The Mental Militia has for some years now asked: From where does anti-American terrorism come? What has caused the world to hate America, when just fifty years ago the world loved us? What is the price for initiating aggression world-wide? Who prompted the abuse of American seats of Governmental power in order to do the things which have produced the world’s fear and hatred of America, of me and you? Why have we been lied to by our own government, and how deeply do the consequences of governmental deception run nowadays?
This article will grow in coming weeks. Check back at times to catch additions.
I would like to begin with a passage from a book:
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The clandestine mentality is a mind-set that thrives on secrecy and deception. It encourages professional amorality—the belief that righteous goals can be achieved through the use of unprincipled and normally unacceptable means. Thus, the cult of intelligence’s leaders must tenaciously guard their official actions from public view. To do otherwise would restrict their ability to act independently; it would permit the American people to pass judgment on not only the utility of their policies, but the ethics of those policies as well. With the cooperation of an acquiescent, ill-informed Congress, and the encouragement and assistance of a series of Presidents, the cult has built a wall of laws and executive orders around the CIA and itself, a wall that has blocked effective public scrutiny.
When necessary, the members of the cult of intelligence, including our Presidents, (who are always aware of, generally approve of, and often actually initiate the CIA’s major undertakings), have lied to protect the CIA and to hide their own responsibility for its operations. The Eisenhower administration lied to the American people about the CIA’s involvement in the Guatemalan coup d’etat in 1954, about the agency’s support of the unsuccessful rebellion in Indonesia in 1958, and about Francis Gary Powers’ 1960 U-2 mission. The Kennedy administration lied about the CIA’s role in the abortive invasion of Cuba in 1961, admitting its involvement only after the operation had failed disastrously. The Johnson administration lied about the extent of most U.S. government commitments in Viet Nam and Laos, and all of the CIA’s. And the Nixon administration publicly lied about the agency’s attempt to fix the Chilean election in 1970. For adherents to the cult of intelligence, hyprocrisy and deception, like secrecy, have become standard techniques for preventing public awareness of the CIA’s clandestine operations, and governmental accountability for them. And these men who ask that they be regarded as honorable men, true patriots, will, when caught in their own webs of deceit, even assert that the government has an inherent right to lie to its people…..
The original mission of the CIA was to coordinate the intelligence-collection programs of the various governmental departments and agencies, and to produce the reports and studies required by the national leadership in conducting the affairs of U.S. foreign policy. This was President Truman’s view when he requested that Congress establish the secret intelligence agency by passing the National Security Act of 1947. But General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Allen Dulles, and other veterans of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) — a virtually unregulated body, both romantic and daring, tailor-made to the fondest dreams of the covert operator — thought differently. They saw the emergency agency as the clandestine instrument by which Washington could achieve foreign-policy goals not attainable through diplomacy. They believed that the mantle of world leadership had been passed by the British to the Americans, and that their own secret service must take up where the British left off. Thus, they lobbied Congress for the power to conduct covert operations.
That Truman attempted to create an overt intelligence organization, one which would emphasize the gathering and analysis of information rather than secret operations, was commendable. That he thought he could control the advocates of covert action was, in retrospect, a gross miscalculation. Congress, in an atmosphere of Cold War tension, allowed itself to be persuaded by the intelligence professionals. With the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 it allowed the new agency special exemptions from the normal congressional reviewing process, and these exemptions were expanded two years later by the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949. Of the greatest and most far-reaching consequences was the provision in the 1947 law that permitted the CIA to “perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence…as the National Security Council may from time to time direct.” From those few innocuous words the CIA has been able, over the years, to develop a secret charter based on NSC directives and presidential executive orders, a charter almost at complete variance with the apparent intent of the law that established the agency. This vague phrase has provided the CIA with freedom to engage in covert action, the right to intervene secretly in the internal affairs of other nations. It has done so usually with the express approval of the White House, but almost always without the consent of Congress, and virtually never with the knowledge of the American public.” (1)
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I have, numerous times, mentioned the book from which the above is quoted. It is often referred to as a catalyst which helped shape the subsequent Church Senate Oversite Committee hearings, among other spawns of angst. Time and time again, the CIA has intruded into the sovereignty of an almost uncountable list of nations abroad.
As early as December, 1963, President Harry S. Truman, the very President who gave us the CIA, made this statement: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational arm and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.”
We may note: Looking back in history, we find that other governmental agencies “created” by Presidents began their plight under a set of rules and guidelines and laws which limited their evolution, only to break away from their initial premises. Carter’s creation, FEMA, for example, has gone madly afar from the vision of its benefactor, Jimmy Carter in just over twenty years of existence. Now it is known that FEMA spends more than seventy percent of its annual budget on “protecting the government” from its own citizenry. Consider the FEMA camps and bunkers, the “secret government” which relies upon FEMA accommodations.
And as early as 1953, the British intelligence community, at the request of British Petroleum (BP), approached the CIA for assistance in taking out the government of Iran because Iran dared to think of nationalizing its oil industry. CIA took down the government of Iran and replaced it with their own puppet government. It was a coup, and CIA had previously arranged to put the Shah in power, which was done. They did this not to protect America, not even to protect “American interests”, not even to enhance “democracy”; they did it to help British Petroleum administer its business with the Iranian people and their oil. That was in 1953, a scant six years after CIA’s inception.
TMM note: We will eventually get to a subtle connection here which escapes attention usually. That connection has to do with partial ownership of the Federal Reserve System, Inc., by the House of Rothschild in England. The House of Rothschild has been instrumental for a full century in assaulting the public consciousness in America, in establishing and then taking over control of the world’s central banks, in regulating U.S. Federal legislations, activities, and policies. Of the four families of Globalizing Socialist Bankers, the Rothschilds may be considered to be the most powerful, as evidenced by the bold, blatant abuse of America’s new intelligence agency in 1953, the CIA. The coup in Iran in ’53 was done under a cloak of secrecy. Although we now see why, at the time it was done the American people had virtually no clue about what was being done behind their backs by a government agency in the grip of an English plot. It is history. It is done. It is a blight upon the Federal government and the CIA. It marks perhaps the provable beginning of U.S. tampering with the destiny of foreign nations in the Islamic world. You may read the entire accounting, which has now been de-classified, in the New York Times’ archives. In fact, I think I will just post it here in coming days. Meanwhile, you may find it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html
Let us pause to reflect upon how we, you and I, might feel if, in 1953, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan had employed clandestine sabotage upon the American economy, spread all over our media and press a lavish program of disinformation and misinformation, assassinated key Senators or Representatives, kidnapped business leaders in key industries, ruined industries, blackmailed our judicial and executive branches wholesale, and established in the following confusion a new government peopled with “leaders” bought and/or coerced from our population to become a puppet government? How would you and I feel about such goings on? Would we not unify as Americans and fight that kind of intrusion tooth and nail? Of course we would have. That is “assault”; it is “aggression”; it is a form of “attack”, however clandestine might have been its beginnings. It is a violation of international law and it is a violation of professed Western moral codes and ethics. It is, in a word, “wrong”. We, you and I, as citizens who live in this country, would feel no guilt whatsoever as we fought against that kind of invasion of our American way of life, our homeland, our homes and families. Why, we may well ask, should the citizens of foreign nations who have been thusly violated by our CIA feel any differently than we would under such circumstances? Isn’t it fair to ask that question? Of course it is. In fact, the question MUST be asked! This, after all, has everything to do with why a world which loved Americans just a half century ago now hates us, and it also includes the simple observation that it was just about one half a century ago that CIA was created and turned loose upon an unsuspecting world. Let us think on this as we read further…..
That is something of what the Iranians in 1953 felt when we took down the entire infra-structure of their society, their culture, their economy, their governance.
The CIA knew full well what it was doing, the evil of it, the murderous aggression of it, yet they did it anyway. A good question we might ask today, while looking back at some of the CIA’s previously-hidden sins, is why? Why Iran in 1953? Why was British intelligence concerned with BP’s little problem about facing price increases and even the loss of some control over Iranian oil? Why was BP’s Iran-connection an item of interest to British Intelligence? We’ll get to that….
But before looking that closely into just this one example of CIA abusiveness and treachery abroad, let us consider that because of National Fruit’s (An American corporation) “interests” in Guatamala the following year, 1954, the CIA simply took down the government of Guatamala.
As history now reveals it, CIA took out the government of Guatamala just one year after it did so to Iran. Two governments toppled in coups in two years on two separate continents. CIA has been very busy. For Iran and Guatamala, CIA was not so kind as to proclaim to the world that they were doing it to “liberate the people”. It just did its dirty work clandestinely, secretly, with evil intent to do whatever illegal and immoral actions might be needed to protect American economic interests abroad. We might say today that the history of the CIA does not exactly read like a chapter from “How To Win Friends and Influence People”, don’t you agree?
So at this point I would like to ask myself, and ask you the reader, if there could be any repsonse by the Iranians and the Guatamalans other than fear and hatred? Which nation on earth today would you and I allow to do such a thing to our America? Does not this sort of clandestine tampering ultimately cause the people of victimized nations to feel fear, fear of whatever America’s secret forces might NEXT do to their countries? And doesn’t fear always precede hate? Of course it does.
Have we paused to reflect upon the simple fact that to the citizens of Iran and Guatamala in the 1950s, there existed in the wake of U.S. clandestine CIA operations inside their own nations the certain and clear empowerment of rage? Do you and I expect to let our government destroy existing governments in other nations and have the people of those victim nations admire and respect us? Is that not, in truth, one of the most basic ways our brilliant U.S. intelligence cult in Washington DC and Langley, Virginia, might have engineered into foreign populations a sincere and deeply-rooted fear of and hatred for America? Before you answer that, simply recall that in the late 1940s, because we had defeated Hitler and Japan, Americans were the darlings of the planet, welcome everywhere abroad, tolerated and invited by countless nations who today hate us with a passion.
