Defend the Indefensible: Harry S. Truman

alfred -- check out charles mee's "meeting at potsdam" for some good insight into that.

truman actually came to regret the creation of the CIA and recommended in an interview with merle miller late in life that it be disbanded and replaced with a more accountable agency.

oh, well that makes up for it

A lot of Truman can be blamed on FDR's clandestine semiotics: he told so many advisors so many different things, and met Truman just twice after inauguration, that it's no wonder Truman had to improvise.

david brooks longs for the days of a tight-knit "bipartisan" washington oligarchy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/opinion/01brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

could play the piano AND callously incinerate hundreds of thousands

That Merle Miller "oral biography" of Truman is pretty wild to read.

Especially when HST uses the word "nigger" on every other page.

OMG he used the word "chippie"! That is my favorite word for a floozy!

"Nigger" however is not my favorite anything.

created the illegal CIA

Congress approved its charter.

http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/specialy/twinpeaks/foto/twin_peaks_12.jpg

can't believe no-one did this

truman deserves some shit for creating the CIA but it was a reasonably defensible agency until eisenhower took over and started using it to overthrow liberal foreign governments.