| CIA and the Crisis of Democracy |
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| by Ralph McGehee |
The supposedly liberal Clinton Administration, even before the events at Oklahoma City, pushed for more repressive legislation. His administration, like most preceding administrations both Democrat and Republican, draw their top people from the Trilateral Commission and its founding elite group — the Council on Foreign Relations. What neither organization wants is fully participatory democracy here or abroad — see the Trilateral Commission book, The Crisis of Democracy. The bombing in Oklahoma and its aftermath apparently assures the passage of even more repressive legislation.
Internationally, one event of note was the revelation of CIA operations with death Squads in Guatemala that killed an American, Michael Devine, and the husband of an American lawyer, Jennifer Harbury. Death squads have been created and used by the CIA around the world — particularly the Third World — since the late 1940s, a fact ignored by the elite-owned media.
In January 1995, our elites demonstrated their power to make policy this time in Mexico via a Chase Bank report. The report's author, Riordan Roett, is the Director of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University when not on leave with Chase. The report said the Mexican government must "eliminate the Zapatistas" to restore credibility and stability, and Mexico's President, Zedillo, ordered military operations into the Zapatistas' stronghold. Roett's report also said that the ruling PRI might have to rig future elections. In the U.S., after Congress rebuffed Clinton's effort to provide Mexico with $40 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to reimburse U.S. banks and mutual funds for Mexico's inability to pay interest on its loans to them, Clinton unilaterally came up with $20 billion from the U.S. Treasury.
President Clinton early in this period named his appointees to the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the Intelligence Community. The Commission is larded with corporate executives, ex-intelligence wonks and many former Cold War warriors. The 19 "questions" it is to examine are broad and would seem to defy the abilities and energies of this group. As with virtually all such commissions, this is an exercise in calming public outcry for something to be done after the Aldrich Ames debacle. Following each major intelligence or covert action disaster you have cries for change. Appointing a commission allows time for public outrage to dissipate. We can be confident this Commission will implement little if any significant action.
The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University held a series of meetings in late 1994 and early 1995 on "American Intelligence for the Twenty-First Century" as a lead-in to the Presidential Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The chairman of the latter, Les Aspin, was a participant in the colloquium. Others — speakers and members of the Institute — came predominately from either retired or active CIA personnel. Not surprisingly the group opted for a stronger CIA led by a Director of Central Intelligence who had real authority over the entire intelligence community. While opting for a leaner and less costly community primarily via consolidation of military intelligence units, the group ignored the Ames debacle and concluded that the presidential commission should focus on requirements and missions rather than on budget and personnel. The latter of course, is primary to any real reform — especially its old-boy personnel that defend the disastrous status quo.
The DCI nominee, John Deutch, in his confirmation hearings claims he will reform the CIA's personnel and policies. His affiliations, abilities and determination are obvious — but will he implement needed change? Does he understand that by removing many of the the CIA's top bureaucrats and replacing them with its younger generation, he is merely substituting older psychologically-screened, rigid-thinking, tunnel-visioned, team players, with younger ones?
Earlier update notices have covered the use of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as an implement for subverting other governments via the transfer of many of CIA functions in those operations to NED. The Agency for International Development (AID) and the United States Information Agency (USIA) also participate in "democracy promotion" operations in addition to the covert activities of CIA. Some European-based and many U.S. funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also participate directly or indirectly in these operations. While such organizations and agencies are the more or less overt manifestation, CIA retains the primary role of supporting or overthrowing other governments.
In a generally conflicting view of NGOs, the liberal magazine, NACLA: Report on the Americas, in its March/April 1995 issue, discusses the current usage of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Latin America. The author indicates that NGOs may serve a useful purpose in Latin America and that some liberals assume the growth of non-governmental organizations in Latin America reflects a strengthening of civil society. The author goes on to say that in searching for alternative models of development, North American progressives need to question whether these NGOs are invariably the best vehicle. Earlier the Reagan administration's low-intensity warfare used NGOs to supplement counterinsurgency campaigns. Now NGOs have an important role in promoting participatory, egalitarian and sustainable forms of development. Northern organizations must be flexible enough to learn from mistakes. Given the growth in numbers and competence of Latin American NGOs, northern NGOs are rethinking their mandate and role.
But in assessing covert actions we feel NGOs are an ambiguous area. We note a report by Russia's Federal Counterintelligence Service that records what happens in the former USSR. The report says, "through their special services [CIA] and scientific centers [and NGOs] the U.S. is penetrating deeply into all spheres of the country's life, occupying strategic positions and influencing the development of political and economic processes in Russia."
A personal note: The harassment directed at me for the last one and a half plus years — by presumably the FBI or the joint FBI/CIA Counterintelligence office — continues. On the night of 23/24 April my shed was broken into, I am harassed in local stores, subject to vehicular surveillance and tail-gateing and my wife's car was tail-gated by the Herndon police. I fear I will be arrested for shoplifting or assault or some other trumped-up charge.