We are going to look into how that hatred and fear of America were implanted into entire populations of many nations around the world. It is not pretty, but truth makes no pledge untoward prettiness. We are going to look at the truth, however painful, so that we might, hopefully, learn how to undo what CIA and botched foreign policy under CIA’s reign has created. It is going to be quite a nasty business for you and me….BUT: if we do not take an honest look at the last half-century of American foreign policy, and corporate expansionism and cultural imperialism, and administrative lying and deceit, we shall as a nation surely succumb to the forces which now, today, are reaping the early fruits of their great plan to enslave the American people. The Constitution is under attack, as we shall see, not by enemies from without, but from enemies from within. The dots have been connected, the lines drawn, the facts collected and brought before us, enough so that we may today, if we are brave Americans, discover the truth. This is not going to be pleasant, but I have faith in the American spirit to endure the session, and I believe sincerely that “consciousness works!”. It is the last defense available to we the people, our last chance to avert an internalized and concerted effort to deprive us of our freedom as Americans. In that frame of reference, let us continue here….
Going back to the quoted sections above, we note that secrecy and deception are paramount trademarks of covert activity, especially state-sponsored covert activity, such as para-military operations or economic sabotage operations. Such are the characteristics of the clandestine “mind-set” in which CIA operations are planned and conducted. Of many, this example is from Bob Woodward’s “Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987”. (2)
Not only did Reagan and Bill Casey (Director of Central Intelligence under Reagan’s administration and confidant to Bob Woodward, for reasons no one seems to understand) deceive the American public; they tried an “end-run” around the Senate Oversight Committee on Intelligence. The seat of that committee was Senator Barry Goldwater, who railed on the floor of Congress that in thirty years of service to the U.S. government he had never once asked that something he had said be stricken from the Senate record. What had happened to cause the distinguished Barry Goldwater to scream inanities at the CIA and the President from the floor of the Senate?
Let’s see it in Woodward’s words, beginning on page 319:
Assistant Secretary of State Tony Motley wanted to do his part for the Nicaraguan operation, which was running out of money. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens—Motley’s mentor—headed the Senate appropriations subcommittee for defense. Instead of dealing with Goldwater’s Intelligence Committee (the authorizing committee), Motley suggested that the Administration try an end run as Charlie Wilson had done. Who gives a shit about the Intelligence Committee, Motley argued, when the Administration could deal directly in the real world—the appropriations committee that handled the money. So Motley carried a request for $21 million more for Nicaragua to Stevens, and explained that there was probably only a one-in-five chance of sneaking it through this way.
Stevens agreed to give it a try.
Before the first step could be taken, Goldwater found out. The god-damn Administration, he said, was its own worst enemy. It was a mindless, insensitive act, contrary to long-standing Senate rules and customs. He was their friend, on their side, in the same party. The CIA congressional-relations man, Clair George, said that it was Tony Motley’s doing and that the White House did not know.
Nonetheless, on March 12, 1984, Goldwater and Moynihan wrote a secret letter directly to President Reagan strongly protesting the violation of Senate protocol. A copy of the letter was sent to Casey. Secretary of State Geaorge Schultz offered an apology to Goldwater.
This brought Goldwater back to the Administration’s side, and late Thursday night, April 5, he was on the Senate floor attempting to win the $21 million for Casey. It was after the cocktail hour, and Goldwater, still suffering from various hip ailments and operations, was well medicated. At seventy-five, he was two years older than President Reagan, but as willing as ever to slug it out. Serving up the standard pro-Administration line, Goldwater chastised his colleagues for “congressional meddling with the efforts by the President to defend the national security.”
As Goldwater spoke, Senator Biden, one of the more outspoken Casey critics on the Intelligence Committee, was at his small desk reading a classified memo prepared by a committee staff member. The memo stated that the CIA had played a direct role in placing underwater mines in three Nicaraguan harbors. This, according to the memo, all had been done by “uniterally controlled Latino assets”—the UCLAs. Biden was surprised. He hadn’t known about this, but it was possible that he had missed a hearing or a briefing. So he stood up and carried the memo over to his fellow Intelligence Committee member, Republican Bill Cohen.
Cohen read carefully. The memo made it clear that the CIA had planned, ordered and carried out the harbor-mining. This was not a matter of support or supply. This was direct CIA action. Mining was not a borderline covert activity. It was one step further along the road than that memorable day when the Managua airport was attacked. Mining was an act of war. The squalor of the entire operation became clearer than ever, Cohen thought.
He walked over to Goldwater and handed the memo to him.
