CIA
capt 318 bak
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uber1:
https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6950F840-FB80-FCB0-D505-8AB1FA685F08#-114
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Evangelical Christianity Is Literally a PSYOP
576,460 views Jan 31, 2026
US intelligence agencies have conducted a long-term psychological operation promoting Evangelical Protestantism.
Go to https://ground.news/skeptic to get all sides of every story. Subscribe through my link to save 40% off unlimited access.
Liberation Theology is absolutely based. My interview with Colten: [
• Our Evangelical Christian Universities Wer...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2KI50nB7cs)
...
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1 minute, 41 seconds
theology responds to such criticism with just one question. What part have you played in the effective and integral liberation of the oppressed? In El
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Salvador, thinkers like John Sabrino and Ignasio Aakuria related the suffering of the poor to the passion of Christ directly and the sin of oppressors to
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the sins for which he was crucified. The crucified people, that is the poor, are the historical continuation of Yahweh's
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servant whom the sin of the world continues to deprive of his human face.
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The powerful of this world continue to strip them of everything to snatch everything from them even their lives
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especially their lives. Jesus takes a very different approach to each group.
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He offers salvation to all and makes demands of all but in a very different way. He directly demands a radical conversion of the oppressor, an act of
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cessation from oppressing. For these the coming of the kingdom is above all a radical need to stop being oppressors.
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These theologians did not invent liberation theology from above. They put into words what Christian-based communities were discovering for
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themselves as they studied scripture in the shadow of military dictatorships, land monopolies, and US-backed elites.
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These communities did not just pray together. They examined the conditions of their lives. They asked why their societies were structured to benefit a
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small ruling class and what it meant that Jesus identified with the poor.
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Liberation theology took those questions seriously and treated them as a call to collective action, offering ordinary
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people tools to interpret their own oppression and to organize for land reform, workers rights, literacy, and
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democracy. You might see the problem with this. for the wealthy, the greedy,
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the powerful, aka the US empire. This movement encouraged those who suffered most under the existing political order
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to demand they be treated with basic respect. By the late 1960s, US intelligence assessments characterized
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progressive Catholic clergy as an increasingly disruptive force whose work threatened established political order
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in Latin America. A 1969 CIA memorandum warned that liberationoriented priests,
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sermons, and writings have already aroused the concern of conservative church officials and military leaders and predicted some clergy may be driven
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into alignment with leftist political groups. By 1971, President Nixon identified the deterioration of the
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4 minutes, 11 seconds
attitude of the Catholic Church as the single most important event in Latin America over the previous decade,
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worrying that priests were now standing with the peasants and workers against the oligarchs and the armies. Yes, he
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actually said that the 1980 Santa Fe document prepared for the incoming Reagan administration declared that liberation theology represented Marxist
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Leninist forces using the church as a political weapon against private property and productive capitalism and
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called for US foreign policy to mount a counterattack on and not merely react against liberation theology. The US did
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use direct violence to manage its problem, and we'll talk about that. But with liberation theologies proponents having some protection from the Vatican,
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the US couldn't just take out everyone it disliked, at least. So, it chose an
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additional approach to liberation theology. It would dilute, replace, and counterprogram it. How might it do this?
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As a 1969 report by Republican politician and eventual vice president Nelson Rockefeller said, since the
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Catholic Church in Latin America raises the consciousness of the people, the US should give support to fundamentalist Christian groups. As I'm filming this,
...
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and which of these things I'm saying are are my actual words. All right, you've been warned. If SIL linguists were zealous, as they often were, the
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teachers imposed an evangelical order as a condition for the schooling and other material advantages they introduced.
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Where necessary, the teacher pastors concentrated dispersed populations around the schools, which tended to produce ecological and social
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instability. For decades, SEL told the Peruvian government that it would reconcile jungle Indians to colonization, that is to the loss of
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most of their land. According to Yaandrand, Sil has helped the Aguana face a new highway and colonization by one, anchoring them around the bilingual
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schools so that they not abandon choice land and flee into the hills as the elders initially advised. Two,
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convincing the teachers of the highways benefits through new trade opportunities. And three, by giving the Agorana a feeling for progress in the
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accumulation of material goods. As that last quote indicated, missionaries also introduced foreign trade goods, clothes,
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medicines, vehicles, building materials,
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and along with them a capitalist market economy and materialist consumerrist culture to indigenous people. This meant
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to break indigenous traditions of reciprocity as well as their community's self-reliance. Since control over trade
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goods, medicine, and schooling is so basic to missionary work, it is tempting to dismiss it as a coercive economic transaction, one which simply alienates
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15 minutes, 49 seconds
native people from their culture and induces them to accept exploitation in the image of the suffering Jesus. In the
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marginal situation, Sil therefore enslaves native people to the trade good. Considerable economic power is
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concentrated in the teacher who becomes the agent of trade good dependency and is placed under pressure to break with
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the tradition of reciprocity. The population is more likely to require concentration around the school and the evangelical order becomes a condition
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attached to the trade good. SIL's own aviation service, Jungle Aviation and Radio Service, or JARS, also
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occasionally transported state officials in regions where leftist guerilla movements operated. JARS pilots were not
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CIA assets, per se, but they did operate in regions otherwise inaccessible to government forces, and their cooperation was certainly mutually beneficial.
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Finally, as if all that's not enough,
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SIL missionaries actively helped oil companies and the USbacked Ecuadorian government force indigenous people in
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Ecuador into reservations. The evangelicals under the strategic leadership of the more politically sophisticated SIL supported the oil
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companies and an ethnocidal Ecuadorian government policy of encouraging highland homesteaders that's referring to the missionaries to stake out parcels of land along oil company access roads.
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After consultation with the Ecuadorian military, Aka converts flying above the remaining band of uncontacted kin in SIL
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helicopters operating on Texico fuel were urged to put down their arms and join their evangelized kin at Rachel
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Saints Reserva Village. In similar frontier conditions, the American missionaries grandfathers had pacified the American West and placed the Indians
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on reservations. Now their grandchildren in the service of the same 19th century god proposed reservos for the shiwara
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and the aas. Imagine Ecuadorian native reservos a legal entity administered in
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effect by sil missionaries evangelical protestants and dictatorships under USbacked military dictatorships across
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Latin America. Progressive Catholics faced serious persecution alongside the people with which they organized. In
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1975, not long after Nixon's ruminations about Catholicism, Bolivia's Hugo Banzer, with advice from his Nazi
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security chief, Klaus Barbie urged his interior ministry to draw up a plan against liberation theology. Para worked
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closely with the CIA to draw up what would be known as the Banzer plan, which was a direct attack on liberation
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theology. Bolivian intelligence joined by the CIA and by the intelligence services of 10 other Latin American countries began to compile dossas on
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liberation theologists to plant communist literature in churches to shut down any progressive church publication and to arrest and expel foreign priests
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and nuns who believed in liberation theology. Things are about to get even heavier somehow in this video. So,
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content warning for a discussion of genocide and torture, like even a little bit more explicitly than we've already
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discussed. Uh, Eric, let's find a time stamp where people can skip to um after
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that specific discussion is over. Under Brazil's military dictatorship, which the US financially supported at an
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unprecedented rate at that time, the state sought to assimilate and eliminate the indigenous people in order to
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develop the Amazon. Some Catholic clergy advocated for the rights of indigenous people. So, Brazil's generals also
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railed against the church, even kidnapping and torturing church representatives. The regime killed at least 8,350
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indigenous people during the dictatorship. According to Brazil's National Truth Commission, in 1980s El Salvador, where 2026 USbacked
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concentration camps are currently located, groups of US-trained army and national guardsmen sexually abused and
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murdered Catholic nuns and priests. In Chile and across Latin America, dictator Austo Pinish's government and its allies, all backed by the USA at the
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time, carried out Operation Condor, a project which killed an estimated 50,000 civilians, disappeared 30,000 who were
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all presumed dead, and imprisoned 400,000 for being suspected communist
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sympathizers. Many thousands of these civilians were likely tortured. The United States provided the funding and
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inspiration for this project and the CIA specifically instructed Latin American security forces in methods of torture
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and bomb construction. While all of this was happening, evangelical Protestant leaders supported these dictatorships and they received some love in return.
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In December 1974, Chilean General Pinocha personally attended the dedication of the Hotbee Pentecostal Methodist Church Cathedral in Santiago,
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marking the first time a Chilean head of state had ever attended a Protestant service. 2 days earlier, approximately
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2500 evangelicals had gathered to publicly pledge their support for the Huta and denounce Chile's international
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critics. By September 1975, the Methodist Pentecostal Church had assumed the Catholic Church's traditional role
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of hosting the annual Tedum service, a patriotic ceremony attended by Pinocha and other government leaders. Billy
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Graham, who we were all raised to rever in evangelical churches, coordinated directly with Latin American military dictatorships. Between 1962 and 1974,
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Graham personally met with Brazil's dictator Ernesto Geel and other authoritarian rulers. He praised Chile's
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Augusto Pinochet as a great Christian leader. And then there is Ephraim Rios
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Mont. Eric, can you please record yourself saying this dude's name with the utmost disrespect?
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Yeah, Spanish names can be difficult sometimes. Um, I can help. Uh, here is how you pronounce that.
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Hope that helps. Thank you. If there was a single moment when evangelical Christianity and US counterinsurgency
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fully merged, it was this period in Guatemalan history. Rios Mont was a general who took power in a 1982
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military coup. He was a born-again Pentecostal and a member of an American affiliated charismatic church. His
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weekly national TV addresses sounded like sermons mixing Bible verses with calls for obedience to God and the
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state. His government carried out one of the worst genocides in modern Latin American history against the Maya and
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the US financially and spiritually supported him. Good old Ronald Reagan praised Mont as a man of great integrity.
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I know that President Rios Mont is a man of great personal integrity and commitment.
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Jerry Fwell openly supported him. Pat Robertson interviewed the dictator on his TV show, The 700 Club. Ephraim Rios Mont who was uh the president there.
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He's a terrific guy. He was with the Elver Verbo Church and um they had a a a marvelous government. Christian
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evangelist Luis Pau told Christianity Today in 1983, "It's great to have a Christian president as a model. The hand of God appears to be upon him."
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Meanwhile, remember Catholic priests who supported indigenous rights were being assassinated, disappeared, and tortured along with countless other civilians.
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Rios Mont's rule was the logical end of a decadesl long project. Replace politically engaged Catholicism with a
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politically compliant Protestantism so that the structures of inequality remained untouched.
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Even today, evangelical Protestants in Latin America overwhelmingly support the same kinds of politicians which evangelical Protestants in the US support, authoritarian right-wingers.
...
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an raw 5 23 no lnx
no lnx
two House Republican leaders on Wednesday in a letter toCIA Director William J. Burns threatened to subpoenathe agency over documents that they say show a coordinated effort to falsely discredit an ongoing Hunter Biden investigation.
Reps. Jim Jordan and Mike Turner, both Ohio Republicans, said in a news release that they have “renewed their requests for documents related to the investigation and warned that compulsory process may be necessary if the agency does not comply.”
Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, and Turner, who chairs the Intelligence Committee, in the letter said their committees are investigating an Oct. 10, 2020 “Public Statement” signed by 51 former intelligence community officials on the president’s son’s emails.
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“This statement, signed by former intelligence community officials using their official titles and emphasizing their national security credentials, suggested that public reporting about Hunter Biden’s business dealings and Biden family influence-peddling ‘ha[d] all the hallmarks of a Russian information operation,’” the letter said.
“We have since learned that the statement was drafted and disseminated following communications between former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell and Biden campaign advisor—now Secretary of State—Antony Blinken.”
Jordan and Turner in the letter said the CIA is in possession of documents that are “responsive to our requests and necessary to our oversight.”
“The Committees have received evidence that the CIA, or at least an employee of the CIA, may have helped to solicit signatories for the statement about Hunter Biden,” the letter said.
“If accurate, this information raises fundamental concerns about the role of the CIA in helping to falsely discredit allegations about the Biden family in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election.”
The letter said that the CIA provided a “minimal production of documents” on May 9 but said the CIA admitted it hadn’t performed a comprehensive records search, noting that a CIA staffer in a May 12 phone conversation, committed to cooperating in full with the Committees’ oversight.
“We fully expect the CIA to produce all responsive documents to the Committees’ March 21, 2023, request in unredacted form no later than May 30, 2023. If the CIA does not produce all responsive documents, the Committees may resort to compulsory process.”
Read the full letter here.
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https://theintercept.com/2022/12/19/lee-harvey-oswald-cia-lsd-jfk/
IF THE OLIN FOUNDATION was less than transparent about its mission, it was not for the first time. Between 1958 and 1966, it secretly served as a bank for the Central Intelligence Agency. During these eight years, the CIA laundered $1.95 million through the foundation. Olin, according to Miller, regarded his undercover role as part of his patriotic duty. Many of the government funds went to anti-Communist intellectuals and publications. But in 1967, the press exposed the covert propaganda operation, triggering a political furor and causing the CIA to fold the program. The CIA money at the Olin foundation, which was not publicized at the time, disappeared as quietly as it had arrived. The idea of using the private foundation to fund ideologically aligned intellectuals, however, persisted.
The Olin foundation invested in William F. Buckley Jr., whose television show, Firing Line, the foundation supported. It also funded Allan Bloom, author of the best-selling slam from the right at American higher education, The Closing of the American Mind (in which Bloom also lashed out at rock music as a "nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbation fantasy"). The foundation also supported Dinesh D'Souza, author of Illiberal Education, which blasted "political correctness," castigating rules requiring sensitivity to women and minorities as the overreaching of liberal thought police.
omfg
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/9/28/cia_julian_assange_assassination_plot
yahoo isikoff
did the CIAunder the Trump administration plan to kidnap and assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during a shootout in London? That is one of the explosive findings in a new exposé by Yahoo News that details how the CIA considered abducting and possibly murdering Assange while he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid being extradited to Sweden for rape allegations, charges that were dropped in 2017. More than 30 former officials say formerCIADirector Mike Pompeo was apparently motivated to get even with WikiLeaks following its publication of sensitive CIA hacking tools, which the agency considered “the largest data loss in CIA history.” Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, lays out the plans and describes how the abduction plan “was one of the most contentious intelligence debates of the entire Trump era,” noting it ultimately spurred the Justice Department to fast-track its legal case against Assange. We also speak with Assange’s legal adviser Jennifer Robinson, who says the latest revelations should alarm American citizens, as well as journalists around the world. “This is the CIA talking about conspiracy to kidnap and murder an Australian citizen and an award-winning journalist and editor who has done nothing but publish truthful information.”
https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/cia-director-suppressed-information-on-russia-to-avoid-angering-trump-intel-officials/
intelligence officials are worried that CIA Director Gina Haspel is intentionally withholding information about Russian activities from the White House to avoid angering President Donald Trump.
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Nine current and former intel officials tell *Politico* that intelligence on Russia “is being suppressed” because Trump simply does not want to hear about any nefarious activities being conducted by the Russians.
In fact, several sources said that Haspel has assigned CIA general counsel Courtney Elwood to review every piece of intelligence about Russia before it gets sent over to the White House, which these officials said was “unprecedented that a general counsel would be involved to this extent.”
In fact, things have reportedly gotten so poisonous over at the CIA that one Russia specialist “quit earlier this year after Haspel accused him of lying about intelligence — an accusation that happens fairly often,” Politico’s sources say.
Trump’s anger at hearing intelligence about Russia’s efforts to interfere in American elections is well known, in the last week publicly attacked his own FBI director for saying that Russia is once again working to upend the 2020 election.
