We are back for another round of excavation into the life, times, and legacy of Reichsman extraordinaire, John J. McCloy. We last left off with McCloy’s service in WWI, during which he spent the bulk of his time as aide-de-camp to Brigadier General Guy H. Preston. Preston was not only a soldier in the settler colonial army of the Western frontier, he was a participant in the Wounded Knee Massacre who was charged with taking possession of the Indian prisoners of war. What a mark that left on John McCloy.

We pick up post-war with McCloy’s Harvard Law graduation and departure from his native Philadelphia off to the big apple, New York City, where he’d set down his roots as a Wall Street lawyer. His legal practice fit seamlessly into the transition between America’s imperial conquest of the Western frontier–he spent a lot of time helping investment banks build railroad monopolies and consolidate financial control over industry–and America’s entry into the global stage of intercontinental imperialism. Just like the Dulles brothers’ over at Sullivan and Cromwell, McCloy’s work at the firms Cadwalader, Wickersham, and Taft–and later at Cravath–saw him greasing the wheels for that great interwar collaboration between US financiers and industrialists, and the German industrialists who spent the 1930s working overtime to remilitarize. 

During WWII, McCloy is brought under the wing of friend of the pod Henry L. Stimson. We stack up both sides of his moral ledger: on one hand, advocating the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps while fighting efforts to bomb the German concentration camps and curb the Holocaust; but on the other hand, he opposed dropping nukes on Japan and helped integrate the US Army. We make sense of his mixed record through our patented Fourth Reich Lens.

We hope you like Krautrock, because this is our most German episode yet. 

On our free feed, that’s where this episode ends. If you want the full 2-hour extravaganza, head on over to Patreon and sign up today! If not, you’ll need to wait a while for side 2…

Meanwhile, enjoy, and happy holidays to all!

If anyone has a resumé befitting a Horseman of the Fourth Reich, it’s the subject of this episode–John J. McCloy. Just look at some of these highlights:

And, the reason why he’s got his own series-within-a-series-within-a-series: 

Without further examination, McCloy’s curriculum vitae makes his service on the Warren Commission seem like a foregone conclusion. Remember, McCloy was one of the Commission’s two “private citizen” members, the other being Dulles, so it would be easy to assume without more than the above info that McCloy was just another cleanup man. But this is Fourth Reich Archaeology, and you already know that we had to dig deeper on the guy. Donning (and dicking) our patented 4RA lenses, hard-hats, and shovels, we introduce you to the real McCloy. The man was so much more than what initially meets the eye. 

We start our McCloy excavation in 1963 and learn that in fact, he was the driving force behind transforming the Warren Commision from a toothless review committee meant to rubber-stamp the FBI’s report into a real investigative body. For example, McCloy is the reason the Warren Commission was given subpoena powers, and with it, the authority to conduct its own investigation. He also lobbied to hire a staff of lawyers to work under the Commissioners. Now, to be clear, we aren’t saying that the Commission used that power effectively; we’re just pointing out that–at least at the outset–McCloy was more of a squeaky wheel than a rubber stamp. But that changes sometime in Spring 1964, and we’ll discuss why we think that is. Not for nothing did McCloy enjoy a sterling relation among the power elite as a master strategist, a straight shooter, and THE man to call in a national crisis. 

We then turn back the clocks to McCloy’s childhood and early years, and follow him as he goes from “the wrong side of the tracks” in North Philadelphia, to Amherst college, where he spent his free time as any young patriot would, participating in voluntary military preparedness drills as tensions in Europe flared in the lead-up to WWI. He spent two summers in a Teddy Roosevelt-endorsed summer bootcamp in Plattsburgh, NY, where he learned lessons from Teddy’s rough riders and met other members of the patriotic elite at what became known as the “millionaire’s camp.” Throughout all of these educational experiences, McCloy is rubbing elbows with the rich kids, not because he is one himself, but because his mom is their mom’s hairdresser. 

Then WWI breaks out, and McCloy answers the call. And, like any true ascending Reichsman, McCloy was on that grindset tip, and caught the eye of his commander, Brigadier General Guy H. Preston, who picked McCloy to be his aide de camp. And this is where we will leave off, but not without painting what may well be one of the funniest factual vignettes to date. 

Sit back, relax, and put on that PPE–because this dig qualifies for hazard pay. McCloy’s story is a long one, and so it is going to be a two parter - STAY TUNED FOR PART 2!!