“Barry, what the fuck is this?” Cohen asked sharply. “Is this true? Why haven’t I been told?”
Goldwater, angry and caught off balance, asked for permission to speak on the floor, and began reading the classified memo to his colleagues. Goldwater’s staff director, Rob Simmons, raced over to Cohen, demanding, “Get him off, get him down, stop him from reading that.”
It was one of Simmons’ nightmares that Goldwater or some other senator might take to the floor with sensitive, classified information, giving Casey and the CIA ammunition to further cut back on the information flow and brand the committee untrustworthy.
Cohen didn’t move fast enough on Goldwater, and Simmons shot across the floor himself and almost pulled the memo from Goldwater’s hands.
Goldwater and Simmons looked at each other. Mining? Why hadn’t they been told? They, if anyone, were supposed to know. Was this something that Casey had passed on to Goldwater personally? Goldwater said that it was not. Simmons said he hadn’t a clue, either. They had saved the covert program several times in the last couple of years. Why were they kept in the dark?
“You get hold of Bill Casey,” Goldwater said, “and find out what the fuck’s going on.”
Simmons had Goldwater’s reading excised from the Congressional Record. Nonetheless, David Rogers, a reporter for The Wall Steert Journal, had it in the next morning’s paper, though the account was somewhat understated—“U.S. Role in Mining Nicaraguan Harbors Reportedly Is Larger Than First Thought”.
Simmons spent the next day trying to get John McMahon on the phone.
“I’ve been busy,” McMahon said when Simmons finally reached him.
“Did you know about this?” Simmons asked coldy.
McMahon was evasive, but he said that Casey had told the committee members at a breakfast at the CIA.
Simmons checked. Goldwater had never been to one of Casey’s breakfasts at CIA.
The information came in slowly to the Senate committee. About seventy-five so-called “firecracker” mines had been laid on the bottom in three Nicaraguan horbors. But many of the homemade mines had up to 300 pounds of C-4 explosive. Simmons had worked with C-4, and 300 pounds was enough for a giant explosion. A number of merchant seamen or fishermen had been wounded and there was a report that one had been killed. Before the mining, Nicaragua had received much of its oil from Mexico and Europe. Now the Soviets had become the chief supplier of oil, providing up to 80 percent. So, Simmons calculated, the first immediate result of the mining had been do drive the Nicaraguans further into the arms of the Soviet Union.
Simmons could remember, from his time as a DO officer, the expression the real cowboys [TMM note: “cowboys” was in insider term for CIA officers] used for this kind of harrassment: “Let’s bring a little pee on them”. The mining was like the CIA operations run out of Miami against Cuba in the 1960s. The CIA had become the bogeyman, and that helped Castro secure total control over the population.
“You know,” Goldwater told Simmons, “I feel like a boob. I misled my colleagues.” The committee existed to prevent such surprises, and Goldwater felt that he had failed. The mining, Goldwater said, endangered neutral shipping. A British ship had been hit. Imagine what would happen if an American ship hit a British mine secretly laid in some port. Goldwater shook his head. “You tell Casey that he’s on his own. I’ve pulled his nuts out of the fire often enough.”
Goldwater went off for the weekend to the Quinns’ farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It had become Goldwater’s regular weekend retreat, where he did various electronic chores—fixing the TV antenna or wiring up stereo speakers. It was a beautiful spring weekend, but Goldwater could not shake the feeling of betrayal. It just struck him dumb. Obviously, the Administration and Casey had no confidence in him.
Goldwater carried a little cassette dictating machine which he regularly filled with notes, ideas and letters. Pushing the record button, he began a “Dear Bill” letter to Casey:
“…I’ve been trying to figure out how I can most easily tell you my feelings about the discovery of the President having approved mining some of the harbors of Central America. It gets down to one, little, simple phrase: I am pissed off!”
Goldwater ordered it sent to Casey.
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End of passage from “Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987” by Bob Woodward.
It may be noted that seven ships had been hit by the CIA mines in Corinto, the largest Nicaraguan port. On pages 324 and 325 in “Veil” are these quotes:
“Other ships were turning back. Cotton was stacked two stories high there awaiting ships willing to brave the harbor. Coffee beans and sugarcane, Nicaragua’s two other major exports, were also piling up. There was talk inside Nicaragua of economic devastation. Newspapers had widely reported the mining and its impact. Statements by the Sandinista leadership charging the United States with responsibility had been published…..
