A COLD WAR

While Australian Mustangs are supporting - and sometimes killing - the Americans troops in Korea, an Australian journalist prevents war crimes by the South against prisoners. The North, who see the South as collaborators and traitors, also commit atrocities, as do the Americans. The British government finally and reluctantly send a token force, which gets insulted by the Americans as soon as they...

More and more US troops landed in Korea in July-August 1950, only to get immediately crushed by the North. The segregated African-American unit, the 24th infantry of the 25th division, got special criticism for their inability to stand their ground. Yet the US/UN troops were actually killing a lot of KPA troops. Meanwhile Rhee’s ROK men were forcing young South Koreans at gunpoint to join the army...

The next US unit to face the North Koreans was the 34th infantry - 1981 men, but still no tanks, no anti-tank weapons. Did the US learn from their first disaster in Korea? Meanwhile, on 10 July, Dougie Mac was formally appointed Commander-in-Chief of the United Nations Command - despite the UN wanting someone else for the job. A US General gets captured by the North Koreans… and learns to like kim...

The first US troops to engage the North Koreans was “Task Force Smith” as the Battle of Osan. They were sent in there by MacArthur to deliver “an arrogant display of strength.” It was a complete disaster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

MacArthur recommends “the full utilization” of the US military to Korea and Truman approves. Although the UK was completely and utterly broke, they agreed to get involved, even though privately they didn’t buy the American claim that Kim’s was taking orders from Moscow. And they were worried that the Americans might want to drop another atomic bomb. According to one senior US military officer: “Al...

Gen Douglas MacArthur, the “American Caesar”, was a rabid Christian who believed it was his personal mission in life to crush communism and help the United States dominate world affairs. A complete narcissist, he enjoyed the company of prostitutes and sycophants, and ran Japan like a shogun. By 1950, he was 70 years old. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Back to the Korean War. We start with a quick re-cap of previous episodes to remind us what happened. After the North attacked the South on June 25, 1950, the US pulled together a coalition (of sorts) of countries to defend the South, lead by 70-year-old General Douglas MacArthur. Truman told the British prime minister, Clement Attlee, “The only way to meet communism is to eliminate it.” Learn mor...

We're joined by Richard Lim from the "This American President" podcast to talk about Truman and his Cold War decisions. It gets a little... tense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles personified the “Soviets As Evil” mindset. They were the classic examples of the American Cold War paradigm. Upper class political blue bloods, fundamentalist Christians, who were big business lawyers, hated Communism, and who set out to remake the map of the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Beetle Smith’s last act as CIA director is to come up with the idea of a CIA “Murder Board”. After Eisenhower is elected POTUS, the new CIA director is Allen Dulles, brother of the new Sec of State, John Foster Dulles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1951, the CIA spent $100 million buying arms and ammunition to support 200,000 Chinese anti-communist guerrillas who were going to fight against Mao. The only problem was - the guerrillas didn’t exist. Then, to counter the rising problem of double agents in their ranks, the CIA set up secret torture prisons in Germany, Japan, and Panama. It was in Panama that the CIA started Project Artichoke....

In 1951, the CIA’s budget was ballooning out of control to fund it’s massive covert operations which were all complete disasters. But they were secret disasters, so nobody, not even Congress or the President, let alone the general public, ever heard about most of them. While the CIA happily sent thousands of Koreans and Chinese agents to their deaths, they reported back to Washington that everythi...

The CIA’s first attempt to train foreign agents and parachute them into Soviet territory ended in disaster. So did their second attempt. And their third. And so on. But they did it anyway. Then the Korean War happened and Bedell Smith became the fourth CIA director in as many years. He inherited a disaster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If there's one thing the CIA loved in its early days, it was hiring Nazis - like General Reinhard Gehlen who ran their West German spying operation and ended up running West Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The CIA wanted to secretly funnel American cash to European politicians, criminals and businesses that would do their bidding. They also wanted to influence public opinion about capitalism, communism, but without appearing to. To accomplish this, they set up an enormous number of front groups, many of which still exist today. They also hid known fascist murderers in the US because they thought the...

On September 1, 1948, Frank Wisner took charge of the CIA’s covert operations. Known as the OPC - The Office of Policy Co-ordination. Although the CIA was a publicly known entity, the OPC was top secret. One of the first things he did was establish a multinational media conglomerate for spreading anti-Communist and pro-American propaganda. He spent millions trying to tip the political scales aroun...

Taking a short break from our CIA series this week to talk to retired U.S. Major Danny Sjursen. Danny was a U.S. Army strategist and history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. These days he’s an outspo...

Even the CIA’s original legal counsel warned them that covert missions were illegal - but they did them anyway. On December 14, 1947, they were ordered to execute “covert psychological operations designed to counter Soviet and Soviet-inspired activities." Their first mission was to spend tens of millions of dollars of secret cash to influence the Italian elections. “We were terrified…. and going b...

In 1947, Truman’s popularity was plunging. The CIA came out of his attempt to scare the hell out of the country. Exit Director Vandenberg and enter Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Allen Dulles, the National Security Council and some loosey-goosey wording in the CIA’s charter that you could drive a semi-trailer through. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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After Truman's decision to shut down the OSS, Wild Bill Donovan’s deputy, Brigadier General John Magruder, met secretly with John McCloy, the assistant secretary of war, taking advantage of the fact that Henry Stimson, secretary of war and a huge opponent of the idea of an "American Gestapo", had just retired. Together they decided to countermand Truman and keep the OSS together. After Truman even...

According to Truman, he never intended for the CIA to be a “Cloak & Dagger Outfit”. It was intended to be a centralized reporting agency, not to act as a spy organization. Today we start a series about how the CIA rose from the ashes of Wild Bill Donovan's incompetent OSS after WWII. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tito’s form of Communism quickly became much more liberal that those in the Soviet bloc countries and China. The question is why? The collectivisation of land was put in reverse. The police were reformed and the press was given additional freedoms. Tito turned the tables on Stalin, accusing the USSR of abandoning socialist principles in favour of imperialist expansion. Learn more about your ad cho...

Tito has his own Central Committee member Žujović arrested for treason, which leads the Cominform to expel Yugoslavia. This creates a rift between the pro=Soviet Yugoslav Communists and the pro-Tito Communists, and Tito sends thousands of “Cominformists” to slave in the camp on Goli Otok. To show that he could out-Stalin Stalin, he announced there would be ‘greater boldness and a faster pace in se...

Tensions between Yugoslavia and the USSR continue to increase in the late 40s, eventually erupting when the Soviets declared the Yugoslav Communist Party was undemocratic and neither Marxist-Leninist nor Bolshevik. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices