Origin and Function of
the CIA: The "Cult of Intelligence"
The CIA was created at the outset of the Cold War by Truman's National Security
Act of 1947. That Act was a response to Yalta, and to the general pervasive
fear that, after WW II, the greatest threat to world peace was the communists.
The CIA was mostly formed out of the reorganized OSS (Office of Strategic
Services) which coordinated espionage and intelligence activities against the
Nazis. (However, anti-communism was an overarching concern for the new agency,
which enlisted some of its old enemies against a previous ally: many former
Nazis functionaries, such as Richard Gehlen, were enlisted into the CIA spy
network in Eastern Europe.) The mission the CIA was expressly charged with was
the centralization and coordination of all the data from the intelligence
agencies of the government - namely, those associated with the branches of the
military service; and after 1952, the National Security Agency, Defense
Intelligence Agency, National Reconaissance Office, and the intelligence
activities of the Atomic Energy Commission, State Department, Treasury
Department, and Justice Department.
The CIA was also granted
in 1952 sweeping "other" powers besides merely the gathering of
intelligence. And despite the fact that it was created for that purpose, due to
counterintelligence and countermeasures, the CIA has only been able to get
minor information, mostly from serendipitous occasions, such as getting their
hands on a defector that was not a "plant." Despite the
glamourizations of the spy trade in James Bond movies, the truth is that field
operatives can only get so much information on troop movements, weapons
stockpiles, and the intentions of foreign leaders. For that reason, the CIA has
relied ever increasingly on electronic techniques; but spy sattelites,
wiretaps, and spy planes are subject to electronic (and other) countermeasures.
It has often been demonstrated in the past that the CIA took intelligence and
distorted it to support the policy inclinations of its Director or the current
Commander-in-Chief, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Reams of data are
collected by the agency every day, much more than anyone can ever process, and
no one coordinates what to do with the humongous piles of uncracked ciphers and
unprocessed intelligence.
Perhaps because of the
limitations of 'intelligence,' or in spite of them, the CIA has chosen to excel
in an entirely different area: covert operations. The CIA has become a secret
branch of the President's foreign policy apparatus, able to act where he cannot
do things openly, because the CIA does not have to answer questions from the
press. All agents agree that, when necessary, they will lie to anyone,
including Congressional Oversight committees, in the interests of 'national
security.' This policy, called "plausible denial," goes hand-in-hand
with the fact that every agent must sign a contract agreeing not to reveal
anything 'sensitive' that they learned during their service without the CIA's
prior consent. To the "imperial presidency", the CIA became seen as a
'can-do' agency, because unlike any other part of the government, they had full
control over their own budget and operations - they answered to nobody. This is
part of what Victor Marchetti called the 'theology of national security,'
maintained through the 'cult of intelligence.' It is a theology of salvation
through duty to country - and adherents of the ritual believe all sins may be
forgiven them.
The CIA has always
maintained that all its secrecy and "clandestine mentality" are part
of its efforts to keep vital secrets out of the hands of America's enemies.
They claim that disclosure of their activities might jeopardize agents in the
field and also destroy many important efforts of foreign policy, because
CIA-controlled foreign agents would be revealed as such to their own people. As
far as they are concerned, freedom of the press and freedom of information take
a back seat, because any secrets given up are secrets betrayed into the hands
of the enemy. Of course, to many others, all this secrecy is just a way for the
CIA to hide its activities from the criticism of the American people, in the
name of national security. But the art of the spook trade is like a poker game:
know as much as you can about your enemy while giving the least away. In a
world where anybody can be working for the other side - and paranoia is never
in short supply in the halls of Langeley - you can't trust anybody, and
anything is fair game. "Black operations" are necessary, 'cause we
gotta do it to 'em before they do it to us. That is the commandment at the
heart of the cult of intelligence and its spookly apostles.
The CIA, whose chief
sphere of operations during the Cold War was to be the Soviet Union and China,
made much of its actual focus the developing or "Third World." It was
there that the CIA flexed its political muscle, recruited its hired hands, and
interfered in other peoples' business, all the while pretending to be aiming
its operations against the other threatening "superpowers."
Unfortunately, the KGB was as good at the game as the CIA, and for that reason
the CIA was never able to score very many successes in either the intelligence
or covert operations field - which is why they made the Third World, an area
the U.S. has always been better at pushing around, their chief focus of
activity. Most Third World nations were no real security threat to the United
States, but the CIA could always claim that there was the danger of their
falling into the "Soviet sphere of influence." The CIA's goals in the
developing world were really based on other factors: strategic interests
(military bases, listening posts, naval ports), material interests (natural
resources and trade goods), and economic interests (protecting the property of
multinational U.S. corporations such as United Fruit, IT&T, and Exxon.)
Democracy and freedom necessarily took a back seat.
Here on Our Shores:
Domestic Operations
Despite its mandate to handle 'foreign' threats, the CIA has never kept its
hands off domestic groups right here in the U.S. Its policy of persecution of
such groups has always been based from the belief that they are the tools of
foreign manipulation. And why not? If the CIA was manipulating Eastern European
organizations during the rebellions of the Prague Spring, it figured the KGB
was just as likely to be behind the revolutionary groups here in the U.S.
Finding those links pointing to Soviet support was a pretty hard task (because
there were none), but it never kept the Agency from its dirty work. Despite the
fact that some of the groups, like the Trotskyist SWP, openly eschewed Soviet
communism, the CIA could never accept the fact that such organizations were
"homegrown" developments of dissent and discontent. They had to be
getting their financing from abroad, thought the spookmasters...
During the late 60s, the
CIA frequently recruited young men to infiltrate 'subversive' (generally antiwar)
groups as agents provocateurs . These infiltrators were to try and agitate the
groups and get them to surrender their nonviolent tactics for more militant
ones. As part of the joint COINTELPRO effort with the FBI, the CIA maintained
wiretaps, 'bugging' devices, hidden tape recorders, and other gimmicks for the
invasion of privacy at the premises of the meeting places of many of these
groups. Files were maintained on important (but potentially 'threatening')
citizens such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Tom Hayden. Anybody who was a
potential troublemaker of whistleblower soon would discover how the CIA used
its relationship with other government agencies (such as the IRS)... and find
his or her credit rating slashed, employee record blacklisted, bank account
frozen, incoming mail opened, and careers ruined. If they were authors, they
might soon discover publishers avoiding them like the Plague; if they were film
directors or producerers, they might find their projects suddenly 'cancelled.'
You tangle with the Company at your own peril.
The groups that the
COINTELPRO effort targeted primarily were the Socialist Workers' Party, the
Black Panther Party, and the Young Communist League. Radical, revolutionary,
militant, and communist organizations were the initial targets; but liberal,
socialist, pacifist, and reformist groups (like Ralph Nader's) often found
themselves under scrutiny as well. Often immigrants to the U.S. were monitored
for possible ideological or other connections to 'hostile' foreign governments
or to 'terrorist' organizations, and lost their right of residency (and speech)
in the U.S. when they were suspected of 'un-American' sentiments. (Nixon's
"plumbers" squad had some former CIA men on it, and they focused
primarily on Nixon's real and perceived enemies, including columnist Jack
Anderson, who received death threats.) The CIA found clever ways of
discrediting organizations (such as the American Indian Movement) by 'framing'
their leaders for crimes they did not commit or creating false trails to
violent incidents and terrorist organizations.
"Center for
International Assassination": Attempts on Poltical Leaders
The assassination attempts that the CIA made on Fidel Castro in the 1960s -
including using a poisoned cigar and Cuban exile 'hit squads' like Alpha 66 -
are fairly well known. But the CIA has tried to kill other foreign leaders - in
direct violation of the Geneva Convention and other articles of international
law - when it felt them to be a sufficient 'threat' to U.S. interests. Other attempted
victims included President Nasser of Egypt and Kim Il Sung of North Korea in
the 1950s. The CIA provided names of prominent members of the Communist party
of Indonesia in the 1960s to paramilitary forces under General Suharto, who
killed some 60,000. In a similar operation called Project Phoenix, the CIA and
South Vietnamese security forces may have killed some 12,000 VietCong leaders
in North and South Vietnam. Prominent terrorists, such as Abu Nidal, have been
on the CIA's 'hit list' for a long time, but they are tough 'marks' for killing
due to their great mobility. The reason why many of us haven't heard much of
this is that the CIA is not above murdering journalists, when that becomes
necessary.
But did the CIA conspire
to kill U.S. officials right here at home? Might they have even murdered a
president? Jim Garrison's investigation of the Kennedy Assassination revealed
many potential links between the CIA, Cuban exiles, and the Mafia, who all
hated Kennedy for different reasons. Richard Helms finally admitted in 1974
that one part of Garrison's investigation, Clay Shaw, was indeed a CIA
operative. The CIA hated Kennedy because in one of his executive orders, he
issued a presidential directive to put the CIA under joint military and
civilian control. In the wake of the bay of pigs fiasco, Kennedy threatened to
seek detente with the USSR and Cuba, and "break the CIA into a thousand
pieces." It is clear that the CIA knew Oswald pretty well, enough to be
sending him money some months before November 1963; and other principals in the
Garrison investigation had connections, as well. Jack Ruby may have helped the
CIA run guns into Cuba on some trips there, and Guy Banister was with the
Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), which often worked closely with the CIA. If
there was a conspiracy to kill the President, then the CIA was almost surely
part of it. Some "assassination researchers" have also found curious
CIA links to the King and Robert Kennedy, Jr. slayings, as well, where there
are some hints of suspicious activity.
The CIA rarely dirties
its own hands with something as messy and jeopardizing as assassination. Often,
mercenaries and contract agents are maintained for such actions. When the CIA
does get personally involved, it tries to make the death of the victim appear
to be as much of an 'accident' as possible, through the use of poisons and
other 'invisible' techniques. Weapons training of all kinds is standard for
field operatives, but the best of the black ops are trained in the more subtle
means of killing. The preferred method for killing foreign leaders is to get
their own countrymen to pull off the execution - then the CIA can attempt to
wash its hands of the whole matter. Thus, the CIA trains, advises, and equips
many of the paramilitary 'death squads' of El Salvador and Guatemala, while
claiming to have nothing to do with them. There are often very few
international inquiries into the deaths of guerilla leaders, no matter how
suspicious the circumstances...
The Search for the
Manchurian Candidate: Mind Control Research
Ostensibly, the agency began its MKULTRA project with the search for nothing
more than the perfect truth serum. Such a drug would set intelligence light
years ahead, and deal with the headaches posed by defectors, spies, and double
agents. In its quest for The "Truth Drug", the CIA would use in the
1950s just about every chemical that the counterculture would turn to a decade
later - Albert Hoffman's LSD, Gordon Wasson's 'Magic Mushroom' psilocybin, and
marijuana. It was thought that such drugs could 'destabilize' the personality
enough to elicit confessions or even whole changes of belief structures
(deprogramming.) Then came the revelations from Korea of American soldiers
producing taped confessions renouncing "the wars of imperialist
regimes" and their citizenship. A Miami Herald article written by a CIA
disinformant attempted to solve the mystery of how red-blooded American boys
could turn against their country. And it coined a new word taken from a Korean
translation: "brainwashing."
The CIA had always used
the same methods of coercion as the KGB: sexual entrapment; blacklisting;
'framing' people for uncommitted crimes; or outright physical
torture. But there was no foolproof method for assuring that
confessions were true; no polygraph test was 100% certain, and even then the
information could be 'planted.' Along with the technological supremacy of the
United States came a belief in the omnipotence of science. So the CIA was eager
to test the powers of technology in new realms. Spy sattelites and electronic
bugs were great information gatherers. But the realm of 'human intelligence'
still demanded more innovations. Further, new chemical agents could facilitate
covert warfare: the CIA thought that "dusting" a crowd with LSD could
pacify them; and they experimented with other drugs that might alter the
emotions, including the hallucinogen BZ which created paranoid delusions and
rage toward the nearest people. In a paramilitary situation, use of such
tactics could be devastating.
For a while, the CIA
thought that LSD might be the ultimate Spook Drug. They tested it on
unsuspecting army privates; put it in the food of federal prisoners; gave it to
people visiting prostitutes in hotel rooms; (while watching from behind a
see-through two-way mirror in the next room - Operation Twilight Climax) and
even put in drinking water, 'just to see what would happen.' Methods of
delivery were often comical: such as the time when they tried to spray a
convention of foreign dignitaries with an LSD aerosol, with little success (it
dissipated too quickly.) Eventually, they found it too 'unpredictable,' but one
maverick agent, Ronald Stark, may have been instrumental in getting LSD onto
the street black market, and thence making it a staple for the 'counterculture'
of the period. Martin A. Lee and Norman O. Solomon note the curious cultural
politics of LSD in their recent book, and point out the curious connection of
the CIA to some of the early acid gurus at Millbrook.
It is always the case in
the echelons of national security that when the enemy is believed to have a
capability that it becomes a priority to beat them to the punch. Hence, the CIA
attempted to create its own Manchurian Candidate, someone who could literally
be 'reprogrammed' to kill Communist leaders or even have his ideology and
loyalty switched. In its search for mind control, the CIA found willing allies
in the academic behaviorist psychological establishment. Tired of controlling
salivating dogs, running rats, and flying pigeons, the behaviorists were
beginnning to look into the possibility of controlling human behavior. J.B.
Watson and his successor B.F. Skinner looked toward a Clockwork Orange world
where antisocial behavior could be completely eliminated. Delgado impressed the
world by stopping a bull in its tracks with a pair of electrodes and a handheld
transmitter; what was on everybody's minds was... what next?
The head of the American
Psychological Association, a behaviorist named Donald Cameron, was
internationally recognized for his work in 'psychic driving'. He was searching
for a technique of wiping the mind 'clean', making it a tabula rasa , so that
new beliefs could be implanted. Originally he was only interested in using this
technique to 'cure' the mentally ill. But the CIA's head of TSS (Technical
Support Services), Sid Gottlieb, saw other possibilities, as did his colleague
Morse Allen. Cameron used a variety of techniques ranging from sensory
deprivation (also taken up eagerly by countercultural figures, including John Lilly)
to electroshock, hallucinogens, isolation, and bombardment by radiofrequency
waves, to 'treat' his subjects. The CIA could provide Cameron with what he was
lacking: subjects. People from marginal sectors of society like prisoners, drug
addicts, prostitutes, the homeless, and deviants. It was assumed that these
people had nowhere to turn to and were the least possible security risk.