“Some Senators criticized the indiscriminate nature of a mining operation. On the mine that had gone off under a British ship, one senator asked, What were we doing trying to harass our closest ally? Another mine had been detonated by a Soviet vessel. Did Casey want to start World War III? How would the United States react if a U.S. merchang ship had run into a mind field laid by the KGB?……
“Mining was sneaky, a shadowy endeavor, akin to planting a bomb in a restaurant, a trap for the unsuspecting and innocent. Goldwater’s disapproval magnified the issue. He loomed as an arbiter of toughness and common sense. Privately he called the mining ‘the dumbest fucking idea I ever heard of.’ “
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Now let’s look more closely at the “clandestine mindset” and its horrible results during the past half century of American policy. How would you or I feel if we lost a son in a fishing boat to a mine placed into a harbor clandestinely by the Russian KGB? What moral right had the CIA to mine harbors behind the backs of Congress? Blowing up foreign ships in foreign harbors with no declaration of war is simply evil, any way we stack it. It is terrorism, plain and simple. It is one example of government-sponsored terrorism. It was done in your and my names, in the name of the American people, and the whole world knew about it except You and Me! Why? Because our own government knew better than to tell us the truth about what it was doing behind our backs. But the reader may say at this point, “oh well, national security demanded that CIA do bizarre things, illegal things, immoral things”. But what, after all, has “national security” to do with the destiny of Nicaragua? Was Nicaragua threatening America? No, she was not. Is it some intangible but omnipresent intuition readily seen by the whole world, which only I cannot see? Nicaragua was no threat to the United States of America, was she? But Nicaragua WAS a threat to certain business interests, American business interests. Ah…
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Speaking of the CIA and American “interests”, let us now take a look at some American “interests” who made good use of the CIA in Chile. International Telephone and Telegraph, (ITT) teamed up with Anaconda Copper in a series of meetings with the CIA in Chile in the late 1960s. The purpose of their meetings was twofold; first they sought ways to prevent the success of Salvador Allende in the upcoming national election; secondly, after Allende won the election, their meetings with CIA were designed to both prevent him from actually taking office and, after he took office, to get him out of office. CIA, Anaconda Copper, and ITT plotted assaults upon the national economy which were hoped to encite the national military chiefs and the Chilean national police into executing a coup d’ etat. Allende was duly assassinated. (4) Here it is from the perspective of a former CIA executive who, at the time, was executive assistant to the Director of Clandestine Services and was therefore in a very key position to know about this:
(Henry Kissinger was at a secret meeting at the White House on June 27, 1970. The topic was Chile.)
begin quoted section:
In his capacity as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Kissinger was chairman of a meeting of the so-called “40 Committee”, (which was) an interdepartmental panel responsible for overseeing the CIA’s high-risk covert-action operations. The 40 Committee’s members are the Director of Central Intelligence, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (At the time of the Chilean meeting, Attorney Genaral John Mitchell was also a member.) It is this small group of bureaucrats and politicians—in close consultation with the President and the governmental departments the men represent—that directs America’s secret foreign policy.
On that Saturday in June 1970, the main topic before the 40 Committee was: What, if any, secret actions should be taken to prevent the election of Salvador Allende? The Chilean election was scheduled for the following September, and Allende, a declared Marxist, was one of the principal candidates. Although Allende had pledged to maintain the democratic system if he was elected, the U.S. ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, predicted dire consequences in the event of an Allende victory. Korry feared Allende would lead his country into the Communist bloc and thus he strongly favored CIA intervention to make sure that Chile did not become another Cuba.
[TMM note: In other words, “America” took it upon itself to monitor the free elections of Chile, and the clandestine officers of CIA, as well as holders of public seats of governmental power, actually sought to intervene in the process of Chile’s election. In a word, America had set herself up to be the judge regarding which candidates would be “acceptable” to America, despite the feelings and ideologies of the Chilean people. In a word, that is: Imperialism.]
Most of the American companies with large investments in Chile were also fearful of a possible Allende triumph, and at least two of those companies, the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT) and Anaconda Copper, were spending substantial sums of money to prevent his election.
Ambassador Korry’s superiors at the State Department in Washington opposed the idea of CIA intervention. They believed that the interests of the United States would best be served if events in Chile were allowed to follow their natural course. They hoped that Allende would not win, but they opposed active—even if secret—American intervention against him. To try to manipulate the Chilean electoral processes, believed the State group led by Assistant Secretary for Latin America Charles Meyer, would likely succeed only in making matters worse and further tarnishing America’s image in Latin America. [TMM note: we could re-word that to read, “…succeed only in making the people of Chile fear and hate America even more.”]
Richard Helms, then director of the CIA, represented a somewhat divided Agency. On the one hand, the 40 Committee was that day considering plans for covert intervention which had been drawn up by the agency’s Clandestine Services; (Marchetti note: The official name for this part of the CIA is the Directorate of Operations [until early 1973 the Directorate of Plans] but it is more approprately referred to within the agency as the Clandestine Services. Some members of Congress and certain journalists call it the “Department of Dirty Tricks”, a title never used by CIA personnel.); and like the American ambassador, the CIA’s principle representative in Chile strongly supported covert action to keep Allende out of office. But on the other hand there was a lack of confidence among senior CIA officials that secret agency funding and propaganda would have the desired effect. They were concerned that a large influx of CIA money might lead to discovery of the agency’s role by the Chilean press—perhaps with help from the Soviet KGB—or by American reporters, and that such disclosures would only help Allende.
