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Games without Frontiers: The Shadow World of the CIA
Posted on Friday, February 03, 2006 (CST) by Thoth
 America’s Central Intelligence Agency operates throughout the world, seemingly with and without presidential remit as the sensitivity of their operations demands. As more information emerges as to the nature of their activities, many observers are beginning to question whether it has become a renegade organisation, one that operates so far outside of the law and with such limited accountability, that it is a threat to world security.
History shows that the organisation, which celebrates its 60th birthday this year, has left a trail of horror and destruction throughout its shady history.
During the last six decades, the agency quietly set about shaping the world, it achieved this by sponsoring coups, destabilising governments, suppressing democracy, engaging in drug and arms dealing, mind control experiments and all manner of illegal or morally questionable activity.
The CIA has
left a trail of unimaginable global destruction in its wake and
repeatedly abdicates responsibility for the repercussions that arise
from its operations. Yet, despite its $5 billion dollar budget, the
catastrophic events of 911 demonstrated that the eyes of America
ultimately failed in its remit to protect America, and in the case of
911 that attack happened on its own soil. Was this failure a one-off
event or does the CIA really have a less than impressive track record
that should have rang alarm bells a long time ago? To mark the
organisation’s sixtieth birthday, we thought we’d take a closer look at
the CIA.
The CIA and the Nazis
 Shortly after its formation
in 1947, Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s former spy chief, made secret deals
with the CIA, turning over his agencies’ files to the agency. In
return, he received a guarantee that he wouldn’t be tried for war
crimes. The fledgling organisation then scrambled to recruit as many
former Nazi intelligence officers into their ranks as they could. These
men, many of who should have been tried at Nuremburg, were instead
retrained as CIA operatives, and given immunity from prosecution. It
wasn’t just field operatives that were recruited from the Nazi ranks,
almost 800 former Nazi scientists were recruited in this manner also.
The staff were debriefed and then employed in covert CIA programmes
such as MKULTRA, a horrific program to develop and test mind warfare
initiatives. The experiments they conducted included ‘brainwashing’
thousands of individuals, most of which were American citizens, using
techniques such as electric shock therapy, sleep deprivation and a
cocktail of synthetic drugs. The plan was to create sleeping agents
that could be called upon if needed and other times just because they
needed human guinea pigs to test the effectiveness of their product.
Some of the techniques developed by the MKULTRA project are still used
in interrogation techniques used in Guantanamo Bay today.
Communism – The Enemy at the Door
The Central intelligence
Agency was born into a post war climate of suspicion and fear as the
political ideologies of East and West polarised as capitalism and
communism. Any nation caught between America and the Soviet Union, even
neutral ones such as Cambodia, posed a threat to democracy and was a
legitimate target in the CIA mindset. While its intention of protecting
America may have been legitimate, its methodology was anything but that.
The CIA’s interest in the
Middle East started in the early 1950’s when Iran’s President Mohammad
Mossadeq made the mistake of starting talks with the Soviets.
Mossadeq’s government was immediately flagged up as a threat. In
response to the threat, the CIA spent millions of dollars organising
and hiring rent-a-mobs to create instability in the country. Their
tactic paid off and the CIA was successful in orchestrating the
overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddeq’s government. Mossadeq was
replaced with a puppet president of America’s choosing, rather than the
peoples; the pro-American, Shah of Iran. In 1979, the religious
opposition, lead by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, drove the shah into
exile. Khomeini sought the capture of the shah, and when it was learned
that he had been admitted into the United States for medical treatment,
Iran's response was the start of the hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy
in Tehran.
Installing their own
‘government approved’ leader to bring pro-soviet nations into the
American fold swiftly became part of CIA modus operandi. In 1960 when
the African republic of Congo approached the Soviets for help, the CIA
mechanism sprung into life once more. The agency financed the
relatively unknown Colonel Mobutu, enabling him to overthrow and later
assassinate the deposed Patrice Emery Lumumba.
The CIA installed Colonel
Mobutu as the leader of their (the CIA’s) choice. Mobutu turned out to
be a sociopath who committed appalling human rights violations and
stole over half the nations GDP in the course of his rule. Despite
knowing what Mobutu was up to, the CIA continued to support him until
the 1990s. Today the Congo is still considered one of the most unstable
countries in the world after the CIA’s involvement in its politics, but
the CIA’s remit of preventing the spread of communism was seen as
justification for their actions.
The CIA consistently acts
without conscious when it came to getting the job done, but their
operations have often caused not only grief for other nations, but
embarrassment for their own administration.
The infamous Bay of Pigs
invasion in Cuba is a perfect example of a CIA plan that failed
abysmally. Having a communist country on America’s doorstep was
considered a huge threat, not to mention embarrassment for the Kennedy
administration. The agency devised a covert paramilitary operation to
overthrow Fidel Castro, using tried and tested methods of funding
rent-a-mobs, mercenaries and in this case 1,500 anti-communist Cuban
exiles to do the job for them.
 Castro was popular with the
Cuban people and despite gaining the approval of JFK, the plan was ill
thought out and destined to fail. The agency made eight further
attempts in the following ten years to assassinate Castro, not only did
they fail but there are some who believe that Castro was actually
behind the assassination of JFK. It’s also interesting to note that a
few days prior to his assassination in 1963, there were secret
communications between President Kennedy and the Castro government.
