A SHORT HISTORY OF INCA
A SHORT HISTORY OF INCA
(INFORMATION COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAS)
by Frank DeBenedictis
One
aspect of anti-communism which has not received the attention given to
the US conflict with the Soviet Union is the more recent war with Fidel
Castro and his Communist regime in Cuba. Cuba's conversion to Marxism
in 1959 caused much consternation in the United States, and especially
in cities doing trade with that Latin American country. New Orleans in
particular feared the new regime, and out of this fear a new
anti-communist organization based in this city was born in 1961 called
the Information Council of the Americas (INCA).
By the 1950s, 75% of US imports from Latin America came through the
port of New Orleans. Civic and business leaders of the Crescent City
throughout the decades forged closer business, political and social
ties with their Latin American counterparts. Fidel Castro's rise to
power sent shock waves through New Orleans and threatened a lucrative
mutual relationship. In Tampa, Florida (another large port city) where
cigar manufacturing played an important part of that cities industry,
the Cuban Revolution also caused alarms to go off when Senator George
Smathers of Florida proposed an embargo against Cuban tobacco. But
Tampa reacted differently from New Orleans.
Instead of fear and reaction leading to the anti-communist INCA, Tampa
saw a rise in pro-Castro activity. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee
started a chapter and in an early 1961 rally proclaimed Smathers
action, "would lead to unemployment in Tampa." Castro's revolution
began to take effect in the United States. Three months after the Tampa
FPCC rally, the Information Council of the Americas would begin its own
campaign against the changing economic sensibilities of a Communist
Cuba.
INCA was founded on May 15, 1961 by public relations professional
Edward Scannell Butler. From the beginning its agenda was narrowly
focused on Communism as an issue. INCA in fact sought support from
liberal as well as conservative anti-communists, asking liberal
anti-communist Smathers to speak at an organization function. Ed Butler
had prior to the Castro takeover, laid plans for an anti-communist
organization. But when Castro took over in Cuba, and New Orleans
expressed growing anxiety over the new Latin American dictator, the 27
year old public relations man was handed a searing issue and an alarmed
constituency.
Ed Butler had an interest in both pubic relations and psychology, so in
a real sense his organization was not ideologically based, even though
this public relations man exhibited a penchant for conservative
politics. He especially expressed admiration for red-baiting Wisconsin
Senator Joe McCarthy whom he described as a great American. So Ed
Butler the founder of INCA did have ideological convictions beyond the
function of INCA, but he put his promotional talents rather than
politics into the organization. INCA soon evolved into an effective
propaganda machine under its youthful leader.
Loyola University archivist Arthur Carpenter expressed anti-communism
in a realpolitik sense when he poses the question, "Was anti-communism
a manifestation of popular, democratic sentiment or of elite
interests?" He answers that question in the latter vein, including the
formation of INCA. Carpenter also describes anti-communism and the
origins of INCA in a post-World War II context.
Popular anti-communism as opposed to an elitist based movement died
with the more excessive reactions of Senator Joe McCarthy in the
early 1950s. Then the writings of historian Richard Hofstader and
sociologist Daniel Bell dismissed the idea of a popular anti-communist
movement. They were saying that legitimate anti-communism could be
properly understood only by the elite; the public should be encouraged
to divert in other directions. So by the late 1950s the better known
organizations which had anti-communism as a primary function tended to
be organs of business, civic and academic leaders. The John Birch
Society in 1958 was founded by Robert Welch and twelve well off
business friends in Indianapolis. In 1961 the Young Americans for
Freedom met at the Connecticut mansion lawn of National Review
editor William F. Buckley to form that group. INCA came on the heels of
both of these conservative organizations and had similar patrician
origins.
Along with founder Ed Butler, the most important member of INCA was
famed physician Dr. Alton Ochsner. Ochsner, 38 years Butler's senior
formed a partnership with his younger colleague which would last twenty
years. Ed Butler, who didn't have a great knowledge of Latin American
affairs, benefited substantially from the association with the
celebrated doctor. Alton Ochsner had an internationalist
outlook---especially when it pertained to the field of medicine.
Ochsner felt medicine transcended national boundaries, and had trained
many physician exchange students from Latin America since the
1920s. His prominence as an international physician led him to be
elected to leadership of both the International Trade Mart and
International House in the 1960s. Both business groups promoted
Latin American trade for New Orleans, and had been founded immediately
after World War II. Ochsner also was elected to the presidency of the
Cordell Hull Foundation which administered a program of Inter-American
university study.
Ochsner fit the mode of the wealthy educated elite. He was elderly and
encouraged other New Orleans prominent and wealthy citizens to join
INCA. Ochsner's persuasiveness helped Ed Butler recruit United Fruit's
Joseph W. Montgomery, Delta Steamship Line's John W. Clark,
International Trade Mart's William Zetzmann and William B. Reily of
Reily Coffee Company. The local Catholic hierarchy also joined with
Archbishop Phillip M. Hannan and Dean of Loyola University Law School
AE Papale becoming members. INCA also received endorsements from Mayor
deLesseps Morrison and Congressman Hale Boggs.
INCA's approach to anti-communism (in addition to being anti-Castro)
tended to follow a practical approach of containment. This approach was
not conciliatory, but echoed the realities of American foreign policy
in the early 1960s with the newly elected Kennedy administration. Dr.
Alton Ochsner had written a letter to President Kennedy, at a friend's
request, urging a quarantine of Cuba from shipments of troops and
military equipment. Yet Ochsner doubted the plea would matter since,
"many of Kennedy's advisors were leftists." Presidential advisor Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr. echoing the new administrations desire to chart a new
course in foreign policy---both with regard to the Cold War and the
developing nations---called for a new liberal anti-communism, one that
would be more cooperative with the American progressive left, and
sensitive to changes in the less rigid post-Stalinist Soviet Union.
Schlesinger had expressed his opinion that, "a policy designed for the
age of Stalin was not necessary in the age of Khruschev."
Cold War containment dominated foreign policy in Eisenhower's
administration. Advisor Dean Acheson was its main proponent, and the
incoming Kennedy saw it as static and a remnant of the old order.
When Kennedy became president in January, 1961 he faced a dilemma since
he inherited the CIA sponsored war against Castro. This war started
with the Eisenhower administration and continued with Kennedy,
culminating with the Bay of Pigs invasion in April, 1961.
Eisenhower's vice president and Kennedy rival Richard Nixon was one of
the first Republicans to make a career out of anti-communism and also
had been one of the first in his party to support the Democratic
Party's contrived Marshall Plan. Nixon was not a disciple of Dean
Acheson either, favoring a more aggressive stand against Communism. The
Vice President's former membership on the House Committee on
Un-American activities belied the difference between two types of
anti-communist thought. One was liberal anti-communism which dismissed
the American Communist Party as a real political danger in the United
States. The other anti-communist wing was politically
conservative and domestically counter-subversive in its outlook.
Conservatives saw Communists infiltrating public life and imposing
"collectivist" values on the population at large. Both Nixon and the
Information Council of the Americas with its leadership of Butler,
Ochsner and the New Orleans business elite fit the latter. Both
Nixon and INCA were also internationalist in outlook. Yet with the new
Kennedy administration, INCA opted for a containment policy, since it
was unable to be more aggressive toward Cuba. It directed its
propaganda energies toward Latin American nationals who had not fallen
to Communism, but (who) like the New Orleans business elite
felt threatened by Castro.
INCA started expanding its bi-directional support lines into Latin
America. Ed Butler in an interview explained to me that INCA was, "an
international organization." Nurtured by its benefactor Dr. Ochsner, it
expanded its list of supporters to include former Latin American heads
of state. Among them were former Guatemalan president Miguel Ydigoras
Fuentes, Nicaraguan president Anastasio Somoza, and Juan Peron, former
president of Argentina. Ochsner's medical prowess made him revered in
Latin American circles, some of the Latins saw him almost like a god.
In his early career, Ochsner studied in Europe, practiced in New
Orleans, set up the Ochsner medical clinic in 1941, and "cultivated
relations with Latins in New Orleans." While he did profess at times
extremist personal views toward integration and communism, historically
these were somewhat offset by his dedication to internationalism, trade
and medicine.
Fear of Communism was no less a concern for Ed Butler, Dr. Ochsner, or
the other prominent INCA members than it was for the many right-wing
segregationist groups springing up in the South in the early 1960s.
INCA, however, studiously avoided forming alliances with the
segregationists. INCA had never defended segregation. Its own
rapport with Latin Americans further strengthened this image, and the
organization made alliances with local anti-Castro Cuban refugees. Then
in August, 1963 an event proving important to both the Cubans and INCA
occurred. INCA was to have an encounter in New Orleans with the future
accused assassin of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald.
