News and Views you don't have to lose:

News and Views you don't have to lose:

Strategic Support Branch "secret army of Northern Virginia."

Known by several names since its inception as Project Icon on April 25, 2002, the Strategic Support Branch is an arm of the DIA's nine-year-old Defense Human Intelligence Service, which until now has concentrated on managing military attachés assigned openly to U.S. embassies around the world.

Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department's bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect.

Comment: Note that WAR must be declared by Congress against a specific country or countries.


Two longtime members of the House Intelligence Committee, a Democrat and a Republican, said they knew no details before being interviewed for this article. Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using "reprogrammed" funds, without explicit congressional authority or appropriation. Defense intelligence missions, they said, are subject to less stringent congressional oversight* than comparable operations by the CIA.
A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed. Rumsfeld is laying claim to greater independence of action as Congress seeks to subordinate the 15 U.S. intelligence departments and agencies -- most under Rumsfeld's control.

The latest commander, reserve Army Col. George Waldroup. A colorful Texan who refers to himself in the third person, as "GW.", is not a graduate of the Army's Special Warfare Center or the CIA's Field Tradecraft Course for intelligence officers.

Comment: What makes Waldroup qualified to hold his command is his ability to lie to Congress: See more below:

Rumsfeld has designated SOCOM's leader, Army Gen. Bryan D. Brown, as the military commander in chief in the war on terrorism. Rumsfeld has also given Brown's subordinates new authority to pay foreign agents*. Known as "special mission units," Brown's elite forces are not acknowledged publicly. They include two squadrons of an Army unit popularly known as Delta Force, another Army squadron -- formerly code-named Gray Fox -- that specializes in close-in electronic surveillance, an Air Force human intelligence unit and the Navy unit popularly known as SEAL Team Six.

*Comment: Recruiting drug lords, assassins and snippers, death squads or tortuers? See below article History of CIA Atrocities

The Strategic Support Branch's human intelligence "augmentation teams" have deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq with a commando unit - most recently called Task Force 626 - that drew the most demanding intelligence missions, including the hunt for weapons of mass destruction and the recruitment of informants in Iraq's insurgency. said those assigned to work with them included out-of-shape men in their fifties* and recent college graduates on their first assignments.

*Comment: "Fifties"...Now we know that the civilian contractors are part ot this Strategic Support Branch.
Two US contractors, CACI International Inc and the Titan Corporation, for their involvement in the functioning of Abu Ghraib. CACI, has headquarters in Virginia, Note above comment about the "secret army of Northern Virginia."
History of US civilian covert operations connected to Bush Sr and the infamious Oliver North:

The term "Enterprise" came out of the Iran/Contra investigation where in references were made to a stand alone covert operation that acted independent of Congressional funding, should Congress cut off such funding and independent of Congressional oversight.

This subject is very complex. The Enterprise is an off shoot of a group called the World Anti-Communist League.

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/wacl.php


The Defense Department is planning for further growth. Among the proposals circulating are the establishment of a Pentagon-controlled espionage school, largely duplicating the CIA's Field Tradecraft Course at Camp Perry, Va., and of intelligence operations commands for every region overseas.

The Defense Department has decided that it will coordinate its human intelligence missions with the CIA but will not, as in the past, await consent. It also reserves the right to bypass the agency's Langley headquarters*, consulting CIA officers in the field instead. The Pentagon will deem a mission "coordinated" after giving 72 hours' notice to the CIA.

*Comment: This is exactly what Bush Sr and Oliver North did with the Enterprise, that is, financing the Contras by trafficking in drugs.

Four people with firsthand knowledge said defense personnel have already begun operating under "non-official cover" overseas, using false names and nationalities. Those missions, and others contemplated in the Pentagon, skirt the line between clandestine and covert operations. Under U.S. law, "clandestine" refers to actions that are meant to be undetected, and "covert" refers to those for which the U.S. government denies its responsibility. Covert action is subject to stricter legal requirements, including a written "finding" of necessity by the president and prompt notification of senior leaders of both parties in the House and Senate.

One scenario in which Pentagon operatives might play a role, O'Connell said, is this: "A hostile country close to our borders suddenly changes leadership. . . . We would want to make sure the successor is not hostile."


