Description: The Cloak and Dollar War by Gordon Stewart This is the scarce 1953 First Edition A short (72 page) paperback which was one of the first books to detail the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. Front cover and spine Further images of this book are shown below Publisher and place of publication Dimensions in inches (to the nearest quarter-inch) London: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd 4¾ inches wide x 7¼ inches tall Please note the book's small dimensions. Edition Length 1953 First Edition 72 pages Condition of covers Internal condition Original printed very thin card cover (paperback). The covers are rubbed, particularly around the edges, and scuffed, with discolouration to the lighter areas of the covers and darkening around the edges (which is particularly evident on the rear panel). There are also a number if minor marks, mainly on the rear panel, and an old pencilled price on the front panel. The thin spine is heavily rubbed, is frayed in places, and there is a small tear at the tail The text is generally clean throughout though the paper has tanned noticeably with age. The construction is of a stapled text block, and the two staples have rusted, as can be seen in the image above of the Title-Page. The front cover is partially coming away as a result, though still firmly attached. Dust-jacket present? Other comments No This is a scarce, short (72 page), monograph on the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the first such to appear. Considering the stapled paperback construction, the current condition is quite reasonable, internally clean though in scuffed and discoloured covers. Gordon Neil Stewart (25 June 1912 – 15 February 1999) was an Australian writer. Stewart was born in Melbourne into a wealthy Australian family with pastoral interests in the Bathurst district of New South Wales. He was a great grandson of Major General William Stewart (1769–1854) Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales from 1825 to 1827. Stewart received a spasmodic education at The Scots College, Sydney due to his parents' frequent travels, but developed a love of reading from long holidays spent in the library of his uncle's house (Abercrombie House) in Bathurst. The family moved to Paris when Stewart was in his late teens. He attended an English language school and then studied art. With other members of his family now based in England, Stewart settled in London where he worked from time to time as a journalist and became involved in radical politics. In 1936 he married the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson with whom he collaborated on two thrillers under the name Nap Lombard. When the Second World War broke out he joined the British army and served as an Officer in the artillery in India and Burma. After his divorce from Pamela Hansford Johnson, Stewart married Doreen Ellen Coulling in 1950. In 1953 he published The Cloak and Dollar War, the first book to be written about the Central Intelligence Agency, described by intelligence scholar Richard J Aldrich as a revelatory text. Stewart returned to Australia in 1955 and worked in Sydney as a journalist for the mining and construction industry. He retired to Bathurst in 1983 where he died on 15 February 1999 Illustrations, maps, etc Contents NONE : No illustrations are called for Please see below for details Post & shipping information Payment options The packed weight is approximately 250 grams. Full shipping/postage information is provided in a panel at the end of this listing. Payment options : UK buyers: cheque (in GBP), debit card, credit card (Visa, MasterCard but not Amex), PayPal International buyers: credit card (Visa, MasterCard but not Amex), PayPal Full payment information is provided in a panel at the end of this listing. The Cloak and Dollar War Contents Introduction I Cops and Robbers II Cloak-and-Dagger III Organising the Cold War IV The Department of Dirty Tricks V Unofficial Spies VI U. S. Labour Bosses in the Cold War VII Cold War in the Ether VIII West Berlin: Spy Centre IX Are American Diplomats Spies? X Plots Against Poland XI Cleaning up after Allan Dulles XII To the Reader The Cloak and Dollar War Introduction Today, men and women all over the world want peace. They want great-power agreement, a relaxation of international tension. The enemies of peace in the United States and elsewhere, faced with the bankruptcy of their foreign policy, want to stir up international hatred. Because it cannot act openly, dare not present its real policy to the public, Washington falls back on the "psychological warfare" experts. These people and their work are the subject of this book. The basic sources of material used are the United States Press, statements by United States leaders, books by "cold war" experts. Material from Eastern Europe is only used to elaborate points already proved. It is important for everyone to know about America's cloak-and-dagger work. It is important to recognise a provocation, a false rumour, a lie originating in Washington. For cloak-and-dagger warfare is more and more the expression of American foreign policy. And it is not confined to the countries behind the so-called Iron Curtain. It can and is being used in the countries hitherto looked upon as America's allies. To them this book is a warning. Today the Psychological Strategy Board, or as the Washington cynics call it "the Department of Dirty Tricks", is working overtime to create hatred, and to counter any move on the part of the countries of the peace camp to lead to the relaxation of international tension. To the reader we say: think carefully next time