On August 5, 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald visited Casa Roca, a clothing store
managed by Carlos Bringuier. Bringuier, a Cuban refugee, was one of the
important Cuban exile leaders in New Orleans at the time. The ex-Marine
offered help to the beleaguered Cuban exiles in the form of military
training for the purpose of fighting Castro. Four days later Bringuier
became inflamed when he saw Oswald on Canal Street passing out
pro-Castro literature, urging "hands off Cuba" and promoting the Fair
Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). The two got into a fight and were
arrested. Again on August 16, Oswald passed out literature, this time
in front of the International Trade Mart. On August 21, Oswald
joined in a radio debate with Bringuier of the Cuban Student
Directorate, an anti-Castro group and Ed Butler of INCA. The
participants were ready for Oswald, having done some research on him,
and shifted the discussion to his defection to the Soviet Union, his
sympathy for Cuba and his professed Marxism. Ed Butler described
Oswald as an articulate speaker, and well versed in his topic. But
having looked into the defector's background and discrediting him, the
INCA director also expressed the view that they had driven him and the
FPCC out of town.
President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, three months
after the New Orleans radio and TV sessions. Oswald was charged with
the murder. Ed Butler recorded the debate sessions and produced a new
propaganda tool with two LP records entitled Oswald: Self-Portrait in
Red and Oswald Speaks. Butler after the assassination argued Communist
propaganda had incited Oswald to violence. The Oswald episode also
provided new raw material for yet another propaganda film, the lurid
Hitler in Havana---which equated the Cuban Communist and Nazi German
leaders. The film showed graphic accounts of murder replete with firing
squads and corpses in both totalitarian states. Also the there was a
split screened sequence showing the rantings of both Castro and Hitler
side by side. This film went on to blame Castro for Kennedy's death.
Possibly foreseeing a future spread of INCA out of New Orleans, Ed
Butler and his organization claimed that if there had been an INCA
chapter in Dallas, Oswald may have been neutralized and the president's
life may have been saved.
Louisiana politics has had a tendency,during certain periods, of not
only being colorful, but spreading beyond the boundaries of the state
and into the nation. The first example of this phenomenon was former
governor and US senator Huey P. Long who challenged Franklin Delano
Roosevelt for the presidency in 1932 and found himself to be at odds
with the Roosevelt administration many times in the early 1930s. Long
founded the Share Our Wealth Clubs, which originated in Louisiana and
spread to other states. INCA in the mid-Sixties started seeing
something similar for its organization. Unlike Long's left wing group,
INCA made no pretensions to populism. But it did share with Long a
desire to move its politics out of the South and into the nation. So
INCA soon found itself in a new partnership with California
contributors such as National Airline chairman Dudley Swim and more
importantly with Schick Razor executive Patrick Frawley, Jr. In the
fall of 1966, Frawley underwrote the cost for television showings of
Hitler in Havana in several large cities. The reaction proved rewarding
for Butler in New Orleans as several hundred Cuban exiles rallied at
New Orleans city hall and saluted INCA's film. By this time Butler had
relocated his home base from New Orleans to practice his public
relations craft in Los Angeles, the communications center of America.
Since he felt Oswald was the vanguard of the later student revolt, he
held meetings to determine what to do---what program would best expose
the radicals.
Ed Butler also worried about the Kennedy assassination since many books
started coming out during this period. He noticed a predilection among
the new writers to questioned the Warren Report and its conclusion that
Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy. Although the investigation of
District Attorney Jim Garrison occurred in New Orleans and in
fact implicated Clay Shaw, who at the time was a former director of the
International Trade Mart, INCA itself never was implicated. He and
Carlos Bringuier both were very critical of Garrison and his theory of
CIA and Cuban exile involvement in the assassination, but INCA's
propaganda instead focused on writer Mark Lane.
Ed Butler criticized Mark Lane, claiming he had been informed that Lane
had been associated with several communist front groups between 1952
and 1967. He had gotten the information by asking Louisiana Congressman
F. Edward Hebert to get information on Lane from HUAC committee member
Congressman Willis. INCA's memos showed much concern for Lane, who was
one of the leading critics of the Warren Commission. Two INCA leaders
in a public statement criticized Lane's Rush to Judgment and branded
him an unscrupulous communist. The Garrison investigation and the
descendency upon New Orleans by Lane and others proved to be a
distraction for INCA. But the organization continued in New Orleans,
California and Washington DC with propaganda activities unrelated to
the JFK assassination trial.