Waldroup spent most of his working life as a midlevel manager at the INS, where he became embroiled in accusations that he participated in deceiving a congressional delegation about staffing problems at Miami International Airport in June 1995. The Justice Department inspector general's office, which concluded its probe the following year, quoted in its report sworn statements from subordinates that Waldroup, then assistant district director for external affairs, helped orchestrate a temporary doubling of immigration screeners on the day of the visit, instructed subordinates not to discuss staff shortages and physically confronted a union leader to prevent him from reaching members of Congress. Waldroup told the investigators that he was following an order from a superior in Washington to withhold information.

During the investigation, according to the inspector general's final report, Waldroup refused to disclose the password to his e-mail files, refused to sign an affidavit summarizing his testimony and, in a subsequent interview, "stated that he would not answer any questions" because "he wished to protect himself from exposure to criminal sanctions." The authors of the Justice Department report found insufficient evidence to file charges but said they were troubled by "recurrent failures to provide documents."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012405Z.shtml


That incident, which involved officials' attempts to hide from congressional investigators overcrowded conditions at the Krome Detention Center, was uncovered after inspectors found backups of incriminating e-mails that had been erased.
The situation has become akin to that of Frank Serpico, a New York City cop who disclosed corruption within his department. Retribution and violence are in the air.

A flag hung in the office of assistant district director George Waldroup had above it a bumper sticker reads, "American by birth, Texan by the grace of God." The green-and-yellow flag sports a version of the Miami city seal and six bananas. "Banana Republic," it reads. Many of South Florida's Hispanics consider that term to be a blatant anti-Cuban slur.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y01/apr01/19e7.htm


A tall man in cowboy boots was struggling to drag Michael Wixted out of the booth. The tall man was George Waldroup, a senior official in the INS's Miami district. "It started when I heard the comment from George, 'You guys are not supposed to be here. You guys have to leave right now,'" Galafa recalled in a recent interview. "Then Michael says, 'Take it easy, I don't want any problems.'"
Waldroup grabbed Wixted and forced the smaller man to the ground. "I heard Michael say, 'Take your hands off me or I'll call Metro-Dade and have you arrested for disorderly conduct.' It got to the point where it was basically assault and battery, and I left my booth to help Michael."
The scuffle ended not a moment too soon, for the delegation had already arrived and the congressmen had been escorted to a glass-walled room with a view of the inspection floor.

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/1996-09-12/news/feature2_print.html

* Mixted Wixted was the president of the local branch of the American Federation of Government Employees, represented INS workers in their negotiations with and grievances against management and inform the Congressmen of the coverup.


Deception of Congress:
The Congressional Task Force on Immigration Reform's Fact-finding Visit to the Miami District of INS in June, 1995

The June 10, 1995, Congressional Task Force Delegation's visit to the Miami District of INS, Congressman Gallegly received a letter of complaint signed by 47 INS employees alleging that the Delegation was deceived during the visit. The employees alleged that the deception occurred at the two INS installations visited by the Delegation -- the Krome Service Processing Center, located 23 miles southwest of downtown Miami, and the Miami International Airport. Of the allegations made in the letter concerning Krome, we concluded at the end of the investigation that the most serious two allegations were substantially correct. Those allegations were:
that a large number of aliens detained at Krome were moved out of Krome to other facilities in the 48 hours before the delegation's visit to create a false impression that Krome was not seriously overcrowded; and
that a large number of aliens were released from Krome into the community in the 48 hours before the delegation arrived without criminal checks and medical checks being performed in order to bolster that same false impression.
that additional airport inspectors were assigned to the inspections area during the visit by the delegation to make it appear that the area was well-staffed and was able to process passengers without delay; and
that aliens held in a detention area called "hard secondary" were released to sit in a waiting area during the delegation's visit, again apparently to create the false impression that very few aliens were incarcerated and that the situation in dealing with potentially dangerous illegal aliens was well in hand.
We learned that a senior INS manager instructed a group of INS employees that if they were asked a question by any member of the delegation whether anyone other than criminal aliens were held in the cells in the area known as "hard secondary," they were to respond that only criminal aliens were so held. This constituted not merely a license to lie but an order to lie.