you see that scare headline. Is it really true? Or did it originate in the brain of some "expert" who planted it in an American-subsidised newspaper? The future of peace may depend on how quickly you discern truth from falsehood. With that in view, read on. The Cloak and Dollar War Excerpt: I. Cops and Robbers The scene is the straggling village of Babice, in Czechoslovakia. The time, one hot summer afternoon in July 1951. In the village hall four members of the village council are discussing local affairs. The discussion was abruptly interrupted by two men bursting into the room. In their hands they carried sub-machine-guns. Brutally, and in cold blood, they opened fire. Three of the councillors were shot dead, the other seriously wounded. A couple of days after, the police cornered the killers in a wheat field. After a short gun battle they were captured: Some time later the murderers and twelve accomplices were brought to trial. Then it was revealed that they were terrorists trained in American camps in Bavaria and sent back into their own country to commit sabotage and murder. Key man in the conspiracy was Ladislav Maly, who had organised a group of malcontents, supplied them with funds and weapons. In this he was helped by a village priest. Maly was killed in the final clash with the police. His gang had committed a number of crimes, including assault and robbery, before they were caught. Seven were condemned to death and the rest to terms of imprisonment. But did this really happen? Does the United States subsidise gangsters to commit crimes? Was the Babice affair a frame-up of some harmless opponents of the "people's democracy"? These are questions asked by many people in Western countries. In December 1951 the State Department in Washington vigorously denied that the United States interferes in the internal affairs of other countries. American policy, it claimed, is purely defensive, and its relations with other countries are carried on according to normal standards of international contacts. Other people, however, had other opinions. The well-known American journalist, James Reston, New York Times correspondent and Pulitzer prize-winner, writing in his paper on December 8, 1951, made the following comment on the State Department protest: "Really, the only result of this statement was to confuse the American people. The Russians know we are playing cops and robbers back of the Iron Curtain. So do the satellites and our allies. About the only people who do not know —and they must suspect it—are the American people, many of whom do not know anything about the bare-knuckle aspects of the cold war." A few months later another well-known American journalist gave further details of how to play "cops and robbers": "No Government official will admit it, but we are training men to be spies, saboteurs, specialists in the tougher forms of psychological warfare. They are being taught to slip into the Russian fabric on their own to do some unravelling. They learn to blow up bridges, railroad trains and war-plants, are taught to use all types of weapons, both U.S. and foreign. They become expert map readers. They learn secret methods of communication so that they can get back word of what they learned. They merge into hostile populations and spread disquieting rumours, help to frame-up Russian stooges so that their own superiors will lose confidence in them. They locate and help resistance leaders. "One of our men can, for another example, walk up to a key building in a hostile country and stick some gooey plastic material on a wall—picking an inconspicuous place. What looks like a harmless pencil is then stuck in the plastic, after which the agent walks away. In a few hours, or if he wishes, in a few days, the building will blow up. . ." This candid piece of information was written by the well-known American journalist, Anthony H. Leviero, in Nation's Business, published by the Chamber of Commerce of the United States in April 1952. How did it all begin? Let us go back a little in our contemporary history. Back to May 6, 1948, to a meeting of the Bond Club of New York, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The main speaker at the lunch-time meeting of Wall Street bankers and stock-dealers was John Foster Dulles, a banker himself, and a leading public figure. Dulles expounded the proposition that United States policy was faced with a crisis. American leadership in world affairs was meeting with difficulties. True, in Western Europe, the Communists had been expelled from the governments of France and Italy. But in Czechoslovakia the previous February, the pro-American group in the government had been isolated and expelled. In Hungary, the pro-American Smallholders' Party and the Social-Democrat leaders were losing their grip. Similar stories came from Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania and Albania. On July 23, 1948, the New York Times military editor, Hanson W. Baldwin, revealed that "several intelligence fiascos have occurred in Rumania, Hungary, Finland and elsewhere . . . 