by Anita Sands Hernandez
See, you gotta get the commie agitators out. What does that have to do
with mining the harbors of Nicaragua? Well, errrr....Who sez I did that?
This was William Joseph Casey testifying against his own CIA a few weeks before he died of a 'brain tumor' Just like John Mitchell died, for Nixon's sins, a decade and a half earlier. CASEY was a hero. I have such a postmortum crush on William J. Casey, I can't even tell you! (After reading his bio by Joseph Persico) What's really odd about that is that I'm a lifelong progressive --even a borderline socialist, oh hey, let it all hang out, --verging on fellow traveler communist --so it's weird that I always had this weak spot in my heart for old OSS guys. My bestest BF ever was OSS. Thirty years I dated him, through count'em, three wives. Showing a penchant for intrigue, in both of us.
Captain Edward Anhalt fought WWII, also had two
oscars, wrote Jeremiah
Johnson, Becket, a lot of other things. Boston Strangler QBVII, Peter
the
Great. Man in the Glass Booth. Luther. Panic in the streets. And The
Sniper,
a film that was pulled.-- l9 mothers sued Columbia for making a
perverted
film, alleging the flick caused a wackjob serial murderer to kill their
l9 daughters. Eddie testified that "the shooter killed girls, nothing
perverted
about that, now if he killed GUYS...". Columbia escaped a costly
lawsuit.
Eddie had a biting wit, very dry like his eternal martinis. I went
to thirty years worth of cinema classes with him, drank Virgin Marys
while
he tanked up on the high octane stuff. The WGA spent months recording
his
life story. They should have just framed his liver. He was a fabulous
raconteur
from the first to about the ninth martini,, he told vintage stories of
drinking Vodka with Stalin in his greatcoat during a food-free zone in
the Kremlin during the Nazi siege while Moscovites dug huge, deep
trenches
so the German tanks would turn belly up in a hole as they rolled in to
Moscow.And when he was swacked, I got to drive his red Ferrari home. To
my house at least. Don't know how he got back to the Palisades.
Eddie was in the Army but the Army didn't control Eddie. He got to MOSCOW to escape MERRIL's MAURADERS, where he was assigned. (Every GI DIED) He got to Moscow feloniously, writing his own orders to get away from this other WAAAY more dangerous Pacific Beachwar that the Army was GOING to send him too. He became OSS accidentally: breakfasting in a Washington DC hash house one morning while he was in the process of being DRAFTED into WWII, he bumps into General Bill Donovan at the next barstool and makes this big impression. The 27 yr old Anhalt had been at Columbia doing propaganda classes with the top expert in the field and film documentary classes with another big name and gone on to be a PATHE news cameraman. Wild Bill instantly says 'boy, we can sure use you. I can get you diverted (from the draft to come in with us.' What was really going through his mind was, rich kid Upper west side Riverside Avenue Jew..you can be our little Kissinger. So into the OSS Eddie trots and having that little extra cachet in his jacket, he was able to rewrite his orders for the entire war, getting him out of Merrill's Marauders and other doomed units. He was absolutely PSYCHIC which battles to avoid. (He spent most of his time at Fort Wacky with Ronald Reagan and Bill Holden.So he has great RR stories, too and he ended up photographing the Concentration Camps with the big director who got him to Hollywood. He did the documentary on the BIG FLYING fortress, what was that film called?
So, having this rare predilection for old spies, cut to the post Millenium, I accidentally read Joseph Persico's book on super spy William Joseph Casey. I read it cover to cover as if it were a spy novel.. Takes me all of three nights. This book is so super readable you can't even believe it! Author Persico is a genius...and he loved his subject so that the reader really sees that rare breed we had in the 1940's, a street smart guy who was born Lace Curtain Irish but rose to the heights on a legal degree. He knew New York frontwards and backwards, became a lawyer whose conversance with US Tax codes made him rich . Casey not only advised he wrote books on how to keep your money and still 'salute Sam'. He published them himself (more profits) both before and after his stint in the OSS in Europe. Persico describes Casey's war experience in London sending spies into Nazi Germany. He returned to USA and became friends with corporative leaders from those tax books (and his law practice.) He made another smart turn, he went into VENTURE CAPITAL where he said the BIG MONEY got made. Casey 'let in' oligarch investors and with his 'deal creations,' put together a l0 million dollar fortune which in those days was REAL money, and did it before he met Ronald Reagan's handlers who had heard his name and fame. Casey knew CEOs in NYC, and POLS in DC so got conscripted by Ronnie's handlers to 'get RR into office.' Bill Casey promised he'd do it and he delivered. This was, after all, the man who got actual German speaking Nazi POWs out of English camps (totally forbidden) and back into Germany to spy on Hitler so after he got Ronnie into office Ronnie says 'what do you want? "I want to be Secretary of State". Sorry, Al Haig got that one, you're ex OSS so wouldn't CIA DO? Well, it wouldn't and didn't do but it was better than nothing and hey, Haig went on to make a conspicuous jerk out of himself. while Bill Casey went to work with his same WWII efficiency, lack of scruples, getting Ruski and Latin Reds out of a hemisphere already polluted by Fidel. And this was just after the SHAH fell which the CIA missed entirely so their anti-nationalism was intense. And the whole Iran Contragate scandal was spawned from Casey's brain.
