Okay. I'm ready to handle it. Just how bad was our CIA in the 70s?

[The Backlash Cometh]

I went to an American school in a latin American country and I had two friends who were convinced that their fathers died due to assassinations. One of the fathers was a diplomat and I do believe he may have had something to do with oil, hard to say. The other just said that her father was riding on a commercial plane that crashed - that also included a diplomat which she felt was targeted for assassination. Both were anglo-Americans.

Didn't know these girls or their families very well. But these are comments that I did hear come directly from their mouths. How bizzare is it by today's standards? Not much, is it?

[blm]

1. Oil and drugs....BushInc's realm. You may be interested in this thread

as a review piece on how they operate.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5703587

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Surreal.

Can you imagine how Kerry must have felt losing that last election? He was hot on their trail, and they keep weaseling away from him. Oliver North. Why is that bastard allowed to have such popularity in the Republican party without all good men of conscience realizing how he puts a stain on anything he touches.

[blm]

5. This is how they operate and you can see how the media won't discuss it

even when it's a matter of record.

I believe we are now seeing an epic battle between the good guys in the CIA loyal to Americans and the agents loyal to BushInc.

[robbedvoter]

20. he didn't lose. Didn't dare to fight for his win, but won nevertheless.

[lvx35]

2. I don't think its that bizzarre

But you also have to keep in mind that the CIA works by proxy in a lot of cases, so you have some group of local murderous badasses, who happen to not like the communists, then the CIA starts backing them. That's my understanding of how things went down in south america a lot. So if one of the CIA backed badasses kills somebody or other, there is some question as to whether the CIA actually wanted them dead, or whether they just wanted to be allied with the people who exceed at killing.

[papau]

4. Very True - I thought the CIA in the late 50's and in the 60's was a much

more "wet work" kind of place than it was thereafter.

As you say, Station chiefs could not control what their friends did , but looking the other way during the contra days was a bit special.

The GOP definition of enemy of US democracy was expansive in the 50's and 60's and included anyone anti-oil control by US Companies, or the least bit socialist. It has remained expansive, but the CIA has become less an arm of the GOP, as far as I can tell. I suspect that is the reason that Bush developed his bypass of CIA/NSA management.

The FBI post Hoover was not bad until it went political as its head promised loyalty to the GOP as he went after Clinton.

[baldguy]

6. John Negroponte introduced the idea death squads to Latin America.

Armed by America. Trained by America.

Now he's the Director of National Intelligence for w.

[0007]

15. .....and this Iran/Contra piece of shit, John Negroponte, receives no

notoriety from the press. American is definitely in a deep sleep or scared shit-less.

[The Backlash Cometh]

18. Believe me, there was nothing they did by force, that couldn't have

been achieved by other means. They introduced violent means into countries that previously knew of no such political vengeance. No wonder latin American leaders have no respect for this Administration.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. Let's see, just what I remember offhand==

1) Fomenting the revolution against the legally elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, resulting in about 20 years of repression under Pinochet.

2) Sanctioned and supported the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony that had opted for independence instead of joining Indonesia. Over 200,000 residents of East Timor were killed.

3) Supported Lon Nol's coup against Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, destabilizing the country and leading indirectly to the Khmer Rouge genocide.

4) Armed and encouraged Islamic fundamentalist insurgents against the Marxist revolutionary government of Afghanistan, which came to poewr in a coup in March 1978. They were arming these insuragents BEFORE the Soviets were invited in by the Afghan government to quell the rebellion in December 1979 (the so-called "invasion").

I was going to add Panamanian president Omar Torrijos' evident assassination by plane crash, but I just Googled it and found out that it occurred in 1981.

However, the skullduggery goes way back, most notoriously to the 1954 overthrow of the democratically elected president of Guatemala, resulting in forty years of brutal dictatorship, and the overthrow of the liberal Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953, leading to the brutal reign of the Shah, who killed or exiled all his moderate opponents, leaving only the wackos under Ayatollah Khomeini.

And mind you, that's just what I remember. There's plenty more.

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. The Torrijos thingie has me puzzled.