The irony of medical
torture being used to assist a regime was not lost on Cameron's colleagues,
such as neurologist William Sargant, who still remembered the Hippocratic Oath,
and the statements of the Nazi doctors at the Nuremberg trials. Cameron also
was unable to provide the success that the Agency wanted: he could lobotomize
his patients and turn them into virtual zombies, but he couldn't manage to
return them as functioning members of society with new personalities. The human
spirit just remained too damn slippery for the Scottish doctor. In the
post-Kennedy shakeup of 1964, Cameron lost his MKULTRA funding. LSD had slipped
out of the hands of the controllers and into the uncontrollable rebellious
hippies. The Agency saw the need to practice damage control in a new
post-Dulles era.
MKULTRA was renamed
MKSearch and placed under the control of ORD (Operations Research & Development.)
The new agenda became more focused on direct brain stimulation and hypnosis.
Neurologist Wilder Penfield showed that patients could recall vividly past
memories when areas of their brain were stimulated. What, the Agency wondered,
could they achieve if they could use electrical stimulation of the brain to
cause a man to hallucinate that his beloved leader was his worst enemy? Could
hypnosis create a 'sleeper' who could be 'activated' to carry out a mission
five years down the road after being 'triggered' by a word or signal and
perform it with no recall of his action? These experiments also met with highly
limited success. A Cuban exile was hypnotized and told he would kill Castro
when he heard the word "cigar." Before being brought out of the trance,
he was told Castro was in the room. The hypnotist then said the word
"cigar." The Cuban politely replied, "Sorry, I don't
smoke." The Cuban dictator would survive yet another attempt to rub him
out.
Perhaps in desperation,
in the 1970s the Agency would turn to the occult. Telepaths were asked to try
and read minds and even place suggestions into them. Clairvoyants and
fortunetellers were consulted for their usability in intelligence-gathering.
Palmists and phrenologists were asked for their techniques of personality
assessment. Could easily controllable people be found by their palms? One
project even looked into the links between eye color and mental illness.
Victims of multiple-personality disorder or those claiming to be 'spirit
possessed' were studied. In the Vacaville prison, famous for its detention of
Prof. Timothy Leary, weird experiments were performed with altered
consciousness which made even the king of 'trippers' worry. The Devil was alive
and well and working in Langeley.
The Doping of America:
The CIA and the Drug Trade
During the same period of its LSD experiments, it was well known that the CIA
was involved with the drug merchants of the 'Golden Triangle' who were
smuggling in much of the United States' heroin supply. Some opium was also entering
the U.S. from Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the CIA at the least turned a
"blind eye" toward the drug trade. The CIA has never stopped looking
the other way when drug dealers have had the right politics - they also had
connections with the Medellin cocaine cartel in the early 80s, who at the time
where providing information on the Communist insurgency in the region. While
the DEA was busy busting narco-traffickers, the CIA often kept many of them
(such as General Manuel Noriega) on its payroll. Many insurgent groups
supported by the CIA - including RENAMO, the Contras, and the Afghan mujaheddin
- engaged in drug trafficking with the U.S., to pay for U.S.-built arms and
materiel. There is some evidence to suggest that the CIA may have even been flying
in the drugs for them, on their return flights to the U.S. (!) The fact that
many of the 'freelance' mercenaries employed by the agency (a la Soldier of
Fortune) often "part-time" to train the private security forces of
the traffickers is not a complete coincidence.
But the CIA, while
undermining the official policy of the DEA through its own covert policy, never
lost sight of the propaganda value of the War on Drugs. That "war"
allowed a much more open use of military force in Latin American countries such
as Peru and Colombia, where there was virtual 'civil war' between the
narco-traffickers and the government. However, the American 'foreign policy
establishment' tried to portray a different picture, suggesting that it was the
guerillas and rebels in those countries - such as the Shining Path or other
Marxist groups - that were doing the trafficking, with the complicity of
countries such as Nicaragua and Cuba, who allowed overflights of drug-bearing
planes. Rather than going after the big cartels and their processing plants,
the CIA has often cooperated with the Peruvian army to go after coca-growing
peasant villages, suspected of being hotbeds of 'subversive' activity. It is
entirely possible that many revolutionary groups are engaged in the drug trade,
but the lion's share comes in from the vast organizations and distribution
networks created by the drug cartel heads, many of whom are former important
"agribusiness" leaders who got support from the CIA-backed Agency of
International Development (AID).