Whether Castro had Kennedy assassinated as revenge for the repeated
attempts on his own life by the CIA or whether the CIA were worried
that Kennedy himself was becoming a problem will probably never be
known but either scenario, if true puts an alarming spin on the CIA
involvement.
See the article "JFK assassination 'was Cuba plot'" for more details.
Repercussions
One of the hallmarks of the
CIA is their inability to consider the repercussions of the actions.
Many consider the current drugs epidemic to have been created as a
result of the CIA. This is often illustrated by their involvement in
places such as Indonesia and Laos during the Vietnam War.
Laos was of strategic
importance to the US during the war, so the CIA signed up 30,000 Hmong
tribesman to fight for them. To ensure their continued support, the CIA
set up the notorious ‘Air America’ to assist the tribesmen in
distributing the opium they grew. This in turn created an immense
source of black money for the CIA. Most of the drugs made their way to
the troops in Vietnam or back to America itself, so while the CIA
funded their operations, America began its descent into the sordid
reality of the drugs culture, courtesy of the Central Intelligence
Agency.
This entry into the drugs
trade created new possibilities for the CIA when it came to funding
their operations and was used again in Nicaragua in 1983 to fund the
Contra rebels’ war. This time the press got hold of the story,
resulting in the scandal known as the Iran-contra affair, which
revealed how the CIA provided funds to the Nicaraguan contra rebels
from profits gained by selling arms to Iran. Incidentally, George Bush
Snr subsequently pardoned those found guilty in the Iran-contra affair.
During the past sixty
years, the CIA has intervened in politics in many countries that have
become highly unstable or suffered greatly as a result. In Chile, they
replaced Salvadore Iande with Augustas Pinochet with disastrous results
for Chile. In Cambodia, they engineered a coup against Prince Norodom
Sihanouck in 1970 which ultimately led to the CIA’s puppet leader Lon
Nol being deposed by the Marxist Polpot. 1.7 million Cambodians were
executed under Polpot’s regime.
 The CIA also has a knack of
creating martyrs that live on long after their own demise, and as
they’ve learned to their cost, the legend lives on far longer than the
man; Che Guevara being a perfect example. Desperate to halt the spread
of communism in Bolivia, the CIA under the command of Felix Rodriguez,
ordered the assassination of the young freedom fighter. Guevara was
undoubtedly popular with the Bolivian people, but realistically he was
never a threat to democracy. As it was the CIA turned him into a legend
and a symbol of those who fight oppression and Bolivia is still a
troubled country that causes the United States a great deal of concern.
The CIA’s ability to
interfere in domestic politics on an international scale resulted in
their funding of the Mujahadin in Afghanistan in 1979. It was through
the ranks of the Mujahadin that Osama Bin Laden rose to prominence.
When the Soviets finally left Afghanistan, the Americans left too,
leaving the Taliban to take control of Afghanistan and for Osama Bin
Laden to create Al Qaeda from the ranks of the Mujahadin.
Osama Bin Laden, the CIA’s lasting legacy
 On September 11th 2001,
2991 people died when Al Qaeda launched their attack on the World Trade
Centre. It was clear that the CIA knew who was responsible but they had
missed the planning of the attack completely. It was a catastrophic
failure of intelligence that left America reeling. The cold war threat
of communism was now replaced by a new and more deadly threat, the
Islamic terrorists, in many ways a threat cultivated by decades of CIA
covert operations.
The CIA responded to this
new threat by failing to capture Bin Laden. Instead, they focussed
their attention on Iraq and another former associate of the CIA, Saddam
Hussein. The CIA claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction,
knowing that they had supplied him with them twenty years earlier.
George Tenant, the CIA’s director is said to have personally ordered
the ‘sexing up’ of the intelligence reports to support George Bush’s
case for war. What no one banked on was the embarrassing fact that the
WMDs had all been disposed of before America’s invasion, leaving Bush
and his allies without any justification for the war other than to save
the Iraqi people from a dictator that once again, the CIA had financed.
Sixty years of CIA activity
have led to millions of deaths and a growing culture of hostility
directed against America, but still the American taxpayer throws its
tax dollars into the CIA money pit. For its entire billion dollar
funding, international agents, private airlines and lack of
accountability, the CIA admits that it is highly unlikely that it can
stop the next terrorist attack on the US; it’s only a matter of time.
After sixty years of CIA
involvement in world politics, America herself is suffering the
blowback from the CIA’s covert operations.
© Thothweb - http://www.thothweb.com
All images copyright © by their respective photographers. This article is copyrighted. No part of this article can be reproduced without the written permission of ThothWeb.
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Re: Games without Frontiers: The Shadow World of the CIA
by Kaya on Friday, June 16, 2006 (CDT)
(User Info | Send a Message) | | Their actions have been unquestionably destructive to our entire planet. The CIA is the grand-daddy of black operations, with the exception that it operates in plain site whilst giving the public the finger. Taxpayers are paying for this!?? |
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Re: Games without Frontiers: The Shadow World of the CIA
by taboodada on Wednesday, September 06, 2006 (CDT)
(User Info | Send a Message) | | The possibility of the nazi's actually winning W.W.II via infiltration & assimilation must be considered. In light of Arnold Swarzenegger's comments, & the installation of a sympathetic nazi Pope. |
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