▲ 133 points
back
93 comments
If you have fatigue from years of reading about all sorts of underhanded spy action and diplomatic choices, one noteworthy thing about this writeup is that it shows multiple US officials who seemed to be acting with integrity and admirable values.
One of the earlier times I was reading about underhandedness, it involved a US ambassador raising red flags about grave human rights abuses by the foreign gov't. For whatever reason, that ambassador was replaced by one who would publicly deny what was going on. At the time I read that (long after it happened), I paid attention to the latter, villain ambassador, but not enough attention to the earlier ambassador, who seemed to be on the right side.
A bit like the saying from Mister Rogers lore, "Look for the helpers."[1]
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/198594-when-i-was-a-boy-and...
It may be soothing to focus on a few individuals who acted "with integrity and admirable values". The Guardian has a few articles about diplomats that recently resigned because they wanted no collusion with clear crimes against humanity. But that's anecdotal. The USA did their best to destroy democracy in South-America, put millions of people under military dictatures for decades, and induce the torture of tens of thousands. And most people in the USA agreed or didn't care.
> And most people in the USA agreed or didn't care.
Where did they hear about it, at the time, and what did they hear?
People really ought to read the Wikipedia on this. After 50 years, the evidence of practical US involvement is theoretical.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_i...
On the flip side, the US military intervention in Granada saved its democratic government from a coup and in Panama liberated it from a dictatorship. But there is a segment of people who need the US to be a pure villain. Fortunately, there is a lack of evidence that the US is doing worse than any other nation would if it had its power.
A stirring patriotic speech: "We can't be proved to be doing worse than others would do if given our power!"
They should engrave that on a monument somewhere.
The honest, moral ones seem to be the minority far too often.
I think a lot get pushed out for not going with the plan. It's like this in a lot of organizations. The other problem is morality is based on an individuals view. Most of the most egregious actions were likely deemed morally fine by those that perpetrated it. It's messed up. Working in the IC can be amazing and also nerve wrecking. Many bad decisions start out more as a Bad choice 1, bad choice 2, or bad choice 3.. and that's the only real options out there.
The CIA have been cowboys.. and I suspect that the modern CIA still has this going on.
What the US did in South America is appalling, and I can't believe they got away with it.
The women of Calama have been searching for decades for their children, brothers, and husbands who disappeared during the dictatorship of Pinochet.
Urge Anyone interested in this topic to read (or hear the free audio book read by the author on several platforms) the book about alende bringing the father or cybernetics to organize the country factories. It also show what the cia meddling actually cause on the ground.
Title is a joke on chigago boys: the Santigo boys
There are also many YouTube documentaries/videos about Chile's "Cybersyn", e.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ACfgc1o3P6o&pp=ygUIY3liZXJzeW4...
And a decent Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn
Nuts that when the coup was mounted the military completely gutted the Cybersyn facility out of sheer ignorance about what was being done inside.
I went to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, and I appreciate how blunt it is about US involvement in the coup. All-in-all a phenomenal museum.
I think it’s exceptionally appropriate on 911 for us to reconcile and understand that as a nation from the 1960s onward, and accelerating with the growth of the intelligence community since 9/11, the United States has covertly or clandestinely interfered with every nations political process worldwide since the end of WWII and the “Pax Americana.”
I was an intelligence officer for ~17 years, served in Iraq and saw first hand how heavy of a hand the US plays globally in a way that is so expansive and embedded there’s no single body (HPSCI, commissions etc…) that can control it.
Yes technically all collection, processing, dissemination etc… activities are still under congressional budget authorities and executive control and subject to judicial review.
However, the fact that title 10 and title 50 authorities are so broad and interchangable, in addition to the reach into industry for any ability to do data collection, that you couldn’t dismantle the US influence system even from the inside at this point. There’s also a million checks internally to ensure OPs are LEGALLY allowed, but that just means you found a loophole or have topcover, or find an OCA that will make your activity SAP
50 years from now the official position of representatives of powers (Russia, US, China, Israel, etc.) on their own actions from today will still be completely avoiding the topic. But some might, at best, halfheartedly admit that what happened "back then" was not their proudest moment and they could have done better, all while actually being worse. But that will be their water under someone else's bridge and as long as that water sill allows them to reap the benefits of their "not proudest moments" then it's just going to happen again and again with the next generations getting a minor point of conversation.