In a 1968 memo explaining INCA's "programs and plans," a warning
enveloped in hysteria was issued. Calling for mobilization of
anti-communists from the left, right and center, INCA touched on
several issues in this very turbulent year. Described in the memo was a
resistance to the war in Vietnam in the US, which was according to INCA
designed to split children from their parents. It spoke of events
creating urban anarchy, and creating divisions between blacks and
whites. Assassination was also spoken of in this April 8, 1968 memo
which it describes as being used to divide government from the people.
The memo went on to talk about the upcoming Democratic and Republican
national conventions, which warned of "Communist convergence and
predicted riots. INCA also lambasted black militancy claiming
"Castroite Black Power extremists" wanted to assassinate black
moderates such as Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young.
While in the early 1960s the issue of race was generally avoided by
INCA, the latter part of the decade proved different. This memo and
Butler's book Revolution is My Profession outlines this change of
emphasis brought on by urban riots and campus unrest. In the memo the
example of race as an issue outside the US is brought out. The INCA
memo states, "From experience in Malaya and elsewhere, Communists know
a one-race revolution won't work. If the Communists capture campuses,
and attack the white sections from these sanctuaries the outlook will
be very dark for America. Reiterating an old INCA theme in this memo,
the New Orleans based group called for a mobilization of
anti-communists of the left, right and center.
In order to counteract the increasing radical and anti-war activities
on college campuses, INCA set up some of their own programs. In a
Readers Digest article from January, 1965 the author speaks of "red
agents" and "front groups" and calls upon citizens to organize specific
attack forces to "wreck the wreckage." The article brought up as one of
its examples INCA and the Oswald/FPCC episode in New Orleans. And it
went at the end to tell its readers how to contact INCA and get
involved. INCA turned its attention to college campuses. In St. Louis,
Missouri it set up a booth at the conservative Young Americans for
Freedom (YAF) national conference. In Chicago at another conference,
INCA members picketed the Student for a Democratic Society's national
headquarters. INCA member Dick Warren of New Orleans was congratulated
by hawkish South Carolina Congressman Mendel Rivers for his
organization's work.
INCA in the late 1960s took on the image as an all-American
organization which believed in wholesome positive values. This attitude
nurtured in part by negative New Left rhetoric became
incorporated into Ed Butler's organization with vigor. Another project
was Up With People (UWP). UWP developed as a singing group in 1966 and
expressed its desire to work with others, promote non-violent programs,
and avoid rebellion toward the older generation. INCA also got
involved in drug education with a program entitled "Drugs and
Teenagers." The purpose of the proposed TV documentary was to focus on
why teenagers used drugs. It proved to be another effort by INCA which
indicated a yearning for the turbulence of the 1960s to end, not unlike
the so-called "decency rallies" which took place in some localities
during this time. INCA's lip service to creating anti-communist
coalitions were not that successful. Butler's organization did spread
but increasingly sought out and formed alliances with politically
conservative groups. One of the most important of these was the Young
Americans for Freedom. The YAF increasingly started mimicking the New
Left in its tactics. YAF engaged in liberating campus buildings taken
over by the New Left activists. One YAF activist exclaimed quite
succinctly, "We don't need all the flag-wavers (referring to "Old
Right" heroes such as California Superintendent of schools Max Rafferty
and radio talk show host Joe Pyne). We need people who are hip to the
media, like [Yippie leader] Jerry Rubin. Increasingly Ed Butler
found his organization's themes dated when compared to the YAF, but he
understood the media, imagery of the person, and its effect on an
audience. So the New Orleans public relations man grew his hair longer,
wore mod clothing and hosted a television show called the SQUARE world
of Ed Butler.
Ed Butler's Westwood village SQUARE started in California as an
auxiliary to the INCA organization. It too was funded by California
business executive Patrick J. Frawley. Among the persons he debated
were 1960s radical figures such as Chicago Seven trial defendants Jerry
Rubin, Tom Hayden, and William Kunstler. Butler also used a tactic
which he learned from his public relations work which consisted in
"aping" or copying the opposition. He countered the hippie "love-ins"
with "SQUARE-ins, and accused the New Left of sponsoring love-ins to
break down moral values." Butler also organized the INCA Information
Service to counteract the counterculture and New Left oriented
Liberation News Service. The object was to give timely reports of
happenings at universities around the country. INCA's media proved as
slanted as the New Left media was. At one particular gathering reported
by SQUARE magazine, Butler sat on a panel with SDS founder Tom Hayden,
and other 1960s radical figures such as Stu Alpert and Steve Shapiro.
