Texts for this class
1. Steve Kangas, "A Timeline of CIA Atrocities"
2. Nicholas Davies, "America's Coup Machine: Destroying Democracy Since 1953"
3. Interview with David Talbot discussing his book The Devil's Chessboard: Allan Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America's Secret Government.
Other recommended materials
4. Steve Kangas, "Origins of the Overclass"
5. Veterans Today: "The CIA continues trafficking drugs from Afganistan"
6. "Secret World of US Election": John Pilger Interview with Julian Assange
7. Corbett Report: "How the CIA Plants News Stories in the Media"
8. Famed JFK researcher Mark Lane discussing his book"Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK"
9. Edward Curtin, "The Government that Honors Dr. MLK with a National Holiday Killed Jim.
Evil as the Concentration of Power
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Great men are almost always bad men.”
- 19th century British politician Lord Acton
O, yes, I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath --
America will be!
- Langston Hughes
“The United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Deep State
…another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.
A loose (non-monolithic) network of financial(banking) organizations, intelligence agencies, powerful law firms, military leaders and political powerbrokers who come together from time to time when their interests coalesce.
[my definition]
The CIA as a case study in the Evils of Centralized Power
Part I: The CIA Anti-democratic Playbook: How to murder a democracy
“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.” [from http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/CIAtimeline.html ]
Several infamous examples of CIA-orchestrated coups against democratically-elected governments.
(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.
(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.
(1961) 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.
(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.
Part II: Some notorious and well-documented CIA programs
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Part IV: The CIA and Drugs - Nicaragua and Afghanistan
[From http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/06/04/the-cia-continues-trafficking-drugs-from-afghanistan/ ]
“The CIA has a long history of being involved in global drug trade in all parts of the world under the control of the US or where it has considerable influence. While a few cases have been investigated and exposed by journalists, the issue continues to remain in the shadows.
The CIA’s history began in the 1980s. Drugs were seen as the quickest and easiest way to earn money to fund CIA proxies and paramilitary forces that served them, in different countries. Gary Webb, the brave journalist who exposed the Nicaraguan Contra drug trafficking scandal and was eventually driven to suicide by an extensive smear campaign by the mainstream media, described the process like this:
“We (CIA) need money for a covert operation, the quickest way to raise it is sell cocaine, you guys go sell it somewhere, we don’t want to know anything about it.”
Read the original articles by Gary Webb HERE
[https://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/start.htm ] or watch the film Kill the Messenger
This tactic worked very successfully in Afghanistan during the Cold War when the Mujahideen forces serving the US were funded through drugs. Before the US invasion in 2001, the poppy fields were eradicated by the Taliban. Right after the US invasion, drug production began increasing drastically, and today Afghanistan produces 90% of the world’s opium, and on the verge of becoming a narco-state.
More on how the CIA smuggles drugs
The CIA and Political Assassinations JFK and MLK
"Someone would have talked," goes the old refrain. In the case of some CIA officers and others associated with the Agency, they did talk. But who's listening?
In 2007, legendary Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt died, leaving behind a taped "confession" in which he claimed knowledge of the plot to kill Kennedy but not active participation, describing himself as a "benchwarmer." Hunt named names - including Lyndon Johnson, Tracy Barnes, William Harvey, Frank Sturgis, and others - but provided no substantiating details. For many observers, the hard-to-credit confession was a "last laugh" and a parting gift to his ne-er-do-well son, who has attempted to capitalize on it.
Other confessions have carried a bit more weight. David Morales, Chief of Operations at the JMWAVE station in Florida where he trained Bay of Pigs participants and by some accounts was involved in assassination operations, was getting drunk one night with childhood friend Ruben Carbajal and a business associate named Bob Walton. Both men said that Morales went on a tirade about Kennedy and particularly his failure to support the men of the Bay of Pigs. Morales finished this conversation by saying "Well, we took care of that son of a bitch, didn't we?”
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