Helms’ position at the 40 Committee meeting was influenced by memories of the Chilean presidential election of 1964. At that time he had been chief of the Clandestine Services and had been actively involved in planning the CIA’s secret efforts to defeat Allende, who was at that time running against Eduardo Frei. Frei had won the presidency, but now, six years later, he was constitutionally forbidden to succeed himself, and Allende’s candidacy therefore seemed stronger than before.
Anti-American feelings had grown in Chile since 1964, and one reason was widespread resentment of U.S. interference in Chile’s internal affairs. The Chilean leftist press had been full of charges of CIA involvement in the 1964 elections, and these reports had not been without effect on the electorate. Additionally, in 1965 the exposure of the Pentagon’s ill-advised Project Camelot had further damaged the reputation of the U.S. government. Ironically, Chile was not one of the principal target countries of the Camelot project, a multimillion-dollar social-science research study of possible counterinsurgency techniques in Latin America. But the existence of Camelot had first been made public in Chile, and newspapers there—of all political stripes—condemned the study as “intervention” and “imperialism”. One paper said, in prose typical of the general reaction, that Project Camelot was “intended to investigate the military and political situation prevailing in Chile and to determine the possibility of an anti-democratic coup”. Politicans of both President Frei’s Christian Democratic Party and Allende’s leftist coalition protested publicly. The final result was to cause Washington to cancel first Camelot’s limited activities in Chile, and then the project as a whole. While the CIA had not been a sponsor of Camelot, the project added to the fears among Chileans of covert American intelligence activities.
In 1968 the CIA’s own Board of National Estimates, after carefully studying the socio-policital problems of Latin America, had produced a National Intelligence Estimate on that region for the U.S. government’s planners and policy-makers. The central conclusions had been that forces for change in the developing Latin nations were so powerful as to be beyond outside manipulation. This estimate had been endorsed by the United States Intelligence Board, whose members include the heads of the government’s various intelligence agencies, and had then been sent to the White House and to those departments that were represented on the 40 Committee.
The 1968 estimate had in effect urged against the kind of intervention that the 40 Committee was in 1970 considering with regard to Chile. But as is so often the case within the government, the most careful advance analysis based on all the intelligence available was either ignored or simply rejected when the time came to make a decision on a specific issue. (Four and a half lines deleted here by CIA.) Henry Kissinger, the single most powerful man at the 40 Committee meeting on Chile, (Line Deleted by CIA).
So at Kissinger’s urging, the 40 Committee agreed that the CIA would carry out a relatively modest $400,000 program of secret propaganda and support for Allende’s opponents. While CIA men and money would be brought into play to prevent an Allende victory, there would be no repeat of the agency’s massive effort to fix the election in 1964.
Within the next few days, President Nixon endorsed the 40 Committee’s decision, and the American ambassador and the CIA chief of station in Chile were notified to start the covert propaganda programs.
(17 lines deleted by CIA.)
Since the decision to intervene had been approved by the President of the United States, (Two lines deleted by CIA).
In keeping with the guidelines set down by the 40 Committee and approved by the President, four hundred thousand dollars were made available from the CIA director’s secret contingency fund and earmarked for the Chilean election operation. The agency’s chief of station in Santiago, working with the close cooperation of Ambassador Korry, put the money and his undercover agents to work in a last-minute propaganda effort to thwart the rise of Allende to the Presidency. But despite the CIA’s covert action program, Salvador Allende received a plurality in the September 1970 popular vote.
During the next two months, before Allende was officially endorsed as President by the Chilean congress, the CIA and Ambassador Korry, with White House approval, tried desperately to prevent the Marxist from taking office. Attempts were made to undercut Allende through continued propaganda, by encouraging a military coup d’ etat, and by trying to enlist the support of private U.S. firms, namely ITT, in a scheme to sabotage Chile’s economy. None of the secret actions, however, proved successful.
Some months afterward President Nixon disingenuously explained at a White House press conference: “As far as what happened in Chile is concerned, we can only say that for the United States to have intervened in a free election and to have turned it around, I think, would have had repercussions all around Latin America that would have been far worse than what happened in Chile.”
The following year, in the fall of 1972, CIA Director Helms, while giving a rare public lecture at Johns Hopkins University, was asked by a student if the CIA had mucked about in the 1970 Chilean election. His response: “Why should you care? Your side won.”
