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From: Brian Redman (bigxc@prairienet.org)
Date: Fri Jan 13 1995 - 06:03:44 PST
Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 3 Num. 47
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("Quid coniuratio est?")
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I received the following from a CN reader who wishes to remain
anonymous. What I plan to do is post the entire document over a
period of time, most likely in weekly installments. Here is part 9.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
CONSPIRACY:
THE INVISIBLE SECOND RUNG OF GOVERNMENT
An Investigation and Discussion of that Part of the United
States Government Which We Did Not Elect, Which Is Not
Accountable, Which Is Unconstitutional, Which Is Engaged In
Unlawful and Unconstitutional Activity, and Then Hides Behind
the National Security Act of 1947
PART I :
CITATION AND SUMMARY OF SOURCES
(continued)
33. Kessler, Ronald, Inside The CIA, New York, New York, Simon &
Schuster, Inc., 1992. Kessler is an author and award-winning
former investigative reporter. Summary: Documents CIA covert
action to influence or overthrow foreign governments or political
parties; development of eavesdropping devices that work by
zapping laser beams through windows. CIA officials failed to
tell their own boss, the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence),
the truth. "Not that they lied outright; they were too smart for
that. But by telling only half the story, by answering questions
precisely, by not addressing the real intent of [the DCI's]
questions, they had misled him" just as they had misled other
legal bodies of investigation. The DCI found that plans for
covert action were rarely scrutinized formally and their approval
was given informally. CIA misdeeds have been "aided and abetted
by a Congress that shirked its oversight duties." Documents how
the agency moves forward and backward, into and out of illegality
based on who the Director of Central Intelligence is.
Because of the competition between departments, the directorates
of those departments report "to the [DCI] only grudgingly,
fearful that its own turf will be infringed upon or that its
secrets will be shared with the other directorates."
The CIA's past attempt to humiliate Castro "by trying to get his
beard to fall off - something that only someone whose level of
maturity had not advanced beyond kindergarten could have dreamed
up." The CIA "is also secretive - sometimes foolishly so....Even
newspaper clippings have been stamped 'secret.'"
"A 1979 Opinion Research Corporation poll found 24% [of all
Americans] had an unfavorable opinion [of the CIA]....Unfavorable
opinions were highest among Americans who were college educated
and had higher incomes."
"CIA officers must be willing to break the laws of other
countries and lie....The most common form of fraud is when CIA
officers claim they have paid a local agent and actually kept the
money themselves. While agents are required to sign receipts, it
is easy to forge such documents."
The Agency's emphasis and rewarding of quantity, not quality, in
their efforts to recruit foreign spies has led them into
disaster. For example, it was discovered in 1987 that almost
every single spy recruited from Cuba were double agents reporting
back to Castro.
Since the end of the Cold War, higher priority has been given to
economic spying. "The CIA tries, for example, to find out
overseas what kinds of computers the Japanese are
developing....It is something like being able to eavesdrop on a
seller and his broker when negotiating to buy a house."
The CIA commonly meddles in the affairs of other countries, even
to the extent of overthrowing a legally and democratically
elected leader, which is how the U.S. ends up with a reputation
for being imperialistic and hypocritical. "'Defenders of covert
action would say we are fighting to preserve liberty and
democracy and the American way,' said Simmons, a former CIA
officer....'But when you get into the details, you wonder if they
are talking about the same thing. He may be an SOB and a
dictator, but he is our SOB, whereas Arbenz, who was
democratically elected, was not an SOB, but he wasn't ours.'"
A CIA inspector general's report uncovered dozens of attempts to
humiliate and assassinate Castro, which included the aid of Mafia
gangsters Sam Giancana and John Roselli. The CIA also developed
plans to assassinate the head of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, and
attempts to control elections in Chili. They spent $8 million
attempting to mount a military coup against and to prevent the
confirmation of Salvadore Allende's presidential election.
"In principle, I think we ought to discourage the idea of
fighting secret wars or even initiating most covert operations.
When the United States violates those principles - when we mine
harbors in Nicaragua - we fuzz the difference between ourselves
and the Soviet Union," said George Ball, undersecretary of state
in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. "In the last
analysis, covert action has contributed very little to
strengthening the national security of the U.S. If an action is
worth taking, it should be done openly." Covert action allows
the government to pursue unquestioned policy while "avoiding
asking itself the tough questions it would normally ask before
taking action in the open."
Senior CIA officers "keep in touch with chief executive officers
of major corporations in order to place defectors in jobs."
CIA abuses included "programs for opening mail between U.S. and
Soviet-bloc countries and for compiling files on dissident
Americans." The latter program accumulated 13,000 files on 7,200
Americans and "included the names of 300,000 American citizens
and organizations." Most CIA abuses have "been approved by CIA
directors at the time and even attorneys general of the U.S."
Former Agency officers claim they have never engaged in any
covert activity not ordered by the White House, a president or a
cabinet officer.
The CIA "had been providing funds to the National Student
Association." This, of course, "raised suspicions both in the
eyes of foreigners and of Americans that U.S. institutions might
have dual allegiances - one to their directors or trustees and
one to the CIA."
Frank E. Olson committed suicide "after the CIA had given him LSD
without his knowledge." The consequences for those agents
involved were merely a letter of reprimand which was not even
placed in their personnel files. In reference to another abuse,
the illegal imprisonment for three and a half years of Yuri
Nosenko, Colby said, "That frightened me more than anything else,
the idea that an intelligence agency could secretly hold a man in
prison."