Our long time listeners will know that we at Fourth Reich Archaeology are big fans of a love story. Whether it's a romance (like between Jerry and Betty Ford), or a bromance (like between Jerry and Richard Nixon), or a platonic love story about the paternal bond between mentor and mentee (like between LBJ and Dick Russell), we love it all. That’s why we can hardly contain ourselves this week, as we explore what may well be the most unexplored love story between two people who are eternally tethered by the events of November 22, 1963: John F. Kennedy and John Sherman Cooper. And the best part is that this love story comes complete with a fall from grace and a grand betrayal. 

In this episode, we take you back to the night of President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration ball. In the wee hours after the event, Kennedy heads over to Joe Alsop’s place and links up with his friend and beloved mentor, John Sherman Cooper. The two spend hours talking about the future and Kennedy’s vision for his presidency. Indeed, Cooper and Kennedy were long time friends and as close as any two politicians could be. They came up on the Georgetown scene around the same time, and were both seen as very eligible bachelors. They even went on double dates with the women who eventually became their wives. Kennedy, the young, charismatic president, admired Cooper, the elder statesman, for his integrity and his unwavering commitment to principles. We tell the inspiring come-up story of Cooper’s life from Somerset, Kentucky, to Georgetown, to India, and back to the upper echelon of the power elite in Washington. Yet he never gave up the Kentucky Gentleman sincerity that made him so trustworthy and beloved.

The close bond between these two is perhaps the very reason why LBJ picked Cooper to be on the Warren Commission. Much like with Hale Boggs, LBJ likely saw Cooper as a threat and felt that he needed to bring Cooper in the fold in order to keep him quiet. We can only speculate on Cooper’s state of mind, but to us, what began as a sense of duty to the country soon became an unbearable tension between Cooper’s commitment to the truth and the political pressures that sought to suppress it. Cooper, despite his own reservations, reluctantly agreed to participate in the whitewashed version of events ultimately reduced to writing. It was a decision that we can't help but think would forever haunt him, as he knew he had allowed the forces of power to rewrite history at the expense of the man he once called a dear friend.

Grab your tissue box. This one’s a tear jerker. 

Credit: the author who reported former Cooper aide Morris Wolff’s recounting of Cooper’s confidential Warren Commission critiques is Mark Shaw, and you can find more here: https://markshawbooks.com/assets/docs/New-Evidence-Proving-Warren-Commission-Corruption_Oct-26-2023-1.pdf

His full talk at the Commonwealth Club is here: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/video/mark-shaw-60th-anniversary-jfks-assassination-retrospective

Are you heading into Thanksgiving weekend wondering WTF you will talk about with family and friends? Fear not, dear listener; Fourth Reich Archaeology has got you covered. We dropped this exclusively pre-Thanksgiving for our Patreon subscribers (sign up to get more such treats!), but you know we won't hold out on our listeners, so here it is for free. We offer some fodder to break the ice on a subject that we’re sure you’ll agree is dinner conversation appropriate–the sad true fact that we are currently living in the Fourth Reich, and the latest election results are a painful reminder that that's true.

In the third installment of our 2024 election coverage, we do a post-mortem of the spectacle and add our patented Fourth Reich Archaeology view to the discourse. We offer a verbal carving-knife to help you cut through the liberal doomerism weighing down so many of our friends and families in the wake of Trump’s win and share some thoughts on why we’re hopeful about the next four years. It’s not that we’re excited about Trump’s Killer Krony Krew; it’s that the mask of American fascism is slipping more and more, making the Fourth Reich Archaeology message resonate more than ever. You’ll want to listen to the very end of this one to catch the instructions for Fourth Reich Archaeology’s very first parlor game, which will be the perfect way to have some fun with your normie loved ones this holiday season. 

Music:

• ​The Doors - “Five to One”
• ​John Lennon - “Working Class Hero”
• ​Blaze Foley - “Oval Room”
• ​Mick Gordon - “Nazi Punks, gtfo”
• ​Tom Waits - “Everything Goes to Hell”

Last week, we talked about how President Lyndon Johnson came to put together a top-flight blue ribbon commission to cover up the Kennedy assassination. For the next two episodes, we go around the table and introduce the listener to each of the seven members of that  commission. As we do, we also receive a masterclass on how to lie, manipulate, coerce, and outright strongarm to get your way. At the head of the class is LBJ. 

Along with its chairman, Earl Warren, the Warren Commission consisted of two members from each chamber of Congress: one Democrat and one Republican. The Commission also had “two members of the public.” This week we cover the Warren Commission’s chairman, its members who served in the House of Representatives, and its Democrat Senator. 

