PART 6: THE CIA COVENANT: NAZI'S IN WASHINGTON

The CIA Covenant 

Nazis in Washington

Muller's Journal's

by Gregory Douglas 

Sunday, 26 February 1950 

Back again after a truly wonderful three weeks away from the zoo.

I am looking at an article in the paper that covers a speech made by McCarthy on the 12th to a group of Republican women (at Wheeling, West Virginia, ed.). Had heard about this while I was on the vacation but I did not have the time to check the details.

Much pleasure to learn that M. took one of my own paragraphs and used it in toto. “One thing to remember in discussing the communists in our government is that we are not dealing with spies who get 30 pieces of silver to steal the blueprint of a new weapon. We are dealing with a far more sinister type of activity because it permits the enemy to guide and shape our policy.”

He got his figures wrong. M. said 57 communists in the State Department but there are actually 85. But the important paragraph he copied word for word from my own paper! 

Now the real entertainment starts here and we will see where it goes. The minute I leave the city, we have all manner of interesting things happen. I knew he would start but I would like to have been on the scene. Now, I will have to get all the back papers to see just what was actually said.

Now, about the vacation.

The trip started out well, with some weather problems but nothing overly serious. As I am trying to wean Irmgard away from Heini, I had Heini fake a sprained ankle so he had his own compartment. Irmgard had hers, Bunny had hers and I shared one with Maxl who behaved very well. I had to walk him at various brief stops but all went well and I did not have to put my bare foot into a pile of steaming dog shit when I got up to use the tiny lavatory early in the morning. 

We picked up the brother, Charles, and the sister Gloria, in Iowa and they had their own separate quarters. The rest of the party consisted of Klaus (Müller’s cook, ed.) and Arno. The ski hotel was an older but expensive building and there were a number of wealthy and prominent people there. Some were there for the skiing but others like to sit around in the lodge and play bridge or poker and enjoy the beautiful landscape.

The various romances, including my very own, went off more or less as I anticipated. Bunny and I had a suite and at last we have consummated that which I have worked so hard to accomplish. She is quite good in bed and a great deal of entertainment for me. A sense of humor is as important as physical prowess in these matters.

So much for Bunny. We skied almost every day and went to bed early and rose late. Klaus often served us in the suite that kept me out of the dining room and possible curious eyes. As I planned, Heini could not ski because he does not know how and has this terrible sprain. 

Irmgard made an effort to be kind to Charles, or Chuck as he is known, and tutored him every day. On the second day, she vanished into his room and didn’t come out until noon the next day. 

Arno, on the other hand, took an extra day to bed Gloria (Sic transit Gloria mundi!) but informed me that he was in love again. Every week, Arno falls in love. I suggested a platonic relationship but then said that the trouble with a platonic relationship is that the woman always gets pregnant. Arno was not amused at all.

He looked rather tired after several days and we saw very little of Heini’s siblings during the stay.

That left Bunny and myself, and sometimes I preferred skiing to sexual romps.

There was a Steinway in the lounge and in the bench, I found a number of musical scores, many over forty years old. I have now discovered one (Scott) Joplin, a Negro jazz musician and writer of ragtime pieces. Practiced a few of these and then one night when it was snowing heavily, Bunny and I decided to play the piano to entertain ourselves. I did a few German ballads (“The Little Rose” for example, which I sang) and she ran up and down the scales. When I mentioned the jazz, she asked me to play a few pieces for her.

I did so and of course was only paying attention to her as she sat next to me on the bench, but I suddenly realized that I had quite an audience around me. People were smiling and beating time with their feet and I finished off the concert with the “Felicity Rag” which is a wonderful, lively piece with a great feel to it. This got a round of applause and afterwards, a man came up to me and introduced himself to me as a New York producer who owned night clubs. He actually asked me how I would like a contract to play this music in one of his establishments!

I was much better dressed than he was and smoking a good Upmann and could probably buy his theater but I took his card anyway and thanked him. 

I can hear Walter Winchell saying on that awful program of his: “Flash, America! We have just discovered that the chief of Hitler’s evil Gestapo is playing piano in an off-Broadway theater!” That would put the cat down the rat hole!

Poor Heini couldn’t ski because he doesn’t know how (I promised to tutor him myself later) but he put a brave face on things. He enjoyed my concert and told me that if I ever lost my job, he could get me a position in a Kansas City whorehouse! 

So much for the trip.

Irmgard is now in love with Heini’s brother although she told me in some anger that he was not “that large” after all.

Arno whistles around the house, off key, and may well be in love.

One day, I will have to tell Bunny that I am not Swiss. She already knows that because she speaks excellent High German and knows the difference between real German and Swiss German. I told her I was “in business” in Germany before the war and picked up the accent at “school.”