One might wonder, of
course, why the CIA, which is so concerned with the subversive effects of
foreign influences on our great nation, assists other countries to ply their
drug trade here. The answer is chilling, but any inner-city resident can tell
you why: crack in in the 'hood keeps the poor killing each other (the incessant
'gang wars' over drug turf) rather than going after their real enemies -
"divide and conquer." You can't demand your rights or freedoms when
you're enslaved to drugs, or think about your oppression when you're strung out
on crack. Many radical black groups, such as the Nation of Islam, call upon
black youth to stay drug-free. It's not just for silly moralistic purposes, a
la "Just Say No." They realize that drugs are a tool of the shadow
government to keep people in the inner-city down and out, and also that the
"War on Drugs" gives government an excuse to throw our civil
liberties out the window and use police-state tactics to fight the 'drug
epidemic' their own CIA brought here.
In the Name of Democracy:
Covert Operations and Interventions
The CIA has never had a problem with overthrowing democratically elected
governments, especially when they democratically decide to do something that
the Agency considers not to be in the U.S.'s interests. Michael Manley in
Jamaica, Salvador Allende in Chile, and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala were three
leaders overthrown by CIA-led insurgencies. The CIA has also provided covert
support for rebel groups such as RENAMO in Mozambique, the Contras in
Nicaragua, the Afghan mujaheddin , the Kurds in Iraq, and the Inkatha Zulu
party in South Africa. The current president of Nicaragua, Violeta Chamorro,
was also on the CIA payroll when she was publishing La Prensa , urging her
people to overthrow the Sandinistas. Many of the paramilitary coup d'etats in
South America were supported by the CIA, including the takeover by the generals
in Paraguay and Argentina. The CIA also supported some 30,000 Meo tribe
mercenaries in Laos in the 1960s, as well as other soldiers of fortune, to
destabilize the existing regime. Of course, the CIA has done their best to
tamper with undemocratic governments as well, but with less success - agents of
the CIA were wandering through Tibet in the 1950s, doing their best in whip the
Tibetans into a bloody revolt against the Chinese. And several unsuccessful
invasions of Cuba have been attempted in the wake of the original Bay of Pigs
Fiasco, by CIA-armed Cuban exile brigades such as Alpha 66.
But overt, naked,
military force can often jeopardize the CIA, especially when it fails and their
role in the action stands revealed. For that reason, they often utilize more
'subtle' methods to destabilize governments. They have stuck their fingers in
many elections and 'rigged' them to produce a more 'beneficial' result. To make
governments more unopopular with their people, they have also used economic
sabotage - they tried to ruin a whole years' sugar crop from Cuba by coating it
with an unpalatable substance; and for years in East Germany they attempted to
sour milk, disrupt mining activity, sabotage factories, and ruin other
productive industries. Another technique is to use propraganda and
disinformation - they spread false stories about the regime, especially here in
the U.S. and the presses of its allies, in the hope that other nations will
stop trading with the country. The CIA also uses techniques to reduce the
charisma and appeal of foreign (especially revolutionary/anti-US) leaders - at
one point, they tried to make the beard of Fidel Castro fall out, as if that
was somehow the source of some Samson-like power for him!
That is their
"negative" policy. But when they want to support pro-capitalist or
pro-United States political parties, they often use other techniques. They provide
"political advice and counsel," which we might call "spin
doctoring" here in the U.S., to make those parties more palatable.
Sometimes they give financial assistance to those parties covertly, or
subsidies to important individuals. Other times they try and support private
organizations like trade unions, business firms, and "think tanks"
that are willing to 'lobby' for better relations with the U.S. Occasionally
there is even "private" training and coaching of opposition leaders
here in the United States, and carefully crafted exchange programs. Many of the
organizations who exist ostensibly to aid and support democracy and development
in the Third World - like the Foundation for Democracy - are CIA fronts who
really support anti-communist regimes, even if they are basically undemocratic
and under military rule. Pro-U.S. regimes like ARENA in El Salvador and the PRI
Nationalist Party of Mexico often receive "technical" assistance from
the CIA in managing the affairs of their country - especially as regards
'unruly' peasants and the possibility of insurrection.
The irony of using
undemocratic means to 'protect democracy' has not been lost on many
commentators. In many cases, the leftist leaders overthrown by the CIA were
elected in fair and popular elections, and were not even inclined to allowing
Soviet hemispheric ambitions into their country; but the CIA did not believe
that, and certainly tried to convince others that that was a real danger. The
CIA feels it has some god-given right, somehow, to interfere with the affairs
of other nations; while at the same time supposedly carrying out its mission of
blocking such infiltrations right here at home. How would the American people
react if they found out that the KGB was interfering in our democracy? They shouldn't
cry foul, then, when countries protest when the CIA does the same thing in
trampling on their national sovereignty. While the Peace Corps was trying to
nudge the Third World toward a pro-U.S. attitude, the CIA was doing its best to
turn them into the other camp by playing the "ugly American."