"Some senior officials became overtly obstructionist." Assistant District Director for External Affairs George Waldroup provided a diskette containing documents requested during his interview but then refused to provide the password that would a llow OIG investigators to access it. The OIG was forced to bring in computer specialists to reconstruct electronic mail files from the backup files that were eventually obtained from the server. Despite the OIG's efforts to get INS to preserve its records, some e-mail was deleted before the investigators could review it.

Comment: It is a crime to lie to a federal agent (OIG investiagtors) and destruction of evidence is the crime of obstruction of justice.

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/9606/testimony.htm


What is Joint Task Force -121?

IT is a highly classified field Army/AirForce/Navy (and possibly CIA) unit that has been activated to coordinate the hunt for "high-value targets." (mission is Afghanistan). Its organization and structure have been streamlined to improve its ability to concentrate on real-time hunter-killer missions (to kill or capture and interrogate) against terrorist leaders and cells. A three-star command is also being designed to oversee the most clandestine elements of U.S. special operations, according to senior officers close to the community.
The very secretiveness of special operations makes it hard for the public, or even members of Congress charged with oversight, to keep informed about the new tactics or to measure their effectiveness.

Only about 1,500 "black" special operators are assigned to clandestine units at any one time, including JTF 121 and the so-called Gray Fox intelligence unit.

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/latimes81.html


The "buzz" on the Internet is that Task Force 121 is a new elite assassination death squad trained by the Israelis at Fort Bragg. First, Task Force 121 is not a brand new Special Operations unit....More likely, the Israelis were sharing intelligence or maybe some of their vast experience in operating in Arab countries. (translated: their vast experience in torture methods).

http://students.engr.scu.edu/~jabraham/specwar/specops/us/tf121/page1.html

What is SOG?

Six years ago when he took charge of the CIA, George Tenet began rebuilding the supersecret Special Operations Group (SOG). Hundreds of millions of additional dollars have been pumped into the CIA budget by President George W. Bush. He has ordered SOG operatives to join forces with foreign intelligence services. He has even authorized the CIA to kidnap "terrorists" in order to break their cells or kill them.
Comment: When was torture authorized? Because there existed a "JTF-121 interrogation policy".
The CIA had about 100 officers and SOG troops roaming in Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion.
Intelligence sources tell Time that the CIA had requested that commandos from the U.S. Army's elite Delta Force join its first team going into Afghanistan but that the Pentagon refused to send them.
The part of the (CIA) SOG air force that has received the most publicity lately is the fleet of remote-controlled Predator drones, armed with 5-ft.-long Hellfire missiles, that the agency bought from the Air Force.

How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation or top secret special-access program, (SAP), known inside the intelligence community by code words, Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official in confirmed the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.
Note: That during the Clinton admininstration, the CIA started built a secret paramilitary (aka Special Forces) Army estimated in size to be 200 to 500 men.
Rumsfeld authorized the establishment of the SAP that was given blanket advance approval to kill or capture and, if possible, interrogate “high value” targets in the Bush Administration’s war on terror. The program would recruit operatives and acquire the necessary equipment, including aircraft. Fewer than two hundred operatives and officials, including Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were “completely read on to the program,” the former intelligence official said. The goal was to keep the operation protected.
“Rumsfeld’s goal was to get a capability in place to take on a high-value target—a standup group to hit quickly,” a former high-level intelligence official told me. “He got all the agencies together—the C.I.A. and the N.S.A.—to get pre-approval in place. Just say the code word and go.” The operation had across-the-board approval from Rumsfeld and from Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser. President Bush was informed of the existence of the program, the former intelligence official said.

The people assigned to the program worked by the book, the former intelligence official told me. They ...recruited, after careful screening, highly trained commandos and operatives from America’s élite forces—Navy seals, the Army’s Delta Force, and the C.I.A.’s paramilitary experts.

In theory, the operation enabled the Bush Administration to respond immediately to time-sensitive intelligence: commandos crossed borders without visas and could interrogate terrorism suspects deemed too important for transfer to the military’s facilities at Guantánamo, Cuba. They carried out instant interrogations—using force if necessary—at secret C.I.A. detention centers scattered around the world. The intelligence would be relayed to the sap command center in the Pentagon in real time, and sifted for those pieces of information critical to the “white,” or overt, world.

