Cold War Origins of the CIA Holocaust

By Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

A new book by James W. Douglass [JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters] addresses an "an evil whose depth and deceit seemed to go beyond the capacity of words to describe." A few events, many of them very recent, qualify to be so described. The unspeakable 'evil' in this case is the assassination of JFK, in fact, a cold-blooded murder in the streets.

That it was a 'President' so ignominiously gunned-down is in itself appalling, unspeakable but that it was a President who held out our best hopes to survive as a Democratic, free nation makes it all the more tragic in retrospect.

The assassination succeeded, claims Douglass, because Americans can't handle the truth. Americans have not faced up to what has happened to our nation or what has become of our dreams of freedom, democracy, equal rights and liberty.

Douglass's books is not another conspiracy book. Many books, articles, writers, and talk show hosts have proven to my satisfaction and that of millions of Americans that the cold blooded murder of JFK could not have been anything other than a conspiracy. The 'lone nut' theory is subscribed to only by lone nuts and legions of liars. Douglass not only affirms a 'conspiracy' but speaks directly to jaded Americans, addressing in the subtitle: "Why He Died and Why It Matters."

No murder but especially that of JFK can be understood in a vacuum. There is a fateful history leading up to that dreadful day in Dallas, when the United States lost a President, America lost a future, and every American lost the 'Yankee' optimism that had made our nation great.

John F. Kennedy began as a 'Cold Warrior' and ended as and perhaps because he transcended that role, that label. He had become the embodiment of all our hopes for peace as well as prosperity, more mature relations with both allies and adversaries as well as more humane domestic peace with those citizens who had been denied a fair share of that dream.

Today, anyone aspiring to any political office so lofty as that of President risks his/her life. This outcome may not, must not be tolerated if we are ever again to enjoy the blessings of competent government.

Since the murder of John F. Kennedy, it has become clear to every thinking American that the path toward peace is opposed by those who make war for profit. In the U.S., the group is called the Military-Industrial Complex, in short, the M.I.C., whose 'living' is nothing else but industrialized murder. It is also clear to every thinking American that as long as there is a profit motive, as long as there are big bucks to be made manufacturing and selling arms, peace is but an elusive dream. As long as just one percent of the nation's population owns more than the rest of us combined, peace is but a hopeless dream. As long as there is oil in the Middle East, you will find either the American military and/or the CIA.

Doulgass' book identifies a 'designated patsy', the term used by Lee Harvey Oswald himself upon his arrest. Earlier, according to Douglass, there was a 'second Oswald' who was moved about the country 'like a pawn'. This doppelganger was, in fact, setting Oswald up to 'take the fall'. It was, at the time, a mere sub-plot. The Soviet Union was 'set up' as well. The Soviet Union and its satellite China had a role thrust upon them: 'Evil Empire'. As an ironic result, we are now owned by China. Again --ironically --it is the CIAs own 'World Fact Book' which confirms and documents that fact.

It was during the administration of President Harry Truman that the CIA was given near 'unlimited powers'. This event is referred to by Gore Vidal in his 'Decline and Fall of the American Empire'. Sen Arthur Vandenburg is quoted as having told Truman that if he expected to raise taxes in order to pay for 'covert activities' then he must "...scare the hell out of the American people." Thus was born a 'cold war', an incipient empire, and the Orwellian, non-ending war which has, at last, bankrupted America, enslaved its people, enriched but one percent of the population, and incurred the enmity of many throughout the world who see themselves as victim slaves because of it. They are correct.

The goal was nothing less than the destruction of the Russian Communist State. In a shallow sense and in the shorter term, they succeeded. In the longer term, they failed. The costs of waging Orwellian war had not been assayed. In the end, the victory was merely pyrrhic, short-lived and did not justify the lives lost in Viet Nam and every other surrogate battlefield.