Keeping Company with the
Company: Friends of the CIA
The CIA has many controversial friends. Over the years, it has maintained many
ties with the Mafia and organized crime, and it is very likely that Mob hit men
have done contract work for the CIA in the past. Another group that it has
frequently been involved with has been the international arms traders, like
Adnan Khashoggi. Such arms dealers have turned up in countries with very flimsy
explanations as to their presence there... inevitably with some CIA equipment
for sale. True to their business, the arms dealers will often sell to both
sides of a conflict - for example, arming both Iran and Iraq during their long
war. One tie the CIA has worked hard to maintain over the years is with the
Vatican, for obvious reasons. In the world of gathering intelligence you need
to spread your tentacles far; who better to pick up some juicy info then a
priest hearing Confession? The CIA has many connections to the para-Jesuit order
Opus Dei and also to the Sovereign and Military Order of the Knights of Malta
(the order descended from the Knights Hospitaller of St. John, kicked off the
isle of Malta by Napoleon's troops.) Several CIA officials, including Bill
Casey, have been made honorary members of this Catholic order. Needless to say,
the CIA has had no problem making friends with prominent dictators, such as
Pinochet, "Baby Doc" Duvalier, Marcos, the Pahlevi Shah, Somoza,
General Franco, and, until 1989, Noriega in Panama and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
But is there really a
connection between the CIA and "international fascism" as some more
conspiratorially-minded individuals have suggested? It does appear that the CIA
was involved in some of the shady right-wing intrigues of Europe, including the
whole P2 Masonic affair in Italy. Also, the group connected to Pope John Paul
II's attempted assassination, the Gray Wolves, is part of a fascist "Black
International" which is linked closely to the Reverend Moon's organization
and Gen. Singlaub's World Anti-Communist League, which have been known to work
with the CIA. There are those who think that the CIA was part of Project
Paperclip, which smuggled ex-Nazi scientists and S.S. officials into this
country to spy on Russia or develop rocket technology, or that it assisted the
right-wing generals in South America to hide Nuremberg war criminals from
international justice in exchange for what information could be gleaned on
Soviet military forces. Some U.S. far-right groups are actually as paranoid
about the CIA and its 'internationalist' agenda as they are about the
Trilateral Commission or the Council for Foreign Relations, so it is doubtful
that the CIA works with them...
It's not always clear
where the CIA stands in the shifting sands of international politics: they can
and do switch sides and double-cross their "friends." The CIA
supported the Kurds from 1975-79 in their war for independence from Iraq, but
when the Ayatollah Khoemini came to power in Iran, he was perceived as a
greater threat. Keeping Saddam Hussein in power to 'buffer' Iraq took
precedence over the Kurds' rights, and they were abdandoned to his savage
response. Then, when Khoemini died and Hussein invaded Kuwait, the U.S. turned
against Hussein, who they had been arming for the past eight years. Following
the 'liberation' of Kuwait, the U.S. invited the Kurds to rebel yet again, only
to abandon them to Saddam Hussein's forces once more. Having been
double-crossed twice, I am sure that the Kurds will run the other way the next
time the CIA comes around with some scheme. It is not suprising that the only
'friends' the CIA has are people who are equally as untrusting of others, and
untrustworthy, as it is in its affairs - mercenaries, soldiers of fortune,
cutthroats, adventurers, and other spy agencies such as the Israeli Mossad.
The CIA and the KGB often
get involved with complex games with each other - games so elaborate and
pointless that, as one commentator has noted, it seems that they are jokes for
their benefit and at our expense. In the cloak-and-dagger world of Spookland,
anything is fair game. The CIA has had 'sleepers' placed in many countries -
these agents often going over to live in those countries for months or even
years under some cover before they are finally 'activated' to carry out some
mission. In order to 'sting' KGB operatives, the CIA has often leaked all kinds
of false documents to people in order to 'weed' out their contacts, even
involving people who really should not be under any suspicion. What goes on in
the Soviet and American embassies would almost be funny if it were not such a
waste of taxpayer money. The CIA has often gone to elaborate lengths to
embarass their enemies, including taking pictures of them visiting brothels or
other compromising situations. Nonetheless, these games are often carried out
with a spirit of comraderie. After all, the CIA and the KGB had a mutual
interest in keeping the Cold War going, because it kept them in business. That
made them the strangest 'friends' of all, but after all, politics does make
strange bedfellows.