One Pentagon official who was deeply involved in the program was Stephen Cambone, who was named Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in March, 2003. Early in his tenure, Cambone provoked a bureaucratic battle within the Pentagon by insisting that he be given control of all special-access programs that were relevant to the war on terror.

In mid-2003, the special-access program was regarded in the Pentagon as one of the success stories of the war on terror. “It was an active program,” the former intelligence official told me. “It’s been the most important capability we have for dealing with an imminent threat. If we discover where Osama bin Laden is, we can get him. And we can remove an existing threat with a real capability to hit the United States—and do so without visibility.” Some of its methods were troubling and could not bear close scrutiny, however.

By then, the war in Iraq had begun. The sap was involved in some assignments in Iraq, the former official said.

Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the sap, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation.

“They weren’t getting anything substantive from the detainees in Iraq,” the former intelligence official told me. “No names. Nothing that they could hang their hat on. Cambone says, I’ve got to crack this thing and I’m tired of working through the normal chain of command. I’ve got this apparatus set up—the black special-access program—and I’m going in hot. So he pulls the switch, and the electricity begins flowing last summer. And it’s working. We’re getting a picture of the insurgency in Iraq and the intelligence is flowing into the white world. We’re getting good stuff. But we’ve got more targets”—prisoners in Iraqi jails—“than people who can handle them.”
Cambone then made another crucial decision, the former intelligence official told me: not only would he bring the sap’s rules into the prisons; he would bring some of the Army military-intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi prisons under the sap’s auspices...Hard-core special operatives, some of them with aliases, were working in the prison at Abu Ghraib.
By fall, according to the former intelligence official, the senior leadership of the C.I.A. had had enough. “They said, ‘No way. We signed up for the core program in Afghanistan—pre-approved for operations against high-value terrorist targets—and now you want to use it for cabdrivers, brothers-in-law, and people pulled off the streets’”—the sort of prisoners who populate the Iraqi jails. “The C.I.A.’s legal people objected,” and the agency ended its sap involvement in Abu Ghraib, the former official said.

Comment: Was CIA Director Trent fired because he blow the whisle on Bush and Rumsfeld's secret SAP to HERSH?

The C.I.A.’s complaints were echoed throughout the intelligence community. There was fear that the situation at Abu Ghraib would lead to the exposure of the secret sap, and thereby bring an end to what had been, before Iraq, a valuable cover operation. “This was stupidity,” a government consultant told me. “You’re taking a program that was operating in the chaos of Afghanistan against Al Qaeda, a stateless terror group, and bringing it into a structured, traditional war zone. Sooner or later, the commandos would bump into the legal and moral procedures of a conventional war with an Army of a hundred and thirty-five thousand soldiers.”
In a separate interview, a Pentagon consultant, who spent much of his career directly involved with special-access programs, spread the blame. “The White House subcontracted this to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon subcontracted it to Cambone,” he said. “This is Cambone’s deal, but Rumsfeld and Myers approved the program.” When it came to the interrogation operation at Abu Ghraib, he said, Rumsfeld left the details to Cambone. Rumsfeld may not be personally culpable, the consultant added, “but he’s responsible for the checks and balances. The issue is that, since 9/11, we’ve changed the rules on how we deal with terrorism, and created conditions where the ends justify the means.”
The government consultant said that there may have been a serious goal, in the beginning, behind the sexual humiliation and the posed photographs. It was thought that some prisoners would do anything—including spying on their associates—to avoid dissemination of the shameful photos to family and friends. The government consultant said, “I was told that the purpose of the photographs was to create an army of informants, people you could insert back in the population.” The idea was that they would be motivated by fear of exposure, and gather information about pending insurgency action, the consultant said.
... One book that was frequently cited was “The Arab Mind,” a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at, among other universities, Columbia and Princeton, and who died in 1996. The book includes a twenty-five-page chapter on Arabs and sex, depicting sex as a taboo vested with shame and repression. “The segregation of the sexes, the veiling of the women . . . and all the other minute rules that govern and restrict contact between men and women, have the effect of making sex a prime mental preoccupation in the Arab world,” Patai wrote. Homosexual activity, “or any indication of homosexual leanings, as with all other expressions of sexuality, is never given any publicity. These are private affairs and remain in private.” The Patai book, an academic told me, was “the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior.” ...It became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March, 2003, invasion of Iraq.
In 2003, a group of senior military legal officers from the Judge Advocate General’s (jag) Corps to pay two surprise visits within five months to Scott Horton, who was then chairman of the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on International Human Rights. “They wanted us to challenge the Bush Administration about its standards for detentions and interrogation,” Horton told me. “They were urging us to get involved and speak in a very loud voice. It came pretty much out of the blue. The message was that conditions are ripe for abuse, and it’s going to occur.” The military officials were most alarmed about the growing use of civilian contractors in the interrogation process, Horton recalled. “They said there was an atmosphere of legal ambiguity being created as a result of a policy decision at the highest levels in the Pentagon. The jag officers were being cut out of the policy formulation process.” They told him that, with the war on terror, a fifty-year history of exemplary application of the Geneva Conventions had come to an end.