She assumes, as she has said, that I must have a degree from a university. What she does not know is that I had to leave school when I was fourteen and go to work in an aircraft engine factory to help out the family. My father, while a good father and a fine man, is not a business success and never could be.

Everything I have now and have had before, I worked for and very often worked very hard for. Now that there is a good bit of money, all carefully hidden here and there just in case, I can spend what I want and on what I want but the ingrained habits of thrift learned painfully as a child are not easy to shake off.

I gave Bunny a very decent emerald ring set about with diamonds. It is elegant without being ostentatious but she immediately recognized that it was worth a great deal of money. There were protestations but in the end, she accepted it. What she doesn’t know is that it cost me nothing, having been acquired during the course of the last war. If I had to pay for a gift, I would have gotten her a collection of sheet music or a nice scarf (like the one she bought for me). Still, I find that I like her far better than any of the others.

I ask myself: Why? I am not Freud but perhaps because she is a good pianist and likes the same kind of music I do and because she is intelligent and excellent company. The fact that she is a very handsome, patrician woman does not hurt either but the first two factors are the most important ones, believe me. 

There has been sufficient writing and I will retire.

The Bible says “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” and I can now say “Amen” and go to bed.

Heinrich Muller was a complex person in one sense but quite simple in another. His family was poor and Muller did indeed have to make his own way in the world without assistance from rich parents. 

Intense ambition coupled with an incredible ability for hard and effective work made him a success in both the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. In politics, Muller was a member of the Bavarian People’s Party, a conservative, Catholic entity which was very influential in post-World War I politics.

Very anti-communist, Muller was equally anti-Nazi and his acceptance into the SS and his subsequent progression up the bureaucratic ladder infuriated the old-time Bavarian Nazis who had suffered his persecutions prior to their assumption of power in 1933. 

German files are still filled with loud complaints and expressions of outrage that this strong opponent of the Nazi Party was now a rising star in the government. Old Party members were appalled by the fact that Muller was in possession of the sacred Blood Order, only given to Party members who took part in the 1923 putsch in Munich. Müller, after all, was an active member of the Bavarian Political Police who actively opposed the Putsch and were responsible for rooting out and arresting its participants. 

The other face of the ambitious, aggressive policeman and bureaucrat could be seen in Muller's attitude towards his co-workers in Berlin, most of whom had worked with him in Munich. To them, and to his staff, he was not “Herr Gruppenführer” but only “Herr Muller,” or to his friends, simply “Heini.”

Muller was possessed with a strong, if sometimes grim, sense of humor, and candid pictures of him away from his official duties showed him constantly smiling.

Aside from his duties, which occupied fourteen to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, Muller found relaxation in his piano, in reading, painting (mostly landscapes in watercolor), skiing and mountain climbing, chess (at which he was a master) and finally, in his pursuit of attractive women.

His love affairs tended to be long-standing and semi-permanent and in response to a question from a friend as to why his former lady friends sent him birthday and Christmas cards, Muller's response that one always started an affair with a smile and always ended it the same way.

To those who would be horrified, not only by Müller’s survival but his successes, the vision of him in an expensive tuxedo, smoking an expensive Cuban cigar and playing ragtime in an exclusive Colorado ski resort will no doubt cause what Müller would have called “a first class case of spastic colon.” It is the victors who always write the first, and very official, versions of history and only later do different, and often very unpleasant, themes and variations begin to emerge for the enlightenment of some and to the fury of others.

Napoleon once said that written history was merely fiction that everyone agreed upon. 

The further progressions of Heinrich Müller, his lovers and his friends, will no doubt be a subject of fascination and approbation from some and ill-concealed fury from others. His frank and revealing discussions of the activities of his Gestapo are rivaled by his chronicles of the early days of the CIA and the inside, and hitherto very private observations on the administration of Harry Truman and the activities of such individuals as Senator Joseph McCarthy, “Kim” Philby, and others. Only some of the characters that appear in his journals are enshrined in the pantheon of American heroes, an enshrinement based almost solely on the writings of court historians. More often than not, emperors are not the only ones with new clothes. 

Thursday, 2 March 1950

Another coup for me! One of the main secretaries for the agency has now become a great friend of mine. I learned that her mother was in the hospital so I made an investigation and discovered that an operation was needed and there was not a great deal of money for it. I managed to locate an excellent surgeon in Boston and paid him to take care of mama quite properly. Then, after much overjoyed comment from the secretary, who is not particularly attractive...but decent...I very discreetly let her discover that I was the unknown benefactor. Many tears and she even kissed me! I could have done without that because she has dentures and she smells like Camembert cheese! Still, I made my connection.