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sidney gottleib poisoner bk
https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-october-21-2019/
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overview
https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/spies-and-the-white-house-have-a-history-of-running-wild-without-congressional-oversight/
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https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1991-09-01/cocaine-politics-drugs-armies-and-cia-central-america
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520214491/cocaine-politics
Cocaine PoliticsDrugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Updated edition, With a new preface
- by Peter Dale Scott (Author), Jonathan Marshall (Author)
- April 1998
audio kpfa
Peter Dale Scott - Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA (1992)
Original: https://www.pacificaradioarchives.org...PRA Archive #: SZ0684.20
PRA Archive #: SZ0684.20 Description: Ongoing public affairs program which features interviews with people from the world's political, social and economic hot spots. COCAINE POLITICS : DRUGS, ARMIES AND THE CIA IN CENTRAL AMERICA / Peter Dale Scott Interviewed and produced by Sue Supriano. Steppin' out of Babylon no. 105 Dr. Peter Dale Scott, Professor of English at UC Berkeley and author of Cocaine Politics, discusses the background of links between the CIA and the drug trade in the world, as well as the politics in the various situations which effect the drug trade in Burma, Thailand, Latin America and the United States.
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omg
https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/how-elliott-abrams-found-himself-at-the-center-of-a-dark-reagan-era-conspiracy-to-spring-a-cia-linked-trafficker/
When U.S. policymakers needed to spring a convicted CIA-connected drug trafficker doing hard time in federal prison, who did they call?
Trump’s infamous appointed special envoy to Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, according to a September 1986 National Security Council email, written by NSC staffer Oliver North.
In a U.S. House Committee hearing on Thursday, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) scorched Abrams for his covering up of the infamous El Mozote massacre and lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra conspiracy in the 1980s.
Her interrogation drew rebuke from Max Boot, the apostate conservative, and a chorus of right-wing media commentators. Boot described Omar’s comments as a “disgraceful ad hominem attack.”
Actually, the impertinent congresswoman from Minneapolis could have gone much further about Abrams’ untrustworthy behavior. One of the most revealing stories comes from an impeccably right-wing source, Oliver North, former Republican senatorial candidate and Fox News talking head.
Bagman
The year was 1986. Abrams served as assistant secretary of state for Latin America under President Reagan. He was a 39-year-old lawyer and foreign policy polemicist who qualified as neoconservative royalty. (His wife was the daughter of Norman Podhoretz, the perfervid editor of Commentary magazine.) Even then his perennial scowl managed to make him look furtive and self-righteous at the same time.
The Iran-Contra conspiracy was in full swing. The conspiracy, permissively labeled “a scandal,” was a Reagan White House plot to subvert the U.S. Congress’ powers of the purse. North was the coordinator of what can fairly be described as an unconstitutional covert operation, while Abrams played the role of bagman.
To bypass the so-called Boland Amendment, Abrams took payments from the Sultan of Brunei, a petroleum potentate from South Asia, and passed them to the leaders of Reagan’s counter-revolutionary army in Nicaragua. When questioned under oath, Abrams lied. He later pleaded guilty to two counts of deceiving Congress.
As part of the conspiracy, Abrams also put in a good word for a convicted drug trafficker, General Jose Bueso Rosa. He was a Honduran general who had helped the U.S. government with “sensitive operations” in Central America. As Murray Waas and I wrote in the Washington Post, North did “a favor for a felon.”
So did Abrams.
‘Sensitive Operations’
As an episode of CIA-sanctioned drug trafficking, the Bueso story was typical. Bueso, it turns out, had helped put together a CIA-trained military intelligence unit known as Battalion 316, which served as death squad for U.S. policymakers. A Honduran government investigation found that Battalion 316 had captured, tortured and executed some 200 suspected leftists.
Bueso had also trafficked multi-kiloton shipments of cocaine. As CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz documented in Volume 2 of his report on contra drug trafficking, the agency did business with more than 50 suspected drug traffickers in the 1980s.
(Lazy reporters sometimes say that the CIA was cleared of the allegation. They didn’t bother to read the Sections 800-1148 of Hitz’s report, which detailed how the agency took no action against four dozen suspected traffickers who aided Reagan’s—and Abrams’—anticommunist crusade.)
Investigating the story for the Post, I spoke on background with law enforcement officials familiar with Bueso’s case. A wiretap had picked up Bueso repeatedly talking about shipments of “flour” into central Florida, they said. Given Bueso’s connections, no one in the Reagan Justice Department cared to make a big deal of his cocaine shipments, no matter how hefty. They just wanted a conviction that would put him out of business. Bueso got a generous plea bargain. He would only have to serve five years.
Bueso, however, was led to believe his American friends would save him from serving any time all.
In his September 1986 email, later uncovered by Iran-Contra investigators, North worried Bueso might “break his longstanding silence.” He might disclose unpleasant truths about death squads andCIA drug trafficking.
So North “cabal[led] quietly” with Abrams, as well as top Pentagon, CIA and Justice Department officials. A presidential pardon was out of the question, but transfer to a comfortable “Club Fed” facility was arranged.
As time when U.S. prosecutors meted out 10-year sentences to young black men for the possession of a few ounces of cocaine, Abrams was part of a gang that thought a multi-kiloton trafficker should be treated leniently. Such was his advocacy of “human rights.”
Bueso got out of prison early—for “good behavior.” Abrams went on to a long career in U.S. foreign policy. Hundreds of thousands of black men remained in jails for years, if not decades.
Question
Rep. Omar could have asked an even tougher question of Abrams, namely, “Does Trump’s policy toward Latin America today involve protection of drug traffickers as Reagan’s policy did in the 1980s?”
...
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/2/13/venezuela_accuses_us_of_secretly_shipping
North Carolina-based air freight company has halted flights to Venezuela following a report by McClatchy linking it to possible arms smuggling. Last week, Venezuelan authorities claimed they had uncovered 19 assault weapons, 118 ammunition cartridges and 90 military-grade radio antennas on board a U.S.-owned plane that had flown from Miami into Valencia, Venezuela’s third-largest city. The Boeing 767 is owned by a company called 21 Air based in Greensboro, North Carolina. The plane had made nearly 40 round-trip flights between Miami and spots in Venezuela and Colombia since January 11, the day after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in to a second term. The flights ended after McClatchy first reported on them. Venezuela accused the U.S. government of sending the arms as part of its attempt to topple the Maduro government. While no definitive links between 21 Air and the U.S. government have been established, McClatchy reports the chairman of 21 Air, Adolfo Moreno, as well as another employee at the company have ties to Gemini Air Cargo, which was involved in the CIA’s rendition program during the administration of George W. Bush. We speak to McClatchy reporter Tim Johnson, who broke the story. Johnson was part of a team that shared a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of the Panama Papers.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Venezuela. A North Carolina-based air freight company has halted flights to that country following a report by McClatchy linking it to possible arms smuggling. Last week, Venezuelan authorities claimed they uncovered 19 assault weapons, 118 ammunition cartridges and 90 military-grade radio antennas on board a U.S.-owned plane that had flown from Miami into Valencia, Venezuela’s third-largest city. The Boeing 767 is owned by a company called 21 Air based in Greensboro, North Carolina. The plane had made nearly 40 round-trip flights between Miami and spots in Venezuela and Colombia since January 11th, which is the day after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in to a second term. The flights ended after McClatchy first reported on them. Venezuela accused the U.S. government of sending the arms as part of its attempt to topple the Maduro government. Bolivarian National Guard General Endes Palencia Ortiz said, “This materiel was destined for criminal groups and terrorist actions in the country, financed by the fascist extreme right and the government of the United States.”
AMY GOODMAN: 21 Air has denied knowledge of the arms shipment, saying the flight had been chartered by another company called GPS-Air, which also denied sending arms. While no definitive links between 21 Air and the U.S. government have been established, McClatchy reports the chairman of 21 Air, Adolfo Moreno, as well as another employee at the company have ties to Gemini Air Cargo, which was involved in the CIA’s rendition program during the administration of George W. Bush. In 2006, Amnesty International identified Gemini as a front company that had authorization to land on U.S. military bases worldwide.
The CIA has a long history of running front companies for covert actions. Most famously, the CIA ran a front airline called Air America, which operated from 1950 to 1976. In the ’80s, a CIA front company called Southern Air Transport was used to send arms to the U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua.
We’re joined now by Tim Johnson, who has been reporting on the story for McClatchy, joining us from Pennsylvania.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Tim, would you lay out what you found?
TIM JOHNSON: Well, as you mentioned, this air charter company, 21 Air, went repeatedly to places in Venezuela and Colombia starting January 11th. Prior to that, it had largely operated domestically, and suddenly it began to change its patterns. And often there would be even two flights a day between Miami and places in Colombia or Venezuela.
I actually learned about this from somebody who tweeted about it. A gentleman in Canada who follows ship and plane movements noticed this, and we started looking into the history of the chairman of 21 Air and saw that he has a number of businesses. And two of those businesses used an address in northwest Miami that were previously used by a subsidiary of Gemini Air Cargo, which, as you mentioned, was listed in that Amnesty International report as having participated in renditions.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, Tim Johnson, a Boeing 767 is a pretty big plane, and the cache of weapons that the Venezuelan government claims they found, while they’re clearly lethal weapons, is not a huge shipment. I’m wondering: Do you have any way of being able to tell what the manifest of this flight, as well as the other 39 or so flights that this airline engaged in—what they were claiming to hold?
TIM JOHNSON: I actually don’t know. We’ve tried to get that, and we haven’t been able to get the manifests yet. So, you know, what was aboard the other flights going to South America, we don’t know. This is a very puzzling case. If you look on social media and dig into the backgrounds of employees of 21 Air and associated companies, you see that there are many accounts of employees who follow the Venezuelan opposition, and opposition accounts that follow them, as well. So, there’s certainly some sympathy from employees within the company to the opposition to Maduro in Venezuela.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about the leadership of the company that you investigated, based in North Carolina. And explain what you mean when you talk about the links to rendition under President George W. Bush.
TIM JOHNSON: Well, Adolfo Moreno is a 75 percent owner of 21 Air, and he’s got many other companies, but he’s been involved out of Miami. I don’t know—while the company is registered in North Carolina, the operations really are out of Miami, as far as I can tell. That’s where many of the flights have been operated. They have a huge operation center at Miami International Airport.
A curious secondary aspect of this story is that the company that consigned the cargo also has tangential links to, you know, this historical—the Iran-Contra affair. The head of GPS Air is a man named José Manuel Calvo, and he, like Moreno, has many companies. And one of those companies, with the partner that he used to create this company, is a company called Heavylift Air. And that company has a subsidiary out of the UAE that is controlled by in Iranian American named Farhad Azima, who also had a role in Iran-Contra. So there’s all these circumstantial things, but there’s really no smoking gun, that I could tell. You know, this may be just circumstantial.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you reporting this new now on Iran-Contra, what you’re saying? And explain, for people who aren’t familiar with the Iran-Contra scandal, this happening under the Reagan-Bush years, the selling of weapons to Iran to take that money to support the Contras in Nicaragua, which violated U.S. law, the Boland Amendment.
TIM JOHNSON: Yes. So, that scandal involved Southern Air Transport, which also was a CIA front company. That really exploded into the news back in 1986 because the Sandinista army shot down a twin-engine plane that was run by Southern Air Transport, that was taking armaments to the Contra rebels fighting in Nicaragua. So, Southern Air Transport was actually heavily involved in all the arms shipments to Iran and from the Middle East to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I want to ask you about Eugene Hasenfus, who you mention in your article. In 1986, he was aboard a U.S. plane that was shot down in Nicaragua while on a secret mission to bring arms to the Nicaraguan Contras. He the only passenger to survive. I want to turn to a documentary made by Wisconsin Public Television called the The Eugene Hasenfus Story from 1991. It featured an excerpt from the station’s initial coverage of what happened to him in 1986.
REPORTER: A Wisconsin man has been the focus of international news this week. Forty-five-year-old Eugene Hasenfus of Marinette was captured in Nicaragua after his cargo plane was shot down. At a press conference Thursday, Hasenfus said his mission was directed by the CIA. But U.S. officials say the flights were privately directed. Mrs. Sally Hasenfus joined her husband in Nicaragua this week. Hasenfus has been jailed and may stand trial.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The documentary also featured an interview with Eugene Hasenfus’s wife, Sally.
SALLY HASENFUS: The next morning, I tried to call President Reagan. I thought, “Well, it’s the only place I’m going to get answers.” He’s—you know, I should be able to trust him. He’s the president. And I knew he knew. He put me in touch with a man named Elliott Abrams. He said, “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I got angry. And before I hung up, he did admit that he knew what I was talking about. And he kept warning me that—you know, “Be careful of the press, and be careful what you say. Be careful what you do.”
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And interestingly or coincidentally, Elliott Abrams is now the special envoy of the White House to Venezuela. I’m wondering your assessment of this affair back then, the impact it had on what was going on at the time, in terms of the war on the Contras?
TIM JOHNSON: I’m not sure I can really speak to the historical impact. But, of course, it—you know, I think it helped lead to a negotiated settlement, leading to the elections in Nicaragua in 1990, because it was, you know, clearly a major impact on that. But I really couldn’t speak further to that.
AMY GOODMAN: But this whole issue of Eugene Hasenfus, this former marine, a mercenary, shot down over Nicaragua, then held by Nicaragua, eventually released, and his contact with the U.S. government at the time, and now you raising this issue in your current piece around the arms shipment that was found going into Venezuela—not clear exactly if there’s a connection to the U.S. government, but clearly the U.S. government is very overtly supporting the attempted overthrow of Maduro, explicitly, and these flights starting a day after Maduro’s inauguration on January 10th.
TIM JOHNSON: Well, yes, there’s a lot of these coincidental links, and it’s worth paying quite close attention to. Again, I use “coincidental” only because we don’t really know. You know, other people point out to me that there are many people that could have a vested interest in this, whether the arms were really aboard that plane. Or, is it possible that this was something that was ginned up by the Venezuelan government to rally support for Maduro? I don’t know. I just—we haven’t been able to determine for a fact that those weapons were loaded aboard that 767 in Miami, that somehow they passed through the normally rigorous screening by TSA for air cargo. These are things that are just yet to be investigated.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And has the company answered in terms of—as you mentioned, they normally were not traveling to Venezuela and Colombia—the 40 flights, what they were actually carrying, or are they saying they just didn’t know?
TIM JOHNSON: Both have been very limited in what they’ve said, other than denying that they knew what the cargo was. Generally, an air charter company would trust the consignee of the freight to handle any declarations, I believe. And for its part, GPS-Air said, well, it was—you know, it doesn’t know what was in the cargo.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, back to that issue of rendition, though you don’t know exactly who this company was working for, what you do have a record of is the company being involved with the U.S. government during the President George W. Bush years, being involved with rendition and having clearance to land on any military base in the world. Can you explain what those renditions, so-called, what some called kidnappings, were about?
TIM JOHNSON: Well, basically, the renditions were to take terrorist suspects, following 9/11, for interrogation in black site jails scattered around the world. There were a number of them in Eastern Europe. I know there was one outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand, elsewhere. And these were used to, you know, forcefully interrogate, waterboard even, suspects in the war against terror. So these rendition flights were commonly used in the period after 9/11.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us, Tim Johnson, McClatchy reporter who’s been covering national security and technology issues since 2016, his recent article headlined “Venezuela says plane from Miami delivered weapons for use by enemies of Maduro.” Tim Johnson was part of a team that shared a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of the Panama Papers. Earlier in his career, he spent two decades as a foreign correspondent in Asia and Latin America. We’ll link to your piece at democracynow.org.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/trump-administration-is-reportedly-holding-secret-talks-with-venezuelan-military/
In an effort to encourage defections from Venezuela’s elected President Nicolas Maduro, the Trump administration is reportedly holding secret talks with members of the Venezuelan military as top U.S. cabinet officials continue to issue aggressive threats and push for regime change.