If Russia can "poison" Eastern Ukraine for their benefit, if the US can cut the legs from under a democracy for their benefit, if Israel can eradicate the people from a land for their benefit, etc. and live to fully enjoy that benefit, people are going to have these conversations on "ancient" history time and time again.
Its sad but that's a reality of the world. The idea that freedom and democracy mean some 100% fair and just system, where amoral actions just don't happen, or if they happen they are either very well justifiable or always punished are lovely, we all like that idea very much but... thats not the reality, not in 2024, not even with champions of western democracies.
Reality is extremely messy, mistakes, negligence, or sometimes outright evil behavior does and will happen.
There is the saying - the bigger dog f*ks all other dogs.
TBH such behavior massively feeds pro-russian propaganda and emotions in ie Europe or Middle east. Since they don't really have to invent massive fantasies just spin mildly actual history, if even needed and continue from there. I manage to see easily forest for the trees so to say, but I personally know quite a few smart people fail at that and lean more into anti-american sentiment, and with less educated minds its even easier.
> But that will be their water under someone else's bridge and as long as that water sill allows them to reap the benefits of their "not proudest moments" then it's just going to happen again and again with the next generations getting a minor point of conversation.
You are claiming at once that deepening our understanding of historic CIA misdeeds misses the forest for the trees, and then ignoring the trees to project current CIA misdeeds out 50+ years.
It's like the coastline paradox and the gambler's fallacy had a baby.
In my opinion, the transformation of the role of intelligence gathering arms of the state in the United States occurred after World War 2. What emerged from that heady moment was a transplantation of the ethos of the British Empire's intelligence apparatus. I noted in your bio a pdf -- "The Myth of Scarcity" -- that indicates that you have an inclination to pursue a matter to its root cause. What is proposed to you is that you review the provenance of 'Anglo-American' intelligence services to its beginnings in Elizabethan England.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Walsingham
Those who are familiar with that period of English history know full well that the 'realm' was engulfed in internal conflicts and that the 'system' devised to "protect the realm" viewed the "subjects of the Crown" as potential adversaries. There you will find the 'DNA' of CIA. [So r/1960s/1947 ..]
America won "World War 2" but lost its soul.
Secret police and the maintenance and extension of power through internal/external covert ops seem to be an inevitable feature of government at any scale.
Rome had the Frumentarii, and there are examples from Persia, China, and Sparta.
These were overt empires run by emperors. What we've had since the end of WWII is a covert empire directed by an informal pseudo-government of oligarchs, hidden under a veneer of democracy.
In the UK the Crown never changed its mind about internal adversaries, as the recent "spycops" inquiry shows.
In fact, we directly inherited the British spying apparatus via George Washington’s first counterintelligence apparatus which pre-existed the revolutionary war
People forget that George Washington was a traitor of the British crown directly - Which, of course I support however, Washington did not actually dismantle such power structures, simply transferring ownership of them
Thank you for this insight.
I'll do my best not to sound glib or combative, or judgmental; but I genuinely would love to know:
How did people working as 'intelligence officers' manage to make informed decisions without the fundamental knowledge that Iraq (and Afghanistan and Syria and Yemen etc) was basically a murderous, internationally illegal money laundering operation?
Or, to try and put it another way, what processes are used to make sure that people have enough information to be effective in their jobs, while also making sure they don't know/care about the unspeakable evil they're enabling? ... Is it just effective compartmentalization? Camaraderie? Nationalism?
Did you guys know, but just sort of not look at the elephant in the room? I'm probably failing at sounding non-judgmental... Apologies if so, but I've wondered this for a long time.
My answer would be too nuance for the Amount I’m interested in writing on this forum. I think it’s a combination of youthful exuberance, propagandized indoctrination from parents and society, etc. that leads certain groups to believe that you’re doing the right thing so whatever doubts you have, and even to whatever extent that you acknowledge the disconnect, there’s really no space to Change it even at the highest levels
Ultimately you decide whether or not you’re going to put blinders on, try to fix the system or exit the system.