Now, I had a talk with her about how damned secretive the lunatics were and how much trouble all this secrecy made for me. After all, I had a job to do and they all liked to make it as difficult as they could for everyone. In the end, she now manages to give Irmgard all the important material that I. brings to me and I take into my large closet and carefully photograph everything. It only takes a few minutes and everything goes back to the benefactress and there I am with a wealth of inside information!

It does pay to be kind...at least to the right people!

Friday, 10 March 1950

(Judith, Ed.) Coplon and (Valintin, ed.) Gubitchev have been convicted of espionage. Coplon worked for Justice and Gubitchev was connected with the UN. She gets 15 years in the cooler and he is to be deported. State wants this because they are afraid the Soviets might take action against Americans outside this country.

They were lovers and he is an ugly man. Poor, frustrated woman. Now she will pay the price for her glandular urges and he can go back to Russia to his ugly wife.

And McCarthy is firing wildly at anything in sight. He is terrifying all the left wing idiots who were running the country five years ago. I have given more information to him via the usual source, this time, a good deal of it from Hoover who wouldn’t dare be seen near the man. But of course, I can.

Brewing problems between Hoover and the CIA. Long talk with Philby who tells me the obvious: Hoover hates the CIA and is trying to cultivate British intelligence (even though he loathes the British) in the hopes of getting one up on the CIA. This is absolutely typical empire building (and territorial defense) that I observed in the Reich in former days. Always a struggle for supremacy while no one is minding the business of intelligence.

I have opted to support Hoover for several reasons. In the first place, he and I have a more common background. We were both poor and had to work for what we got. He is as anti-communist as I am and his agents are far more professional than anything the CIA has. In the second place, he is crisply businesslike and does not spend two hours a day at very alcoholic lunches. He does not have a degree from Harvard or Yale but is a man of common sense.

The CIA is filled with pseudo-intellectuals, drunks and egomaniacs who have no idea at all about what they are doing. It is actually a psychotic circus with manic clowns running about smacking each other with dead fish and accomplishing nothing at all.

Unlike Hoover, who is basically a very professional policeman, the CIA people are constantly plotting on how to expand their shabby lot, sniping at the President, attempting to set foreign policy and not one of them with any more brains than a ladle.

I have to put up with them and their idiotic schemings to the point where I genuinely prefer to work at home. But of course they follow me there, leer at the paintings, drink my liquor and try to steal my good cigars. I haven’t heard one sensible sentence over there since I started working with them and a good psychoanalyst would find a rich harvest among the chattering apes. 

I have already had two sexual encounters with their frustrated and elegant wives and hopefully will have more. And the women do talk to me. Since all of them move in the same, vicious circles, I have to be careful that Bunny doesn’t get wind of my mattress exercises in the little pied-à-terre in Chevy Chase.

Much of the copied material I mentioned earlier goes to Hoover who is entirely delighted.

And Angleton slinks around the offices like some demonic character, a professional poisoner, from Shakespeare or...more to the point, something from the Renaissance in Italy when poison was indeed king.

This man is a poet, as he constantly reminds us, and he feels that he alone can see the dangerous movements of Stalin’s intelligence. I know more about that subject than Stalin, and Angleton knows less than nothing. It is actually very painful to listen to these cretins babbling about their knowledge of their enemy. I have carefully concealed much of my own knowledge and certainly my grasp of the Russian language or they would be after me day and night to give them material for their utterly worthless “position papers” which read like something by Kafka by way of Hasek’s “Schweik.”

The wives, on the other hand, are entirely bored with the heavy drinking, foul language and childlike secrets that their husbands mumble about at garden parties, and are easy pickings. I like nothing better than watching some bleating sheep with a Harvard tie going on about the situation in Italy when the night before, I was educating his wife in certain matters that he could never begin to grasp. 

One charming lady told me yesterday evening that her husband is good for about ten minutes once a week...in a good week! Of course the one in question, who smokes a pipe and has leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket, spends a good deal of time bragging about his prowess with the women and how his wife can’t keep her hands off of him. Marvelous! He must use Chinese chopsticks for splints.

I refrain from telling Hoover how I get some of my inside information because he is a terrible moralist and I do not wish to upset him. Like all moralists leading a monastic life, Hoover is strangely interested in the sexual escapades of his enemies and he is the terror of his own men who do not dare frequent bars or other suspect establishments. 

Drinking and nose painting are not encouraged by the little Colonel!

Sunday, 19 March 1950

Truman, at Key West to warm up, will be out of town in May to dedicate a dam in the west and I promised him a lengthy overview of the recent CIA plans and the cover stories prepared to delude him. I brought up the subject of a little dinner to him and he seemed quite receptive.