http://newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040524fa_fact


History of CIA Atrocities

Comment: I have modified the follow article to include the CIA's (or the Enterprise's) drug trafficking

6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations

INTRODUCTION

The following timeline describes just a few of the hundreds of atrocities and crimes committed by the CIA since 1943. 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.

TIMELINE

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). OSS intervened covertly in the internal politics of Italy and France. In Sicily the OSS allied with the Mafia to assist the Allied forces in their 1943 invasion of the island. After taking control of Sicily, the U.S. army returned favours to the Mafia by appointing Don Calogero Vizzini (the leader of the Sicilian Mafia) mayor of Villalba. Genco Russo (Calogero's successor as Sicily's Mafia boss) was appointed mayor of Mussumeli. Under the command of Colonel Charles Poletti, the former lieutenant governor of New York, the Allied Military Government selected Mafiosi as mayors in many towns across western Sicily. Within five years the, Mafia controlled politics in Sicily.
As Italian politics drifted to the left in 1943-1944, the alliance between American intelligence and the Mafia was maintained to check the growing strength of the Italian Communist Party in Sicily, Don Calogero rendered services to Washington's anti-Communist efforts by breaking up left-wing political rallies. On September 16th 1944, for example, a Communist rally ended abruptly in a hail of gunfire as Don Calogero's men fired into the crowd and wounded 19 spectators.
In 1946, American military intelligence made an enormous gift to the. Mafia - they released Salvatore "Lucky" Luciano from prison in New York and deported him to Italy, thereby freeing one of the criminal talents of his generation to rebuild the heroin trade. Luciano was the man who had, almost single-handedly, built the Mafia into the most powerful criminal syndicate in the United States. Within two years after Luciano's return to Italy, the U.S. government deported more than 100 more Mafiosi. With the help of these people and his old friend Don Calogero, Luciano was able to quickly build an international narcotics syndicate. For more than a decade, this syndicate moved morphine base from the Middle East to Europe, transformed it into heroin, and then exported it in substantial quantities to the United States - all without suffering a major arrest or seizure. The organisation's comprehensive distribution network within the United States helped raise the number of addicts from an estimated 20,000 at the close of World War II to 60,000 in 1952 and to 150,000 by 1965. Luciano became a millionaire many times over.

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.
Operation PAPERCLIPWhile 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) . 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 Galen 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 createdPresident 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, anti-sabotage, 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."
ItalyThe 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. At this time the Sicilian Mafia were relying on Marseilles' (French) Corsican syndicates for their drug supplies.
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 40’s: Operation MOCKINGBIRDThe CIA begins recruiting American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda. Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham head the effort. 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.
France: 1948 to 1950
The CIA allied itself with the Corsican underworld in its fight against the French Communist Party (then the largest political party in France) for control over the strategic Mediterranean port of Marseilles.
The CIA turned to the city's Corsican crime gangs to break the 1950 Communist dock strike in Marseilles, France.
The CIA also sent agents and a psychological warfare team to Marseilles, where they dealt directly with Corsican syndicate leaders through the Guerini brothers. The Agency supplied arms and money to the Corsican gangs for harassment of union officials and assaults on Communist picket lines, murdering a number of strikers in the process.
By supplying the Corsican syndicates with money and support, the CIA broke the last barrier to unrestricted Corsican heroin smuggling operations in Marseilles. The Corsicans used their control over the port to turn it into the heroin capital of Europe and to dominate the export of heroin to the U.S. market.
The Corsicans also enjoyed political protection from France's intelligence service, the SDECE, which allowed their heroin laboratories to operate undisturbed for nearly 20 years

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-ULTRAInspired 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.