I tried my best to Fix the system, but ultimately it was clear that I was going to be more effective outside of it and so I left it.
Well articulated. I hope you will continue this advocacy. If I can be of help at all even just as moral support, lmk.
Genuinely the best thing you can do is build non-governmental non-oligarchic cooperatively owned organizations
The only way out is through and it is by seizing the means of production, such that the ownership and control is exclusively and explicitly done by labor power
> 1960s
https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/TrumanLimitCIA....
[Deserves being quoted in full]:
Limit CIA Role To Intelligence by Harry S. Truman December 22, 1963 The Washington Post, page A11
INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21—I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.
I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.
Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.
But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.
Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department “treatment” or interpretations.
I wanted and needed the information in its “natural raw” state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.
Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being “upset.”
For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.
I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.
With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about “Yankee imperialism,” “exploitive capitalism,” “war-mongering,” “monopolists,” in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.
I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.
But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.
We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.
Copyright © 1963 by Harry S Truman
"I am, of course, referring to what in Latin America is often called “the first 9/11”: September 11, 1973, when the United States succeeded in its intensive efforts to overthrow the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile with a military coup that placed General Pinochet’s ghastly regime in office. The dictatorship then installed the Chicago Boys—economists trained at the University of Chicago—to reshape Chile’s economy. Consider the economic destruction, the torture and kidnappings, and multiply the numbers killed by 25 to yield per capita equivalents, and you will see just how much more devastating the first 9/11 was." - Noam Chomsky
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/noam-chomsky-responsib...
I see your September 11, 1973 and raise you the actual first 9/11, the fall of Barcelona in 1713 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41510919 ( tongue in cheek, no event is more important than another of course )
Remembered on this very day as "La Diada" in Catalunya.
I by no means support the efforts of the CIA in Chile, however it is worth noting how transformative the economy of Chile has been since then.
"The president’s White House lawyer subsequently advised Ford that his statement “was not fully consistent with the facts because all the facts had not been made known to you.”
Plus ça change...
I think the US was very concerned at the time that Chile under Allende would become a client state or a vassal of the Soviet Union similar to Cuba. The US still upholds the Monroe Doctrine which states that any intervention in the politics of the New World by foreign powers is a threat to the US. The US does not want any foreign interference or potential military bases in its 'backyard'.
I think that's an accurate explanation that many people will take as an excuse or justification.
The short of it is "the US (like all powers which can afford to, but more) will do whatever it needs to do for its benefit while crucifying the same actions from anyone else".
That sounds scarily familiar to how Russia sees Ukraine today, and I'm unable to see how it could justify what happened in the past or justify what is happening now.
From a HN commentator in 2054:
> I think Russia was very concerned at the time that Ukraine under Zelensky would become a client state or a vassal of the US. Russia still upholds the "No outsiders" Doctrine which states that any intervention in the politics of the Russian World by foreign powers is a threat to Russia. Russia does not want any foreign interference or potential military bases in its 'backyard'.
It was in fact a Soviet client state, but the Soviets themselves were starving in 1973 (they were actually importing US grains) and couldn't provide enough assistance to both Cuba and Chile.
Read about how a 25 year old American girl, Ronni Moffitt, who was a fundraiser and opponent of Chile's dictatorship, was killed by car bomb, along with Orlando Letelier, in Washington DC in 1976 by Chile's intelligence service. Convicted of the murder was Michael Townley, a US born man who moved to Chile and worked for Chile's intelligence service. Lots of interesting aspects of the case.
Henry Kissinger is a war criminal in the same club as Adolf Eichmann and Pol Pot. He is responsible for the deaths of millions.
The US, at least since WW2, are the bad guys. Look at what happened to the perpetrators of Unit 731. Or all the Nazis that ended up in positions of power in the West. I mean, look at the resume of Adolf Heusinger [1]. The US were the bad guys in the Cuban missile crisis, almost precipitating WW3. The USSR putting missiles in Cuba was a direct response to the US putting Jupiter MRBMs in Turkey. It's for the restraint of one man (Vasili Arkhopov [2]) that we didn't have a nuclear war.
In the 1950s, we started overthrowing governments at the behest of the interests of Western companies (eg Guatemala [3], Iran [4]).