'rings' or agents established in the old O.S.S. days and inherited willy-nilly by the Central Intelligence Agency were responsible for much loose work which resulted in easy detection and ultimate 'elimination' of the 'rings' ". John Foster Dulles was a particularly appropriate person to lecture the Bond Club. The big, grey-haired man with the flamboyant tie was a member of the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, of Wall Street, a firm which served Rockefeller and Morgan's. Dulles explained that he thought it time a more aggressive policy should be adopted towards the people's democracies, the countries in Eastern Europe liberated by the Soviet Army, and where the Communists were becoming the leading force. He proposed that an organisation should be set up which would undertake subversive activities on an enormous scale. This plan, which had already been partly formulated by the reactionary Senator Styles Bridges, was to become known to the world as "Operation X". The organisation would consist of existing U.S.A. espionage bodies, enlarged and consolidated, with a more pugnacious leadership, which would include Dulles' brother, Allan. "We ought to have an organisation", Dulles said, dedicated to the task of non-military defence, just as the present Secretary of Defence heads up the organisation of military defence. The new department of non-military defence should have adequate personnel and ample funds". Being a banker, Dulles appreciated the need for ample funds, he knew that to try and pass such appropriations through Congress would give the plans just the sort of publicity which ought to be avoided. He thought that sums could be appropriated to the State Department which would not have to be accounted for, or could be lent to other departments—for example agents allegedly sent to investigate the use to which Marshall Aid money was being put could in reality be engaged on espionage. "The new effort", he said, "could to some extent use the currencies which will come to us abroad in exchange for goods sent under the European Recovery Programme, and to that extent additional cost to the United States would be entirely avoided". Hitherto United States espionage work has been carried out on the relatively normal scale of activities usual in international politics. This included bribery, blackmail and theft. But now it was to include murder. Commenting on Dulles' speech, the influential right-wing U.S. News and World Report spoke of "Operation X" as follows: "Under this plan, strong-arm squads would be formed under American guidance. Assassination of key Communists would be encouraged. American agents, parachuted into Eastern Europe ... would be used to co-ordinate anti-Communist action. Volunteers for such work, many of them veterans of the undergrounds of World War II, already are turning up in Washington to look for jobs". (April 9, 1948). Another aim of American espionage was to infiltrate agents into the workers' parties in Eastern Europe, to contact discontented members of those parties, to blackmail, if possible, people with discreditable pasts who occupied positions in the civil service or in nationalised industries. The same day that Dulles made his speech at the Waldorf Astoria, another part of "Operation X" was put into action. The Senate in Washington approved the establishment of a seventy-group air force. During the discussion, Senator Henry Styles Bridges, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and part-parent of "Operation X", described Russia as America's "only possible enemy". Both John Foster Dulles and his brother Allan Welsh Dulles had long experience of Europe and its politics. John, born in 1888, was at the Hague Peace Conference in 1907. He carried out a mission for the State Department in Central America in 1917 and came to Europe in 1919 to attend the Paris Peace Conference as part of the American delegation. From then on he was constantly at economic conferences in which the United States' financial interests were concerned. He played a leading role, along with Averell Harriman, another Wall Street banker, in formulating and launching the Dawes and Young plans which, backed by the J. P. Morgan interests, helped to rebuild German industry after the First World War. During 1924-29 Wall Street is estimated to have invested $4,000 million in Germany, which helped to cement the contacts between the lug United States and German trusts. Dulles and his firm have close connections with the German big business interests that backed Hitler, and are once more dominant in Western Germany. The partners of Sullivan and Cromwell sit on the boards of forty of the wealthiest United States corporations, and one client of the firm is the British-German-American firm of J. H. Schroeder Banking Corp., whose: parent banking house in London was described by the American Life magazine in 1939 as "an economic booster for the Rome-Berlin Axis". J. F. Dulles was an exponent of the Chamberlain appeasement policy, and in 1939 delivered a speech to the Economic Club in New York in which he spoke of the Germans, Japanese and Italians as "dynamic peoples determined... to take their destiny into their own hands". Dulles also had connections with an American fascist organisation: the incorporation papers of the New York Chapter of the American anti-Communist and pro-fascist organisation, the America First Committee, were made out in his office. The October 1947 issue of the American journal Social Action, published by the Methodist Federation for Social Action, talked of Dulles in the following terms: "It may only be coincidence, of course, that the firm (of Sullivan and Cromwell) had such close relations with the Schroeder Bank, I. G. Farben, the famous German law firm of Albert & Westrick, etc., and that Mr. Dulles is listed as a director of the International Nickel Co. of Canada, which in 1946 was sued by the U.S. Government for having a cartel price-fixing alliance with I. G. Farben, and giving illegitimate aid to German rearmament..." In 1950, President Truman appointed him political adviser . . . Please note: to avoid opening the book out, with the risk of damaging the spine, some of the pages were slightly raised on the inner edge when