First, we introduce Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was the ringleader of the ragtag team of spooks, drunks, racists, and rats. Warren was the perfect man to lend his name to the cover-up. He had spent the last 10 years building the public’s trust by overseeing the most progressive shift in the history of Supreme Court jurisprudence, including classics like Brown v. Board of Education and Gideon v. Wainwright. 

For his Democratic Senator pick, LBJ chose Senator Richard “Dick” Russell of Georgia. Russell mentored LBJ in the Senate and was a logical pick to serve as LBJ’s “inside man.” There was just one problem. Russell was a Dixiecrat and staunch segregationist, which made him Earl Warren’s arch-nemesis. LBJ bullies him like a boy. We play the tapes. It’s incredible.

For the Democratic Congressman, LBJ picked Hale Boggs of Louisiana. Where Russell was an offensive pick, Boggs was a defensive one. In the days leading up to the announcement of the Warren Commission, Boggs - who had been a great admirer of the slain JFK - was vocal about the need to initiate an independent, unbiased investigation. To nip that in the bud, LBJ neutralized Boggs by bringing him in the fold. 

And you know we had to save the best for last. Our day one homie, Jerry Ford. Jerry was the Republican Congressman pick, and LBJ chose him for all the reasons we’ve discussed in Jerryworld. At this point Jerry was a national brand, with a reputation for being a team player, a hard worker, and a straight shooter. In fact, in LBJ’s eyes, Jerry looked like the perfect mark to be his bagman–after all Jerry was still a young up and comer. Little did LBJ know that Jerry was playing him for a fool and serving as mole to none other than J Edgar Hoover.

As promised, we are digging into the surprising story of the formation of the Warren Commission over the week succeeding Lee Oswald's murder by Jack Ruby on November 24, 1963. Most observers assume that the idea originated with President Lyndon Baines Johnson, whose name was on the Executive Order creating the Commission on November 29, but that is far from the case.

In fact, Johnson - and FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover - initially opposed the creation of a presidential commission, preferring to leave the investigation up to the FBI in collaboration with Texas state and local authorities. So what changed?

As it were, there was a plot of sorts. Indeed, a conspiracy. Individuals close to the CIA and the patrician Georgetown Set, with its swashbuckling imperialist cohort of OSS veterans, launched an intense pincer movement before Oswald's blood had stopped flowing. They swarmed LBJ and his closest aides and pressured them into creating a commission independent from Hoover's FBI. First, Eugene V. Debs Rostow - Yale Law dean and brother of JFK's hawkish advisor (and CIA asset) Walt Whitman Rostow - placed a flurry of calls to the trustworthy blue-blooded Deputy Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbch, who promptly hit the phones in favor of a commission in turn. Rostow also connected with LBJ advisor Bill Moyers to ensure the message reached the new President. Meanwhile, CIA-linked American aristocrat Joe Alsop made the pitch to Johnson directly, issuing veiled threats about forthcoming Washington Post OpEds and promising that the media Mockingbird would sing for LBJ if he followed Alsop's lead.

The fix was in, and the coverup was underway. By November 25, Katzenbach submitted a now infamous memo calling for a report designed to achieve a very discrete goal, rather removed from solving the case of the Kennedy assassination: "The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial."

Buckle up!

UNLOCKED: We promised to release this, our first piece of paywalled content, for free as soon as our wonderful listeners got the first episode of THE WARREN COMMISSION DECIDED over 1,000 streams. You all pulled through in record time, so we hope you enjoy this little spooky story about Lee Harvey Oswald's attempted defection to the Soviet Union on Halloween, 1959. The consular officials who witnessed his performance said it looked rehearsed, like a man reciting memorized lines. But who wrote the script? It's short, sweet, and mysterious. We hope you like it!

Songs:

The Phantom of the Opera

Vladimir Vysotsky - Koni Priveredivye (Fastidious Horses)

Timothy Cleary - Mission Critical

Michael Jackson - Stranger in Moscow

Timothy Cleary - Gremlin

Sting - Russians

We are in the big game now. Jack gets capped and it’s up to FBI informant Gerald Ford Jr. and a ragtag band of Fourth Reichsmen helmed by ex-CIA chief, Allen Dulles, to investigate (read: cover up) the murder. 