Anytime any country has even hinted that they'd nationalize extraction industries of someone who was left-leaning won an election, that country would have a coup and the CIA's fingerprints would be all over it. Pinochet is just one of dozens of examples.
Now we largely exact vengeance for defying US interests by starving people to death (aka "economic sanctions"), a policy that has also killed millions.
None of this is principled. People may point to the Monroe doctrine or the Truman doctrine or defending democracy but we've overthrown too many democracies for that claim to have any credibility.
If this were Star Wars, we we would be the Empire.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
I agree with everything you've said here. The question is, what can really be done about it?
The US, at least since WW2, are the bad guys.
I'll go with "the US has been bad".
But to say that they were simply "the bad guys", in a world bursting full of bad guys in practically every corner, is simplistic and naive.
It also (ironically) denies these other societies any respect for their own agency, and their own salient capacity to be corrupt, incompetent, genocidal and warmongering, and run themselves into the ground in countless other ways without any help at all from the US. In that sense, it's actually quite a myopic and hegemonic way of looking at things.
> Secret White House Memo Documented Kissinger's Attitude: "I Don't See Why We Have to Sit Around and Let a Country Go Communist Due to the Irresponsibility of its Own People"
There is a saying, attributed to Stalin during the Yalta conference (but it's most definitely apocryphal): "I always thought that 'democracy' means the rule of the people but comrade Roosevelt here quite clearly explained to me that 'democracy' actually means the rule of the U.S. people". It's funny because apparently the top US diplomats and leaders genuinely do believe that.
I am eagerly awaiting the complete declassification of the JFK assasination documents, which will further damage the CIA's reputation.
Do you truly believe these documents will ever be released, unedited?
If there is anything really damning that happened, there is no reason it will be revealed, ever, or that documents about it still exist.
Why should they? Who is doing full constant oversight of whole CIA that has always upper hand above them to make it happen? Sorry but this is just a pipe dream, just look how that agency behaved when SHTF. Boeing kills whistleblowers despite literally whole world seeing what a shitshow that company is now. That's just effin Boeing, not folks who can kill almost anybody anywhere and not caring about consequences.
That was the old CIA, i'm sure they've stopped doing this and we should just accept what they say about countries today
Yep, at least they don't do this sort of thing any more: https://archive.ph/TnumH
The CIA was never one thing, working toward a single coherent goal. The liberation of Eastern Europe in the 1990s and the defense of Ukraine were partly the work of the CIA and allied intelligence services.
Except for the Cold War aspects of regime change in South America, and we know a lot of it had very little to do with geostrategic concerns and a lot to do with US private sector economic interests, the South American dictators they installed have done a lot that harms US interests in addition to the obvious harm to the people living there.
The CIA is capable of both and a lot more.
They don't have to. You can't travel anywhere in LA, SA or the ME without encountering the view that people have no agency.
Their leaders even cultivate that view as a means to stay in power. And there is an endless queue of commenters to percolate it forever.
Greatest psyop ever. The CIA could have gone out of business decades back and it wouldn't change anything.
Of course. They achieved their goal.
Director William Casey Quote: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything they believe is false!"
Those central and south american civil wars against communism were dirty, and consistent with how people there fought. CIA torture progams at black sites continue to the modern day where they let the local authorities use their own ethics in interrogations. CIA's history is ugly, but mostly because they partner with the local devils they know. However, communists never won elections, they manipulated them, and anyone familiar with 20th century history knows fighting communist expansion was a just war.
It appears CIA has stared into the abyss a bit too long and have turned their tactics against americans though. First with mk-ultra, then with the crack epidemic, and then with tolerating the fentanyl crisis by picking winners in the cartels and literally training the Zeta cartel at WHINSEC, along with abetting a refugee crisis to secure electoral influence for whoever the anti-populist party is.
The rationale appears to be they think they come out on top as the central committee if they orchestrate 20th century totalitarian playbooks in the west and become, as Karl Rove famously said, "history's actors." Nations needed their intelligence services, but in a post-national framework, many parts of them have become malignant. People should take heed of what is done on their behalf as after decades of dealing with devils to fight totalitarian communism, their chickens appear to be coming home to roost.