According to Reuters, which cited an anonymous senior White House official, the U.S. “is holding direct communications with members of Venezuela’s military urging them to abandon President Nicolas Maduro and is also preparing new sanctions aimed at increasing pressure on him.”
“The Trump administration expects further military defections from Maduro’s side,” Reuters reported, “despite only a few senior officers having done so since opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president last month, earning the recognition of the United States and dozens of other countries.”
As Common Dreams reported, Guaido’s move to declare himself “interim president”—which was denounced by experts and activists as the beginnings of a possible coup—was highly coordinated with the Trump White House, which vowed ahead of time to back the opposition leader in his attempt to seize power.
In an interview with Reuters, the anonymous Trump official said the White House believes the few officers who have defected from Maduro are the “first couple pebbles before we start really seeing bigger rocks rolling down the hill.”
News that the Trump administration is holding direct talks with members of the Venezuelan military comes after Venezuelan government officials said they discovered a crate of weapons and ammunition delivered by a U.S.-based plane this week to an airport in the city of Valencia.
Venezuela’s vice minister of citizen security said the weapons shipment was “destined for criminal groups and terrorist actions in the country, financed by the fascist extreme right and the government of the United States.”
With hawkish Trump White House officials like national security adviser John Bolton continuing to warn that U.S. military intervention in Venezuela remains “on the table,” Maduro published an open letter to the American public urging opposition to “warmongering and war.”
“I say this to the people of the United States of America to warn them of the serious and dangerous intent that factions in the White House have for invading Venezuela, which would have unforeseeable consequences for my nation and for all of the Americas,” Maduro wrote.
“The people of the United States should know that this complex, multi-form aggression is being carried out with total impunity and in flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter, which expressly forbids the threat or use of force, among other principles and resolutions in the pursuit of peace and relations of friendship amongst nations,” he added.
While criticizing Maduro for his crackdown on protesters and other abuses, progressive lawmakers in the U.S. have denounced the Trump administration’s interference in Venezuela’s internal political affairs.
“We must condemn the use of violence against unarmed protesters and the suppression of dissent,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote last month. “However, we must learn the lessons of the past and not be in the business of regime change or supporting coups—as we have in Chile, Guatemala, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/the-illegal-cia-operation-that-brought-us-9-11/
Was it conspiracy or idiocy that led to the failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to detect and prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon headquarters? That’s one of the questions at the heart of “The Watchdogs Didn’t Bark: The CIA, NSA, and the Crimes of the War on Terror,” by John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski. In their careful and thorough investigation of the events leading up to the attacks, the authors uncover a story about the Central Intelligence Agency’s neglect, possible criminal activities and a cover-up that may have allowed al-Qaida to carry out its plans uninhibited by government officials.
In the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” the journalists tell Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer how an interview with Richard Clarke, the counterterror adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, led them to a jaw-dropping revelation regarding two hijackers involved in the infamous attacks. As it turns out, Khalid Muhammad Abdallah al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two men linked to al-Qaida, were staying at an FBI informant’s home in San Diego in 2000, and they were being tracked by the National Security Agency. Despite knowledge of the men’s ties to the terrorist organization responsible for 9/11, neither was investigated by the FBI. Clarke and others believe that this may have had to do with a CIA attempt to turn the two men into agency informants.
SPONSORED
“When we sat down with Clarke … he told us he couldn’t see any other explanation but that there was an op [and] that it never made it to the White House because it would have had to go through him,” says Nowosielski. “And his friend [then CIA Director] George Tenet was responsible for malfeasance and misfeasance in the runup to 9/11.”
Once the plans for the 9/11 attack must have become clear to the CIA, why didn’t the agency prevent it from taking place? Duffy and Nowosielski come to the simple, shocking conclusion that because the CIA is prohibited from operating on U.S. soil, those involved in the operation chose to avoid prosecution rather than come clean.
In a well-documented case study that touches senior government officials, including current special counsel Robert Mueller and other high-level individuals, crucial questions arise about who is responsible for allowing “a plot that resulted in 3,000 murders” and led to ongoing U.S. military entanglements in the Middle East to move forward. However, our country’s recent crimes and the people behind them, including President Bush, are currently being “whitewashed” by our national obsession with Donald Trump, the authors warn.
“All the crimes of the war on terror, the torture, Abu Ghraib, it’s all just gone—the unnecessary invasion of the war in Iraq, it’s all just sort of under the rug now because of Trump,” Duffy says.
Listen to their discussion to learn more about the stunning investigation into the tragedy that changed the course of our nation’s history and the Americans who could have thwarted the attacks but decided to cover their own backs instead. You can also read a transcript of the interview below the media player.
RS:Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of “Scheer Intelligence,” where the intelligence comes from my guests. And the title is really appropriate for the book we’re going to talk about today, “The Watchdogs Didn’t Bark: The CIA, NSA, and the Crimes of the War on Terror.” And the authors are John Duffy and Ray Nowosielski. And they are investigative reporters, and the watchdogs here are the people in our intelligence agencies that are supposed to be protecting the nation. And this book cuts very deeply into the unsolved mystery of how 9/11 happened. Why weren’t we better prepared to prevent it? It’s one of the most important events in American history; it certainly has shaped our lives in terms of a surveillance state, our rights and everything else, up to the present. And this book, I think, represents the most exhaustive and well-documented effort to get to the bottom of the whole thing. You’re very careful in what you do and do not assert about 9/11, what we don’t know about it, and particularly the role of George Tenet, who was then head of the CIA, and the role of the CIA in—what is the right word?—obscuring the story, even keeping information from the White House, from the FBI. So give me the gist of the book.
RN:This is Ray. The book is largely about looking at this case study of the failure leading up to 9/11, the people who were involved in that failure, how that came about, and how they were successful, to the present day, in managing to obscure the public from really fully understanding that this was, in the words of one of our sources, really just a handful of people. And the most jarring thing is that they’re still, in some cases, working today in I guess Trump’s CIA. And we sort of document through the second half of the book what damage was done to America because they remained in their positions.
JD:This is John. And intelligence was gathered around the time of the millennium that led people in the Bin Laden unit at the CIA to monitor a meeting in Malaysia that was a gathering of these al-Qaida figures. In monitoring this—
RS:That was in the year 2000, right?
JD:Yes. Right at the outset of the year. In monitoring this meeting, they became aware of the fact that one of the attendees had a multiple-entry visa to the United States. That man’s name was Khalid al-Mihdhar. He would eventually be on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon; he was one of the hijackers. So this starts the whole thing there, the fact that the CIA becomes aware of this information; the Bin Laden unit, counterterror center, and then all the way up to George Tenet are aware of this information. There’s a lot of ins, outs, and what-have-yous about where that information goes, but it ultimately does not go over to the FBI’s counterterror division in New York, much to the protest of the FBI agents who were detailed to the CIA’s Bin Laden unit. And it did not make it to the White House counterterror czar, Richard Clarke, who very much finds this to be, like, the crux of the whole story—the fact that this information was kept from his office for basically a year and eight months, up until the success of the attacks. The crux is there, that they had this information, these guys were coming into the country, they had just left the terror planning summit, and this information was being held close by the Bin Laden unit, by the counterterror center, and by George Tenet. The reason for that is unknown; the speculation that Richard Clarke has was that George Tenet and these people in the Bin Laden unit and counterterror center thought having these al-Qaida people in the United States, they could possibly go through Allied proxies in the Saudi intelligence to try to get close to these guys, monitor them, potentially find out information from them or even try to flip them. That’s Richard Clarke’s speculation as to why this was kept from him for so long. Ultimately, the attack was successful; that they all just did their best to bury all this and, you know, hope no one noticed.
RS:Let me just start off with something that was confusing to me in reading your book. Because the FBI generally comes off looking pretty good in your book, and the real problem is with the CIA, and to a lesser degree, with the NSA. And in the San Diego story, and this is covered in the 9/11 Commission Report and others, the two San Diego guys—they are staying at the home of an FBI informant at first. So when you say the FBI was not informed, weren’t some of these calls actually made from the home of an FBI asset?
RN:It’s interesting when you know, A, that according to our NSA sources they were able to be pinged every time that Mihdhar and Hazmi, the two hijackers, called from that house that you mentioned in San Diego, back to Yemen. That somebody in the NSA was getting an alert as that was happening each time, and was aware of those connections. But that the house that was being used for the phone call was that of an FBI informant, Abdussattar Shaikh. And Abdussattar was somebody the FBI recruited who was inside a popular mosque in San Diego, and who they thought might be able to feed them warnings of anybody who might be a radical Muslim terrorist. And Abdussattar claims that he simply missed the warning signs of the two tenants that he had in his home. I mean, it’s kind of interesting. He’s also, he’s not just an FBI informant, he’s also a Saudi, which kind of points to Richard Clarke’s conjecture, which he first laid out to us when we sat down in his office in 2009. And that was that once the CIA monitored the meeting in Malaysia, knew that these two guys were connected to Bin Laden and were of interest, and saw that they were heading to the United States, in Clarke’s words, they might well have thought that the best way to try to recruit these guys to feed information was not to send a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, American CIA agent to go to meet them. But, instead, to use our partners in Saudi Arabia and Saudi intelligence—which George Tenet, the head of the CIA, happened to be very close with—to try to recruit them. So I actually focus more on the fact that this guy was introduced to this house by a gentleman who’s been determined to be a Saudi agent, a guy named Omar al-Bayoumi, and that this guy then was perhaps working dually for Saudi intel and as an FBI asset. And everyone sort of focuses on, oh, Abdussattar Shaikh was an FBI asset, so that seems to put blame at the feet of the FBI. Could be; could be, but I would also focus on that Saudi angle, because it recurs so often.
RS:Well, it also goes to the question of the efficiency of the surveillance society.
...
===
https://www.alternet.org/cia-coup-set-stage-conflict-iran
medea b:
Before the theocratic government of today's Iran, there was the brutal Shah. Before the Shah, the CIA overthrew a pro-Western government that had been democratically elected. Mohammad Mossadegh was the prime minister and his US-backed downfall in 1953 was the spark that set in motion the conflict with Iran today. In this interview, Medea Benjamin sheds light on this seminal incident with Iran. She also explores the nation's history and politics.
Mark Karlin: How did the 1953 coup that re-installed the Shah relate to keeping the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company from being nationalized?
Medea Benjamin: In 1934, the Shah had signed a contract with the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company giving it exclusive rights over the nation's oil for the next 60 years. The public ire over the giveaway of the nation's resources culminated in 1951 with the election of Mohammad Mossadegh as prime minister. Mossadegh introduced a bill to nationalize the oil, a bill that was unanimously approved by Parliament. The British then convinced the US government that nationalization was unacceptable, leading to a CIA coup that reinstated the Shah and ensured that the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later renamed BP) could continue to exploit Iran's resources.
What was the impact of the coup?
The CIA coup that overthrew Iran's democratically elected government, while deemed successful at the time, has had a tragic impact on the Iranian people and US-Iranian relations. The Shah was put back in charge with even more dictatorial powers. He built a terrifying internal security force called SAVAK that "disappeared," tortured and killed political dissidents. All the secular parties and organizations that had opposed the Shah were dismantled and banned. The only important institution that maintained some independence and could still speak with moral authority to the concerns of the public was the Shi'ite clergy, setting the stage for the 1979 Islamic Revolution. And thanks to the constant US meddling in Iran's internal affairs, the 1979 Revolution was not only anti-Shah, but anti-American.
Since then, the US policy has been one of trying to economically strangle the government through a variety of sanctions and trying to foment a counter-revolution. It was only during the Obama administration that there was some rapprochement with the signing of the Iran nuclear deal, but this deal was opposed by Donald Trump.
Can you briefly explain the conflict between Sunni Arab Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite Persian Iran?
The religious division between Sunni and Shia dates back to Islam's founding in the 7th century, but Sunni and Shia have coexisted without significant conflict for much of the history of the Middle East. It was only after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran that the rivalry exploded. The new Iranian leaders challenged the legitimacy of the Saudi royal family, claiming that Islam was incompatible with hereditary monarchies. The Saudi rulers' response was to denounce Iran's revolution as a power play by heretical Shi'ites. In essence, the Saudi-Iran rivalry is less about religion than it is about power and politics....
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https://www.alternet.org/why-cia-still-keeps-jfk-secrets
Of all the fascinating and weird things about the JFK assassination story, the veil of official secrecy that still surrounds the subject a half-century later is one of the most fascinating and weird.
Leave aside the implausible theories of conspiracy and the smug assurances that a little man shot a big man, get over it. The extreme and strange secrecy around the government’s information about the JFK assassination continues—even as the CIA insists we already know the whole truth of who killed a popular liberal president a long, long time ago.
On President Trump’s April 26 deadline for full disclosure of the JFK files, that veil of secrecy is still in place. According to the Mary Ferrell Foundation’s analysis of the National Archives database, some 21,890 JFK files remain wholly or partially secret. Approximately 85 percent of the still-secret files are held by the CIA and FBI.
Such secrecy not only stokes JFK conspiracy theories and the specter of a “deep state.” It also discourages historians, journalists and students from completing the historical record of JFK’s murder. Official secrecy helps cede the question of who killed JFK to the social media cohort educated by InfoWars and Reddit. Nothing abets the conspiracy mongering like CIA secrecy.
As a journalist and historian who has written about these files since I broke the story of their existence back in May 2013, I’m less interested in what they say about conspiracy theories than in what they reveal about Washington’s response to a spectacular crime. The president of the United States was gunned down in broad daylight, and no one was ever brought to justice. No one at the CIA or FBI even lost their job over this atrocious intelligence failure. Now tell me exactly, how did that happen?
What the Files Show
As editor of the JFK Facts blog, I hoped the release of the last of the government’s JFK files in October 2017 would shed new light some aspect of the story. Was Kennedy’s death the work of unknown conspirators, abetted by CIA officers? Or the work of a lone gunman, abetted by sheer CIA incompetence?
As news organizations worldwide clamored to know what might be in the last of the government's JFK files, President Trump tweeted boldly but proceeded cautiously. He acceded to pressure from CIA director Mike Pompeo and delayed full implementation of the law for six months.
They also found many files had not been released. Many still had blanked out paragraphs and even whole pages. These files concerned top CIA officers involved in the assassination story such as David Phillips, Howard Hunt, and George Joannides.In November and December, there was a partial release of files. The National Archives posted four large batches of newly declassified CIA, NSA and FBI files about JFK’s assassination. As reporters and researchers delved into the records they found some revelations about FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton.
It was weirdly fascinating, which is to say it was business as usual in Trump's Washington. The president's October 26 tweet, “JFK Files are released, long ahead of schedule!” was wholly misleading. In reality, thousands of JFK files are still secret and their release is way behind schedule. Sad!
The prospects that scholars, journalists, and interested citizens will ever see all of these files this week are not bright. The reason is found in the recently released transcript of whatAngleton told Senate investigators behind closed doors in September 1975.
“It is inconceivable,” he said behind closed doors, “that a secret intelligence arm of the Government has to comply with all of the overt orders of the Government.”
This bold assertion that the CIA could defy government orders did not go over well with the Senate Intelligence Committee or the public. Under withering questioning from the committee chair Senator Frank Church, Angleton walked back the remark. The exchange was so sensitive that the CIA suppressed the transcript for 40 years. The CIA doesn't want you to know that top officials sometimes talk that bluntly.
Angleton’s axiom, once controversial, seems to be alive and well in Washington....