One of Richard Bissell's responses indicated CIA arrogance, that
"only CIA officers know what is good for the country. Elected
officials may be the representatives of the people, but they have
no business questioning the judgment of the CIA....The problem is
irresponsible scrutiny. The winks and nods and tacit approval:
'I don't want to hear these things. Don't tell me this. I need
to deny any knowledge.' Yet when an operation goes awry, these
very same people turn on you," said Saunders, a former CIA
officer.
"Today the Directorate of Science and Technology controls billion-
dollar satellites that see through clouds and even buildings with
radar and infrared imaging that senses heat. Other satellites
can intercept conversations of terrorists, trace narcotics
dealers' electronic transfers of money between bank accounts, and
see mobs in places such as Iraq, a machine gun under a tent, and
water or oil under the desert."
"The agency has a disguise capability that no one can touch," a
former OTS officer said.
"Besides administering the finances of the agency, the Office of
Financial Management launders money using dummy corporations and
multiple bank accounts worldwide in order to further the work of
the clandestine side of the agency."
The CIA's Office of Security "illegally wiretapped the telephones
of three newsmen...in order to determine their sources....And
while investigating CIA employees, the Office of Security
illegally conducted twelve break-ins and installed thirty-two
wiretaps and thirty-two bugs." DCI Webster found this Office of
Security to have the most problems, "to be still operating in the
dark ages and most resistant to change." One CIA officer
responsible for training new recruits lectures to them often that
critics of past CIA abuses are "unsophisticated detractors,"
defends the CIA having spied on Americans due to "national
security questions," and that "those who would destroy us and our
efforts were not the Soviets and our other worldwide enemies but
our own elected legislative representatives." Perhaps this CIA
instructor's worst failure is not informing new recruits that "by
subverting the law, the CIA subverts the very freedoms it is
trying to preserve, while failing to achieve its objectives."
"The CIA and other intelligence agencies can try to hide their
mistakes by claiming prosecutions would air secrets that would
compromise the work of the agencies."
"In debugging overseas stations, one of the biggest problems CIA
technicians face is not bugs but insistent requests from
ambassadors to sweep their offices. 'It's a status symbol,' a
former technician said. 'If the chief of station gets his done,
the ambassador wants his done, too.'"
In hiring a new recruit, training officers claim they want
"impeccable character and integrity." Yet, that same recruit
will be asked to "spend much of his or her life living a lie,
pretending to be someone he or she is not...." And, "you have to
have a passion for anonymity."
"Very few people [at the CIA] know the complete picture because
very few are allowed to know it," McGregor said. "That is what
makes it so difficult to get at the whole truth. This is
exacerbated by the fact that so very few feel any loyalty to the
head of the agency. Rather, their loyalties are to the heads of
their divisions or their directorates."
"Operations officers seldom suffered permanent career damage for
poor performance or incompetence, even when agents were killed or
compromised," said former CIA operations officer. They also "did
not understand the need for taking disciplinary action against
those who had violated the trust the agency placed in them" (as
in not telling the truth during the Iran-Contra investigation.
The CIA criticized the DCI for wanting to please Congress and the
public.
The CIA treats "the American press as an adversary" and has a
history of being involved "in the business of trying to suppress
books....Yet smart as [the CIA employees] were, they seemed to
have difficulty understanding why so many people had a negative
impression of what they do."
The CIA has laundered its money at the Nugan Hand Bank, which had
a reputation for taking your money without asking too many
questions. The CIA also used the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International (BCCI).
"It was the CIA's job to break laws, not to follow them. While
the laws that the CIA broke were those of other countries, it was
easy for the distinction between foreign laws and American laws
to be lost."
"Lawrence R. Houston, the agency's first general counsel, helped
draft the law establishing the agency. According to him, the
clause permitting the agency to engage in 'such other functions'
as the NSC directed referred only to intelligence collection, not
to covert action....'All during this drafting of the act, all
during the presentations to congressional committees and debates,
and all during the consideration in Congress, there was no
mention of covert action,' Houston said. 'It was entirely
intelligence....'" It was only later that Houston wrote a legal
opinion that if the president orders it and if Congress funded
it, then the "such other functions" could be stretched to include
covert action.
The author's 1976 request for material from the CIA under the
Freedom of Information Act took more than fourteen years for the
CIA to fulfill.
"The Classified Information Procedures Act of 1980 provides ways
for classified information to be handled by a court without
making it public."
A law suit was filed against the CIA by victims of Dr. D. Ewen
Cameron, who had conducted experiments on psychiatric patients
without their consent. His experiments subjected his patients
"to LSD, electroshock treatment up to 75 times the normal level,
and drug-induced sleep that lasted for weeks." The suit cost
taxpayers $750,000 for the settlement alone."
"Despite [DCI] Webster's best efforts, the Office of Security is
still in the Dark Ages, still prone to overlook legal niceties
and to act in a heavy-handed fashion." The agency still has
difficulty separating what should and shouldn't be kept
legitimate secrets.
"'We still have institutional biases that act as a wet blanket on
judgment,' Thomas Polgar, a former CIA station chief said. 'If
you say there is no more threat from Eastern Europe, that means
somebody's budget is going to be reduced. Self-interest enters
into it.'"
"The secrecy that envelops [the CIA] conflicts with inherent
American values and leads to mistrust. Too many times in the
past, that mistrust has been warranted. And the CIA is often
guilty of arrogance."
"No longer should Americans 'to a degree take it on faith,' as
Richard Helms proposed....The CIA's power can easily be misused
by unscrupulous directors or presidents."
[...to be continued...]
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
Brian Francis Redman bigxc@prairienet.org "The Big C"
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Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"
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