Cloak and Gown: The CIA
and College Campuses
The nation was shocked by a series of revelations in 1967 that the CIA was
connected to the National Student Association. It was revealed in a series of
articles that the CIA often maintained professors as recruiting agents on
college campuses who were to keep their eyes out for students who would make
good potential Company cadres. As a result, many campuses moved to bar the CIA
from recruiting their students; but the confidential informal networks between
the administration and faculty and the CIA often remained, and were used to
send more recruits the Agency's way. Some of the young agents hired in this way
were used to infiltrate campus leftist groups and spy on them, or to
"plant" stories in the campus newsletter, or to found Young Americans
for Freedom (YAF) chapters where the CIA could easily locate future allies.
Many universities discovered, to their discomfort, that CIA-connected
professors were often taking a cue on their curriculum from the Agency, and saw
it as threat to academic freedom. Student leftists often tried to 'out' those
professors and get them fired.
The CIA has also used
funds from its Science & Technology Directorate to subsidize academic research
projects. Many academic behaviorists received those funds for their research
into human-behavior control. But academic research into covert warfare
technology - remember Bond's amazingly lethal devices - was also supported as
well, in addition to the general DoD funding of projects such as SDI. Much of
the early LSD research - in the pre-Leary era - was controlled by academics
working for the CIA as well. Amazingly, there were some CIA links to the 1969
University of Colorado investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).
Some UFO buffs feel that this may be because the CIA still suspects that UFOs
are "some foreign power's secret air force," and they wanted to throw
other people off the trail of their investigation... but others think this is because
the CIA is doing research into the 'psychological warfare' aspects of utilizing
UFO 'true believers' and they want to throw them off this trail as well.
Certainly, the CIA was
carrying out clandestine activity at many U.S. universities in strategic locations.
The University of Miami in the early 1960s was an important staging base for
many of its operations against Cuba. Jim Jones, the cult leader who had his
Peoples' Temple followers commit suicide in the jungles of Guiana, may have
been part of a CIA operation within the University of California system
focusing on psychological warfare. Even today there are people who wonder
whether Jones was just crazy or if he was really following orders. Some
international universities, especially those in equatorial Africa, are used for
training local, native henchmen and agents, much as the KGB trains its African
operatives as Patrice Lumumba Friendship University. The CIA has always felt it
a priority to get the true WASP bluebloods into the Company, by recruiting the
sons of "well-bred" families at Ivy League schools such as Harvard
and Yale. Changing demographics and political winds have caused the Agency to
focus its efforts much more on recruiting from
midwestern and southern schools.
The Secret Government: Banks,
Guns, and Shadow Proprietaries
The "Enterprise," as it was called, was a joint effort during the
1980s between the NSA, CIA, and DIA to go over Congress' policy in Central
America. As the Christic Institute has pointed out, the 'Shadow' government behind
the 'Enterprise' has been active for 25 years, and the recent Iran-Contra
hearings have only scratched its surface, grabbing its more visible members
such as North, Secord, and Poindexter. The "Enterprise' was to sell arms
to Iranian 'moderates' in order to raise funds to support the Nicaraguan
Contras, whose aid had been reduced to a minimal level in 1985. Links to the
Islamic Republic were not hard to find since the 'moderate' contacts made by
Reagan's "October Surprise" Team (which included Bill Casey) in 1980
were all too eager to accept our weapons in their war with Iraq. It was
thought, somewhat erroneously, that these 'moderates' had some connection to
the Shiite groups in Lebanon who were holding Americans hostage, and that they
could obtain their release. The "Enterprise" also was involved with
some attempted bombings right here in the U.S., and sabotage efforts against
groups opposing U.S. Central America policy, such as the Pledge of Resistance
and the Christic Institute. Bill Moyers called the Iran-Contra hearings a
"Constitutional Crisis," much as some people called Watergate 20
years earlier... but they did not result in the resignation of a president.
It turns out that
unscrupulous businessmen, like Stefan Halper and Harvey D. MacLean, Jr., who
founded the Palmer National Bank in 1983, used deregulation in order to make
loans to ex-CIA operatives involved in funding the Contras. Much of the S &
L swindle, it turns out, may have turned up in the hands of the CIA. Halper,
not unsurprisingly, was one of the individuals who helped set up Oliver North's
defense fund. Other banks, such as Robert L. Corson's Vision Banc Savings, were
involved in the 'laundering' of money connected with Noriega... and the Houston
bank went under four months after Corson took ownership. The "vanishing
money" in the Iran-Contra scandal went, in part, to secret Swiss accounts
belonging to its principals - but at this point it intertwines with another
recent scandal, involving the Bank of Commerce and Credit, International
(BCCI). BCCI has been branded an 'outlaw' bank for its supports of brutal
Middle East regimes, but one of its big trading partners, it seems, was the
CIA, as well. Yet another banking scandal - the Banco Ambrosiano scandal, where
millions of dollars disappeared from the Vatican Bank into the pockets of
"G-d's Banker," Roberto Calvi, has CIA written all over it... Licio
Gelli and his Italian organization may have worked with the CIA to frame the
Communists in a train station bombing in Italy in 1980.