We recap the first half of Jerry’s life’s work and his entry into the keystone of the political pyramid, including the insane amount of intersections Jerry has with historical personages and events, with a heavy center of gravity in the intelligence community… We’re in the late 50s/early 60s as his star continues to rise in Congress. We recount how he was tapped in the 1960 presidential election as a potential candidate for Vice President to his old pal Dick Nixon. That’s right, our man Jerry, who time and again has been quoted as saying that his “sole political ambition” was to be speaker of the House, threw his hat in the ring to play second fiddle on the 1960 Nixon ticket. He loses that bid to Boston Brahmin, and Kennedy family rival, Henry Cabot Lodge. Of course, Nixon loses and JFK takes the reigns. But not for long, as Jack breaks the golden rule–don’t mess with the CIA. And that’s how Jerry gets the professional opportunity of a lifetime. 

We know there are lots and lots of JFK podcasts out there that go through various aspects of the criminal conspiracy to assassinate the president. That’s not what this is. We’re still digging in Jerryworld here. We want to provide our listeners with something fresh and unlike anything else out there. You won’t want to miss it.

In part one of this miniseries, we go over the contours and conclusions of the Warren Commission and set the stage for what’s to come in our archaeological expedition. We explore Jerry’s favorite turn of phrase, and the title of this miniseries. We explain, at a high level, the conventional recitation of what happened on November 22, 1963 and in the days that followed. And we cover the Commission’s thirteen findings, all of which point the finger at Lee Harvey Oswald as a lone assassin. 

So sit back and join us as we embark on the mother of all side quests – an exploration into the assassination and cover up of the 35th President of the United States. 

We hope that this miniseries broadens our listener base as we continue to grow. To that end please tell your friends and family about our project. And, as always, we are grateful for financial support on Patreon.

Join us as we take a final dusting to the artifact-in-the-making that is the 2024 presidential election. Will we make an endorsement? Not likely. Will we have a few laughs? Definitely.

We’ve subjected ourselves to hours upon hours of presidential slop. We went ears deep in the trough for you, listener. We’ll give a few highlights from Kamala’s performance on the Breakfast Club, Trump on Rogan, JD Vance on Tim Dillon. Seriously, we had to bathe with a steel loofah after listening to all this shit. 

Not unexpectedly, we conclude - while not begrudging anyone’s right to fear-vote democrat - that the two candidates for Hitler are pretty much a wash. Both pledge to continue committing genocide. Both pledge to criminalize immigration and build a wall. Both pledge to protect crypto assets (lol). It’s a race to the bottom and we ask aloud whether these parties are really trying to lose.

In an election where the party of Dick Cheney is calling the OTHER guy fascist, you know you’re in the Fourth Reich. Hope this helps you keep your distance from the madness as the barbarians approach both sides of the gates.

In Money Pt. 2, we switch lenses from macro to micro and link back up with Jerry as he navigates the scene we set in part one. Recall that in part one, we gave a big-picture view of the U.S. as it emerged out of WWII as the victor and began its reign over the rubble left in the wake of the War.  We discussed how the “Cold War” was not so cold after all, as Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen’s “stay-behind” armies (under the direction and on the payroll of the ClA) waged guerrilla warfare against the Soviets in Eastern Europe. The American transition from fighting the Nazis to working with them against the Russians was seamless. 

In part two, we zoom in on Congressman Ford as he takes the reigns of power as a lucrative congressional appropriations committee and subcommittee member. 

Of course, we have our usual cast of characters, too. For example, Betty gives her husband advice that ultimately causes Congressman Tabor to take a shine on old Jerry. And that's how Jerry ends up with a cushy spot on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, with his hands on the purse strings for the US war machine. This is also where Jerry first crosses paths with the Dulles brothers.

Whereas in part one we saw the secret love between Reinhard Gehlen and Foster Dulles, this one turns into a three-way bromance between Jerry and the Dulles brothers. Jerry takes a multi-week tour of the Pacific with John Foster Dulles. John and Jerry do a literal tour of the Fourth Reich's post war pickings in Asia: they went to a prisoner exchange in Korea; they met with French and South Vietnamese troops, including a night out on the town in Saigon; and they made a stop in occupied Japan. But Jerry also catches the eye of Allen Dulles, who taps him for the super secret Intel subcommittee assignment in 1956.

In the 1950s, Jerry was in the money. He was cozied up with the Horsemen of the Fourth Reich and signaled that he was ready to serve. We told you things were getting dark. Here we see how willing Jerry was to shed away all decency and do the bidding for Dulles et al. Of course, that will come in full swing in our soon-to-be-released mini-series "The Warren Commission Decided." 

And if you've read this far, that means you are a true Jerryhead and journeyman Reichiologist. If we got that right, please show us some love by donating to our Patreon so we can lock in and focus on our project full-time. Fourth Reich Archaeology is bound for glory, and we promise we won't forget those of you who have been with us since day one. 

With that, let's get digging. . .