RANT ARCHIVE 5:

The CIA and Other Intelligent Ideas

> CIA Atrocities

> 1984 Is Here! 

> BIG Brother is in the "Homeland": Total(itarian) Information Awareness

> You Are A Suspect

>CIA Diary--Inside the Company--by Philip Agee

>Gary Webb--The Dark Alliance: The CIA, Contras, and Cocaine

The Devil in the Details: The CIA and Saddam Hussein

also: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/10/205859.shtml

The CIA --America's Premier International Terrorist Organization

The webpage that Yahoo refuses to list: www.serendipity.li/cia.html

                                                                               operation_phoenix

CRACK THE CIA  www.radio4all.org/crackcia/

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INTRODUCTION

The following timeline describes just a few of the hundreds of atrocities and crimes committed by the CIA since 1943.¹

CIA operations follow the same recurring script. First, American business interests abroad are threatened by a popular or democratically elected leader. The people support their leader because he intends to conduct land reform, strengthen unions, redistribute wealth, nationalize foreign-owned industry, and regulate business to protect workers, consumers and the environment.

So, on behalf of American business, and often with their help, the CIA mobilizes the opposition. First it identifies right-wing groups within the country (usually the military), and offers them a deal: "We'll put you in power if you maintain a favorable business climate for us." The Agency then hires, trains and works with them to overthrow the existing government (usually a democracy). It uses every trick in the book: propaganda, stuffed ballot boxes, purchased elections, extortion, blackmail, sexual intrigue, false stories about opponents in the local media, infiltration and disruption of opposing political parties, kidnapping, beating, torture, intimidation, economic sabotage, death squads and even assassination.

These efforts culminate in a military coup, which installs a right-wing dictator. The CIA trains the dictator's security apparatus to crack down on the traditional enemies of big business, using interrogation, torture and murder. The victims are said to be "communists," but almost always they are just peasants, liberals, moderates, labor union leaders, political opponents and advocates of free speech and democracy. Widespread human rights abuses follow.

This scenario has been repeated so many times that the CIA actually teaches it in a special school, the notorious "School of the Americas." (It opened in Panama but later moved to Fort Benning, Georgia.) Critics have nicknamed it the "School of the Dictators" and "School of the Assassins." Here, the CIA trains Latin American military officers how to conduct coups, including the use of interrogation, torture and murder.

The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations.²  Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an "American Holocaust." The CIA justifies these actions as part of its war against communism. But most coups do not involve a communist threat. Unlucky nations are targeted for a wide variety of reasons: not only threats to American business interests abroad, but also liberal or even moderate social reforms, political instability, the unwillingness of a leader to carry out Washington's dictates, and declarations of neutrality in the Cold War. Indeed, nothing has infuriated CIA Directors quite like a nation's desire to stay out of the Cold War.

The ironic thing about all this intervention is that it frequently fails to achieve American objectives. Often the newly installed dictator grows comfortable with the security apparatus the CIA has built for him. He becomes an expert at running a police state. And because the dictator knows he cannot be overthrown, he becomes independent and defiant of Washington's will. The CIA then finds it cannot overthrow him, because the police and military are under the dictator's control, afraid to cooperate with American spies for fear of torture and execution.

The only two options for the U.S at this point are impotence or war. Examples of this "boomerang effect" include the Shah of Iran, General Noriega and Saddam Hussein. The boomerang effect also explains why the CIA has proven highly successful at overthrowing democracies, but a wretched failure at overthrowing dictatorships.

The following timeline should confirm that the CIA as we know it should be abolished and replaced by a true information-gathering and analysis organization. The CIA cannot be reformed — it is institutionally and culturally corrupt.

 

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TIMELINE

1929: The culture we lost
Secretary of State Henry Stimson refuses to endorse a code-breaking operation, saying, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail."

1941: COI created
In preparation for World War II, President Roosevelt creates the Office of Coordinator of Information (COI). General William "Wild Bill" Donovan heads the new intelligence service.