Bunny is going to New York for a concert but I am not able to break away and join her. She is talking about a trip to Europe and wants me to join her but that idea is out of the question.

McCarthy is about to attack Truman because T. does not want to release confidential files to M. Of course, he doesn’t want it known about the communist O.S.S men and there is, finally, some support for Truman in the CIA. I must say that many of them put on a ferocious act concerning the communists when many of them are a good deal more left of the center than they would like to admit. I have been passing some of their background and political attitudes to those who have the real power and at least hope to slow down some of the lunacy. I have fed M. some material on a few of my co-workers and of course they are in terror lest they be exposed.

I must say, I am greatly enjoying McCarthy’s forays and he is sensitizing the press and various other groups to the real dangers of communism here. We need a good cleansing of the Augean stables, packed with twelve years of Roosevelt’s horseshit. 

Muller's journals accurately reflect the growing rivalry between the newly established CIA and the FBI. Hoover was jealous of his territory, was afraid the CIA would encroach on it, and long established bureaucrat that he was, fought tooth and nail to maintain his position.

Harold Philby kept as far away from Hoover as he could because the latter was anti-British in general and his agency was very actively searching for communist infiltrators in the British services. Neither Philby nor his superiors in London gave anything more than very token cooperation to the FBI in their searches, but Philby himself spent a great deal of time in attempting to discover just how far the Bureau had progressed in their breaking of the Soviet agent codes. 

When it became evident that the FBI’s specialists had been enjoying considerable success in the code-breaking field, British officialdom, to include the Foreign Office and the intelligence community, did everything in their power to protect any British official accused of spying. It mattered not whether these spies worked for the Soviet Union or the United Kingdom. Files were hidden, suspect agents warned and other information destroyed.

Because England was actively spying against the United States and because a number of their own agents were also reporting to Moscow, London had no intentions whatsoever of cooperating with American counterintelligence.

While certainly pungent, Muller's comments on the character and behavior of his associates in the CIA are certainly reflected in a number of biographies and histories that have emerged since the end of the Cold War and the CIA’s subsequent loss of power to control the media and to influence public opinion.

James Angleton emerges in these journals as a very intelligent, dangerous and brutal man, who like so many others of his profession, drank heavily and eventually descended into paranoid delusion. Angleton also advocated, and practiced, physical and psychological torture on his victims, a practice which did not cease until 1985.

Like his good friend Philby, there is a considerable amount of material in the journals on James Jesus Angleton. 

Wednesday, 22 March 1950

McCarthy is certainly having his effect on things here! Accusations flying in all directions. M. has been savagely attacking the State Department and many are rushing to their defense. (General George C. ed) Marshall and Eisenhower are very annoyed with M.... who will now proceed to attack them. (Stewart, ed.) Alsop, a New Deal columnist has attacked M. in the New York press. Some matter of M. being paid while a judge in Wisconsin while engaged in politics (there are two of the Alsops, one worse than the other but I am not sure which is which. Rich, both of them, and one is a raging homosexual.) The Alsops are very popular in Washington society that is not a compliment as far as I am concerned.

A number of security risks in Commerce alleged and these must be investigated. Who knows what will happen to them? The point is, the press is starting to extend greater coverage to the communist problem and the more the better. The left wing is starting to screech “witch hunt” which is to be predicted in safety.

McCarthy said he was planning to go after homosexuals that, coming from him, is ludicrous. He might as well make attacks on balding, drunken Irishmen while he is at it. Such flawed people one have to deal with. The fairies, the drunks, the egomaniacs, the stupid, the greedy and the vicious. There must be civilized people here but I haven’t seen too many of them.

Truman is being asked to order the release of State Department files concerning their communists but will not do so. Why? Because the “spies” are actually O.S.S men who are being removed from government service as discreetly as possible and no one, especially the idiots in the CIA (most of whom were in the O.S.S), want their friends to be exposed. Truman would be inclined to release this material but has had far too much pressure against this so it will probably not be.

(Dr. Philip C. ed.) Jessup, a professor from Columbia University who Acheson is planning to take into his office, is being talked about as being very sympathetic to the communists. He probably is but after all, most of the academics are way left of center and were like swine in the farm gardens during Roosevelt’s reign. It was considered wonderful to love Marx then but certainly not now.

It seems very amusing to listen to my colleagues at the CIA ranting about how they wish to crush world communism when many of them have terrible, dark secrets in their own ideological closets. Hoover has many files on these assholes but is debating whether or not to use the information. In the first place, the CIA is growing in strength and Hoover is a very prudent man. However, he views the CIA as deadly rivals so who knows what might come out?