being scanned, which has resulted in some blurring to the text and a shadow on the inside edge of the final images. Colour reproduction is shown as accurately as possible but please be aware that some colours are difficult to scan and may result in a slight variation from the colour shown below to the actual colour. In line with eBay guidelines on picture sizes, some of the illustrations may be shown enlarged for greater detail and clarity. U.K. buyers: To estimate the “packed weight” each book is first weighed and then an additional amount of 150 grams is added to allow for the packaging material (all books are securely wrapped and posted in a cardboard book-mailer). The weight of the book and packaging is then rounded up to the nearest hundred grams to arrive at the postage figure. I make no charge for packaging materials and do not seek to profit from postage and packaging. Postage can be combined for multiple purchases. Packed weight of this item : approximately 250 grams Postage and payment options to U.K. addresses: Details of the various postage options can be obtained by selecting the “Postage and payments” option at the head of this listing (above). Payment can be made by: debit card, credit card (Visa or MasterCard, but not Amex), cheque (payable to "G Miller", please), or PayPal. Please contact me with name, address and payment details within seven days of the end of the listing; otherwise I reserve the right to cancel the sale and re-list the item. Finally, this should be an enjoyable experience for both the buyer and seller and I hope you will find me very easy to deal with. If you have a question or query about any aspect (postage, payment, delivery options and so on), please do not hesitate to contact me. International buyers: To estimate the “packed weight” each book is first weighed and then an additional amount of 150 grams is added to allow for the packaging material (all books are securely wrapped and posted in a cardboard book-mailer). The weight of the book and packaging is then rounded up to the nearest hundred grams to arrive at the shipping figure. I make no charge for packaging materials and do not seek to profit from shipping and handling. Shipping can usually be combined for multiple purchases (to a maximum of 5 kilograms in any one parcel with the exception of Canada, where the limit is 2 kilograms). Packed weight of this item : approximately 250 grams International Shipping options: Details of the postage options to various countries (via Air Mail) can be obtained by selecting the “Postage and payments” option at the head of this listing (above) and then selecting your country of residence from the drop-down list. 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Please contact me with your name and address and payment details within seven days of the end of the listing; otherwise I reserve the right to cancel the sale and re-list the item. Finally, this should be an enjoyable experience for both the buyer and seller and I hope you will find me very easy to deal with. If you have a question or query about any aspect (shipping, payment, delivery options and so on), please do not hesitate to contact me. Prospective international buyers should ensure that they are able to provide credit card details or pay by PayPal within 7 days from the end of the listing (or inform me that they will be sending a cheque in GBP drawn on a major British bank). Thank you. (please note that the book shown is for illustrative purposes only and forms no part of this listing) Book dimensions are given in inches, to the nearest quarter-inch, in the format width x height. Please note that, to differentiate them from soft-covers and paperbacks, modern hardbacks are still invariably described as being ‘cloth’ when they are, in fact, predominantly bound in paper-covered boards pressed to resemble cloth. Fine Books for Fine Minds I value your custom (and my feedback rating) but I am also a bibliophile : I want books to arrive in the same condition in which they were dispatched. For this reason, all books are securely wrapped in tissue and a protective covering and are then posted in a cardboard container. If any book is significantly not as described, I will offer a full refund. Unless the size of the book precludes this, hardback books with a dust-jacket are usually provided with a clear film protective cover, while hardback books without a dust-jacket are usually provided with a rigid clear cover. The Royal Mail, in my experience, offers an excellent service, but things can occasionally go wrong. However, I believe it is my responsibility to guarantee delivery. If any book is lost or damaged in transit, I will offer a full refund. Thank you for looking. Please also view my other listings for a range of interesting books and feel free to contact me if you require any additional information Design and content © Geoffrey Miller
Price: 250 GBP
Location: Flamborough, Bridlington
End Time: 2025-02-05T11:02:32.000Z
Shipping Cost: 26.06 GBP
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Item Specifics
Return postage will be paid by: Buyer
Returns Accepted: Returns Accepted
After receiving the item, your buyer should cancel the purchase within: 30 days
Return policy details: If any book is significantly not as described, I will offer a full refund, including return postage. All books are securely wrapped and posted in a cardboard container.
Binding: Staple Bound
Place of Publication: London
Non-Fiction Subject: History & Military
Language: English
Special Attributes: 1st Edition
Author: Gordon Stewart
Publisher: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd
Year Printed: 1953
