Status Updates From Legacy of Ashes: The Histor...

"They said Indonesia was a failure," Al Pope reflected bitterly. "But we knocked the shit out of them. We killed thousands of Communists, even though half of them probably didn't even know what Communism meant."

«If arms could not buy loyalty in the Middle East, the almighty dollar was still the CIA's secret weapon. Cash for political warfare and power plays was always welcome.»

With the CIA's help, Nobusuke Kishi became Japan's prime minister and the chief of its ruling party. Yoshio Kodama secured his freedom and his position as the nation's number-one gangster by helping American intelligence. Together they shaped the politics of postwar Japan. In the war against fascism, they had represented everything America hated. In the war against communism, they were just what America needed.

"What we wanted to do was to have a terror campaign," said the CIA's E. Howard Hunt, who worked on the political-warfare portfolio for the operation--"to terrify Arbenz particularly, to terrify his troops, much as the German Stuka bombers terrified the population of Holland, Belgium and Poland at the onset of World War Two.”

“The new president of the United States was not pleased. "Ever since 1946," Eisenhower fumed, "all the so-called experts have been yapping about what would happen when Stalin dies and what we as a nation should do about it. Well, he's dead. And you can turn the files of our government inside out--in vain--looking for any plans laid. We have no plan.
We are not even sure what difference his death makes."