Blessed with secrecy and lack of congressional oversight, CIA operations became corrupt almost immediately. Using propaganda stations like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, the CIA felt justified in manipulating the public for its own good. The broadcasts were so patently false that for a time it was illegal to publish transcripts of them in the U.S. This was a classic case of a powerful organization deciding what was best for the people, and then abusing the powers it had helped itself to.
During the 40s and 50s, most of the public was unaware of what the CIA was doing. Those who knew thought they were fighting the good fight against communism, like James Bond. However, they could not keep their actions secret forever, and by the 60s and 70s, Americans began learning about the agency’s crimes and atrocities. (3) It turns out the CIA has:

• Corrupted democratic elections in Greece, Italy and dozens of other nations;


• Been involved to varying degrees in at least 35 assassination plots against foreign heads of state or prominent political leaders. Successful assassinations include democratically elected leaders like Salvador Allende (Chile) and Patrice Lumumba (Belgian Congo); also CIA-created dictators like Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic) and Ngo Dinh Diem (South Vietnam); and popular political leaders like Che Guevara. Unsuccessful attempts range from Fidel Castro to Charles De Gaulle.


• Helped launch military coups that toppled democratic governments, replacing them with brutal dictatorships or juntas. The list of overthrown democratic leaders includes Mossadegh (Iran, 1953), Arbenz (Guatemala, 1954), Velasco and Arosemena (Ecuador, 1961, 1963), Bosch (Dominican Republic, 1963), Goulart (Brazil, 1964), Sukarno (Indonesia, 1965), Papandreou (Greece, 1965-67), Allende (Chile, 1973), and dozens of others.


• Undermined the governments of Australia, Guyana, Cambodia, Jamaica and more;


• Supported murderous dictators like General Pinochet (Chile), the Shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos (Phillipines), "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier (Haiti), General Noriega (Panama), Mobutu Sese Seko (Ziare), the "reign of the colonels" (Greece), and more;


• Created, trained and supported death squads and secret police forces that tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians, leftists and political opponents, in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, Bolivia, Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Iran, Turkey, Angola and others;


• Helped run the "School of the Americas" at Fort Benning, Georgia, which trains Latin American military officers how to overthrow democratic governments. Subjects include the use of torture, interrogation and murder;


• Used Michigan State "professors" to train Diem’s secret police in torture;


• Conducted economic sabotage, including ruining crops, disrupting industry, sinking ships and creating food shortages;


• Paved the way for the massacre of 200,000 in East Timor, 500,000 in Indonesia and one to two million in Cambodia;


• Launched secret or illegal military actions or wars in Nicaragua, Angola, Cuba, Laos and Indochina;


• Planted false stories in the local media;


• Framed political opponents for crimes, atrocities, political statements and embarrassments that they did not commit;


• Spied on thousands of American citizens, in defiance of Congressional law;


• Smuggled Nazi war criminals and weapon scientists into the U.S., unpunished, for their use in the Cold War;


• Created organizations like the World Anti-Communist League, which became filled with ex-Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, Italian terrorists, Japanese fascists, racist Afrikaaners, Latin American death squad leaders, CIA agents and other extreme right-wing militants;


• Conducted Operation MK-ULTRA, a mind-control experiment that gave LSD and other drugs to Americans against their will or without their knowledge, causing some to commit suicide;


• Penetrated and disrupted student antiwar organizations;


• Kept friendly and extensive working relations with the Mafia;


• Actively traded in drugs around the world since the 1950s to fund its operations. The Contra/crack scandal is only the tip of the iceberg –- other notorious examples include Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle and Noreiga’s Panama.


• Had their fingerprints all over the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcom X. Even if the CIA is not responsible for these killings, the sheer amount of CIA involvement in these cases demands answers;


• And then routinely lied to Congress about all of the above.

The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. (4) Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an "American Holocaust."
We should note that the CIA gets away with this because it is not accountable to democratic government. Former CIA officer Philip Agee put it best: "The CIA is the President's secret army." Prior to 1975, the agency answered only to the President (creating all the usual problems of authoritarianism). And because the CIA’s activities were secret, the President rarely had to worry about public criticism and pressure. After the 1975 Church hearings, Congress tried to create congressional oversight of the CIA, but this has failed miserably. One reason is that the congressional oversight committee is a sham, filled with Cold Warriors, conservatives, businessmen, and even ex-CIA personnel.
--Steve Kangas, The Origins of the Overclass

A summit meeting of U.S. President Eisenhower with Soviet Premier Khrushchev was canceled after a U.S U2 spy plane crashed in Russia. Eisenhower had order such flights canceled. So--who disobeyed or counter-manded orders from the President? It was after this incident that Eisenhower issued his famous warning about the 'Military-Industrial Complex' in his farewell address. It was, thus, left to John F. Kennedy to defy the "conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry."