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 "Army 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.
CIA trafficks in drugs to support covert operations and the Laos economy. The CIA's involvement with the international drugs trade can be traced back to the Agency's covert operations in the Far East, Latin America and Europe in the early stages of the Cold War. CIA operatives directly assisted underworld narcotics traffickers in these areas, aligning together in a fight against Communism and the left. The CIA has allied itself with heroin merchants in Laos, Chinese opium dealers in Burma, military drug lords in Thailand and Panama, Colombian cocaine cartels in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and guerrilla opium armies in Afghanistan
The CIA and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) supplied the region's opium and heroin dealers with arms, ammunition, transportation of food supplies, buildings and "humanitarian aid", in exchange for mercenary forces or political leverage. These dealers included the Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Chinese) on the Chinese border, Hmong tribesmen in Laos led by narcotics trafficker Vang Pao, and various political factions in South Vietnam and Burma.

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 would 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. When the Agency attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro in the 1960s, it employed American Mafia syndicates.
Dominican RepublicThe 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.
EcuadorThe 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: Kennedy Assassination

1963: Dominican Republic
The CIA overthrows the democratically elected Juan Bosch in a military coup. The CIA installs a repressive, right wing junta.
EcuadorA 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 that 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 RepublicA 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.
GreeceWith 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 reveal 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 Cyprus, Johnson tells him: "Fuck your parliament and your constitution."

Vietnam Operation PHOENIX
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."
CIA chief of station Ted Shackley exercised overall command over the Agency's covert operations in Laos. (He later managed Operation Phoenix, the CIA's mass murder "pacification" programme in Vietnam). Shackley's CIA deputy in Laos, Tom Clines, managed ground support activities for the war, and U.S. Air Force liaison Richard Secord, then a lieutenant colonel, supplied most of the aircraft for Air America and other CIA proprietary airlines.
Shackley, Clines and Secord, together with Robert Jantzen, the CIA's station chief in Thailand and CIA officer Edwin Wilson, were cited in the late 1970s in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal in Australia, which was found to be heavily involved in drug trafficking between Thailand and Australia, as well as money laundering and illegal weapons deals.
The CIA's Senior Liaison Office, under the command of Edward Lansdale, worked closely with South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky's administration during the war, and Ky was heavily involved in narcotics trafficking. One of Ky's strongest supporters in the air force, Colonel Phan Phung Tien, was close to many Corsican gangsters and was implicated in the smuggling of drugs between Laos and Vietnam.

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 Sihanouk, 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.
CambodiaCongress votes to cut off CIA funds for its secret war in Cambodia.
Watergate Break-inPresident 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 investigationsWilliam 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 ScandalThe CIA's main collaborating newspaper in America, The Washington Post, reports Nixon's crimes long before any other newspaper take 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 FiredPresident 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
exposedPulitzer 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 firedCongress 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 WatergateThe House of Representatives clears the CIA of any complicity in Nixon's Watergate break-in.
The Hughes Ryan ActCongress passes an amendment requiring the president to report non-intelligence 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.
AngolaEager 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 wrongdoingPublic 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 CommissionIn 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.

Lebanon: CIA Trains Phalangists on how to bomb civilians

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.
NicaraguaAnastasios 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.

