Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Allen Dulles: Harvard Law School Forum: December 13, 1963

Harvard Law School Forum



From a tape recording beginning at about 47:35: “There never has been a political action, or an action of a political nature – Bay of Pigs, U-2, uh, Vietnam and the security services – there never has been an operation of that kind that had not been approved from the very beginning, at its very inception at the “highest” level of government and approved. Now when there’s a failure, uh, if something blows up – whether it’s a plane or a Bay of Pigs, you’re going to have criticism. And the CIA then can’t run out and say, ‘Now look here, we were backed on this by …’ [Audience laughter] Maybe I should stop? I’m going to very soon. The CIA can’t get up and say we didn’t have anything to do with this and so forth and so on; just keep their mouth shut. In both the Bay of Pigs situation and the U-2 situation the chief executive assumed responsibility – not because I asked him to … not at all. But because he felt that not to assume responsibility for these particular actions – and I think he was right – we both were right – would have meant irresponsibility in government. If I was going to be allowed to sit around there and say ‘I ought to be allowed to sit around there and send airplanes over Russia without policy approval, I ought to be shot … or certainly dismissed.’ [Audience laughter] … or mount a Bay of Pigs operation without approval, the same thing should have happened to me. Well, it just didn’t work that way.”