The radicals chastised Butler and when he rose to speak his mike cord
was pulled. The radicals got up to leave and Butler's magazine reported
it with the caption, "the revolutionaries beat an ignominous retreat."
In addition to the radical left criticizing INCA's counterrevolutionary
incursions, the establishment press chided in also. Hitler in Havana
was roundly criticized in a New York Times review unflatteringly, "as
the crudest form of propaganda." Dr. Ochsner complained to his
friend Turner Catledge the executive editor of the Times, but reported
to Butler, "that we have a real problem when we have to fight the
leftist press." But INCA had friends on the right such as Patrick
Frawley, Congressman Edward Hebert (a Congressional Medal of Honor
Winner), and eventually included in its list of advisors General
William Westmoreland, Cuban military figure Admiral George Anderson,
and some intelligence experts such as Herbert Philbrick (former FBI
agent and subject in the television series I Led Three Lives), and
Malaysian psychological warfare expert C.C. Too. The inclusion of the
Asian intelligence expert is revealing since INCA in addition to
fighting Communism in the Western Hemisphere became increasingly
involved in countering campus unrest and urging support of the US war
effort in Vietnam. Butler continuously described the leftists as
"tyrannists."
A figure from the early INCA days started complaining about this turn
of events. Carlos Bringuier, who had earlier debated Lee Harvey Oswald
with Ed Butler, voiced his support of the U.S. war effort, but
lamented with concern how Castro had increased subversive activities
when the U.S. started escalating in the Vietnam war. This article by
Bringuier appeared in INCA's information service newsletter. Bringuier
wrote about President Nixon's plan to "Vietnamize" the war, and urged a
new program on called "Flan Torrienta" which would create an
organization of Latin American nations for the purpose of countering
Castro's subversion. This article appeared in March, 1970 and is an
early indication of at least one INCA associate expressing a desire to
get the organization back to its original purpose---which was to combat
Communism in Latin America.
INCA rhetoric is described by Arthur Carpenter as "rational but
overwrought and its analysis simplistic." But when one takes into
account Butler's profession of public relations, the simplicity, the
reliance on visual symbols and the need for simple but persuasive
rhetoric Butler's communications style becomes more
understandable. Ed Butler was a salesman at heart, and since his
constituency was an elite and consequently more prominent, wealthy and
educated, the message conveyed need not be complex, philosophical, and
academically inclined. It also didn't need alliances with other
anti-communist groups on the far right which were concerned with
segregation and paranoiac conspiracy theories of the variety talked
about by the likes of Richard Hofstadter in his book the Paranoid Style
of American Politics. One of Ed Butler's associates during the late
1960s was Lee Edwards, a former campaign worker for Barry Goldwater's
1964 presidential campaign.
Edwards writes in his book Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution
about Goldwater and the attacks made on him by both the far right and
far left. The Nazi like National States Rights Party labeled him a
kosher conservative due to his Jewish heritage. Goldwater had opposed
civil rights programs, but he saw it as a constitutional issue rather
than as a way to enforce segregation, Edwards writes. In 1964 Goldwater
carried much of the South. It proved to be a seminal event for this
solidly Democratic area of the nation. Since Butler's organization's
emphasis was on free trade and anti-communism and not on race, INCA's
political leanings and refusal to defend segregation proved to be
somewhat ahead of its time with regard to the region it originated in.
But Lee Edwards and Ed Butler had other things in common besides
ideology. Both had promotional skills. Edwards developed his in the
service of Barry Goldwater, and Butler in the service of INCA. By the
late 1960s both were now promoting the Information Council of the
Americas as Lee Edwards became an advisor to the group. Butler
himself in many debates chastised both the extreme left and extreme
right. He had debated Frank Colin head of the American Nazi Party at
one point for the same reasons he took on the New Left.
In fighting against extremism of both the left and right, and in his
book Revolution is My Profession, Ed Butler expressed his plan of
action. Butler's anti-communism was practically rather than
ideologically based. On page 171 he describes "Model Making...as the
deliberate construction and elevation of a model attitude, act, fad,
concept, or personality for political purposes. He goes on to write,
"By capturing or creating peer leaders in entertainment, sports,
political and cultural figures with whom people can identify
(especially youth) one can control the opinion climate in America as
clearly as steering a car." Butler went on to use his nemesis, Kennedy
assassination author Mark Lane and others as an example of this in
defining books used to exonerate Oswald. Revolution is My Profession
goes on to say, "In this age of instant idea via mass
telecommunications, simply saying it is (or isn't) so, can make it so
(or not so).