Afghan-Pakistan 1980's
The CIA's operation in Afghanistan was the second largest covert war in its 40-year history. Only its secret war in Laos was bigger and more expensive.
When the failure of the monsoon rains for two consecutive years reduced the Golden Triangle's opium production to a record low in 1980, a network of heroin laboratories opened along the Afghan-Pakistan border to service the global markets opened by the drought in Southeast Asia. Afghanistan's mujahedin guerrillas correspondingly expanded production in their zones and shipped the raw opium to the Afghan-Pakistan border refineries for processing into heroin.
Soon after President Reagan took office in 1981, the White House offered a $3 billion programme of military aid to General Zia's harsh Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship in Pakistan and Zia's military quickly assumed a dominant role in supplying arms to the mujahedin. The CIA worked closely with Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI), which the Agency helped build into a powerful covert operations unit and the strong arm of Zia's martial-law regime.
During the ten years of CIA support for the mujahedin resistance against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the U.S. government was silent about the involvement in the heroin traffic of leading Afghan guerrillas and the Pakistan military. In particular, the CIA allied with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the small mujahedin Hezbi-i Islami group, and over the next decade the Agency gave Hekmatyar more than half its covert aid, building the Hezbi-i Islami into the largest guerrilla force in the country. Hekmatyar also used the Agency's arms, logistics and support to become the region's largest drug lord. Within a year, the surge of his heroin production had captured over 60% of the American market.
An Islamic militant, the brutal and corrupt Hekmatyar had founded the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1970s, when his activities included dispatching followers to throw vials of acid into the faces of women students who refused to wear veils. Hekmatyar allied himself with Pakistan's Jamaat-i Islami (Party of Islam), a fundamentalist and quasi-fascist Muslim group with many members inside the Pakistani officer corps.
By 1989, the CIA's complicity in global narcotics traffic had allowed world opium production to multiply fourfold to 4,200 tons a year. Significantly, three quarters of this came from Southeast Asia where the Agency had worked with the region's drug lords for 24 years. Most of the balance came from southern Asian opium hills and heroin laboratories controlled by the CIA's Afghan guerrilla clients. Just as CIA support for KMT forces had increased Burma's opium crops in the 1950s, so the Agency's aid to the mujahedin guerrillas expanded opium production in Afghanistan and linked Pakistan's nearby heroin laboratories to the world market.

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 (aka The Enterprise) . This includes "humanitarian aid" donated by Adolph Coors and William Simon, and military aid funded by Iranian arms sales.
Comment: The building the private funding for covert operations - the Enterprise goes back to Watergate days and the end of the Vietnam war.

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 ScandalAlthough 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.
The CIA used on the Saudi government to fund, through secret BCCI accounts, the Contras and other anti-Communist groups such as UNITA in Angola. Saudi Arabia's secret contributions to the Contras were estimated by congressional investigators to be $32 million in 1984-5. The NSC also maintained accounts with BCCI, which were used to support the Contras.
Acting CIA Director Richard Kerr told Congress in 1986 that the Agency was well aware that BCCI "was involved in illegal activities such as money-laundering, narcotics and terrorism."
Back in his days as Vice President, George Bush intervened with federal regulators in a corrupt Florida Savings and Loans scam that close friends, his sons Jeb and Neil, and a handful of Mafia associates were systematically plundering. This operation eventually went bust with losses of $700 million. In another Savings and Loans bust that cost $200 million in a shady land deal, the money disappeared via Du Pont's St. Joe Paper Co. Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. It is now believed that the looted funds were used by the CIA to procure weapons for Iraq. A central figure in the Savings and Loans fraud was Walter Mischer, a long-time acquaintance of George Bush. Mischer was closely connected to the New Orleans Marcello family, one of the most powerful Mafia clans in the country.The Washington DC-based Palmer National Bank was established by Herman Beebe, the so-called godfather of the Florida Savings and Loans scandals, associate of the Louisiana mob, and business associate of Walter Mischer. Palmer National Bank's board included Stefan Halper (a member of the Nixon White House and son-in-law of Ray Cline, formerly Deputy Director of Intelligence at the CIA), Frederick Malek (Nixon's White House personnel chief and the Bush-Quayle campaign manager), William Kilberg (member of the Reagan-Bush transition team) and John Knebel (President Ford's Secretary of Agriculture). Palmer National's clients included the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty (NEPL) who provided $10 million to Oliver North's covert networks to Nicaragua and Iran. This operation was the brainchild of the CIA's William Casey.

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 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: HaitiThe 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.

1. 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.

2. Coleman McCarthy, "The Consequences of Covert Tactics", Washington Post, December 13, 1987.
http://www.serendipity.li/cia/cia_time.htm Source: via Mark Nagel

and http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/cia2.htm

Copyright 1996 Steve KangasText can be quoted freely for non-commercial purposes only, with proper attribution.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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