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https://www.c-span.org/video/?440861-1/directorate-s
fEBRUARY 8, 2018
Directorate S
Steve Coll looks at the CIA’s secret wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the problematic relationship between the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
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Trump appts:
missle and MOAB press cheers; wikileake assange Jeff sessionspompeo
...
https://theintercept.com/2017/11/07/dnc-hack-trump-cia-director-william-binney-nsa/
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Given the last 15 years of history, it’s not hard to imagine what’s likely to result from the further elevation of military power: disaster. This is especially true because Donald Trump has appointed to key positions in his administration a crew of generals who spent the last decade and a half fighting America’s catastrophic wars across the Greater Middle East. They are not only notoriously incapable of thinking outside the box about the application of military power, but faced with the crisis of failed wars and failing states, of spreading terror movements and a growing refugee crisis across that crucial region, they can evidently only imagine one solution to just about any problem: more of the same. More troops, more mini-surges, more military trainers and advisers, more air strikes, more drone strikes... more.
After a decade and a half of such thinking we already know perfectly well where this ends -- in further failure, more chaos and suffering, but above all in an inability of the U.S. to effectively apply its hard power anywhere in any way that doesn’t make matters worse. Since, in addition, the Trump administration is filled with Iranophobes, including a president who has only recently fused himself to the Saudi royal family in an attempt to further isolate and undermine Iran, the possibility that a military-first version of American foreign policy will spread further is only growing.
Such “more” thinking is typical as well of much of the rest of the cast of characters now in key positions in the Trump administration. Take the CIA, for instance. Under its new director, Mike Pompeo (distinctly a “more” kind of guy and an Iranophobe of the first order), two key positions have reportedly been filled: a new chief of counterterrorism and a new head of Iran operations (recently identified as Michael D’Andrea, an Agency hardliner with the nickname “the Dark Prince”). Here’s how Matthew Rosenberg and Adam Goldman of the New York Times recently described their similar approaches to their jobs (my emphasis added):
“Mr. D’Andrea’s new role is one of a number of moves inside the spy agency that signal a more muscular approach to covert operations under the leadership of Mike Pompeo, the conservative Republican and former congressman, the officials said. The agency also recently named a new chief of counterterrorism, who has begun pushing for greater latitude to strike militants.”
In other words, more! ...
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war on terror:
**LUMPENPROLETARIAT**—On this week’s edition of free speech radio’s ***Guns and Butter***, host Bonnie Faulkner broadcast an interview with American German historian, economic researcher and investigative journalist **F. William Engdahl**, author of The Lost Hegemon: Whom the gods would destroy (2016). [1] **Listen** (and/or **download**) **here**. (Also see transcript below.) [2]
UPDATE—[14 DEC 2016] The Guns and Butterbroadcast for December 14, 2016 was a fund drive special, which focused on the work of Dr. William Engdahl. (Also see transcript draft below.) [3]
UPDATE—[21 DEC 2016] The Guns and Butter broadcast for December 21, 2016, entitled “The Incredible Trump Deception” also focused on the work of Dr. William Engdahl. [4]
UPDATE—[28 DEC 2016] The Guns and Butter broadcast for December 28, 2016, entitled “The Lost Hegemon: How the CIA Lost Its Holy War Crusade” also focused on the work of Dr. William Engdahl. Excerpts of this interview with Dr. Engdahl were previously aired during a fund drive special broadcast (14 DEC 2016). [5]
Messina
***
[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat and Guns and Butter.]
**GUNS AND BUTTER**—[7 DEC 2016] [SASHA LILLEY: “Thank you all, who’ve called and pledged. We made the match. Thank you all so much.” C.S. SOONG: (overlapping) “Thank you sooo much.” MIKE BIGGS: “And this is KPFA; KPFB in Berkeley, 88.1; KFCF in Fresno, 97.5; K24ABR in Santa Cruz; and online at kpfa.org. It is 1pm; up next is Guns and Butter.”]
“This is Guns and Butter. [theme music]
“I’m Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns and Butter, J. William Engdahl. Today’s show: ‘The Incredible Trump Deception’.
“F. William Engdahl is an international best-selling author and political economist. He has specialised for more than 30 years in geopolitical analysis of global events with special focus on the interaction of economics with politics. He is currently Visiting Professor of Geopolitics at **Northwest University** in Xi’an [city], China. Among his best-known books are A Century of War:Anglo-American Oil Politics; Gods of Money:Wall Street and the Death of the American Century; *Seeds of Destruction:The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation; Target China:How Washington and Wall Street Plan to Cage the Asian Dragon. His latest English book is—The Lost Hegemon:Whom the gods would destroy*—about the CIA and political Islam. It was published in March of 2016. (c. 1:46)
“The Lost Hegemon:Whom the gods would destroy is our thank-you gift, our premium today on Guns and Butter for a donation to KPFA of $110 dollars. We will talk a lot more about the specifics of The Lost Hegemon:Whom the gods would destroy—about the CIA and political Islam. But today’s interview with William Engdahl is ‘The Incredible Trump Deception’. (c. 2:19)
https://lumpenproletariat.org/2016/12/07/guns-and-butter-presents-the-lost-hegemon-whom-the-gods-would-destroy-2016/
==
kpfa event
NICK SCHOU
“Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood”
==
ExposeFacts has been engaged in a campaign for truth
about CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling. Now, ExposeFacts
has produced the film "The Invisible Man: CIA Whistleblower
Jeffrey Sterling,http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/05/cia-closing-its-main-climate-research-program
On Wednesday, when President Barack Obama spoke at the US Coast Guard Academy's commencement ceremony, he called climate change "an immediate risk to our national security." In recent months, the Obama administration has repeatedly highlighted the international threats posed by global warming and has emphasized the need for the country's national security agencies to study and confront the issue.
So some national security experts were surprised to learn that an important component of that effort has been ended. A CIA spokesperson confirmed to Climate Desk that the agency is shuttering its main climate research program. Under the program, known as Medea, the CIA had allowed civilian scientists to access classified data—such as ocean temperature and tidal readings gathered by Navy submarines and topography data collected by spy satellites—in an effort to glean insights about how global warming could create security threats around the world. In theory, the program benefited both sides: Scientists could study environmental data that was much higher-resolution than they would normally have access to, and the CIA received research insights about climate-related threats.
But now, the program has come to a close.
"Under the Medea program to examine the implications of climate change, CIA participated in various projects," a CIA spokesperson explained in a statement. "These projects have been completed and CIA will employ these research results and engage external experts as it continues to evaluate the national security implications of climate change."
"There's a growing gap between what we can currently get our hands on, and what we need to respond better," said security expert Marc Levy.
The program was originally launched in 1992 during the George H.W. Bush administration and was later shut down during President George W. Bush's term. It was re-launched under the Obama administration in 2010, with the aim of providing security clearances to roughly 60 climate scientists. Those scientists were given access to classified information that could be useful for researching global warming and tracking environmental changes that could have national security implications. Data gathered by the military and intelligence agencies is often of much higher quality than what civilian scientists normally work with.
In some cases, that data could then be declassified and published, although Francesco Femia, co-director of the Center for Climate and Security, said it is usually impossible to know whether any particular study includes data from Medea. "You wouldn't see [Medea] referenced anywhere" in a peer-reviewed paper, he said. But he pointed to the CIA's annual Worldwide Threat Assessment, which includes multiple references to climate change, as a probable Medea product, where the CIA likely partnered with civilian scientists to analyze classified data.
With the closure of the program, it remains unclear how much of this sort of data will remain off-limits to climate scientists. The CIA did not respond to questions about what is currently being done with the data that would have been available under the program.
Marc Levy, a Columbia University political scientist, said he was surprised to learn that Medea had been shut down. "The climate problems are getting worse in a way that our data systems are not equipped to handle," said Levy, who was not a participant in the CIA program but has worked closely with the US intelligence community on climate issues since the 1990s. "There's a growing gap between what we can currently get our hands on, and what we need to respond better. So that's inconsistent with the idea that Medea has run out of useful things to do."
The program had some notable successes. During the Clinton administration, Levy said, it gave researchers access to classified data on sea ice measurements taken by submarines, an invaluable resource for scientists studying climate change at the poles. And last fall, NASA released a trove of high-resolution satellite elevation maps that can be used to project the impacts of flooding. But Levy said the Defense Department possesses even higher-quality satellite maps that have not been released.
Still, it's possible Medea had outlived its useful life, said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a 23-year veteran of the CIA who had first-hand knowledge of the program before leaving the agency in 2009. He said he was not surprised to see Medea close down.
"In my judgment, the CIA is not the best lead agency for the issue; the agency's 'in-box' is already overflowing with today's threats and challenges," he said via email. "CIA has little strategic planning reserves, relatively speaking, and its overseas presence is heavily action-oriented."
Sen. John Barrasso said the CIA "should be focused on monitoring terrorists in caves, not polar bears on icebergs."
Over the past several years, climate change has gained prominence among defense experts, many of whom see it as a "threat multiplier" that can exacerbate crises such as infectious disease and terrorism. Medea had been part of a larger network of climate-related initiatives across the national security community. Medea's closure notwithstanding, that network appears to be growing. Last fall, Obama issued an executive order calling on federal agencies to collaborate on developing and sharing climate data and making it accessible to the public.
But the CIA's work on climate change has drawn heavy fire from a group of congressional Republicans led by Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.). Barrasso said last year that he believes that "the climate is constantly changing" and that "the role human activity plays is not known." He recently authored an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he listed the conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere as "greater challenges" than climate change. (The Syrian civil war, however, was likely worsened by climate change.)
Around the time Medea was re-instated by the Obama administration, the CIA formed a new office to oversee climate efforts called the Center for Climate Change. At the time, Barrasso said the spy agency "should be focused on monitoring terrorists in caves, not polar bears on icebergs." That office was closed in 2012 (the agency wouldn't say why), leaving Medea as the CIA's main climate research program.
So does the conclusion of Medea signal that the CIA is throwing in the towel on climate altogether? Unlikely, according to Femia. At this point, he said, US security agencies, including the CIA, are still sorting out what resources they can best offer in the effort to adapt to climate change. Regardless of whether the CIA is facilitating civilian research, he said, "continuing to integrate climate change information into its assessments of both unstable and stable regions of the world will be critical."
"Otherwise," added Femia, "we will have a blind spot that prevents us from adequately protecting the United States."
==
http://www.alternet.org/books/unbelievably-shocking-and-corrupt-tactics-cia-used-hide-their-torture-practices
http://www.amazon.de/American-War-Machine-Connection-Afghanistan/dp/0742555941
This provocative, thoroughly researched book explores the covert aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Prominent political analystPeter Dale Scottmarshals compelling evidence to expose the extensive growth of sanctioned but illicit violence in politics and state affairs, especially when related to America's long-standing involvement with the global drug traffic. Beginning with Thailand in the 1950s, Americans have become inured to the CIA's alliances with drug traffickers (and their bankers) to install and sustain right-wing governments. The pattern has repeated itself in Laos, Vietnam, Italy, Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama, Honduras, Turkey, Pakistan, and now Afghanistan-to name only those countries dealt with in this book
---
This review is from: American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (War and Peace Library) (Hardcover)
Having read a few of Peter Dale Scott's earlier books, I was looking forward to his new work, American War Machine. I was not disappointed. Published by Roman & Littlefield in late 2010, this book examines a wide-ranging number of covert US operations since World War II, and, among other things, demonstrates that many of these operations were intimately connected with, and dependent on, illicit drug trafficking. Although my background and experience do not qualify me to write an authoritative review of this important book, I hope that my impressions will compel others to read it.
Scott previously defined concepts such as deep events, deep politics and the deep state, to refer to covert mechanisms that facilitate the strategies of the politically minded rich, a group otherwise referred to as the overworld. Deep events, which Scott defines as those which are "systematically ignored or falsified in the mainstream media and public consciousness," can be seen as sharing certain features, such as cover-up of evidence and irresoluble controversy over what happened. These features contribute to a suppressed memory of the event among the general public. Deep events are often associated with illegally sanctioned violence, and involve little known, but historically evident, cooperation between leaders of the state and organized crime.
In American War Machine, Scott sets out to write the first "deep history" of such events, politics and state entities. As he writes: "In my experience, deep events are better understood collectively than in isolation. When looked at together, they constitute a large pattern, that of deep history."
Some of the more well known deep events are briefly reviewed, such as the JFK assassination and Tonkin Gulf incident, as well as the plans known as Operation Northwoods. Scott also makes clear that he now sees 9/11 as not only a deep event, but a "constitutional deep event" in that the implementation of continuity of government (COG) plans, as a result of 9/11, means that the US constitution has been circumvented in favor of what former assistant attorney general, Jack Goldsmith, called the "Terror Presidency." The latter office has been exploited by an influential power group, among whose major operatives are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, to pursue long-standing goals of US global domination at the expense of citizen protections as has been done with warrantless surveillance, warrantless detention and suspension of habeas corpus.
One great value of Scott's writing is that, as with the "deep" terms, he provides us with a wealth of new intelligent language that allows people to discuss matters that otherwise either leave too much to uncertainty or, alternatively, generate confusing and unsupported assumptions. With phrases like "global dominance machine" and the "global drug connection" we can better attribute acts and plans to an influential and interconnected transnational organization that is not yet fully defined, while at the same time not oversimplifying by implying that the US government is always to blame. On the other hand, the "war machine" is a US-based construct that has been used to enforce those acts and plans, and therefore the term war machine helps take us a step closer to seeing how the US government relates to the global dominance machine.
Another great value of the book is the tremendous historical perspective provided for the origins and changing patterns of the global drug connection. Scott begins this history lesson by examining the certain characters involved in the World War II era intelligence agency called theOffice of Strategic Services (OSS), the birth of the National Security Council and the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC).
The book describes how leaders of the wartime OSS, including William Donovan and Allen Dulles, lobbied for the creation of the CIA through the National Security Act of 1947. At the same time, however, they created private alternatives for covert operations that would operate outside of government control, such as the World Commerce Corporation (WCC).
As CIA executive director, Buzzy Krongard, would later say -""the whole OSS was really nothing but Wall Street bankers and lawyers."Scott confirms this by writing that, when the CIA was created, it was dominated by "aristocratic elements of the New York overworld." Despite this fact, and despite the creation of privately controlled CIA-like alternatives, a secret government funded organization was authorized by the National Security Council a year later. This was the OPC, led by Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner, a State Department official who wielded unprecedented power due to his position in New York law and financial circles.
What American War Machine covers most well are the operations that the OPC and CIA engaged in that contributed to the establishment and growth of drug trafficking and terrorism throughout the world. Scott writes: "After World War II, the United States, along with Britain and France, recurrently used both drug networks and terrorist groups as assets or proxies in the Cold War."
The book begins this discussion in Mexico, where a global drug connection consisting of major organized crime figures and US covert operatives worked together to give birth to a national narcosystem that competed for control of the entire country for many years.The Mexican drug problem was pre-existing, and Scott describes how it grew as a result of a reduction in Chinese opium production in the 1930s. In the late 1940s, however, the Mexican Federal Security Directorate (DFS), which was "setup with FBI assistance" and "partly managed and protected by its sister organization, the CIA," developed an "institutional relationship with drug traffickers [who] supplied recruits for off-the-books governmental violence."
The DFS became a protector of the drug traffickers and "both in turn were protected by elements in the CIA." The Mexican drug traffic, which was a primary factor in the introduction of drugs to the US and Canada, was also dominated by major figures ininternational organized crime, such as Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and "Lucky" Luciano. It was also controlled by the OPC Mexico station chief, E. Howard Hunt, who later was convicted in the Watergate scandal.
In the early 1950s, Operation Paper was a US initiative to supply arms and materiel to the opium-trafficking Kuotmintang (KMT) in Burma, for the purpose of invading the southern Chinese province of Yunnan. Hunt and Lansky both had pre-war KMT connections (as did OSS chief Donovan) and were apparently instrumental in developing the flow of Chinese opium to Mexico via the KMT. Hunt had been an OSS agent under Paul Helliwell in Kunming, which was "a station that had made payments to its agents in opium."
