Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

July 24, 1945: At the Potsdam Conference, Truman slyly told Stalin that he had a new weapon, but not that it was the atomic bomb. Stalin wasn’t fooled. He already knew. The nuclear arms race had begun.


Truman Tells Stalin, July 24, 1945


Rare shot of JFK military aide (and Nuclear Football carrier) Gen. Chester V. Clifton with Fiddle & Faddle. He was in the motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.




Priscilla Ware and Jill Cowen, allegedly slept with President Kennedy while interning at the White House.

Files of Chester V. Clifton, November 22, 1963–January 20, 1969

This Series contains records, none of which have been digitized.

This series consists of the working files of C. V. Clifton during his time as Military Aide to the President under President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson. The files reflect the subject matters for which Clifton was responsible.

Access: Partially Restricted
Access to some of these archival materials is restricted for the following reason:

    Donated - Security Classified
    Top Secret

Too many damn secrets in this Country!

September 16, 2015 – Today the big pooh-bahs of the security services–Fearful Leader Clapper, the Machiavellian Brennan, former SEAL chieftain Admiral McRaven, and a number of their predecessors, have gathered in Austin, Texas, at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library. Their purpose is to preside over an event at which the government agencies and the National Archives formally open for research the key intelligence reports for the ages. Today these are called the President’s Daily Briefs (PDBs). Jack Kennedy knew them as the PICKL (predictably, “pickle”), or President’s Intelligence Checklist; Dwight D. Eisenhower’s staff had even more awkward names like “Synopsis of Intelligence Items Reported to the President.” (They never could find an acronym for that one.)

...
But like most things that go to presidents, the PDBs became the focus of fierce jockeying. (Still today: In an attempt to assert that it was always the oracle of the PDB, the CIA maintains that its publications Current Intelligence Bulletin and Central Intelligence Bulletin, precursors to the National Intelligence Daily, all lower-level organs, were “PDBs.”)

Responsible for the actual information utilized in the PDB the CIA sought to gain control over the drafting. They succeeded when John F. Kennedy occupied the White House. The PICKLs, as they were then known, were delivered by the president’s military aide, General Chester V. Clifton. Then a focus of infighting became who would be present when the president received his daily dollop of intel. McGeorge Bundy often attended, Walt Rostow wanted to be a recipient of the document himself, Henry Kissinger did not want the PDB delivered if he wasn’t there to hear it; Zbigniew Brzezinski, I am told, sought to prevent CIA director Stansfield Turner from delivering the document, to take over the delivery duty himself, or at least be there for the event. In Ronald Reagan’s time security advisers did not trust the president to understand the issues and were almost always in attendance.

Freeing the President’s Daily Brief

Most everyone knows about the heated Kitchen Debate between Nixon and Khrushchev in Moscow that took place July 24, 1959. After the debate, Nixon did his duty and led Khrushchev to the exhibit where he downed 7 Pepsi cola's and provided the USSR with an alternative to Coca-Cola. However, less remembered is the fact that the Nixons were subjected to high levels of radiation at Spaso House during their visit to the USSR.



CIA newspaper clipping from WaPo (PDF) It's a crappy OCR scan (per usual)...you can read a very short NYT version here.

The Nixon radiation story was broken in 1976 by Rick Berke and Michael Gill of the Walt Whitman High School student newspaper.



Rick Berke went on to become a...journalist and later an editor at NY Times. The Black & White school newspaper is still around.

The State Department's response to Government Attic's Freedom of Information Act request re: the 1959 Nixon radiation incident in the USSR...




July 24, 1990: the last continuous "Looking Glass" flight took off from SAC HQ at Offutt AFB, Nebraska. For more than 29 years, beginning on February 3, 1961 at least one EC-135 airborne command post was kept aloft, ensuring the ability to fight a nuclear war if SAC were destroyed...or so went the justification.




Sekai daisensô (The Last War) released in 1961, directed by Shūe Matsubayashi, Japanese film speculates on the events which lead the U.S. and the Soviet Union into a nuclear Armageddon.


THE LAST WAR press release from TOHO and a newspaper ad from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin from December 28, 1961. Based on newspaper archive searches alone, it looks like this film's only U.S. theatrical release was in Hawaii.

The English version/dubbing of The Last War has only been released on VHS and is currently the only home video release of the film in the United States. Germany has seen a DVD release in 2008, under the title of Todesstrahlen aus dem Weltraum (translation: Death Rays from Outer Space).


Meanwhile, over in UFO circus world...