This period I added information to CIABASE from a number of new on-line and/or printed intelligence publications. "Intelligence," a computerized as well as printed magazine published in Paris, France, is particularly informative. Intelligence Watch Report, published in the U.S., provides daily and periodic substantive coverage of world-wide developments in intelligence. The NY Transfer News is another valuable computerized report. A number of individuals sent me hard-to-find books or other important material such as informed E-Mail. I select, edit and summarize the most relevant from all of those sources and incorporate this with information from the usual sources: Covert Action Quarterly, Military Intelligence, Extra!, Unclassified, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Progressive, the newsweeklies, The Washington Post and the Washington Times, etc.
McNamara, Robert Strange. (1995). IN RETROSPECT: THE TRAGEDY AND LESSONS OF VIETNAM. NY: Times Books. A superficial and selective mea culpa. The former Secretary of Defense claims our governing elite had little understanding of the Vietnamese and the war — and from the perspective of 25 years — explains all that they did (do) not know. McNamara decries the Vietnamese lack of resolve to fight, he still does not realize that they won, repelling the world's strongest military force. McNamara was the best and brightest of the "best and brightest," but his book does not cite a single communist source. The shallowness of his analysis exposes the intellectual prostitution demanded of America's academic elite. Sam Adams, a CIA analyst, who fought the CIA at every step, said the Agency in undercounting the VC, refused to use what should have been its primary source — captured enemy documents. In my own experience I discovered that the CIA buried any information that did not support its pro-war policies. Asian communist leaders set forth in their writings the plans and programs of their revolutions but I doubt if any Agency operative, or any member of the best and brightest, ever read or, if so, understood those writings. The CIA recruited paid agents to tell the CIA what it wanted to hear, ignoring the mass of overt information that so disproved our rationales for the war. This practice epitomizes Agency operations from the beginning to the present.
Mohammad Yousaf & Adkin, M. (1992). THE BEARTRAP: AFGHANISTAN'S UNTOLD STORY. London, England: Leo Cooper. The book outlines CIA's support operation for the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan via Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's CIA. ISI funneled 70 per cent of all material aid — money, uniforms, weapons, including stinger missiles and demolitions — to radical Islamic fundamentalists. Now radical Islamic fundamentalism is one of our major problems.
Howard, E.L. (1995). SAFE HOUSE: THE COMPELLING MEMOIRS OF THE ONLY CIA SPY TO SEEK ASYLUM IN RUSSIA. Bethesda, MD: National Press Books. Howard says he had no contact with the Soviets until FBI harassment operations forced him to flee the United States and seek sanctuary in the USSR.
Adams, James. (1995). SELL OUT: ALDRICH AMES AND THE CORRUPTION OF THE CIA. NY: Penguin Books USA. The story of Ames' betrayal. To protect Ames the KGB ran deception operations that kept the FBI chasing false leads for years. The book foreshadows a series of other such books on Ames.
Andrew, C. (1995). FOR THE PRESIDENT'S EYES ONLY: SECRET INTELLIGENCE AND THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY FROM WASHINGTON TO BUSH. NY: HarpersCollins Publishers.
Kempe, F. (1990). DIVORCING THE DICTATOR: AMERICA'S BUNGLED AFFAIR WITH NORIEGA. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
William, P. (1991). PUPPETMASTERS: THE POLITICAL USE OF TERRORISM IN ITALY. London: Constable.
Minter, W. (1994). APARTHEID'S CONTRAS: AN INQUIRY INTO THE ROOTS OF WAR IN ANGOLA AND MOZAMBIQUE. London, England: ZED Books Ltd.
Institute for the Study of Diplomacy of Georgetown University, CHECKLIST FOR THE FUTURE OF INTELLIGENCE, prepared by Dr. John Hollister Hedley. The checklist concludes that the CIA is fine, it just needs more power and influence.
Anderson, J. L. & Anderson, S. (1986). INSIDE THE LEAGUE: THE SHOCKING EXPOSE OF HOW TERRORISTS, NAZIS, AND LATIN AMERICAN DEATH SQUADS HAVE INFILTRATED THE WORLD ANTI-COMMUNIST LEAGUE. NY: Dodd, Mead & Company.
GAO REPORT: RADIO MARTI: PROGRAM REVIEW PROCESSES NEED STRENGTHENING. GAO/NSAID-94-265 11 PAGES.
GAO REPORT: CHEMICAL WEAPONS: STABILITY OF THE U.S. STOCKPILE. GAO/NSAID-95-67.
JOURNAL OF DEMOCRACY, A PUBLICATION OF THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY.
Godson, Roy (editor). Books published in the 1980s by the National Strategy Information Center (NSIC). Readers' alert: Irrelevance, ignorance, arrogance and dissembling. The books are:
INTELLIGENCE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 1980'S: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE
INTELLIGENCE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 1980'S: ANALYSIS AND ESTIMATES
INTELLIGENCE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 1980'S: INTELLIGENCE AND POLICY
INTELLIGENCE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 1980'S: CLANDESTINE COLLECTION
INTELLIGENCE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 1980'S: COVERT ACTION
INTELLIGENCE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 1980'S: ELEMENTS OF INTELLIGENCE
INTELLIGENCE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 1980'S: DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE
INTELLIGENCE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 1990'S: COLLECTION, ANALYSIS, COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AND COVERT ACTION
Details here.
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