Helliwell is an important figure in the context of American War Machine. He coordinated the purchase of General Claire Chennault's Civil Air Transport (CAT), an offshoot of the wartime "Flying Tigers" that later was modified for transport of drugs through Taiwan. CAT is the predecessor of Air America, the air corps that the CIA utilized for drug-running out of Southeast Asia.
Paul Helliwell also incorporated a CIA-proprietary firm called Sea Supply, Inc. which funneled funds to OPC agents, including Bangkok-based Willis Bird, and supplied covert operatives in Thailand. Through such mechanisms, and at a time when Chinese opium production was vanishing, "US covert support for the Thai and KMT drug traffickers converted Southeast Asia, for more than two decades, into the world's major source of opium and heroin."
In 1953, OSS chief Donovan was named ambassador to Thailand, with additional powers as "Personal Representative of the President." Donovan's power in the region allowed for the OPC and the players who formed WCC to dominate the international drug trade under the guise of fighting the spread of communism. Thai organizations like the Thai Border Police (BPP) and the Police Aerial Reinforcement Unit (PARU) were developed into off-the-books paramilitary resources for US dominance in Southeast Asia and were paid in part through the drug trade and also through CIA funding.
Although Scott takes pains to recognize that some of these maneuvers might have actually stabilized the region (e.g. BPP activities), he also emphasizes how important these activities were to long-term US foreign policy. He writes that, overall, this was how a bureaucratic cabal used Thailand as a base to, over a decade, "induce US military engagement in Southeast Asia in advance of presidential authority or even knowledge. By 1965, if not earlier, this engagement had produced the Vietnam War."
The book moves on to Laos, where in the early 1960s the CIA attempted to polarize the communist and anti-communist factions of the nation using the cross-border forces of PARU. CIA-controlled KMT forces from Burma joined in this effort. Scott describes how US intelligence agency leaders simultaneously manipulated President Eisenhower, and shows that long-term war in Laos and Vietnam was initiated without approval from the US government and was driven primarily by overworld concerns.
The Golden Triangle encompassing Burma, Thailand and Laos, was for many years the largest opium producing region in the world. Scott writes about how CIA-supported drug proxies and the de-facto protection they conferred on the opium trade in this and similar drug producing regions (e.g. the Golden Crescent) is "clearly a major historical factor for the world crime scourge today."
The de-facto protection conferred upon drug traffickers by the CIA included protection of some of the dominant figures in organized crime, who were in some cases also involved in high-level CIA paramilitary operations. Theodore Shackley, the CIA station chief in Miami who was responsible for the failed operations aimed at overthrowing Castro in the early 1960s, became CIA station chief in Laos in 1966. Scott writes about mobster John Roselli's ties to Shackley operations, and provides evidence that Santo Trafficante, the biggest rival of Meyer Lansky, might have also been working with Shackley representatives in Laos.
The 1971 declaration of a "war on drugs" by President Nixon resulted in the targeting of Turkey as an opium source but, in effect, also resulted in the growth of the opium production in Southeast Asia. The Golden Triangle continued to lead in opium production until US interests moved from that region to Afghanistan. Deep state activities continued to play a major role in the transition of drug production from one region to another.
Chapter 7 of American War Machine is perhaps the most interesting, as it describes the global drug connection and its ties to a "shadow CIA," which has functioned as a tool for international overworld interests including those referred to as the Safari Club. OPC officer Paul Helliwell figures prominently in this chapter, in part for his role in creating the CIA-related Castle Bank, which laundered money and helped finance off-the-books operations, and for his ties to organized crime. Castle Bank's connections to the overworld are discussed as are its links to agent C.V. Starr, whose insurance empire evolved into the company we know as AIG.This chapter also introduces Adnan Khashoggi, who appears throughout the deep history of US foreign policy and played a major role in the activities of Castle Bank's successor, the Bank of Credit and Commercial International (BCCI).
Scott writes about some of the deep events in which these players converge. He states that -- "BCCI provided the initial infrastructure for the CIA intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 and the ensuing alliance with the major drug trafficker Gulbeddin Hekmatyar." Additionally, "Shackley, Khashoggi, and BCCI were instrumental in inaugurating the illegal Iran-Contra connection of 1985-1986."
The book makes some interesting references to an OPC successor organization created by the Pentagon and run by Shackley's OPC colleague and Operation Paper overseer, Richard Stillwell, called the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Scott notes that the JSOC was created in 1980 and by 1981 was, according to Joseph Trento, "one of the most secret operations of the US government." This reader was led to consider indications that the JSOC might be controlled in part by the shadow CIA, as are other military and intelligence organizations such as Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
A description of the war machine in chapter 8 includes the role played by private armies and private intelligence companies. Firms such as Blackwater and Science Applications International (SAIC) are briefly discussed but the focus turns to lesser known companies including Diligence LLC and Far West Ltd.
Chapter 9 reviews the implications of the 9/11 events in light of other deep events, without going into detail about what happened on 9/11 or who might have been responsible. Scott does, however, state that - "Without understanding the details, we can safely conclude that operations of the CIA were somehow implicated, whether innocently or conspiratorially, in the background of both the JFK assassination and 9/11." It is worthwhile to consider Scott's perspective that "9/11 is not wholly without precedent in US history. It should be seen not as a unique departure from orderly constitutional government - a coup d'etat - but as yet another deep event of the sort that has continued to erode the American constitutional system of open politics and liberties."
The book concludes by discussing the role of the US under Obama in Afghanistan, and the fact that Afghanistan has become the world's largest producer of opium and heroin. Intriguing remarks about BCCI, Pakistan's ISI, and US connections to a "global terrorist" named Dawood Ibrahim, make the final chapter interesting reading.
Overall, American War Machine is a remarkable collection of interwoven facts and concepts that provides an understandable framework for our previously unexplained deep history. As a 9/11 researcher, I found it to be an invaluable resource for my own education and for consideration of future work. As a citizen I can say it is a tremendous achievement that will, for many years to come, be useful to members of any free society that wish to remain free. Everyone should read this book.
AMY GOODMAN: Gary Ruskin, a few years ago we had a chance to interview Eamon Javers, author of the book "Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage," and I asked him about the CIA’s little known policy allowing their active duty operatives to moonlight in the private sector.
EAMON JAVERS The CIA was relatively forthcoming with me when I called them to ask them about this. They said, “Yes, this is our policy.” They said that in order to moonlight and work in the private sector, a CIA officer has to have approval from their boss. They have to go through a vetting process to make sure there’s no conflict of interest, there’s no danger to national security here.
But they wouldn’t tell me all the key details about the program. They wouldn’t tell me how many people are participating in it. And they wouldn’t tell me which companies they’re working at. So I’ve gotten some pushback from some CIA veterans who said, “Well, this is just a policy for twenty-four-year-old CIA guys to go work at Home Depot on the weekend and pick up a little extra spending cash.” But we don’t know.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Eamon Javers, author of "Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage." Gary Ruskin, can yo elaborate on that, and what the policies are? Talk about the CIA and also the FBI.
GARY RUSKIN: So, Eamon Javers has really tried to heroically pull this stuff out into the light, but, it’s been very hard for him and really what he knows is pretty much all we know, and pretty much all that’s been reported on CIA or NSA for that matter, moonlighting. So, we really don’t know. He asks all the right questions, but, we really don’t have answers to them and that’s what Congress really should be for, to figure out who is moonlighting for whom, how much are they being paid, what companies are hiring active duty CIA or NSA or other law enforcement officials, how common is this, what kinds of espionage activities are they allowed to do or do they consult or do they actually execute these espionage activities. Congress is asleep, and it’s really a shame because these are vital questions for out democracy and we deserve to know.
http://grist.org/climate-energy/cia-backs-630000-scientific-study-on-controlling-global-climate/
The Central Intelligence Agency is funding a scientific study that will investigate whether humans could use geoengineering to alter Earth’s environment and stop climate change. The National Academy of Sciences will run the 21-month project, which is the first NAS geoengineering study financially supported by an intelligence agency. With the spooks’ money, scientists will study how humans might influence weather patterns, assess the potential dangers of messing with the climate, and investigate possible national security implications of geoengineering attempts.
The total cost of the project is $630,000, which NAS is splitting with the CIA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA. The NAS website says that “the U.S. intelligence community” is funding the project, and William Kearney, a spokesperson for NAS, told Mother Jones that phrase refers to the CIA. Edward Price, a spokesperson for the CIA, refused to confirm the agency’s role in the study, but said, “It’s natural that on a subject like climate change the Agency would work with scientists to better understand the phenomenon and its implications on national security.” The CIA reportedly closed its research center on climate change and national security last year, after GOP members of Congress argued that the CIA shouldn’t be looking at climate change.
The goal of the CIA-backed NAS study is to conduct a “technical evaluation of a limited number of proposed geoengineering techniques,” according to the NAS website. Scientists will attempt to determine which geoengineering techniques are feasible and try to evaluate the impacts and risks of each (including “national security concerns”). One proposed geoengineering method the study will look at is solar radiation management — a fancy term for pumping particles into the stratosphere to reflect incoming sunlight away from the planet. In theory, solar radiation management could lead to a global cooling trend that might reverse, or at least slow down, global warming. The study will also investigate proposals for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The NAS has held two previous workshops on geoengineering, but neither was funded by the intelligence community, says Edward Dunlea, the study director for the latest project. The CIA would not say why it had decided to fund the project at this time, but the U.S. government’s apparent interest in altering the climate isn’t new. The first big use of weather modification as a military tactic came during the Vietnam War, when the Air Force engaged in a cloud seeding program to try to create rainfall and turn the Ho Chi Minh Trail into muck, and thereby gain tactical advantage. Between 1962 and 1983, other would-be weather engineers tried to change the behavior of hurricanes using silver iodide. That effort, dubbed Project STORMFURY [PDF], was spearheaded by the Navy and the Commerce Department. China’s “Weather Modification Office” also controversially seeded clouds in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, hoping to ensure rain would fall in the Beijing suburbs instead of over the Olympic stadiums.
Although previous efforts to manipulate weather and climate have often been met with mockery, many geoengineering proposals “are fundamentally doable, relatively cheap, and do appear to be able to reduce climate risk significantly, but with risks,” explains David Keith, a Harvard researcher and top geoengineering proponent.
But if geoengineering is cheap and “fundamentally doable,” as Keith claims, that suggests foreign countries, or even wealthy individuals, could mess with the climate to advance their own ends. “This whole issue of lone actors: Do we need to be concerned about China acting unilaterally? Is that just idle chatter, or is that something the U.S. government should prepare for?” asks Ken Caldeira, a geoengineering researcher at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and a member of the current National Academy of Sciences panel.
At least one individual has already tried modifying the climate. Russ George, the former head of Planktos, a company that works to develop technology to deal with global warming, seeded the Pacific Ocean off western Canada with iron to generate a plankton bloom that, in turn, was supposed to suck up carbon dioxide from the air. George’s effort was widely condemned, but at present there’s little to stop other individuals or countries from trying it or something similar. That’s part of what has the U.S. intelligence community interested.
The CIA’s decision to fund scientific work on geoengineering will no doubt excite conspiracy theorists. The last time the government tried to do cutting-edge research related to the atmosphere — with theHigh Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, which aimed to protect satellites from nuclear blasts — people speculated that it might be a death ray, a mind control weapon, or, worst of all … a way to control the weather. mooney &
spooky biz
The CIA’s“old boy
network”is legendary.
Regarding
the
FBI,
Eamon
Javers
describes
a
little-‐known
publication,
the
Trapline,
which
“lists
every
retired
FBI
agent
in
the
country
who
works
in
the
private
investigations
business.”
Javers
describes
the
Trapline
as
“a
bit
like
an
institutionalized
old-‐boy
network
for
retired
G-‐
==
domestic spying http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/nyregion/cia-sees-concerns-on-ties-to-new-york-police.html?_r=1&
==
http://grist.org/news/the-cia-shutters-its-climate-change-center-because-who-needs-it/
audio: http://www.loe.org/shows/shows.html?programID=12-P13-00048
ashes: we trained 700k soldiers and cops from 25 cty: made secret police in cambiodia, col, ecuador, el salv, guate, iran, iraq, laos, PI, peru, so korea, svn thai 279 Lat AM: us backed arg, boliv, brazil, domrep, ecod, guate, guyanna, hond, nicar, peru, venez 280 helms saud juntas good for US
parry says analyical capbility gutted from b1 on, ideol cooperation rewarded 354, start w/ team b wolfie
A Wind Blows in from Afghanistan
The term "blowback" first appeared in a classified CIA post-action report on the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, carried out in the interests of British Petroleum. In 2000, James Risen of the New York Times explained: "When the Central Intelligence Agency helped overthrow Muhammad Mossadegh as Iran's prime minister in 1953, ensuring another 25 years of rule for Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the CIA was already figuring that its first effort to topple a foreign government would not be its last. The CIA, then just six years old and deeply committed to winning the Cold War, viewed its covert action in Iran as a blueprint for coup plots elsewhere around the world, and so commissioned a secret history to detail for future generations of CIA operatives how it had been done . . . Amid the sometimes curious argot of the spy world -- 'safebases' and 'assets' and the like -- the CIA warns of the possibilities of 'blowback.' The word . . . has since come into use as shorthand for the unintended consequences of covert operations."
"Blowback" does not refer simply to reactions to historical events but more specifically to reactions to operations carried out by the U.S. government that are kept secret from the American public and from most of their representatives in Congress. This means that when civilians become victims of a retaliatory strike, they are at first unable to put it in context or to understand the sequence of events that led up to it. Even though the American people may not know what has been done in their name, those on the receiving end certainly do: they include the people of Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1959 to the present), Congo (1960), Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965), Vietnam (1961-73), Laos (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-73), Greece (1967-73), Chile (1973), Afghanistan (1979 to the present), El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua (1980s), and Iraq (1991 to the present). Not surprisingly, sometimes these victims try to get even.
There is a direct line between the attacks on September 11, 2001 -- the most significant instance of blowback in the history of the CIA -- and the events of 1979. In that year, revolutionaries threw both the Shah and the Americans out of Iran, and the CIA, with full presidential authority, began its largest ever clandestine operation: the secret arming of Afghan freedom fighters to wage a proxy war against the Soviet Union, which involved the recruitment and training of militants from all over the Islamic world. ...http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175578/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_chalmers_johnson%2C_the_cia_and_a_blowback_world/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=db3e64c238-TD_Johnson8_5_2012&utm_medium=email#more
http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?map=1657
Operation Mockingbird http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
Operation Mockingbird was a secret Central Intelligence Agency campaign to influence domestic and foreign media beginning in the 1950s.