The CIA has a rather
remarkable 'financial empire.' Despite the fact that it is the only government
agency with a totally unmonitored 'black budget' - they can spend as they see
fit (within set limits) - it is also the only one that annually turns a profit!
That is because it maintains many 'shadow proprietaries,' commercial
enterprises that operate "up-front" operations until the point where
they are called on to do CIA business. Some of those proprietaries include
major airlines, such as Pacific Air and its subsidiary Air America, and trade
organizations (such as the International Trade Mart) that are really used for
covert operations coordination. These shadow companies are maintained tightly
and squeaky-clean (and often turn over a hefty profit) until their covert
support becomes necessary. It is well known that the CIA brass reguarly invest
much of the Agency's money in stocks and risky investments rather than the
generally tame security bonds issued by the government. It isn't just James
Bond who believes in gambling... the CIA feels that financial independence is
an important key to remaining free of government oversight.
Conclusions: What Future
for Shadow-Politics?
Robert Gates, who became Director of Central Intelligence recently over
questions that he (like other illustrious predecessors) distorted intelligence
to support policy, declared that the Agency would be taking "new
directions." In the post-Cold War world, the Agency would focus on
"new threats." Two new sources identified as potential threat sources
were Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in the Middle East, and economic
'warfare' on the part of ostensible U.S. 'allies' such as Germany and Japan. In
addition, Bush had directed Gates to marshal the CIA's resources to curtail the
proliferation of "weapons of mass destruction" - chemical,
biological, and nuclear devices. (That is ironic, in light of the U.S. refusal
to sign chemical weapons accords in the 1970s and its own huge nuclear
arsenal.) Industrial espionage and sabotage were to be part of the new focus of
the Agency - but, needless to say, the Company will probably do more than just
prevent foreign powers from doing it to us: they will try to "do it to
them before they do it to us." If Japan can steal our technological
secrets, well, surely there must be ways the cult of intellligence can beat
them at their own game? Gates seems to think so.
The founding fathers
enjoined their nascent republic to constant vigilance against its enemies.
There is vigilance, and then there is paranoia. One can be on guard against
danger, or one can go out of their way to see enemies where there aren't any.
The Pentagon has always profitting by overestimating the size and capability of
American enemies, and the CIA knows the value of that game as well - lest their
budget fall to the cutback axe as well! The CIA simply cannot handle a world
without enemies, without people ready for a double-cross. Once you're part of
the spook trade, it becomes impossible to see things any other way. And if the
CIA doesn't have communism as a scapegoat, it may have to create something else
to fulfill its role as the justifier of its actions, and find another sparring
partner altogether in the absence of the KGB. No federal bureaucracy ever
mandates itself out of existence, saying "Hey, our job's done, we can go
home!" And if most small government bureaucracies are reluctant to cease
their self-promotion and perpetuation, consider the Agency, which is a
multibillion dollar organization with some 16,000 admitted employees...
But if the CIA isn't
willing to pack its bags and go home, perhaps it is time for Congress to act.
The National Security Act of 1947 should be revoked, or at least have many of
its provisions changed severely. The CIA should be turned back into what it was
meant to be, an intelligence-processing center with lots of number-cruching
bureaucrats, like elsewhere in Washington. But Clandestine Services and Covert
Operations are fossils, and should be scrapped. The "black ops"
should be retired. Spying in peacetime - in the absence of a clear and present
threat - should be illegal. But most certainly interference with the democratic
processes of other countries should be made illegal, especially paramilitary
exercises. The shadow government's covert policy has often been at open odds
with the stated public policy of the elected government in many areas, putting
us in the position of considerable distrust by the rest of the world. In a free
society, foreign policy should be as open and democratic as domestic policy. If
the President wants to aid nations that have democratic values and protect
human rights, or to sanction or use military force against those countries that
are true threats to the United States or its allies (and not just ruled with a
form of government we don't like), let him openly ask for the support of the
American people, not go behind their backs.
There will always be a
need to gather intelligence about the military capabilities of other nations,
and for a center to coordinate the gathering of that intelligence. Such a
center would really know when a country was preparing for war or invasion, and
how to plan a response. The CIA's dismal failure in predicting Iraq's
aggression against Kuwait shows that it is not competent for that task. And it
is not competent because since 1952 it has gained proficiency in all the
"black operations" to the detriment of improving intelligence
techniques. The CIA must be "broken in a thousand pieces," as Kennedy
wanted, and built anew, into something that will not be a disgrace to American
principles and ideals. That new agency will address real concerns to national
security, and not chase after phantoms. And it will take a sea change in the
government to bring about a "new" CIA; but such a sea change is well
overdue.
Steve Mizrach
Related
The CIA:
Criminals in Action (July 15, 2008)
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/ciafromsourcewatch15jul08.shtml