1942: OSS created
Roosevelt restructures COI into something more suitable for covert action, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Donovan recruits so many of the nation's rich and powerful that eventually people joke that "OSS" stands for "Oh, so social!" or "Oh, such snobs!"

1943: Italy
Donovan recruits the Catholic Church in Rome to be the center of Anglo-American spy operations in Fascist Italy. This would prove to be one of America's most enduring intelligence alliances in the Cold War.

1945: OSS is abolished
The remaining American information agencies cease covert actions and return to harmless information gathering and analysis.

Operation PAPERCLIP
While other American agencies are hunting down Nazi war criminals for arrest, the U.S. intelligence community is smuggling them into America, unpunished, for their use against the Soviets. The most important of these is Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's master spy who had built up an intelligence network in the Soviet Union. With full U.S. blessing, he creates the "Gehlen Organization," a band of refugee Nazi spies who reactivate their networks in Russia. These include SS intelligence officers Alfred Six and Emil Augsburg (who massacred Jews in the Holocaust), Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyon"), Otto von Bolschwing (the Holocaust mastermind who worked with Eichmann) . The Gehlen Organization supplies the U.S. with its only intelligence on the Soviet Union for the next ten years, serving as a bridge between the abolishment of the OSS and the creation of the CIA. However, much of the "intelligence" the former Nazis provide is bogus.

Gehlen inflates Soviet military capabilities at a time when Russia is still rebuilding its devastated society, in order to inflate his own importance to the Americans (who might otherwise punish him). In 1948, Gehlen almost convinces the Americans that war is imminent, and the West should make a preemptive strike. In the 50s he produces a fictitious "missile gap." To make matters worse, the Russians have thoroughly penetrated the Gehlen Organization with double agents, undermining the very American security that Galen was supposed to protect.

1947: Greece
President Truman requests military aid to Greece to support right-wing forces fighting communist rebels. For the rest of the Cold War, Washington and the CIA will back notorious Greek leaders with deplorable human rights records.

CIA created
President Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947, creating the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council. The CIA is accountable to the president through the NSC -there is no democratic or congressional oversight. Its charter allows the CIA to "perform such other functions and duties as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." This loophole opens the door to covert action and dirty tricks.

1948: Covert-action wing created
The CIA recreates a covert action wing, innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination, led by Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner. According to its secret charter, its responsibilities include "propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation procedures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."

Italy
The CIA corrupts democratic elections in Italy, where Italian communists threaten to win the elections. The CIA buys votes, broadcasts propaganda, threatens and beats up opposition leaders, and infiltrates and disrupts their organizations. It works — the communists are defeated.

1949: Radio Free Europe
The CIA creates its first major propaganda outlet, Radio Free Europe. Over the next several decades, its broadcasts are so blatantly false that for a time it is considered illegal to publish transcripts of them in the U.S.

Late 40’s: Operation MOCKINGBIRD
The CIA begins recruiting American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda. Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham head the effort. Graham is publisher of The Washington Post, which becomes a major CIA player. Eventually, the CIA's media assets will include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service and more. By the CIA's own admission, at least 25 organizations and 400 journalists will become CIA assets.

1953: Iran
CIA overthrows the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup, after he threatened to nationalize British oil. The CIA replaces him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police, SAVAK, is as brutal as the Gestapo.

Operation MK-ULTRA
Inspired by North Korea's brainwashing program, the CIA begins experiments on mind control. The most notorious part of this project involves giving LSD and other drugs to American subjects without their knowledge or against their will, causing several to commit suicide. However, the operation involves far more than this. Funded in part by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, research includes propaganda, brainwashing, public relations, advertising, hypnosis, and other forms of suggestion.

1954: Guatemala
CIA overthrows the democratically elected Jacob Arbenz in a military coup. Arbenz has threatened to nationalize the Rockefeller-owned United Fruit Company, in which CIA Director Allen Dulles also owns stock. Arbenz is replaced with a series of right-wing dictators whose bloodthirsty policies will kill over 100,000 Guatemalans in the next 40 years.