What is so clear today, in retrospect, may not have been so obvious at the time. Else, we might have avoided the tragic history that has resulted. Clearly, JFKs fate was sealed when he refused to support the CIA invasion of Cuba to regain control of Cuba for organized crime. Think of it this way: the CIA had hoped to hijack the apparatus of the U.S. government and its military in order to make Cuba safe for the Mafia.

Kennedy was not buying it. He knew that he had been lied to by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA. He refused to provide air support for the Cuban brigade. It was not the only time that JFK had run afoul of the military. During the Cuban-Missile Crisis, he resisted 'tremendous pressure' on him to take military action, which in retrospect, it is clear would plunged the nation in a nuclear Armageddon.

JFK intended to end the cold war, establish peaceful relations with the Soviet Union. At this time in our history, the bumper sticker: "better dead than red" was seen on millions of vehicles, often beside the slogan: 'Impeach Earl Warren'. This is the political atmosphere that prevailed in the short years and months preceding JFK's cold-blooded murder.

The bumper stickers, however, were just the political atmosphere that was promoted and exploited. The real power opposing JFK was the arms industry which still controls the United States. At the time, the war machine generated billions of dollars. It was then as now, the producer of America's chief exports: death and destruction.

JFK learned to trust Khrushchev more than the 'people' within his own government. Traitors to the Constitution and the President, they had embarked upon a strategy in which they would oppose him, isolate him and subvert his policies. The gang of traitors included Richard Bissell, Charles Cabell, Henry Cabot Lodge, Lyman Lemnitzer, Curtis LeMay and perhaps the most contemptible of all, Allen Dulles who was, in fact, a traitor.

On June 10, 1963, JFK spoke about his desire for world peace, a new relationship with the Soviet Union and Nikita Khrushchev with whom he had hope to form a new relationship with the Soviet Union. To these ends, he said that nuclear disarmament was a necessity and to that end proposed a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. And, as 'we are all mortal', he most certainly infuriated the American right wing by declaring that the Russian people wanted peace as much as did the American people.

Just as Dwight David Eisenhower was, as I have called him, the last honest Republican, JFK died a martyr for the cause of peace. The speech also certified JFK's death warrant. With so many powerful enemies opposing his policies and hating him, JFK didn't have a chance. He was craftily maneuvered into the crossfire in Dallas.

The CIA was infuriated when it learned that JFK had exchanged private letters with Khrushchev and had, in secret, planned to seek 'rapprochement' with Cuba. Castro was interested and was, in fact, meeting with American representatives when JFK was murdered. Douglas rightly claims that "JFK died a martyr" to the causes of freedom and peace.

Douglass is right to claim that if JFK had not been murdered, the Cold War would have ended amid 'peace talks' with Khrushchev. The tragedy of Viet Nam might have been avoided or cut short. They're might never have been a 'War on Terrorism'. Within a month of JFKs assassination, Harry Truman wrote an article for the Washington Post warning of a CIA take-over of the United States. Harry was right!

Origins of the CIA Holocaust

Joan Baez: We Shall Overcome

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Like GWB, Adolf Hitler was in the death business

One of the greatest disasters to befall humankind was triggered by a state crime perpetrated by Adolf Hitler. That crime was The Reichstag Fire. [See: excerpts from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer ] It led inexorably to the Holocaust, a crime of unimaginable proportions.

In Houston, I spoke with Holocaust survivor Siegi Izakson....

Given what Hitler himself had written in Mein Kampf, it is easy enough to conclude that Hitler's desire to cleanse the "Fatherland" was motive enough to pull off a Reichstag Fire, an act of "terrorism" which Hitler exploited as shamelessly as Bush has exploited 911.

The whole truth about the Reichstag fire will probably never be known. Nearly all those who knew it are now dead, most of them slain by Hitler in the months that followed. Even at Nuremberg the mystery could not be entirely unraveled, though there is enough evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that it was the Nazis who planned the arson and carried it out for their own political ends.