Helms was understandably perturbed. Columnist Jack Anderson had only recently reported “the ITT story”, which among other things revealed that the CIA had indeed been involved in an effort to undo Allende’s victory—even after he had won the popular vote. Much to the agency’s chagrin, Anderson had shown that during September and October 1970, William Broe, chief of the Western Hemisphere Division of the CIA’s Clandestine Services, had met several times with high officials of ITT to discuss ways to prevent Allende from taking office. (The ITT board member who later admitted to a Senate investigative committee that he had played the key role in bringing together CIA and ITT officials was John McCone, Director of the CIA during the Kennedy Administration and, in 1970, a CIA consultant.) Broe had proposed to ITT and a few other American corporations with substantial financial interests in Chile a four-part plan of economic sabotage which was calculated to weaken the local economy to the point where the Chilean military authorities would move to take over the government and thus frustrate the Marxist’s rise to power. ITT and the other firms later claimed they had found the CIA’s scheme “not workable”. But almost three years to the day after Allende’s election, at a time when severe inflation, truckers’ strikes, food shortages, and international credit problems were plaguing Chile, he was overthrown and killed in a bloody coup d’ etat carried out by the combined action of the Chilean armed services and national police. His Marxist government was replaced by a military junta. What role American businesses of the CIA may have played in the coup is not publicly known, and may never be. ITT and other giant corporations with investments in Chile have all denied any involvement in the military revolt. So had the U.S. government, although CIA Director William Colby admitted in secret testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee (revealed by Tad Szule in the October 21, 1973, Washington Post) that the agency “had some intelligence coverage about the various moves being made”, that it had “penetrated” all of Chile’s major political parties, and that it had secretly furnished “some assistance” to certain Chilean groups. Colby, himself the former director of the bloody Phoenix counterintelligence program in Vietnam, also told the Congressmen that the executions carried out by the junta after the coup had done “some good” because they reduced the chances that civil war would break out in Chile—an excellent example of the sophistry with which the CIA defends its strategy of promoting “stability” in the Third World.
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In the next quip I have dredged up, I wish to note that while the focus of the article is on one Henry Kissinger and the criminal organization named BCCI, there is mention within of one Mr. Clark Clifford…..a most unusual name in American history, and a most-unheralded name as well. I think we shall do Clark Clifford after we look at BCCI and Kissinger Associates.
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http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/20kiss.htm
BCCI AND KISSINGER ASSOCIATES
Introduction
Beginning in the fall of 1986, and continuing through early 1989, BCCI initiated a series of contacts with perhaps the most politically prominent international and business consulting firm in the United States — Kissinger Associates.
At the time, Kissinger Associates had five partners: former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Assistant and current National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Under Secretary and current Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, international economist Alan Stoga, and investment bank T. Jefferson Cunningham III.
Ultimately both Stoga and a retired Brazilian Ambassador working as a consultant to Kissinger Associates, Sergio Correa da Costa, seriously explored finding ways to link BCCI’s global network of banks with the services being offered by Kissinger Associates. Discussions between representatives of BCCI and representatives of Kissinger Associates took place over an 18 month period concerning the possibility of merging the capabilities of BCCI and Kissinger Associates on various, mostly unspecified, projects. Following BCCI’s indictment, discussions continued as to whether Kissinger Associates could help BCCI respond to the ramifications of that indictment. These discussions ended in early 1989 at Henry Kissinger’s personal insistence.
During the discussions, Stoga provided advice to BCCI on a possible public relations campaign. At their conclusion, Kissinger Associates referred BCCI to one its own directors, former Assistant Secretary of State William Rogers, and his firm, Arnold & Porter, who already represented Kissinger Associates on its own legal work. Rogers and Arnold & Porter in turn agreed to provide BCCI with legal services arising out of its indictment, although few services were provided as a consequence of the opposition of Clark Clifford and Robert Altman to the firm’s involvement.
Although discussions concerning a broader relationship were cut short by the indictment, the BCCI-Kissinger Associates correspondence reveals much about BCCI’s approach to seeking political influence in the United States. The correspondence also highlights BCCI’s focus on doing business with, and ability, given its $23 billion in reported assets and 73 countries of operation, to attract interest from, some of the most politically well-connected people in the United States.
Genesis of Interest in BCCI-Kissinger Relationship
And Position Of Kissinger Associates Concerning BCCI
In late July, 1991, the Subcommittee received documents from BCCI’s liquidators describing BCCI’s use of a retired Brazilian Ambassador, Sergio da Costa, as a front-man for its purchase of a bank in Brazil while da Costa was also working — according to the BCCI documents — as a partner in Kissinger Associates.
In September, 1991, staff was advised by press that there were a number of documents at BCCI’s document depositories concerning its relationship with Kissinger Associates. Staff were provided some of these documents by reporters, and found others in subsequent reviews of BCCI documents at its former offices in New York. These documents, on both Kissinger Associates and BCCI stationery, discussed in general terms the services Kissinger Associates might perform for BCCI, and were dated both before and after BCCI’s indictment on drug money laundering charges in Tampa. Accordingly, they raised the question of whether Kissinger Associates had ever been retained by BCCI.