I heard that BOB WOODWARD takes up that part of the story in detail in "VEIL". SO I go to Abe books, order it and it is equally delightful, almost. You get a copy used, for a buck, read how a pack of Agency bulldog anti commies (with the help of Orson Welles and my very own UNCLE CHARLIE FAWCETT, got Senator Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks played him,) to create a Secret War which would bring down Russia in Afghanistan, and create the unforseen blowback of OSAMA BIN LADEN, ISIS, Syria which is WORLD WAR III
VEIL goes on to tell how Casey /Reagan made life hard for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua using a yank chain of money, murder and harbor mining and in the doing, got a lot of Nicaraguan and Salvadoran national liberationists genocided, and Guatemalans too and created even more BLOWBACK for America. Temporary wins there were at the cost of the lives of the liberal left, teachers, journalists, students and innocent Indian villages across Latin America. Here, Casey was wrong. These were Bolivaristas, not Communistas.
But I don't hold genocide against Bill Casey like I didn't fault Eddie Anhalt for being a rightwing, drunken cheater who pinned me down for three decades of martini monologues. I admire Casey for sticking to his belief that Commies were after American mines, factories and oil wells. I am sorry that he just couldn't let little third world banana republics rightfully emerge with some of their own resources in their own pockets. I sort of am an apologist for Casey. It was a case of post 1917 black and white world view. And I am sort of not. He killed recklessly.
So tonight my favorite crime shows have passed for the evening; I have nothing to do and I google my dead beau's name not the screenwriter, my imaginary 'new' beau Bill Casey, and I find this:
A picture of WILLIAM J. CASEY's Florida mansion's BOOKSHELF featuring & starring a FLETCHER PROUTY BOOK, "THE SECRET TEAM" Another hero of mine. CASEY READ PROUTY? WHO KNEW? (Prouty is the Army Colonel (played by Sutherland in JFK) who sits on park bench and gives Costner (Jim Garrison) the big picture.Apparently CASEY read Prouty. Proof is at: http://www.nysocialdiary.com/node/167504
Ever wonder who reads books with titles like World Coal, The SECRET
TEAM, The Weapons of WW III, and The Citizen Army, and who still finds
time for The Age of Elegance? That is not the William James one, either.
The Casey library shelves are filled with books that might have been written
by former OSS information specialists who kept fighting WW II for fifty
years after it ended.
I get a crick in my neck writing down all the titles I can see
and naturally I go straight to Abebooks to order the titles knowing Casey's
fave subject was the American Revolution especially the spy tricks
that G. Washington used. (Bob Woodward chronicles Casey's favorite books"
Douglas Southall Freeman's 7 volume George Washington, ( Vol 3 and 6 in
particular,) Pennypacker's General Washington's Spies, Ford's "A peculiar
Service, Carl Van Doren's The Secret History of the American Revolution.
From these tomes, Casey wrote his "Where and How the War was Fought." (He
also personally walked the Benedict Arnold Trail one summer with his wife
and daughter.) He admired spies and was born for spycraft. You want to
add Woodward's Veil and Persico's many books to your collection. It's a
lot of fun and you'll come out of it loving Casey too. And forgiving him.
It's just how old farts THOUGHT in those days. See, things really ARE EVOLVING
and the IMF and FEDERAL RESERVE (probably the same critter,) ARE playing
Daddy Warbucks and ARE bailing out the next tier of bankers down. As well
they SHOULD! So things are perfect. In a crooked kind of way.