Am now considering the mechanics of the small dinner I want to give for Truman. The weather is not pleasant, so perhaps towards the end of next month will do. There is a great deal of planning which has to go into one of these things...the menu, the wine list, the entertainment, the outfitting and cleaning, not to mention the guest list.

It would be a wonderful coup for me to do this but I am afraid it will have to be very private if it happens at all. Truman and I do get along but he is a careful man.

Still, I heard about Mr. Pendergast, a political “boss” for whom Truman worked as a judge. P. went to jail, disgraced and when he died, forgotten and alone, the only outsider who attended his funeral was Truman. Told not to by his aides, he went anyway because “Tom was my friend.” This shows his character and his loyalty. Much good to be said for Truman but I heard him shout at someone in Florida and he has a terrible temper when he is aroused.

I just got in several excellent pieces of armor to enhance my already very significant collection. Both of these pieces belonged to the collection of Hearst and I got them at a very good price from a dealer in New York. Hearst is expected to die at any time now and I wonder what will happen to the rest of his collection when he does.

I recall that in 1936 Hearst and his lady friend were at Garmish for the Olympic winter games. We had to prepare a file on H. for Hitler who was planning to meet with him then. A very interesting and powerful man.

He was the first press owner in America to recognize the danger posed by communism in this country. A very intelligent, if eccentric, man with excellent perceptions. There has never been anyone like him before and with the press getting into alien hands, not likely to be seen again. 

Hearst started a campaign against the communists about the time King Franklin was enthroned in 1933 and drove the communists and other left-wing assholes mad because he did have a large following here. Roosevelt then hated him although he needed the support of his chain of newspapers. 

The usual attacks were made on him by the left. “Hearst is a fascist” was one of the chants and he was accused of being a Nazi, which he was not.

Hearst, in his conversations with Hitler, expressed great fear that communism would get a fatal grip on the United States through their support of Roosevelt. He said that fascism was a movement that was created solely as a reaction to the brutal activity of communists and not the other way around. He, at least, could see what I have known for years.

Of course American liberal Jews loathed him and attacked him in left wing magazines and elsewhere. What these screeching morons did not realize is that Hearst intervened on their behalf with Hitler...who certainly listened to him. It did some good for Jews because Hitler wanted Hearst’s support.

I have always said that Hitler’s worst error was not the Russian campaign but his attack on the Jews. He did not like them and viewed them as totally parasitic in society and wanted them out of his new Germany. By expelling and mistreating them, he stirred up a great storm of fury, firstly among the powerful Jewish financial interests in England (where they bribed Churchill to represent their views in the British press) and then this wave of vindictive fury against anything German spread to the United States.

It did not help us that Roosevelt had been elected and had the complete support of influential Jewish bankers but also the total, dedicated support of the communists in America. This combination, which had been in effect before the October Revolution in Russia, worked against anything German. There were savage attacks in the motion picture industry, filled with German refugees, and of course Roosevelt was easily persuaded to attack Hitler and Germany at every opportunity.

It became a virtual war, long before Spain in 1936 (where these groups strongly supported the Republicans or communists) and the war in 1939.

There were economic boycotts but that did not fare too well. Hitler retaliated against these sly bankers by instituting his famous barter system whereby Germany, who had lost all her gold assets at the end of the 1914 war, no longer had to go to the international banking types for funding. For example, he would trade German locomotives and other such products to, let us say, the Argentine for wheat and beef products. When the international banking houses discovered that they had lost an enormous amount of control over Hitler, not to mention huge interest payments on loans lost to his barter program, they really began to howl.

I would say, without doubt, that the horrors of the last war were due entirely to this issue of Hitler’s anti-Semitism and nothing else.

Now that Roosevelt is dead, Truman has said, in private, that he wants to disassociate himself from the cabals who controlled his predecessor. That will be the absolute end of the man. We saw that in the last election when all the secret financial support was swung away from the liberal Democratic programs (now in danger of being destroyed by Truman) to Dewey. At least, according to Hoover’s files, Dewey agreed to go along with the various cabals and keep away from the communist issue.

But we can see in the left wing attacks on Hearst what one can expect in this country when someone does not pay sufficient attention to the suffering of Jews or has the audacity to question the joys of the worker’s and peasant’s paradise. 

Hitler is now accused of slaughtering millions of Jews (which he did not) but Roosevelt’s close friend, Stalin, is never mentioned as the real butcher of at least 40 millions of his own people as well as a large number of unfortunate Polish Jews whom he murdered in 1939.

This is the reason that I am strongly pushing McCarthy to attack those American institutions like the Department of State as being filled with communists. Once the American people become aware of what a pack of verminous and lunatic murderers communists are, they will rise up and throw the lot of them into the sea where their rotting bodies will no doubt kill off all the fish.

Hearst understood all of this very clearly. Hitler said that of all the visiting foreign leaders he had met, Hearst was the man with the quickest mind. Like so many other intelligent people, Hearst was immediately branded as a Nazi that I know he was not. Neither was I for that matter but the truth has nothing to do with the hysterical venom of a crossed communist.

If I were to sum up Hearst from what I knew about him, I would say that he was neither a fascist nor a Nazi, but was a very patriotic American who saw Hitler as the lesser of two evils. He did not embrace him but viewed him as a man, who, not like the communists, was not interested in seizing power in America and destroying its economic structure and instituting a lunatic reign of terror against anyone and everyone whom they hated. And those the communists hate with an insane fury are anyone who has become an actual success, either in finance or even in the arts.

I note with amusement that there are no really creative communist writers and there is nothing like the fury of a failed writer or, especially, poet when confronted with someone who actually can create and be a success at it.

I note in passing that the CIA have, in its upper ranks, a number of very bad poets, none of whom are worth a pinch of dried cow dung. I am thinking of Angleton here most specifically.

A short sentence should sum up these people: All communists are failures and moral bankrupts.

The most dangerous groups in any normal society are communists and hidden homosexuals, both of whom exist on a diet of hate and envy directed towards those who they perceive as being unjustly in control of their miserable existences.

At any rate, the armor is much welcome and we can add to the display in the main hall.

Thursday, 30 March 1950

Poor Owen Lattimore is coming to the surface. We have known for a long time that he was a great friend of the communists, although most carefully indeed, not a member of the party. (According to left wing logic, if a man is not a member of the party, he is not a communist!)

McCarthy hinted and on the 26th, (Drew, ed.) Pearson exposed him. We shall see where this goes. L. has the reputation of fighting over matters. No doubt he will become fierce and dramatic just like Harry White was. Much shouting and finger pointing. Fierce denials. “We aren’t communists, we are only agrarian reformers.” And then they rape your wife, loot your house and burn it down with your old grandmother inside because they have always lived under someone else’s bridges (but in their own filth.)

I have been translating Stefan George into English, just for entertainment and because George does not translate well. In fact, it is very difficult to translate poetry into another language. One can certainly get the meaning of the original but to capture the spirit of it in the new language is very hard indeed.

Here is my rendition of the Prince of Vermin (Der Fürst des Geziefers, ed.) 

The Prince of Vermin enlarges his realm

Lacking no treasure, his luck holding firm

Destruction to all other rebels!

You rejoice, enthralled by the demonic fire,

Feast on the remains of the past

And sense the danger before the end.

They put down your tongues in the emptying trough,

Stray aimless like cattle through the burning courtyard 

And loud sounds the terrible trumpet.

Crazy Stauffenberg likened the Prince to Hitler but that doesn’t really fit the case. Not even Stalin could fit. And Roosevelt did not destroy his own people. Perhaps Churchill who did destroy England, or maybe Mussolini. One of the first Caesars such as Caligula or Nero could fit the picture. More likely, Lenin because of the terrible wave of blood that followed in his train. Not a profitable way to spend my leisure hours but entertaining.

Am still working on the state dinner for T.

More later.

Friday, 7 April 1950

A great fuss about Lattimore here. He, of course, denies being a communist, which is to be expected. McCarthy has been challenged and claims to have the necessary material. But of course, he does not. Hoover does and M. can’t get at it. 

The President is greatly annoyed with everyone, saying that those who attack his favorite, Acheson, and his people, are attacking his bipartisan foreign policy. Truman actually has no foreign policy. He has very little knowledge of what is actually going on in the world and the CIA is not helping this situation by feeding him deliberately false information. T. equates communism with Hitler and Franco. All three are, or were, police states. A great revelation! Both Russia and Germany have always been police states. The new, democratic Germany is now an American police state and Franco goes without saying.

I saw first hand the chaos of the so-called democratic Weimar Republic and have much knowledge of the equal chaos in pre-1936 Spain when the left was in power. 

Communists can only destroy; they are constitutionally incapable of creating anything. Their attitude is that evil capitalists have taken control of the western nations and that this control rightfully belongs to the workers and peasants. In Russia, Lenin tried to give control to these groups only to drive his country to the brink of economic chaos and complete starvation.

Capitalism, while it does have its faults, is not to be compared with Marxism.

In capitalism, most men can succeed if they are able. In communism, the idea is that no one individual is ever permitted to succeed...only the masses. This is the product of a lunatic former Prussian civil servant who should have spent his life babbling in London coffee houses. It is ironic that Marx’s doctrines which he intended for a highly industrialized Germany were instead shoved down the uncomprehending throats of a highly rural and very primitive Russia. When the war broke out in 1914, Russia was just beginning to move into an industrialized phase...a phase which was dealt a terrible blow by the war they so eagerly embraced and was finally killed by the lunatics such as Lenin and his crew of intellectual nihilists.

