The CIA and Activities Domestic and Foreign
Putting little pieces together, as we're sure many others have already done, we wanted to ensure that our little pieces were made explicit. We posted about Robert Gates in Demonstrated Contempt for the Rule of Law, and then brought up the renewed US military activity that is slated for Central and South America in Iran Contra Redux.
We also have found a fascinating video dating some years back about what the CIA did between 1947 and 1987 around the world to influence events in favour of "US national (security) interests."
We also have found additional information that clarifies a bit about the video and adds information about this entire topic. Here is a snip:
THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA:
by John Stockwell
A lecture given in October, 1987
Part I
John Stockwell is the highest-ranking CIA official ever to leave the agency and go public. He ran a CIA intelligence-gathering post in Vietnam, was the task-force commander of the CIA's secret war in Angola in 1975 and 1976, and was awarded the Medal of Merit before he resigned. Stockwell's book In Search of Enemies, published by W.W. Norton 1978, is an international best-seller.
"I did 13 years in the CIA altogether. I sat on a subcommittee of the NSC, so I was like a chief of staff, with the GS-18s (like 3-star generals) Henry Kissinger, Bill Colby (the CIA director), the GS-18s and the CIA, making the important decisions and my job was to put it all together and make it happen and run it, an interesting place from which to watch a covert action being done...
I testified for days before the Congress, giving them chapter and verse, date and detail, proving specific lies. They were asking if we had to do with S. Africa, that was fighting in the country. In fact we were coordinating this operation so closely that our airplanes, full of arms from the states, would meet their airplanes in Kinshasa and they would take our arms into Angola to distribute to our forces for us....
What I found with all of this study is that the subject, the problem, if you will, for the world, for the U.S. is much, much, much graver, astronomically graver, than just Angola and Vietnam. I found that the Senate Church committee has reported, in their study of covert actions, that the CIA ran several thousand covert actions since 1961, and that the heyday of covert action was before 1961; that we have run several hundred covert actions a year, and the CIA has been in business for a total of 37 years."
To read all of it and to view the video, click here.
It is difficult to say where events will unfold next, but it seems clear that the US is setting itself to intervene in Central and South American politics in the coming two years. I won't say you saw it here first, but it seems beyond coincidence that Gates' appointment and the lifting of the ban on 'training' south of the border occured in the past two weeks.