In talking about his new profession of Conflict Management (which is
basically a offshoot of public relations), INCA, and the coming war
against communism and the media Butler describes the use of "Truth
Tapes" which his organization made and used Cuban refugees such as
Juanita Castro (sister of Fidel Castro) to serve as the voice on the
tape recordings. These tapes were sent to over 15 Latin American
countries and over 100 broadcast stations. Juanita Castro and Paul
Bethel of the Free Cuba Committee in Miami, Florida both were advisors
to INCA. Butler and Dr. Ochsner saw the importance of propaganda
early in the organizations inception and gave INCA credit in keeping
leftist Salvador Allende out of power in Chile's 1964 presidential
elections.
Butler's obsession with the media is apparent in his book, when he
writes, "The media are the delivery system for mental missiles. The
messages are the warheads, The vehicles are the rockets." His
experiences in Latin American propaganda show when he writes in the
book, "Conflict Managers must learn to relate, to articulate for large
numbers of people. As a spokesman for the SQUARE movement, I have
learned no one can create fads or trends, but can identify and
anticipate latent convictions and viewpoints, help verbalize them and
give them form, content and substance." Butler applied this knowledge
and used it when in Los Angeles with graphic symbols and other stimuli
in his magazine as a way to counteract the New Left and hippie visual
imagery at the time. He referred to the New Left as the
anti-establishment and the hippies as the non-establishment. He saw
both as being in need of Conflict Management. His INCA information
service depicted hippie types in derogatory situations.
In a 1973 New Orleans newspaper article, Ed Butler took credit for
breaking the defunct SDS, and claimed a victory against tyranny. But
this article proved to be one of the few jubilant moments for the
Information Council of the Americas as the 1970s got under way. INCA's
magnanimous California contributor Patrick Frawley incurred financial
difficulties and his past generous support was lost. Also Dudley Swim,
another generous California contributor died. In 1972 Butler closed the
California operation, and moved back to New Orleans, but met with
financial difficulties there also. Other things of Ed Butler's own
doing lost ground for INCA in the early 1970s. Butler and Ochsner's
weak explanation for the Watergate scandal placed the blame on the
Communists. It proved to be a pathetic time for the organization in
this narrow thinking analysis as anti-Castro exile compatriots and
conservative fellow travelers Frank Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio
Martinez, G. Gordon Liddy and Bernard Barker all were arrested,
tried and convicted of the break-in of Democratic headquarters.
INCA continued until 1981, its final demise attributed to the death
of an aged Dr. Alton Ochsner that year. His son Dr. Alton
Ochsner, Jr. helped start another organization similar to INCA. The
Caribbean Commission was formed in 1982 by the younger Ochsner and
several influential New Orleanians. While INCA had directed its
energies on the Cuban Revolution, the CC concentrated on Nicaragua.
INCA proved to make a definitive statement with regard to
anti-communism in its time. Ed Butler in September, 1980, late in the
organization's history, interviewed president-to-be Ronald Reagan.
Several years later in June, 1982 Reagan addressed the British
Parliament. He surprised his supporters and infuriated his enemies by
returning to the idea of the Cold War as a conflict between value
systems. Reagan said, "The struggle that's now going on in the world
will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas, a trial
of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the
ideals to which we are dedicated..." Reagan went on in the speech, "At
the same time, we see totalitarian forces in the world who seek
subversion and conflict around the globe to further their barbarous
assault on the human spirit. What, then, is our course? Must
civilization perish in a hail of fiery atoms? Must freedom wither in a
quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?" Reagan presided
over the disintegration of communism. INCA founder Ed Butler like his
president was a communicator. The reference to Reagan infuriating
his enemies by taking on an idea of calling the Cold War a conflict of
value systems, and where communications and not bombs were the key to
winning the struggle was one not foreign to Ed Butler. His own style
preceeded the likes of other communications wizards such as Lee Atwater
and Ralph Reed. While his own propaganda organization was wrought with
covert activities, some of which we do not know everything about yet,
he and INCA still proved to be politically effective. An American
History magazine article showed some of the possible intelligence links
of Butler to the CIA directly and through the International Trade
Mart and Cuban Student Directorate members such as his Cuban exile
colleague Carlos Bringuier. Butler's own ties to INCA, the trade mart
and possibly to the CIA was peripheral to the Garrison investigation
of Kennedy's death, and the congressional intelligence inquiries
that followed. These CIA links may or may not be true, but
if so would put another interesting footnote in the history of the
Information Council of the Americas.
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