Of course everyone here is very upset about what they call the “loss” of China.

Someone has to pay for the loss of such a potentially huge market so the left-wing ninnies of the Roosevelt era will have to take the blame. The real blame lies in the U.S. support of Chiang who is vicious, stupid and entirely corrupt. Mao, the communist, is far cleverer than Chiang. 

This country poured millions of dollars into the support of a thoroughly corrupt warlord and lost China in the process. Now, someone has to pay the butcher’s bill for their stupidity. Of course the Chinese are born capitalists and when the ideological madness passes, (as it always does in the end), China will be back to doing business in the same marketplace.

Even if Stalin died today, I personally doubt if Russia would be able to follow the Chinese example. The country is basically too far behind the West in technology but more important, the Russians have never been independent and have always been a country with potential but no performance.

Here, it is said by the idiots in the CIA, Russia is overtaking the United States every day and we must spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer’s dollars to keep ahead of them. I know this is nonsense and the CIA monkeys know this is nonsense but it makes money for business here, keeps the army moving along and allows the CIA to establish more and more control through fear of an enemy that fears this country (and with very good reason) far more than we ought to fear them. This would have me burned at the stake if the Inquisition were still in force, but fortunately, things are so completely disorganized in Washington that no one would pay the slightest attention to anything I had to say.

I see that the actual danger is not from Stalin but from China. This country actively fought against the communists in the 1920's, sending troops to Murmansk and Vladivostok and fighting in Russia. That was then and memories fade. 

Now, we have supported Chiang with weapons and money, the communists have won and this is now. I see the Chinese as far more dangerous than the Russians because basically, they are far more intelligent and at this moment, do not like us at all.

They also have a huge manpower pool, even if they have a very limited industrial base. If they should develop this, and they have the brains to do this, then we here should watch them very carefully indeed. One of my CIA colleagues here was talking about this the other day but officially the agency is of the opinion that China will take years to develop and would never attack the West.

There is as much proof in support of this theory as there is for mine: absolutely none whatsoever. Right now, the U.S. is preoccupied in Europe and doesn’t want any problems in Asia. Therefore, the CIA sees Europe as the main theater and not Asia.

What if Mao invaded Taiwan? Would we defend it? At the present moment, not likely. Or what if they attack their ancient enemy, Japan? There we might do something in defense. Or Korea? A very poor country, long a slave state of Japan but divided in half with a communist government in the north. Or French-Indo China (Vietnam, ed.) Another divided country.

This country appears to be in the same position that Hitler was in 1939. If he went to war with Poland, would the British and French attack his almost undefended western borders? Given their disunity, probably not, but it was a real gamble then. Now, of course, we realize that there was no danger whatsoever and the enemies, who I must point out, had declared war on us, not the other way around, finally got around to attacking us long after the Polish campaign was over and we had reinforced our troops holding the West wall.

However, I regard the Chinese as a more formidable foe than the decaying British and French. These were, to quote Shakespeare (whom I have been reading lately) “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

China, on the other hand, is full of people who have been engaged in warfare for two decades and have just chased out the last of the corrupt warlords.

I regret now not having spent more time studying the problems of Asia. Of course during my work in Germany, there was no need for this and there are only so many hours in a day.

I have now been reading up on the Orient but I doubt if there will be much need for anti-Oriental counter intelligence. A Russian who speaks perfect English, (and many of them do) can pass for an American, but an Oriental is still an Oriental and easily identified. Besides, the Russians can appeal to the left wing in this country and the Chinese cannot.

There was sympathy for China during the last war but not the intimate connection that the Russians had with labor people, intellectuals, Jews and so on.

I have developed a great liking for Chinese food.

I am afraid McCarthy will have to soak his head in the toilet and calm down or he will stifle the anti-communist movement in the cradle. I will have the Msgr. talk firmly to him as soon as possible. McCarthy’s problem is that he loves to hear the sound of his voice and delights in attention. This leads him into intemperance that in turn makes him a very large target. He should surface quietly from time to time, let loose a few well-chosen shots and then go back into his bunker. Now, he runs around making wilder and wilder accusations that will eventually trip him up.

And of course, McCarthy doesn’t really care about communist infiltration in America. All he does care about is to pull the tails of the establishment monkeys and make faces at them. There are others to deal with but he gets the most newspaper coverage. 

Thursday, 20 April 1950

Today is the Fuhrer's birthday and a few of us will celebrate it tonight but very quietly at home. Also, (Louis, ed.) Budnez, former communist leader here, has identified Lattimore. Of course he has no proof but so what, as they say here. Important communist sources were never members of the communist party and very often kept far away from the gibbering and very visible radicals. Just because a man did not carry a card in his wallet or give money for party dues does not absolve him from guilt. 