The activities, extent and even the existence of the CIA project remain in dispute: the operation was first called Mockingbird in Deborah Davis' 1979 book, *Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and her Washington Post Empire*. But Davis' book, alleging that the media had been recruited (and infiltrated) by the CIA for propaganda purposes, was itself controversial and has since been shown to have had a number of erroneous assertions.[1]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-0) More evidence of Mockingbird's existence emerged in the 2007 memoir American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, by convicted Watergate "plumber" E. Howard Hunt and The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America by Hugh Wilford (2008).[2]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-1)
Contents[hide] |
[edit] History
In 1948, Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP). Soon afterwards OSP was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."[3]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-ig_inv-2)
Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic and foreign media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham from *The Washington Post* to run the project within the industry. According to Deborah Davis in *Katharine the Great*; "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of *The New York Times*, *Newsweek*, CBS and other communications vehicles."[4]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-3)
In 1951, Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal organizations he had been a member of in the later 1940s.[5]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-4) According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird's "principal operative".[6]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-5)
In 1977, Rolling Stone alleged that one of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was :{Joseph Also:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:p, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists alleged by Rolling Stone Magazine to have been willing to promote the views of the CIA included :{Stewart Alsop:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: (*New York Herald Tribune*), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson (*Time Magazine*), Walter Pincus (*Washington Post*), William C. Baggs (*The Miami News*), Herb Gold (The Miami News) and Charles Bartlett (*Chattanooga Times*).[7]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-stones-6) According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman), these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by Frank Wisner. The CIA also provided them with classified information es, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. By this time Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. These organizations were run by people with well-known right-wing views such as William Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (*Time* and *Life Magazine*), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of the Washington Post), Jerry O'Leary (*Washington Star*), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham, Sr., (*Louisville Courier-Journal*), :{James Copley:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: (:{Copley News Services:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:) and Joseph Harrison (*Christian Science Monitor*).[7]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-stones-6)
The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning of funds intended for the Marshall Plan. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers. Frank Wisner was constantly looking for ways to help convince the public of the dangers of communism. In 1954, Wisner arranged for the funding of the Hollywood production of *Animal Farm*, the animated allegory based on the book written by George Orwell.[9]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-8)
According to Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, "some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts". Wisner was also able to restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events. For example, the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of Iran (See: Operation Ajax) and Guatemala (See: Operation PBSUCCESS).[10]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-9)
Thomas Braden, head of the International Organizations Division (IOD), played an important role in Operation Mockingbird. Many years later he revealed his role in these events:
"If the director of CIA wanted to extend a present, say, to someone in Europe—a Labour leader—suppose he just thought, This man can use fifty thousand dollars, he's working well and doing a good job - he could hand it to him and never have to account to anybody... There was simply no limit to the money it could spend and no limit to the people it could hire and no limit to the activities it could decide were necessary to conduct the war—the secret war.... It was a multinational. Maybe it was one of the first. Journalists were a target, labor unions a particular target—that was one of the activities in which the communists spent the most money."[11]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-tb_interview-10)
[edit] Part of the Directorate for Plans
In August 1952, the Office of Policy Coordination and the Office of Special Operations (the espionage division) were merged under the Deputy Director for Plans (DDP). Frank Wisner became head of this new organization and Richard Helms became his chief of operations. Mockingbird was now the responsibility of the DDP.[12]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-11)
J. Edgar Hoover became jealous of the CIA's growing power. He described the OPC as "Wisner's gang of weirdos" and began carrying out investigations into their past. It did not take him long to discover that some of them had been active in left-wing politics in the 1930s. This information was passed to Joseph McCarthy who started making attacks on members of the OPC. Hoover also gave McCarthy details of an affair that Frank Wisner had with Princess Caradja in Romania during the war. Hoover claimed that Caradja was a Soviet agent.[13]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-12)
Joseph McCarthy also began accusing other senior members of the CIA as being security risks. McCarthy claimed that the CIA was a "sinkhole of communists", and claimed he intended to root out a hundred of them. One of his first targets was Cord Meyer, who was still working for Operation Mockingbird. In August, 1953, Richard Helms, Wisner's deputy at the OPC, told Meyer that Joseph McCarthy had accused him of being a communist. The Federal Bureau of Investigation added credibility to the accusation by announcing it was unwilling to give Meyer "security clearance". However, the FBI refused to explain what evidence they had against Meyer. Allen W. Dulles and Frank Wisner both came to his defense and refused to permit an FBI interrogation of Meyer.[14]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-13)
Joseph McCarthy did not realize what he was taking on. Wisner unleashed Mockingbird on McCarthy. Drew Pearson, Joe Alsop, Jack Anderson, Walter Lippmann and Ed Murrow all engaged in intensely negative coverage of McCarthy, whose political reputation was permanently damaged by the press coverage orchestrated by Wisner.[15]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-14)
[edit] Guatemala
Mockingbird was very active during the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala during Operation PBSUCCESS. People like Henry Luce were able to censor stories that appeared too sympathetic towards the plight of Arbenz. Allen W. Dulles was even able to keep left-wing journalists from travelling to Guatemala, including Sydney Gruson of the New York Times.[16]^(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird#cite_note-15)
^===^
^hmmn
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/CIAtimeline.html
A Timeline of CIA Atrocities
By Steve Kangas
The following timeline describes just a few of the hundreds of atrocities and crimes committed by the CIA. (1)
CIA operations follow the same recurring script. First, American business interests abroad are threatened by a popular or democratically elected leader. The people support their leader because he intends to conduct land reform, strengthen unions, redistribute wealth, nationalize foreign-owned industry, and regulate business to protect workers, consumers and the environment. So, on behalf of American business, and often with their help, the CIA mobilizes the opposition. First it identifies right-wing groups within the country (usually the military), and offers them a deal: "We'll put you in power if you maintain a favorable business climate for us." The Agency then hires, trains and works with them to overthrow the existing government (usually a democracy). It uses every trick in the book: propaganda, stuffed ballot boxes, purchased elections, extortion, blackmail, sexual intrigue, false stories about opponents in the local media, infiltration and disruption of opposing political parties, kidnapping, beating, torture, intimidation, economic sabotage, death squads and even assassination. These efforts culminate in a military coup, which installs a right-wing dictator. The CIA trains the dictator�s security apparatus to crack down on the traditional enemies of big business, using interrogation, torture and murder. The victims are said to be "communists," but almost always they are just peasants, liberals, moderates, labor union leaders, political opponents and advocates of free speech and democracy. Widespread human rights abuses follow.
This scenario has been repeated so many times that the CIA actually teaches it in a special school, the notorious "School of the Americas." (It opened in Panama but later moved to Fort Benning, Georgia.) Critics have nicknamed it the "School of the Dictators" and "School of the Assassins." Here, the CIA trains Latin American military officers how to conduct coups, including the use of interrogation, torture and murder.
The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. (2) Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an "American Holocaust."
The CIA justifies these actions as part of its war against communism. But most coups do not involve a communist threat. Unlucky nations are targeted for a wide variety of reasons: not only threats to American business interests abroad, but also liberal or even moderate social reforms, political instability, the unwillingness of a leader to carry out Washington�s dictates, and declarations of neutrality in the Cold War. Indeed, nothing has infuriated CIA Directors quite like a nation�s desire to stay out of the Cold War.
The ironic thing about all this intervention is that it frequently fails to achieve American objectives. Often the newly installed dictator grows comfortable with the security apparatus the CIA has built for him. He becomes an expert at running a police state. And because the dictator knows he cannot be overthrown, he becomes independent and defiant of Washington's will. The CIA then finds it cannot overthrow him, because the police and military are under the dictator's control, afraid to cooperate with American spies for fear of torture and execution. The only two options for the U.S at this point are impotence or war. Examples of this "boomerang effect" include the Shah of Iran, General Noriega and Saddam Hussein. The boomerang effect also explains why the CIA has proven highly successful at overthrowing democracies, but a wretched failure at overthrowing dictatorships.
The following timeline should confirm that the CIA as we know it should be abolished and replaced by a true information-gathering and analysis organization. The CIA cannot be reformed — it is institutionally and culturally corrupt.
1929
The culture we lost— Secretary of State Henry Stimson refuses to endorse a code-breaking operation, saying, "Gentlemen do not read each other�s mail."
1941
COI created — In preparation for World War II, President Roosevelt creates the Office of Coordinator of Information (COI). General William "Wild Bill" Donovan heads the new intelligence service.
1942
OSS created — Roosevelt restructures COI into something more suitable for covert action, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Donovan recruits so many of the nation�s rich and powerful that eventually people joke that "OSS" stands for "Oh, so social!" or "Oh, such snobs!"
1943
Italy — Donovan recruits the Catholic Church in Rome to be the center of Anglo-American spy operations in Fascist Italy. This would prove to be one of America�s most enduring intelligence alliances in the Cold War.
1945
OSS is abolished — The remaining American information agencies cease covert actions and return to harmless information gathering and analysis.
Operation PAPERCLIP � While other American agencies are hunting down Nazi war criminals for arrest, the U.S. intelligence community is smuggling them into America, unpunished, for their use against the Soviets. The most important of these is Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler�s master spy who had built up an intelligence network in the Soviet Union. With full U.S. blessing, he creates the "Gehlen Organization," a band of refugee Nazi spies who reactivate their networks in Russia. These include SS intelligence officers Alfred Six and Emil Augsburg (who massacred Jews in the Holocaust), Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyon"), Otto von Bolschwing (the Holocaust mastermind who worked with Eichmann) and SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny (a personal friend of Hitler�s). The Gehlen Organization supplies the U.S. with its only intelligence on the Soviet Union for the next ten years, serving as a bridge between the abolishment of the OSS and the creation of the CIA. However, much of the "intelligence" the former Nazis provide is bogus. Gehlen inflates Soviet military capabilities at a time when Russia is still rebuilding its devastated society, in order to inflate his own importance to the Americans (who might otherwise punish him). In 1948, Gehlen almost convinces the Americans that war is imminent, and the West should make a preemptive strike. In the 50s he produces a fictitious "missile gap." To make matters worse, the Russians have thoroughly penetrated the Gehlen Organization with double agents, undermining the very American security that Gehlen was supposed to protect.
1947
Greece — President Truman requests military aid to Greece to support right-wing forces fighting communist rebels. For the rest of the Cold War, Washington and the CIA will back notorious Greek leaders with deplorable human rights records.
CIA created — President Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947, creating the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council. The CIA is accountable to the president through the NSC — there is no democratic or congressional oversight. Its charter allows the CIA to "perform such other functions and duties� as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." This loophole opens the door to covert action and dirty tricks.
1948
Covert-action wing created — The CIA recreates a covert action wing, innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination, led by Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner. According to its secret charter, its responsibilities include "propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage, demolition and evacuation procedures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."
Italy — The CIA corrupts democratic elections in Italy, where Italian communists threaten to win the elections. The CIA buys votes, broadcasts propaganda, threatens and beats up opposition leaders, and infiltrates and disrupts their organizations. It works -- the communists are defeated.
1949
Radio Free Europe — The CIA creates its first major propaganda outlet, Radio Free Europe. Over the next several decades, its broadcasts are so blatantly false that for a time it is considered illegal to publish transcripts of them in the U.S.
Late 40s
Operation MOCKINGBIRD — The CIA begins recruiting American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda. The effort is headed by Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham. Graham is publisher of The Washington Post, which becomes a major CIA player. Eventually, the CIA�s media assets will include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service and more. By the CIA�s own admission, at least 25 organizations and 400 journalists will become CIA assets.
1953
Iran � CIA overthrows the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup, after he threatened to nationalize British oil. The CIA replaces him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police, SAVAK, is as brutal as the Gestapo.
Operation MK-ULTRA — Inspired by North Korea�s brainwashing program, the CIA begins experiments on mind control. The most notorious part of this project involves giving LSD and other drugs to American subjects without their knowledge or against their will, causing several to commit suicide. However, the operation involves far more than this. Funded in part by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, research includes propaganda, brainwashing, public relations, advertising, hypnosis, and other forms of suggestion.
1954
Guatemala — CIA overthrows the democratically elected Jacob Arbenz in a military coup. Arbenz has threatened to nationalize the Rockefeller-owned United Fruit Company, in which CIA Director Allen Dulles also owns stock. Arbenz is replaced with a series of right-wing dictators whose bloodthirsty policies will kill over 100,000 Guatemalans in the next 40 years.
1954-1958
North Vietnam — CIA officer Edward Lansdale spends four years trying to overthrow the communist government of North Vietnam, using all the usual dirty tricks. The CIA also attempts to legitimize a tyrannical puppet regime in South Vietnam, headed by Ngo Dinh Diem. These efforts fail to win the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese because the Diem government is opposed to true democracy, land reform and poverty reduction measures. The CIA�s continuing failure results in escalating American intervention, culminating in the Vietnam War.
1956
Hungary — Radio Free Europe incites Hungary to revolt by broadcasting Khruschev�s Secret Speech, in which he denounced Stalin. It also hints that American aid will help the Hungarians fight. This aid fails to materialize as Hungarians launch a doomed armed revolt, which only invites a major Soviet invasion. The conflict kills 7,000 Soviets and 30,000 Hungarians.
1957-1973
Laos — The CIA carries out approximately one coup per year trying to nullify Laos� democratic elections. The problem is the Pathet Lao, a leftist group with enough popular support to be a member of any coalition government. In the late 50s, the CIA even creates an "Armee Clandestine" of Asian mercenaries to attack the Pathet Lao. After the CIA�s army suffers numerous defeats, the U.S. starts bombing, dropping more bombs on Laos than all the U.S. bombs dropped in World War II. A quarter of all Laotians will eventually become refugees, many living in caves.
1959
Haiti — The U.S. military helps "Papa Doc" Duvalier become dictator of Haiti. He creates his own private police force, the "Tonton Macoutes," who terrorize the population with machetes. They will kill over 100,000 during the Duvalier family reign. The U.S. does not protest their dismal human rights record.
1961
The Bay of Pigs — The CIA sends 1,500 Cuban exiles to invade Castro�s Cuba. But "Operation Mongoose" fails, due to poor planning, security and backing. The planners had imagined that the invasion will spark a popular uprising against Castro -� which never happens. A promised American air strike also never occurs. This is the CIA�s first public setback, causing President Kennedy to fire CIA Director Allen Dulles.
Dominican Republic — The CIA assassinates Rafael Trujillo, a murderous dictator Washington has supported since 1930. Trujillo�s business interests have grown so large (about 60 percent of the economy) that they have begun competing with American business interests.
Ecuador — The CIA-backed military forces the democratically elected President Jose Velasco to resign. Vice President Carlos Arosemana replaces him; the CIA fills the now vacant vice presidency with its own man.
Congo (Zaire) — The CIA assassinates the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba. However, public support for Lumumba�s politics runs so high that the CIA cannot clearly install his opponents in power. Four years of political turmoil follow.
1963
Dominican Republic — The CIA overthrows the democratically elected Juan Bosch in a military coup. The CIA installs a repressive, right-wing junta.
Ecuador — A CIA-backed military coup overthrows President Arosemana, whose independent (not socialist) policies have become unacceptable to Washington. A military junta assumes command, cancels the 1964 elections, and begins abusing human rights.
1964
Brazil — A CIA-backed military coup overthrows the democratically elected government of Joao Goulart. The junta that replaces it will, in the next two decades, become one of the most bloodthirsty in history. General Castelo Branco will create Latin America�s first death squads, or bands of secret police who hunt down "communists" for torture, interrogation and murder. Often these "communists" are no more than Branco�s political opponents. Later it is revealed that the CIA trains the death squads.
1965
Indonesia — The CIA overthrows the democratically elected Sukarno with a military coup. The CIA has been trying to eliminate Sukarno since 1957, using everything from attempted assassination to sexual intrigue, for nothing more than his declaring neutrality in the Cold War. His successor, General Suharto, will massacre between 500,000 to 1 million civilians accused of being "communist." The CIA supplies the names of countless suspects.
Dominican Republic — A popular rebellion breaks out, promising to reinstall Juan Bosch as the country�s elected leader. The revolution is crushed when U.S. Marines land to uphold the military regime by force. The CIA directs everything behind the scenes.
Greece — With the CIA�s backing, the king removes George Papandreous as prime minister. Papandreous has failed to vigorously support U.S. interests in Greece.
Congo (Zaire) — A CIA-backed military coup installs Mobutu Sese Seko as dictator. The hated and repressive Mobutu exploits his desperately poor country for billions.
1966
The Ramparts Affair — The radical magazine Ramparts begins a series of unprecedented anti-CIA articles. Among their scoops: the CIA has paid the University of Michigan $25 million dollars to hire "professors" to train South Vietnamese students in covert police methods. MIT and other universities have received similar payments. Ramparts also reveals that the National Students� Association is a CIA front. Students are sometimes recruited through blackmail and bribery, including draft deferments.
1967
Greece — A CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government two days before the elections. The favorite to win was George Papandreous, the liberal candidate. During the next six years, the "reign of the colonels" — backed by the CIA — will usher in the widespread use of torture and murder against political opponents. When a Greek ambassador objects to President Johnson about U.S. plans for Cypress, Johnson tells him: "Fuck your parliament and your constitution."