From Goring's Reichstag President's Palace an underground passage, built to carry the central heating system, ran to the Reichstag building. Through this tunnel Karl Ernst, a former hotel bellhop who had become the Berlin S.A. leader, led a small detachment of storm troopers on the night of February 27 to the Reichstag, where they scattered gasoline and self-igniting chemicals and then made their way quickly back to the palace the way they had come. At the same time a half-witted Dutch Communist with a passion for arson, Marinus van der Lubbe, had made his way into the huge, darkened and to him unfamiliar building and set some small fires of his own. This feeble-minded pyromaniac was a godsend to the Nazis. He had been picked up by the S.A. a few days before after having been overheard in a bar boasting that he had attempted to set fire to several public buildings and that he was going to try the Reichstag next.

The coincidence that the Nazis had found a demented Communist arsonist who was out to do exactly what they themselves had determined to do seems incredible but is nevertheless supported by the evidence. The idea for the fire almost certainly originated with Goebbels and Goring. Hans Gisevius, an official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior at the time, testified at Nuremberg that "it was Goebbels who first thought of setting the Reichstag on fire," and Rudolf Diels, the Gestapo chief, added in an affidavit that "Goring knew exactly how the fire was to be started" and had ordered him "to prepare, prior to the fire, a list of people who were to be arrested immediately after it." General Franz Halder, Chief of the German General Staff during the early part of World War II, recalled at Nuremberg how on one occasion Goring had boasted of his deed.

--William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.

- George Santayana, American Philosopher

Sadly, however, we always forget the past. We are in need of constant reminders, especially the corporate origins of fascism and Nazism.

If you have trouble connecting the dots from Hitler's corporate base to the Nazi state to the Final Solution, a reminder: big companies --I.G Farben (manufactuers of Zyklon B), Thyssen, Krupp --all made fortunes at every step of the way. Like Bush today, Hitler was in the death business.

The Wannsee Conference was held on 20 January 1942, in a villa owned by the SS-Nordhav Foundation in the attractive Berlin lakeside suburb of Wannsee. It was presided over by SS-Lieutenant General Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Security Police and Security Service. Heydrich summoned fourteen men representing the governmental and military branches most involved in implementing the practical aspects of the Final Solution. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring had charged him with arranging all practical matters concerning the implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish question.1 Heydrich was an ambitious and meticulous officer who relished the responsibility of power. One of Heydrich's foremost intentions was to make sure that all these men understood perfectly what duties and responsibilities their office was expected to fulfill.

In the years leading up to World War II, the phrase "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem" had taken on a series of increasingly ominous meanings in the Nazi vocabulary.2 The various implications had included voluntary emigration, confinement to ghettos in cities located along rail lines, forced removal to concentration camps, and finally, extermination. Heydrich wanted to be certain there was no confusion among the group that, now, the term referred specifically to the murder of all European Jews.

Heydrich's assistant, SS Lt-Colonel Adolf Eichmann tells us in testimony at his trial in 1961, that the meeting was relatively brief, lasting only an hour to an hour and a half, and that the atmosphere of the meeting was one of cooperation and agreement.3 These high-ranking members of the Nazi government met at mid-day over a buffet luncheon to discuss the annihilation of an entire people.

The Wannsee Conference

A flash forward to the present day proves that despite Santayana's admonition, we have forgotten the past and we are doomed to repeat it.

We will export death and destruction to the four corners of the earth!

--George W. Bush

The Existentialist Cowboy

Conservative Lies
liberals
Why Conservatives Hate America
Democrats
Bush

Spread the word:

"We have to touch people..."

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In my last article, I referred to Jacob Bronowski, whose Science and Human Values addressed not merely the objective, scientific bias behind "logical positivism" but also the human drive to create in both science and art. Arguably, this drive is as basic as are the instincts to procreate, eat and seek shelter.

Bronowski, was a scientist, a positivist; but, just as importantly, he was a humanist. When Bertrand Russell would wander into the arid deserts of pure symbolic logic and linguistic abstraction, Bronowski, would bring us all back to earth with the human touch, a comforting reminder that "'...science is not a mechanism but a human progress."

I cannot believe that it was by accident that what may be his finest effort -- Science and Human Values --was written in the war scarred, arid intellectual landscape that was the post World War II world. The surreal devastation that had been Hiroshima and Nagasaki were symbolic of that world. It was a world that dared to ask or was perhaps forced to confront the frightening question: what would I do if I were the only human being to survive a world wide apocalypse, the last human being left alive?