If I have heard the rumor that he was assassinated, then certainly his son did too. And his son went to Texas A & M, and is now running the country. How screwed up is that?

[johnaries]

21. I remember the Congressional Hearings over shellfish toxin.

The CIA had a special type of "assasination" gun that would shoot a dart that would inject the subject with shellfish toxin. Looked just like a heart attack.

[kevsand]

27. Everyone knows that Allende committed suicide.

With a sub-machine gun. From a distance of twenty paces. Stopping only twice to reload. (I think that's how the National Lampoon described it.)

There's also a real Kissinger quote that I vaguely remember. I think it was from NSA minutes. Something to the effect that "if the people of Chile are irresponsible enough to elect a socialist government, we have no choice but to intervene."

[shance]

8. Is the CIA primarily a right winged organization?

I dont know much of its origin, but it seems it was started by right winged interests.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Officially it grew out of the spy agency that operated during WWII

but it took on a life of its own.

Every nation has a spy agency, and its principal job is to keep things from ordinary people. If your library has Victor Marchetti's The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, the first book ever subjected to pre-publication censorship, read it. It was written in about 1979, so it will tell you a lot about what was going on in the 1970s.

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. I think any spy agency is going to have trouble keeping things from

the public in this era of the blogs. Maybe that is a signal to them that it's time for them to resort to methods that have integrity? For example, if you want to take down a latin American leader, take pictures of him buying or selling drugs and show it to the public. They need to find more pacifist and creative ways of achieving their goals.

[shance]

13. Thanks for the referral Lydia.

I guess if there is anything beneficial about all that is going on in this country is the information that is coming to light, and/or being re-visited.

It seems the key to our success depends on our knowledge of our history.

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. You would think so, wouldn't you?

Bush 1 Was a CIA director and the Dems are the ones that tried to cut back on their abuse of power.

[shance]

14. Yes. Perhaps the Dems have been the real protectors of truth for quite

a while now.

[RoyGBiv]

16. Read _In Search of Enemies_

by John Stockwell, formerly of the CIA. That's a good start.

[stillcool]

17. Steve Kangas wrote a timeline of CIA atrocities...

prior to being suicided in a bathroom coincidentally located in the Scaife Office Building
http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/CIAtimeline.html

and this one has some good CIA history as well...
http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/L-overclass.html

[The Backlash Cometh]

19. No wonder no one respects us, and guess what? This is why Cheney

Rumsfeld and the neo con group are doing everything by force. Because they know that no country believes their word any more. It just came to me.

[stillcool]

24. It's been very difficult for me to absorb...

the picture of what has really been going on in during my own frigging history. The thing is other governments contribute to weaving these webs..it is not simply a case of a corrupt republican administrtion, but more American/Global corporations with massive wealth and reach that spans throughout our history. Granted, Bushco are a stunning example of bullying corruption, as they loot the federal government and redistribute the wealth, but their actions have had the effect of really blowing the lid off this can of worms.

[The Backlash Cometh]

26. You're right. George Bush's ineptitude just uncovered the sting.

We'll never look at any global, corporate or governmental action without questioning who is pulling the strings. Their formulas are becoming very, very transparent.

[BrotherBuzz]

22. To be fair, we should also examine The School of the Americas...

I think there is plenty of blame to go around.

What is the SOA?

The School of the Americas (SOA), in 2001 renamed the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation,” is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Former Panamanian President, Jorge Illueca, stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” The SOA, frequently dubbed the “School of Assassins,” has left a trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned.

Over its 59 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the School of Assassins.

http://www.soaw.org/new/type.php?type=8

[Disturbed]

23. For the Wesley Clark fans

Wesley Clark Vigorously Defends the US Army's 'School of Assassins'
CONCORD, NH -- Retired General Wesley K. Clark sometimes downplays his Army ...
The US Army School of the Americas, created in 1946, has been located since ...
www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0117-01.htm

[The Backlash Cometh]

25. Interesting.

Especially the comment that when a person is guilty of a white collar crime, you don't go and blame the college he graduated from. Well, maybe we should look into the number of CEOs who are caught in this web of corruption and see if there are any correlations?