Operation PHEONIX — The CIA helps South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in South Vietnamese villages. According to a 1971 congressional report, this operation killed about 20,000 "Viet Cong."
1968
Operation CHAOS — The CIA has been illegally spying on American citizens since 1959, but with Operation CHAOS, President Johnson dramatically boosts the effort. CIA agents go undercover as student radicals to spy on and disrupt campus organizations protesting the Vietnam War. They are searching for Russian instigators, which they never find. CHAOS will eventually spy on 7,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations.
Bolivia — A CIA-organized military operation captures legendary guerilla Che Guevara. The CIA wants to keep him alive for interrogation, but the Bolivian government executes him to prevent worldwide calls for clemency.
1969
Uruguay — The notorious CIA torturer Dan Mitrione arrives in Uruguay, a country torn with political strife. Whereas right-wing forces previously used torture only as a last resort, Mitrione convinces them to use it as a routine, widespread practice. "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect," is his motto. The torture techniques he teaches to the death squads rival the Nazis�. He eventually becomes so feared that revolutionaries will kidnap and murder him a year later.
1970
Cambodia — The CIA overthrows Prince Sahounek, who is highly popular among Cambodians for keeping them out of the Vietnam War. He is replaced by CIA puppet Lon Nol, who immediately throws Cambodian troops into battle. This unpopular move strengthens once minor opposition parties like the Khmer Rouge, which achieves power in 1975 and massacres millions of its own people.
1971
Bolivia — After half a decade of CIA-inspired political turmoil, a CIA-backed military coup overthrows the leftist President Juan Torres. In the next two years, dictator Hugo Banzer will have over 2,000 political opponents arrested without trial, then tortured, raped and executed.
Haiti — "Papa Doc" Duvalier dies, leaving his 19-year old son "Baby Doc" Duvalier the dictator of Haiti. His son continues his bloody reign with full knowledge of the CIA.
1972
The Case-Zablocki Act — Congress passes an act requiring congressional review of executive agreements. In theory, this should make CIA operations more accountable. In fact, it is only marginally effective.
Cambodia — Congress votes to cut off CIA funds for its secret war in Cambodia.
Watergate Break-in — President Nixon sends in a team of burglars to wiretap Democratic offices at Watergate. The team members have extensive CIA histories, including James McCord, E. Howard Hunt and five of the Cuban burglars. They work for the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), which does dirty work like disrupting Democratic campaigns and laundering Nixon�s illegal campaign contributions. CREEP�s activities are funded and organized by another CIA front, the Mullen Company.
1973
Chile — The CIA overthrows and assassinates Salvador Allende, Latin America�s first democratically elected socialist leader. The problems begin when Allende nationalizes American-owned firms in Chile. ITT offers the CIA $1 million for a coup (reportedly refused). The CIA replaces Allende with General Augusto Pinochet, who will torture and murder thousands of his own countrymen in a crackdown on labor leaders and the political left.
CIA begins internal investigations — William Colby, the Deputy Director for Operations, orders all CIA personnel to report any and all illegal activities they know about. This information is later reported to Congress.
Watergate Scandal — The CIA�s main collaborating newspaper in America, The Washington Post, reports Nixon�s crimes long before any other newspaper takes up the subject. The two reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, make almost no mention of the CIA�s many fingerprints all over the scandal. It is later revealed that Woodward was a Naval intelligence briefer to the White House, and knows many important intelligence figures, including General Alexander Haig. His main source, "Deep Throat," is probably one of those.
CIA Director Helms Fired — President Nixon fires CIA Director Richard Helms for failing to help cover up the Watergate scandal. Helms and Nixon have always disliked each other. The new CIA director is William Colby, who is relatively more open to CIA reform.
1974
CHAOS exposed — Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh publishes a story about Operation CHAOS, the domestic surveillance and infiltration of anti-war and civil rights groups in the U.S. The story sparks national outrage.
Angleton fired — Congress holds hearings on the illegal domestic spying efforts of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA�s chief of counterintelligence. His efforts included mail-opening campaigns and secret surveillance of war protesters. The hearings result in his dismissal from the CIA.
House clears CIA in Watergate — The House of Representatives clears the CIA of any complicity in Nixon�s Watergate break-in.
The Hughes Ryan Act — Congress passes an amendment requiring the president to report nonintelligence CIA operations to the relevant congressional committees in a timely fashion.
1975
Australia — The CIA helps topple the democratically elected, left-leaning government of Prime Minister Edward Whitlam. The CIA does this by giving an ultimatum to its Governor-General, John Kerr. Kerr, a longtime CIA collaborator, exercises his constitutional right to dissolve the Whitlam government. The Governor-General is a largely ceremonial position appointed by the Queen; the Prime Minister is democratically elected. The use of this archaic and never-used law stuns the nation.
Angola — Eager to demonstrate American military resolve after its defeat in Vietnam, Henry Kissinger launches a CIA-backed war in Angola. Contrary to Kissinger�s assertions, Angola is a country of little strategic importance and not seriously threatened by communism. The CIA backs the brutal leader of UNITAS, Jonas Savimbi. This polarizes Angolan politics and drives his opponents into the arms of Cuba and the Soviet Union for survival. Congress will cut off funds in 1976, but the CIA is able to run the war off the books until 1984, when funding is legalized again. This entirely pointless war kills over 300,000 Angolans.
"The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" — Victor Marchetti and John Marks publish this whistle-blowing history of CIA crimes and abuses. Marchetti has spent 14 years in the CIA, eventually becoming an executive assistant to the Deputy Director of Intelligence. Marks has spent five years as an intelligence official in the State Department.
"Inside the Company" — Philip Agee publishes a diary of his life inside the CIA. Agee has worked in covert operations in Latin America during the 60s, and details the crimes in which he took part.
Congress investigates CIA wrong-doing — Public outrage compels Congress to hold hearings on CIA crimes. Senator Frank Church heads the Senate investigation ("The Church Committee"), and Representative Otis Pike heads the House investigation. (Despite a 98 percent incumbency reelection rate, both Church and Pike are defeated in the next elections.) The investigations lead to a number of reforms intended to increase the CIA�s accountability to Congress, including the creation of a standing Senate committee on intelligence. However, the reforms prove ineffective, as the Iran/Contra scandal will show. It turns out the CIA can control, deal with or sidestep Congress with ease.
The Rockefeller Commission — In an attempt to reduce the damage done by the Church Committee, President Ford creates the "Rockefeller Commission" to whitewash CIA history and propose toothless reforms. The commission�s namesake, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, is himself a major CIA figure. Five of the commission�s eight members are also members of the Council on Foreign Relations, a CIA-dominated organization.
1979
Iran — The CIA fails to predict the fall of the Shah of Iran, a longtime CIA puppet, and the rise of Muslim fundamentalists who are furious at the CIA�s backing of SAVAK, the Shah�s bloodthirsty secret police. In revenge, the Muslims take 52 Americans hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
Afghanistan — The Soviets invade Afghanistan. The CIA immediately begins supplying arms to any faction willing to fight the occupying Soviets. Such indiscriminate arming means that when the Soviets leave Afghanistan, civil war will erupt. Also, fanatical Muslim extremists now possess state-of-the-art weaponry. One of these is Sheik Abdel Rahman, who will become involved in the World Trade Center bombing in New York.
El Salvador — An idealistic group of young military officers, repulsed by the massacre of the poor, overthrows the right-wing government. However, the U.S. compels the inexperienced officers to include many of the old guard in key positions in their new government. Soon, things are back to "normal" — the military government is repressing and killing poor civilian protesters. Many of the young military and civilian reformers, finding themselves powerless, resign in disgust.
Nicaragua — Anastasios Samoza II, the CIA-backed dictator, falls. The Marxist Sandinistas take over government, and they are initially popular because of their commitment to land and anti-poverty reform. Samoza had a murderous and hated personal army called the National Guard. Remnants of the Guard will become the Contras, who fight a CIA-backed guerilla war against the Sandinista government throughout the 1980s.
1980
El Salvador — The Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero,pleads with President Carter "Christian to Christian" to stop aiding the military government slaughtering his people. Carter refuses. Shortly afterwards, right-wing leader Roberto D�Aubuisson has Romero shot through the heart while saying Mass. The country soon dissolves into civil war, with the peasants in the hills fighting against the military government. The CIA and U.S. Armed Forces supply the government with overwhelming military and intelligence superiority. CIA-trained death squads roam the countryside, committing atrocities like that of El Mazote in 1982, where they massacre between 700 and 1000 men, women and children. By 1992, some 63,000 Salvadorans will be killed.
1981
Iran/Contra Begins — The CIA begins selling arms to Iran at high prices, using the profits to arm the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. President Reagan vows that the Sandinistas will be "pressured" until "they say �uncle.�" The CIA�s Freedom Fighter�s Manual disbursed to the Contras includes instruction on economic sabotage, propaganda, extortion, bribery, blackmail, interrogation, torture, murder and political assassination.
1983
Honduras — The CIA gives Honduran military officers the Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual � 1983, which teaches how to torture people. Honduras� notorious "Battalion 316" then uses these techniques, with the CIA�s full knowledge, on thousands of leftist dissidents. At least 184 are murdered.
1984
The Boland Amendment — The last of a series of Boland Amendments is passed. These amendments have reduced CIA aid to the Contras; the last one cuts it off completely. However, CIA Director William Casey is already prepared to "hand off" the operation to Colonel Oliver North, who illegally continues supplying the Contras through the CIA�s informal, secret, and self-financing network. This includes "humanitarian aid" donated by Adolph Coors and William Simon, and military aid funded by Iranian arms sales.
1986
Eugene Hasenfus — Nicaragua shoots down a C-123 transport plane carrying military supplies to the Contras. The lone survivor, Eugene Hasenfus, turns out to be a CIA employee, as are the two dead pilots. The airplane belongs to Southern Air Transport, a CIA front. The incident makes a mockery of President Reagan�s claims that the CIA is not illegally arming the Contras.
Iran/Contra Scandal — Although the details have long been known, the Iran/Contra scandal finally captures the media�s attention in 1986. Congress holds hearings, and several key figures (like Oliver North) lie under oath to protect the intelligence community. CIA Director William Casey dies of brain cancer before Congress can question him. All reforms enacted by Congress after the scandal are purely cosmetic.
Haiti — Rising popular revolt in Haiti means that "Baby Doc" Duvalier will remain "President for Life" only if he has a short one. The U.S., which hates instability in a puppet country, flies the despotic Duvalier to the South of France for a comfortable retirement. The CIA then rigs the upcoming elections in favor of another right-wing military strongman. However, violence keeps the country in political turmoil for another four years. The CIA tries to strengthen the military by creating the National Intelligence Service (SIN), which suppresses popular revolt through torture and assassination.
1989
Panama — The U.S. invades Panama to overthrow a dictator of its own making, General Manuel Noriega. Noriega has been on the CIA�s payroll since 1966, and has been transporting drugs with the CIA�s knowledge since 1972. By the late 80s, Noriega�s growing independence and intransigence have angered Washington� so out he goes.
1990
Haiti — Competing against 10 comparatively wealthy candidates, leftist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide captures 68 percent of the vote. After only eight months in power, however, the CIA-backed military deposes him. More military dictators brutalize the country, as thousands of Haitian refugees escape the turmoil in barely seaworthy boats. As popular opinion calls for Aristide�s return, the CIA begins a disinformation campaign painting the courageous priest as mentally unstable.
1991
The Gulf War — The U.S. liberates Kuwait from Iraq. But Iraq�s dictator, Saddam Hussein, is another creature of the CIA. With U.S. encouragement, Hussein invaded Iran in 1980. During this costly eight-year war, the CIA built up Hussein�s forces with sophisticated arms, intelligence, training and financial backing. This cemented Hussein�s power at home, allowing him to crush the many internal rebellions that erupted from time to time, sometimes with poison gas. It also gave him all the military might he needed to conduct further adventurism — in Kuwait, for example.
The Fall of the Soviet Union — The CIA fails to predict this most important event of the Cold War. This suggests that it has been so busy undermining governments that it hasn�t been doing its primary job: gathering and analyzing information. The fall of the Soviet Union also robs the CIA of its reason for existence: fighting communism. This leads some to accuse the CIA of intentionally failing to predict the downfall of the Soviet Union. Curiously, the intelligence community�s budget is not significantly reduced after the demise of communism.
1992
Economic Espionage — In the years following the end of the Cold War, the CIA is increasingly used for economic espionage. This involves stealing the technological secrets of competing foreign companies and giving them to American ones. Given the CIA�s clear preference for dirty tricks over mere information gathering, the possibility of serious criminal behavior is very great indeed.
1993
Haiti — The chaos in Haiti grows so bad that President Clinton has no choice but to remove the Haitian military dictator, Raoul Cedras, on threat of U.S. invasion. The U.S. occupiers do not arrest Haiti�s military leaders for crimes against humanity, but instead ensure their safety and rich retirements. Aristide is returned to power only after being forced to accept an agenda favorable to the country�s ruling class.
EPILOGUE
In a speech before the CIA celebrating its 50th anniversary, President Clinton said: "By necessity, the American people will never know the full story of your courage."
Clinton�s is a common defense of the CIA: namely, the American people should stop criticizing the CIA because they don�t know what it really does. This, of course, is the heart of the problem in the first place. An agency that is above criticism is also above moral behavior and reform. Its secrecy and lack of accountability allows its corruption to grow unchecked.
Furthermore, Clinton�s statement is simply untrue. The history of the agency is growing painfully clear, especially with the declassification of historical CIA documents. We may not know the details of specific operations, but we do know, quite well, the general behavior of the CIA. These facts began emerging nearly two decades ago at an ever-quickening pace. Today we have a remarkably accurate and consistent picture, repeated in country after country, and verified from countless different directions.
The CIA�s response to this growing knowledge and criticism follows a typical historical pattern. (Indeed, there are remarkable parallels to the Medieval Church�s fight against the Scientific Revolution.) The first journalists and writers to reveal the CIA�s criminal behavior were harassed and censored if they were American writers, and tortured and murdered if they were foreigners. (See Philip Agee�s On the Runfor an example of early harassment.) However, over the last two decades the tide of evidence has become overwhelming, and the CIA has found that it does not have enough fingers to plug every hole in the dike. This is especially true in the age of the Internet, where information flows freely among millions of people. Since censorship is impossible, the Agency must now defend itself with apologetics. Clinton�s "Americans will never know" defense is a prime example.
Another common apologetic is that "the world is filled with unsavory characters, and we must deal with them if we are to protect American interests at all." There are two things wrong with this. First, it ignores the fact that the CIA has regularly spurned alliances with defenders of democracy, free speech and human rights, preferring the company of military dictators and tyrants. The CIA had moral options available to them, but did not take them.
Second, this argument begs several questions. The first is: "Which American interests?" The CIA has courted right-wing dictators because they allow wealthy Americans to exploit the country�s cheap labor and resources. But poor and middle-class Americans pay the price whenever they fight the wars that stem from CIA actions, from Vietnam to the Gulf War to Panama. The second begged question is: "Why should American interests come at the expense of other peoples� human rights?"
The CIA should be abolished, its leadership dismissed and its relevant members tried for crimes against humanity. Our intelligence community should be rebuilt from the ground up, with the goal of collecting and analyzing information. As for covert action, there are two moral options. The first one is to eliminate covert action completely. But this gives jitters to people worried about the Adolf Hitlers of the world. So a second option is that we can place covert action under extensive and true democratic oversight. For example, a bipartisan Congressional Committee of 40 members could review and veto all aspects of CIA operations upon a majority or super-majority vote. Which of these two options is best may be the subject of debate, but one thing is clear: like dictatorship, like monarchy, unaccountable covert operations should die like the dinosaurs they are.