Positivism is associated with Comte but more recently with the "logical positivists" like A.J. Ayer who proposed and outlined in Language, Truth and Logic a "verifiability criterion of meaning":

"A complete philosophical elucidation of any language would consist, first, in enumerating the types of sentence that were significant in that language, and then in displaying the relations of equivalence that held between sentences of various types.

For Ayer, the function of a sentence is to convey meaningful information. But, if only meaningful sentences are significant and nonsense insignificant, then what is the meaning of meaning? Whether Ayer successfully offers up a meaning of meaning, as he had hoped to do, becomes the litmus test of his legacy. Did he succeed? Or --was Wittgenstein correct to state that all such "positivist" attempts end in infinite regress. What is the meaning of the meaning of meaning?

For Ayer, meaningful sentences are significant because they are verifiable or because they are tautologies. For example, "bald men have no hair" is true by definition. "Synthetic sentences", as Ayer classified them, are only true when measured empirically but are significant because they may be so verified. Statements about the height of certain mountains, on earth or moon, are resolved only by actually measuring the mountain. But statements about them, even if false, are nonetheless, significant. For the moment, we may assume reasonably accurate methods of measure.

Ayer is dry reading:

2. Reduction of material object language to language about sense-contents.

logical constructions (p. 63): if we can provide a definition in use showing how to get rid of a term ‘a’ in favor of other terms ‘b’, ‘c’, etc., then we may say that the thing supposedly referred to by ‘a’ is a logical construction out of the things referred to by ‘b’, ‘c’, etc. So, for example, tables are logical constructions out of sense-contents. (Here is the tendency for positivism to lead to idealism!)

--Language, Truth and Logic, A. J. Ayer

Bronowski, by contrast, talks as much about creation as verification, about culture and civilization as about symbols and formal systems:

This is the act of creation, in which an original thought is born, and it is the same act in original science and original art. But it is not therefore the monopoly of the man who wrote the poem or who made the discovery. On the contrary, I believe this view of the creative act to be right because it alone gives a meaning to the act of appreciation.

...

'The society of scientists is simple because it has a directing purpose: to explore the truth. Nevertheless, it has to solve the problem of every society, which is to find a compromise between man and men. It must encourage the single scientist to be independent, and the body of scientists to be tolerant. From these basic conditions, which form the prime values, there follows step by step a range of values: dissent, freedom of thought and speech, justice, honour, human dignity and self-respect.'

Only Bronowski, who understood science as well as art, could have written this perfect synthesis of both sides of the human brain, this perfect description of the cultural role that is often played by science.

The act of fusion is the creative act, he wrote. Few have written as eloquently or as precisely about the creative process. Indeed, few have known or understood that both science and art are products of the same human will to create. The artist will produce a gestalt of his/her own brain and hand. The scientist will reconcile, for example, Everest as seen from the north with Everest as seen from the south.

All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses. Let me illustrate. Western mountain climbers, at home with compass and map projection, can match a view of an some inaccessible and rarely seen mountain with another view that they have seen years ago. But to the native climbers with them, each face is a separate picture and puzzle. The natives may know another face of the mountain, and this face too, better than the strangers; and yet they have no way of fitting the two faces together.
...

On the morning of the 27th we turned into the Lobujya Khola, the valley which contains the Khombu Glacier (which flows from the south and south-west side of Everest). As we climbed into the valley we saw at its head the line of the main watershed. I recognized immediately the peaks and saddles so familiar to us from the Rongbuk (the north) side: Pumori, Lingtren, the Lho La, the North Peak and the west shoulder of Everest. It is curious that Angtarkay, who knew these features as well as I did from the other side and had spent many years of his boyhood grazing yaks in this valley, had never recognized them as the same; nor did he do so now

The leading Sherpa knew the features of Everest from the north as well as Shipton did. And unlike Shipton, he also knew them from the south, for he spent years in this valley. Yet he had never put the two together in his head. It is the inquisitive stranger who points out the mountains which flank Everest. The Sherpa then recognizes the shape of a peak here and of another there. The parts begin to fit together; the puzzled man's mind begins to build a map; and suddenly the pieces are snug, the map will turn around, and the two faces of the mountain are both Everest. Other expeditions in other places have told of the delight of the native climbers at such a recognition.