Communism was so popular with the feeble-minded intellectuals here that it would surprise me if more professors and government bureaucrats didn’t turn up with each turn of the spade. Now, many of them are living in increasing fear...fear of exposure, arrest or loss of their jobs...because of what was once considered socially acceptable.... at least in their circles.

Lattimore was in a position to influence policy. Some dockworker in New York was not.

(Sen. Millard, ed.) Tydings is going to open the “Amerasia” case again and that ought to make a lot of these State Department types very angry. After all, a number of their most sensitive documents ended up in a communist magazine’s office. Roosevelt had this shut up but now it is the Republican’s chance to dig up more dirt.

That brutal (Colonel James A. ed.) Killian lost his lawsuit over a book discussing his sadistic behavior at an American training camp in England during the war. Truman hates him and once told me that he considered K. as a “real Gestapo” type that I found amusing because I would never have had such a repulsive brute on my rolls. And the Army has tried to paint him white for years.

Am proceeding now with plans for my dinner for Truman. He has accepted in principle but we have to find a date when it is convenient for him. So far, I have worked up a menu, laid in the wine and had the servants unpack and prepare the plates and dinnerware.

I think we can give the President a very pleasant intimate dinner and after it is over, perhaps I can make a few points.  

I am told that he likes bourbon whiskey and I was at my wine dealers recently and asked him what the best bourbon was. He looked at me rather unhappily because he (and I) are basically wine drinkers. He mentioned a superior brand that comes from some place in Tennessee where they only make a few dozen crates a year. Extremely expensive but I am told very good. I bought a case (at a hundred dollars a bottle!) just in case.

If Truman doesn’t come, we can sell it to McCarthy (who would no doubt drink boot polish if it were strong enough in alcoholic content).

And there will be music. I will have a Bechstein and a Steinway in the music room and Bunny and I can entertain him. We have been going over the scores and I am very partial to two Bach pieces. Truman prefers more romantic music but I loathe Chopin so if we keep it relatively short, I think the Bach will do.

Aunt, of course, wants to come...and shall. Even though she is a staunch Republican, the thought of dining with the President is enough to warm her cold Republican heart. 

Wednesday, 26 April 1950 

Truman has launched another barb at McCarthy. Gave a speech to a group of lawyers on Friday and spoke about his methods of fighting communism. The slow, steady method is recommended and he struck at M. by using the word “hysteria” with reference to the recent press reports.

Yes, of course, Truman is correct from his point of view. He cannot permit a great movement of hysterical people to purge out all the communists because it would wreck his administration and do terrible damage to the fabric of American society.

He knows perfectly well that McCarthy is a tool and who is using him. It is, as I said earlier, he can easily deny what is happening and attack M. while looking like a reasonable man. At the same time, we will go on our happy way, sensitizing the Americans to the (at least) former menaces. This will help us to root out the real spies and so terrify the left wing that they will crawl back under the wet logs for a decade or so.

They were getting extremely pervasive and arrogant during the Roosevelt era, and what is actually worse, fettering American businesses in such a way as to eventually destroy them. Had the war not broken out and business not had many controls temporarily lifted by the Roosevelt people to increase wartime production, who knows if we would not now be enjoying Henry Wallace’s version of the corporate state? Poor Henry. He almost was President but now is a discredited man, talking to himself in the wilderness from which he will soon vanish entirely.  

And poor Irmgard. She now lusts after Heini’s brother but cannot get at him. He will be coming to Washington (as my guest, of course) in a week so Irmgard can get her battery recharged. I will put both of them up at a hotel so we won’t have to bother with their mating rituals.

And good news! Truman will come!

Now all we have to do is fix the date, buy the meat and vegetables, polish the armor and hire some temporary servants.

I want to be careful not to appear too rich or the President might get jealous but a good show might impress him. I have stressed to him my own humble origins, as compared with the Dulles brothers, and I know it hits a point with him.

I think we will sit ten to table. There might be one more but I like even numbers and I am told Truman is somewhat superstitious and doesn’t want thirteen. I do not want to invite Clifford. He does not like me after the wig business and he would monopolize every conversation throughout the evening. Hoover would be out. He would no doubt want tomato ketchup at the table with paper napkins and grape juice.

Enough of this.

I am expecting another shipment of drawings tomorrow and I want to get up early enough to walk Maxl and be here just as they arrive. I alone get to open the boxes and only safely upstairs.

This place is beginning to look like Hearst owned it! Still, better to have too much than not enough.

next....Thursday, 4 May 1950