In November, 1991, the Committee on Foreign Relations authorized a subpoena for all documents to Kissinger Associates and related entities, for all documents pertaining to BCCI, and for its client lists.
In response, Kissinger Associates promised to cooperate with the Subcommittee investigation and to provide all documents pertaining to BCCI, under an agreement that the subpoena not be served. Kissinger Associates refused, however, to provide the client list, arguing that the list was beyond the parameters of the investigation into BCCI by the Subcommittee, and advising the Subcommittee that if it pursued the list, Kissinger Associates would litigate the matter, if necessary, through an extensive appellate process to the Supreme Court.
In providing several dozen documents material to the Subcommittee investigation on January 30, 1992, Kissinger Associates, represented by its attorney, former Presidential counsel Lloyd Cutler, made the following representations:
At the outset, it should be made clear that Kissinger Associates, Kent Associates, and China Joint Ventures (collectively referred to hereinafter as “Kissinger Associates”) have never represented or provided any services for BCCI, ICIC, or any BCCI shareholder. Neither BCCI or ICIC nor any person known to be a BCCI shareholder has ever been a client of Kissinger Associates.
The only substantive contact between Kissinger Associates and BCCI occurred in late 1988-early 1989, when [BCCI officer] Abol Helmy met several times with Alan Stoga of Kissinger Associates to discuss a possible consulting arrangement for BCCI . . . In December, 1988, Mr. Stoga advised Mr. Helmy that Kissinger Associates was not interested in a consulting relationship with BCCI. At Mr. Helmy’s request, Mr. Stoga met with Mr. Helmy again in January, 1989, at which time in response to a further inquiry from Mr. Helmy he again advised Mr. Helmy that Kissinger Associates did not want to proceed with a relationship. In February 1989, in response to Mr. Helmy’s request for a recommendation for Washington-based legal counsel, Mr. Stoga recommended Arnold & Porter. Mr. Stoga has had a number of other meetings with Mr. Helmy since February, 1989, but these meetings have been of a purely social nature.(1)
While this account of the relationship is not untrue, it does fail to characterize the full extent of the contacts between BCCI and Kissinger Associates and the series of meetings and contacts between representatives of the two organizations. In fact, both Stoga, as a partner of Kissinger Associates, as well as its consultant, da Costa, worked over an extended period to bring the two organizations together, and such a relationship could well have developed but for BCCI’s drug money laundering indictment. The following account, while not necessarily complete, is intended to provide a fuller picture of the contacts between BCCI and Kissinger Associates, of BCCI’s goals and intentions in soliciting the relationship with Kissinger Associates, and of the assistance, albeit limited, provided to BCCI by Kissinger Associates in BCCI’s time of trouble.
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Now let us look at Clark Clifford, the man who wrote for Truman the National Security Act of 1947. Clifford was one man who worked to bring BCCI into America. BCCI is (was) “Bank of Credit and Commerce International”, a bank with offices in more than seventy countries around the world. BCCI was subsequently investigated by the U.S. Congress and was found to be an extension of CIA drug-money laundering operations. (3)
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(1) Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks; “The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence”; Dell Publishing Company, 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York, New York, 10017; Copyright 1974, 1980 by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks; ISBN: 0-440-11329-6; Published by agreement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, New York. [ TMM note: Victor Marchetti is a former Executive Assistant to the Director of Clandestine Services of CIA; John D. Marks is a former U.S. State Department Intelligence officer; both men resigned their positions in American Intelligence to write this book. The CIA took them to Federal court in an effort to prevent the book’s publication; the ACLU furnished the legal assistance to get the book published after all. Sections of this book have been censored by CIA, who was awarded the manuscript for thirty days prior to its publication, for purposes of censoring what the authors might expose. As the book was published, notes about lines censored by CIA are given in place.]
(2) Bob Woodward; “Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987”; copyright 1987 by Bob Woodward; Simon Schuster, Inc., Rockefeller Center, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY, 10020; ISBN: 0-671-60117-2. [ TMM note: William Casey, DCI under Reagan, interviewed Mr. Woodward at three locations by way of assisting Woodward’s writing of this book: 1) Langley, Virginia, at CIA headquarters; 2) Bob Woodward’s offices at the Washington Post; and 3) at Casey’s personal home, where he and his wife often entertained Mr. Woodward. This is the same Bob Woodward who worked with Carl Bernstein to expose the CIA’s mis-publicized “Watergate Burglary Scandal”, a public misperception featuring a “Republican vs Democrat” cheap burglary scenario that was corrected by Jim Hougan in his book on Nixon, Watergate, Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers, and the CIA, entitled “Hidden Agenda”.
(3) Much is available on BCCI, including reports of the Congressional investigations which shut the bank down on criminal charges. The bank was heavily used by CIA in laundering money from illegal drug operations as well as other forms of financial fraud. For online readers, I suggest this site as the most comprehensive of which I’m aware:
