John Alexander McCone (January 4, 1902 - February 14, 1991) was an American businessman and
politicianA politician or political leader is an individual who is involved in influencing public decision making. This includes people who hold decision-making positions in government, and people who seek those positions, whether by means of election, coup d'état, appointment, electoral fraud, conquest,...
who served as
Director of Central IntelligenceThe Office of United States Director of Central Intelligence was established by U.S. President Harry Truman on January 23 1946 with Admiral Sidney Souers occupying the position...
during the height of the
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II , primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States...
.
McCone was born in
San Francisco, CaliforniaSan Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 12th most populous city in the United States, with a 2008 estimated population of 808,976. It is the eighth most densely populated city in the U.S. and is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the larger San...
. His father ran iron foundries across California, a business started in Nevada in 1860 by McCone's grandfather. He graduated from the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley is a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines...
in 1922 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, beginning his career in Los Angeles' Llewellyn Iron Works.
John Alexander McCone (January 4, 1902 - February 14, 1991) was an American businessman and
politicianA politician or political leader is an individual who is involved in influencing public decision making. This includes people who hold decision-making positions in government, and people who seek those positions, whether by means of election, coup d'état, appointment, electoral fraud, conquest,...
who served as
Director of Central IntelligenceThe Office of United States Director of Central Intelligence was established by U.S. President Harry Truman on January 23 1946 with Admiral Sidney Souers occupying the position...
during the height of the
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II , primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States...
.
McCone was born in
San Francisco, CaliforniaSan Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 12th most populous city in the United States, with a 2008 estimated population of 808,976. It is the eighth most densely populated city in the U.S. and is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the larger San...
. His father ran iron foundries across California, a business started in Nevada in 1860 by McCone's grandfather. He graduated from the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley is a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines...
in 1922 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, beginning his career in Los Angeles' Llewellyn Iron Works. He rose swiftly and in 1929, when several works merged to become the
Consolidated Steel CorporationConsolidated Steel Corporation was an American steel and shipbuilding business. Consolidated built ships during World War II in two locations: Wilmington, California and Orange, Texas...
, he became executive vice president. A prominent industrialist, McCone also served for more than twenty years as a governmental advisor and official. Most importantly, he was chairman of the
U.S. Atomic Energy CommissionThe United States Atomic Energy Commission was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by Congress to foster and control the peace time development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S...
(1958 - 1961) and Director of the
Central Intelligence AgencyThe Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government.It is an independent agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior United States policymakers....
(CIA) (1961 - 1965).
According to journalist Seymour Hersh, in December 1960, while still Atomic Energy Commission chairman, McCone revealed CIA information about
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
's
Dimona nuclear weapons plantThe Negev Nuclear Research Center is an Israeli nuclear installation located in the Negev desert, about thirteen kilometers to the south-east of the city of Dimona....
to the New York Times. Hersh writes that President
John F. KennedyJohn Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
was "fixated" on the Israeli nuclear weapons program and appointed McCone CIA director in part because of his willingness to deal with this and other nuclear weapons issues - and despite the fact that McCone was a
RepublicanThe Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the Grand Old Party or the GOP, despite being the younger of the two major parties. In the U.S...
.
He was a key player in the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (
EXCOMMThe Executive Committee of the National Security Council was a body of United States government officials that convened to advise President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962...
) during the October 1962
Cuban Missile CrisisThe Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba in October 1962, during the Cold War. In Russia, former Eastern Bloc, and communist countries , it is termed the "Caribbean Crisis" , while in Cuba it is called the "October Crisis"...
. In the Honeymoon telegram of September 20, 1962, he insisted that the CIA remain imaginative when it came to Soviet weapons policy towards
CubaThe Republic of Cuba is an island country in the Caribbean. It consists of the island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city. Cuba is home to over 11 million people and is...
, as a September 19 National Intelligence Estimate had concluded it unlikely that nuclear missiles would be placed on the island. (The telegram was so named because McCone sent it while on his honeymoon in Paris, France, accompanied not only by his bride, but by a CIA cypher team as well.)
McCone's suspicions of the inaccuracy of this assessment proved to be correct, as it was later found out the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
had followed up its conventional military build up with the installation of MRBMs (Medium Range Ballistic Missiles) and IRBMs (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles), sparking off the crisis in October when they were later spotted by CIA's
Lockheed U-2The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is a single-engine, very high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force and previously flown by the Central Intelligence Agency. It provides day and night, very high-altitude , all-weather surveillance...
surveillance flights.
McCone resigned from his position of DCI in April 1965, believing himself to be unappreciated by President
Lyndon B. JohnsonLyndon Baines Johnson , served as the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969 after his service as the Vice President of the United States from 1961 to 1963...
, who he complained, would not read his reports, including on the need for full-fledged inspections of Israeli nuclear facilities. Upon his resignation, McCone submitted a final policy memorandum to Johnson arguing that Johnson's expansion of the war in Vietnam would arouse national and world discontent before it brought down the North Vietnamese regime.
Throughout his career, McCone served on numerous commissions that made recommendations on issues as diverse as civilian applications of military technology and the
Watts riotsThe term Watts Riots of 1965 refers to a large-scale race riot which lasted 6 days in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in August 1965. By the time the riot subsided, 34 people had been killed, 1,032 injured, and 3,952 arrested...
.
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