During Washington's leadership of the war on socialism, the rollback of the Iron Curtain, and the dismantling of the Soviet Union took center stage, but there were other items on its agenda, both at home and abroad. While Moscow was being cornered, and subdued, its most dangerous sympathizers in leadership positions in certain countries, and within various electorates, especially Western ones, had at least to be kept track of, and reduced or eliminated if conditions required. While winning the Cold War was always in the forefront, steps had to be taken, usually behind the scenes, to make sure that the battle was not being lost or betrayed on some home front, particularly after the conflict became institutionalized.
The tactics in winning this struggle were much more sophisticated and secret than ones dealing with the Soviets. Here dangerous groups, especially organized labor, had to be isolated – unions discredited, their leaders corrupted, and their followers confused about their benefits. This process was best accomplished in an environment where the media, educational system, economic system, and society continually stressed the advantages of individual opportunity, responsibility, and reward. The traditional predatory nature of capitalism was very much being discounted in order to give the masses a sense of living in a most sensitive community.
Behind the scenes, though, Anglo-American covert government was willing to show its fangs if developments warranted it. When Fidel Castro took over Cuba, and moved to reduce vastly the profits of its foreign-owned oil facilities, the CIA, thanks particularly to the prodding of MI5′s Peter Wright (See Spycatcher, p. 146ff.), quickly attempted to kill him by the most subtle means in terms of agents and delivery systems, as the hearings of the Church Committee amply documented. When the scene had to be switched to Southeast Asia after the botched assassination of President Kennedy for similar reasons, the CIA led a comprehensive assault on the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese in order to prevent the whole region from allegedly falling to the communists The elimination of the Kennedy brothers, and Dr. Martin Luther King along the way indicated just how serious the process had become.
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