Related links:
Myth: There�s no "vast right wing conspiracy" to get Clinton.
Myth: Conservative think tanks are the answer to liberal academia.
**Return to Liberalism Resurgent**
Endnotes:
- All history concerning CIA intervention in foreign countries is summarized from William Blum�s encyclopedic work, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995). Sources for domestic CIA operations come from Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen�s The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1997).
- Coleman McCarthy, "The Consequences of Covert Tactics" Washington Post, December 13, 1987.
Overview
In 1975 and 1976, the Church Committee published fourteen reports on the formation of U.S. intelligence agencies, their operations, and the alleged abuses of law and of power that they had committed, together with recommendations for reform, some of which were put in place.
Among the matters investigated were attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile and President John F. Kennedy's plan to use the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba.
Under recommendations and pressure by this committee, President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11905 (ultimately replaced in 1981 by President Reagan's Executive Order 12333) to ban U.S. sanctioned assassinations of foreign leaders.
Together, the Church Committee's reports have been said to constitute the most extensive review of intelligence activities ever made available to the public. Much of the contents were classified, but more than 50,000 pages have since been declassified under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.
http://books.google.com/books?id=FgyjaNmFdAMC&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
By Tim Weiner
cia overview http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html
ciabksum
9/Jul/2012
leagacy of ashes tim weiner (pulitzer ) doubleday 2007
wil bill neamed for a yankee pitcher, imaginative
allen w dulles star OSS
before fdr died asked for rep on OSS by col parker (aided by JEH) that wd have doomed
said UK and china had manipulated US agents, germans infiltrated nad japan knew codes broken
willd bill lost a briefcase at coctail party given to gestapo by a dancer p 6-7
hiring via old boy network
siphoned $ from Marshall Plan to manip Greek vote(dir Avrell Harriman gave ok) met at Hotel Tallyrand (min house )
kermit rossevelt (chief of NE and Asia)
budget authorization from sen subcommittee taken as legal authority 40 (rmn votes aye // if pres does = legal)
rev wm sloane coffin quit cia; 100's of agents sent to E Eur captured and killed.
michael D coe recruited, harv 1950 later broken mayan hieroglyph code 8 mos on tiny choneese is till chief found to be 2z agent
may 1952 various drugs, incl lsd; 7 prosoners in Penn pen kept high 77 days; civ employee frank olson dosed and jumped out window; sr officers incl Helms destryoed the evidence of pgms
Stalin knew ussr weak, terririfed of war w/ US 73
aug 53 nuke test ussr, ike wondrerd if shd strike
CIA asked press to plant stories: Henry Luce [lsd?] time, look, fortune mags; parade, sat rev, reader's digest, CBS news 77
11/52 Kermit E trying to cover for UK agents trying to topple Iran PM (W Churchill want to keep oil_pre WWI converted UK navy to il, has 51% share; uk, russ, turky troops caised famine that killed 2 mil!? 81 --> Cossack cmder Reza Khan, proclaimed shah 1925. Opposed by Mossadeq; uk cheated, so germans welcome (UK USSR invaded 1941) UK op boot --> ajax (off name, wend made, killed sheep then self) coup busted day 1; khomeini watched riots 91 shah mil law 3 yrs, set up secet poice SAVAK, cia hoped to spy on USSR, but just oppressed 92
GUATE: if arbenz not a commie, he'll do till one comes along" ?! Tracy Barnes )Groton Yale Harv Law) grew up on Whitney estate on long is OSS silver star; rebel taining camp on somoza farm in nicaragua 95
Al Haney loose cannon, planted fake UFO stories to distract from plot; givn a hit list of 58 ppl (wd send a msg rebels serious?!) E Howard Hunt wabted terror campaign; pirate radio lucked out when official station went down for maint; stole the frq and sent scary stories uprising, poison wells and kid draft 99
Pres arbenz freaked, marshall law, found evidence of US in student group (75 tortured and killed)
3 f47 fighter -bombers 92 broke) blew up oil tank, out in 20 min; clled big ike donor pawley who gave 150K for 3 new bombers;
embassy roof had tape of jets; pres drakn to stupor; armas later 21 gun salute, toased by VP rmn at WH. 43 men kia but said one, thus myth born
ch 11: Korea (bunch of cia quit, told McCarthy/Cohn about 2x agents; cia secretly discreditied JMcC
dulles said no one had authority to review covert ops
Hungarian uprising encouraged by US disinfo (some wrong info like army defected to to Ike as well; uSSr crushed,.
1957 ike encouraged jihad ~ ussr
after 1958 iraq coup ~ pro US guy, kermit quit to consult for oil co; cia became interested in Ba'ath
ch 15: indonesia: oil, leader not pro US and increasing commies
Al Pope cia pilot 151 our coup went bad so we switched sides?! 153 nsukarno
frank wisner get electroshock
CUBA; some in ci wanted to back him? e hhunt on pol ops; orig idea was set up puppet, not invade
MIssle gap led to plan to bomb warsaw to bejing (uur had 4 warheads, not 500) 158
Only ike could ok U2 flights ,but bissell sent them over moscow w/o even twlling dulles
mayday u2 shootdown made ike want to quit,since showed he lied?
Bissell puts out mafia hit on castro
ike orderd LUmumbo killed congo; mobuto captured and handed to cia; shot by belgian; mob ruled 530 years, brutal, our man in africa
Joe Kenneday told jack JEH had info jrk shacked up w. suspected nazi spy ww2, jeh rehired 165
cia knew cuba wd need full-on invasion but never told jfk; he thot ike ok'd; mccone called missles
Us supported Trujillo in Dom Rep
mccone spied in US to find leaks (way before plumbers)
castro said if tried to kill him US not safe ether 209
warren comm not told of castro plts
Gulf of Tonkin relied on mistranslation? (we had plans to bomb and war resol waiting 2 mos; LBJ said they were shooting at flying fish.
we backed corrput thai (drugs/whores); Indosnesia had 1 mil polit prisoners 262. some for decades 1/2 mil mkilled in coup?
VIET NAM we have 8 mi micrifilm, small % on intel
Nat'l Student Asso in US got cia $, Radio Free Eur, congress fro cult freedom
we trained 700k soldiers and cops from 25 cty: made secret police in cambiodia, col, ecuador, el salv, guate, iran, iraq, laos, PI, peru, so korea, svn thai 279 Lat AM: us backed arg, boliv, brazil, domrep, ecod, guate, guyanna, hond, nicar, peru, venez 280 helms saud juntas good for US
che ~ mobutu, ran to bolivia, tracked and killed; no excaper planned, win or die; can you send fingerprints? fingers 283
Under LBJ, spy on dissidents 285 7 yrs, 300k names in Db, files on 7k; saw race riots and USSR connected, so asked for evidence that was then fabricated
RMN: kisenger got increasing control of cia
US gave guns/$ to tibetian guerillas fought for 14th dalai lama 301
CHILE: allende beat w/ $ in 64; kissenger approved anothr 135K to a daggar pointed at the heart of antarctica; cant let it go commie just b/c ppl irresponsible 307
Rich guy (pepsi) and pepsi ceo Kendall (big nixon donor) met w/ HK (kendall wanted to keep allende out 308
HK hunted by law in chile, argent, spain and Fr for Caravan of Death ? 316
ehh totally self-absorbed, amoral, danger to self and others 318
wm casey OSS and fundraiser
acting atty gen Luarence Silberman (ford) asked to run cia but no; knew about thick file of crimes; rummy
ciabooksum cont
ch 34 VN
phoenix kia 20k VC suspects by 71 colby told it was over, the war, but HK wd not negot; more $ and guns; 3 mos actually 3 wks; 1-2 mil shd have been evac; no plan fro hmong tho 15 yrs allies
oct 75 holloween massacre; DC CoS rummy sec def, butted heads w/ B1 on $, thot cia was spying on him 347 b1 left congress for oil; dad pal of allan d
after saigon fell, big op in oil rich angola
Team B 2x ussr bombers BS led to RR elected! 352
JC had as many secrt op, but for human rights, eg apartheid (ussr supported ANC
HK pressured JC to allow shah to us for rx
rr picked casey, wall st tax dodge, OSS, his ideology ruled info
nicaraguan and el salv; congr said no to overthrow, RR lied
pentagon $30B cia 3 bill 381
casey liked ollie
1/2 bill to chad (stingers lost)
saidis and cia spent big on muj in afg. warlords skimmed gunsand $
RR scared ussr on alert 2 yrs, cyber war on gas pipeline.
how to war VN comic tranasl to sp for contras
RR signed guns for hostage finding 403 c powell transf missles to cia; deal led to increase in kidnapoing, 2 kia, some held 5 yrs
iran $ paid felix R (bomped cuban airliner, killed che
shipped arms (and info?) to both iran and iraq
casy denounced by his own bishop at his funeral
congr oversight comm staffers seeded y cia 415
wa and ussr never passed up a weapons system they wanted;
muj selling heroin; suadi's started buying loyalty (//bin L?)
casey saw noriega as protege
rr sent rumy to saggam, gace hi tech, took off terror list (he said he supported is-arab peace)
cia ID old bunker as target bit now used as air raid shelter
b1 invited iraqis to rise, no support, cia hyped too
1992 gates list 176 threats incl climate 433
clinton asked cia for quick fix, but went to mil.somalia cold war left lots of guns
blind sheik rahman recruit muj ~ usssr, aquitted for sadat kill, cia approved US visa 6x
bomb ~ b1 looked iraqi, so missle strike
after black hawk, us pulled out of africa so blind on rwanda (tho cia predicted 500k deaths wd happen) ignored
lt gen bill odom nsa RR
cia gave ussr arms assess, tho they knew compromised
guate 200k killed after 54 coup; when col killed american innkeeper and hubby of lawyer, busted, pulled $ but not cia $ amb blackmailed/ for les affair turned out to be her dog 460
coup plan ~ saddam by BC, exposed 200 officers arrested 80 killed
tenet had several chances to get bin laden, but did not 9eg one time pak unstable, we lost 15 guys training; later had good target but qualied on legal authority
cia targetting chineese embassy accidently
BC told GW OBL 1 threat; true he later got doc w/ bold cleart headline, but evidence weak (old?)
guy who said iraq in on 911 tortured, recanted 486
b2 rejected cia bad news on occupation; appt silberman to look at intel failure
Goss witchhunt for lefty subversives in cia; grad address; deny all, admiot not, ctr-charge
pentagon poached whatever (young?) talent cia has
congr oversight collapsed; congr blocked $ b/c i gop ~ rept on secret prisions
cia rev dr ro lockheed, booz (at same time?) by 2006 1/2 bagdad station and new nat'k CtrTerr Ctr contractors! 512 lockM hired to interrogate at gitmo!
cofer black fder Total Intelligence Sol 2007 robt richer and prado, both cia (all 3 1st to blackwater)
Over the Counter Intelligence
Posted by Philip Mattera on June 13th, 2008
Tim Shorrock, a veteran investigative journalist and a longtime subscriber to the Dirt Diggers Digest, has just come out with a book called Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing. Shorrock describes how an activity that used to be handled by spooks on the federal payroll has been steadily transformed into a $50 billion Intelligence-Industrial Complex.
Thanks to the contracting scandals surrounding Halliburton and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, the public learned of the extent to which the Pentagon has turned over routine functions to private military companies. The outrageous behavior of Blackwater has highlighted the use of mercenaries to protect U.S. diplomats and other VIPs in Iraq.
Shorrock shines a light on another group of corporations that are carrying out a more sensitive function that most people have no idea is being handed over to the private sector. Careful readers of the revelations concerning abuses at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq would have learned that interrogators alleged to have abused detainees included civilians employed by a company called CACI. But that is only the tip of a lucrative iceberg, Shorrock shows.
For example, he writes, more than half the people working at the super-secret National Counterterrorism Center in Virginia are employees of companies such as Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin. The Center’s terrorist database is maintained by The Analysis Corporation, which subcontracted collection activities to CACI.
Since 9/11, Shorrock says, the Central Intelligence Agency has been spending 50-60 percent of its budget (or about $2.5 billion a year) on contractors—both individuals and companies. At the CIA and its sister spook agencies: “Tasks that are now outsourced include running spy networks out of embassies, intelligence analysis, signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection, covert operations, and the interrogation of enemy prisoners.”
Shorrock devotes an entire chapter to Booz Allen Hamilton, known to most people as a management consultant for large corporations but which pioneered the intelligence outsourcing industry (though it recently agreed to sell its federal business to the Carlyle Group). When Mike McConnell, a former Booz Allen executive, was named by President Bush as Director of National Intelligence, it was the first time, Shorrock notes, that a contractor was put in charge of the country’s entire spy apparatus.
Spies for Hire has much more to offer that cannot be adequately summarized here. I recommend that you read it in full. But let me let also note that profiles of some of the intelligence contractors discussed by Shorrock—such as CACI and ManTech International—can be found on the Crocodyl wiki to which I contribute. Also note that the updated edition of Jeremy Scahill’s valuable book Blackwater, recently issued in paperback, has a discussion (p.453 forward) on the mercenary company’s move into another form of privatized intelligence—a product called Total Intelligence Solutions that is designed to bring “CIA-style” services to Fortune 500 companies.
*http://dirtdiggersdigest.org/archives/60*
Dirt Diggers Digest is written by Philip Mattera, director of the Corporate Research Project, an affiliate of Good Jobs First.
See also feature articles by Tim Shorrock on CorpWatch.org:
QinetiQ Goes Kinetic: Top Rumsfeld Aide Wins Contracts From Spy Office He Set Up
Carlyle Group May Buy CIA Contractor:Booz Allen Hamilton
===
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
...
In 1948, Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP). Soon afterwards OSP was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the covert action branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."[2]
Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence foreign media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham from The Washington Post to run the project within the industry. According to Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great; "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."[3] Wisner referred to this apparatus as a "Mighty Wurlitzer", referencing the theater organ capable of controlling diverse pipes, instruments, and sound effects from a central console.[4][5]
In 1951, Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal internationalist organizations he had been a member of in the late 1940s.[6] According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird's "principal operative".[7]
| "I’m proud they asked me and proud to have done it" - Stewart Alsop [8] |
In 1977, a People article by Alexander Butler alleged that one of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose foreign affairs articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists alleged by People Magazine to have been willing to promote the views of the CIA included Stewart Alsop who headed the international bureau of New York Herald Tribune, Ben Bradlee foreign affairs correspondent for Newsweek, James Reston for the international section of the New York Times, Charles Douglas Jackson foreign photo-journalist for Time Magazine, and international correspondents such as Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, Charles Bartlett of the Chattanooga Times and William C. Baggs and Herb Gold of The Miami News.[9] According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman), these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by Frank Wisner. The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them with their work.[10]
Congressional hearings in 1976 proved CIA had been paying off editors and reporters in most mainstream media outlets.
After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. By this time Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. The usual methodology was placing reports developed from intelligence provided by the CIA to witting or unwitting reporters. Those reports would then be repeated or cited by the preceding reporters which in turn would then be cited throughout the media wire services. These networks were run by people with well-known liberal but pro-American big business and anti-Soviet views such as William Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time and Life Magazine), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of the Washington Post), Jerry O'Leary (Washington Star), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham, Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal), James Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison[disambiguation needed] (Christian Science Monitor).[9]
The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning of funds intended for the Marshall Plan. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers. Frank Wisner was constantly looking for ways to help convince the public of the dangers of Soviet communism. In 1954, Wisner arranged for the funding of the Hollywood production of Animal Farm, the animated allegory based on the book written by George Orwell.[11]
According to Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, "some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts". Wisner was also able to restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events. For example, the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of Iran (see: Operation Ajax) and Guatemala (see: Operation PBSUCCESS).[12]...