J. Brownowski, Science and Human Values, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965, p. 11.

Of two views, one.

It was a flash of pure creative inspiration that lead Newton to conclude that the moon is falling, literally, around the earth, that an orbit is simply an acceleration of a falling body graphed over time. It was Einstein who took this creative "unification" yet another step. This acceleration graphed over time is a "projection", the very curvature of space-time itself.

It was Bronowski, who urged that we be not "...overwhelmed by the scale of science." There is still work to do. The discovery of mesons occurred during attempts to reconcile our understanding of light as "wave" with its behavior as "particle". Likewise, it is hoped that "string theory" or some other TOE (theory of everything) will make of science an ultimate creative fusion.

For Bronowski, the appreciation of art as well as the understanding of science lies in the willingness of a third party, an observer, to re-create the process. To do so is to share the creative process itself.

The poem or the discovery exists in two moments of vision: the moment of appreciation as much as that of creation; for the appreciator must see the movement, wake to the echo which was started in the creation of the work.'

There are difficulties with both Bronowski and Ayer. Ayer, a thorough-going, formidable logician, cannot verify value statements nor can he state the conditions under which such statements might be verified. His own "Verifiability Criterion of Meaning", his meaning of meaning itself, prevents his doing so.

Bronowski, significantly does not reject such positivism. He embraces its contradiction and transcends it in another paradigm. He humanizes it, pointing out in a single sentence, the underlying, unproved social injunction implied in Ayer's analytical methods. That implied imperative is:

We OUGHT to act in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so.

It was, after all, Ayer and his fellows, who had eschewed the very word "ought". Thus, at a time when modern philosophy had consigned human values to the realm of meaninglessness, Bronowski, conjoined them in a supreme act of creativity.

Bronowski is best known for his monumental The Ascent of Man, a series that he wrote and hosted for the BBC. In thirteen episodes, Bronowski traced the evolution of human society. Many characterize this monumental achievement as refuting Kenneth Clark's earlier Civilization series. That criticism misunderstands both Bronowski and Clark. I like to think of both efforts as book ends on a single shelf. The Wikipedia assertion that "...the two series can be seen as a dialogue between two fundamentally opposed philosophies" misunderstands the nature of both perspectives as the Sherpa, described by Bronouski in Science and Human Values, failed to recognize Everest from the other side.

Bronowski is not easily reduced to one thing or the other. A thorough-going scientist, he was as much a humanist. As a perpetual war is waged in Iraq and the specter of international "terrorism" is raised by demogogues and genuine terrorists alike, we are in need of real humanists. We are in need of more Bronowskis. We are in need of a rational, yet creative and meaningful, world.

The most moving moment in the Ascent of Man occured in an episode entitled: 'Knowledge or Certainty'. In it, Bronowski visited Auschwitz where many members of his family had died.

We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act.

We have to touch people.

Addendum:

Since posting this article, I found another take on Bronowski and Clark. It is from the nationally syndicated Engines of Our Ingenuity hosted by Dr. John Lienhard of The University of Houston's College of Engineering. Lienhard had prepared a broadcast about both Clark and Bronowski for "Engines". Here is an excerpt and a link to a transcript of the broadcast.

Watch either of these TV series by itself and I promise you'll be enchanted. But watch both, and you'll see a stunning convergence from two directions. Clark and Bronowski converge on hope, they converge on belief, they converge on the pervasive unity of the human species. Of course both are wary. In the end, Bronowski says,

We are all afraid ... That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet [we have] gone forward. ...

And a worried Kenneth Clark, facing the social upheaval of the late '60s, says (as much to himself as to us),

... civilisation has been a series of rebirths. Surely this should give us confidence in ourselves.

They both clearly assert our capacity for saving ourselves. They realize that technology, science, and the other arts have always converged upon our problems. And they surely remain our only real hope in troubled times.

-Dr. John Lienhard, Engines of Our Ingenuity, No. 1880:
Clark and Bronowski

When Ascent of Man aired, some "critics" suggested that Bronowski aimed to refute Clark. I never saw it that way. Indeed, Lienhard referred to a "convergence":

Watch either of these TV series by itself and I promise you'll be enchanted. But watch both, and you'll see a stunning convergence from two directions.

-Dr. John Lienhard, Engines of Our Ingenuity, No. 1880:
Clark and Bronowski