1954-1958: North Vietnam
CIA officer Edward Lansdale spends four years trying to overthrow the communist government of North Vietnam, using all the usual dirty tricks. The CIA also attempts to legitimize a tyrannical puppet regime in South Vietnam, headed by Ngo Dinh Diem. These efforts fail to win the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese because the Diem government is opposed to true democracy, land reform and poverty reduction measures. The CIA's continuing failure results in escalating American intervention and finally the Vietnam War.

1956: Hungary
Radio Free Europe incites Hungary to revolt by broadcasting Khruschev's Secret Speech, in which he denounced Stalin. It also hints that American aid will help the Hungarians fight. This aid fails to materialize as Hungarians launch a doomed armed revolt, which only invites a major Soviet invasion. The conflict kills 7,000 Soviets and 30,000 Hungarians.

1957-1973: Laos
The CIA carries out approximately one coup per year trying to nullify Laos' democratic elections. The problem is the Pathet Lao, a leftist group with enough popular support to be a member of any coalition government. In the late 50s, the CIA even creates an "Army Clandestine" of Asian mercenaries to attack the Pathet Lao. After the CIA's army suffers numerous defeats, the U.S. starts bombing, dropping more bombs on Laos than all the U.S. bombs dropped in World War II. A quarter of all Laotians will eventually become refugees, many living in caves.

1959: Haiti
The U.S. military helps "Papa Doc" Duvalier become dictator of Haiti. He creates his own private police force, the "Tonton Macoutes," who terrorize the population with machetes. They will kill over 100,000 during the Duvalier family reign. The U.S. does not protest their dismal human rights record.

1961: The Bay of Pigs
The CIA sends 1,500 Cuban exiles to invade Castro's Cuba. But "Operation Mongoose" fails, due to poor planning, security and backing. The planners had imagined that the invasion would spark a popular uprising against Castro — which never happens. A promised American air strike also never occurs. This is the CIA's first public setback, causing President Kennedy to fire CIA Director Allen Dulles.

Dominican Republic
The CIA assassinates Rafael Trujillo, a murderous dictator Washington has supported since 1930. Trujillo's business interests have grown so large (about 60 percent of the economy) that they have begun competing with American business interests.

Ecuador
The CIA-backed military forces the democratically elected President Jose Velasco to resign. Vice President Carlos Arosemana replaces him; the CIA fills the now vacant vice presidency with its own man.

Congo (Zaire)
The CIA assassinates the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba. However, public support for Lumumba's politics runs so high that the CIA cannot clearly install his opponents in power. Four years of political turmoil follow.

1963: Kennedy Assassination

1963: Dominican Republic
The CIA overthrows the democratically elected Juan Bosch in a military coup. The CIA installs a repressive, right wing junta.

Ecuador
A CIA-backed military coup overthrows President Arosemana, whose independent (not socialist) policies have become unacceptable to Washington. A military junta assumes command, cancels the 1964 elections, and begins abusing human rights.

1964: Brazil
A CIA-backed military coup overthrows the democratically elected government of Joao Goulart. The junta that replaces it will, in the next two decades, become one of the most bloodthirsty in history. General Castelo Branco will create Latin America's first death squads, or bands of secret police that hunt down "communists" for torture, interrogation and murder. Often these "communists" are no more than Branco's political opponents. Later it is revealed that the CIA trains the death squads.

1965: Indonesia
The CIA overthrows the democratically elected Sukarno with a military coup. The CIA has been trying to eliminate Sukarno since 1957, using everything from attempted assassination to sexual intrigue, for nothing more than his declaring neutrality in the Cold War. His successor, General Suharto, will massacre between 500,000 to 1 million civilians accused of being "communist." The CIA supplies the names of countless suspects.

Dominican Republic
A popular rebellion breaks out, promising to reinstall Juan Bosch as the country's elected leader. The revolution is crushed when U.S. Marines land to uphold the military regime by force. The CIA directs everything behind the scenes.

Greece
With the CIA's backing, the king removes George Papandreous as prime minister. Papandreous has failed to vigorously support U.S. interests in Greece.

Congo (Zaire)
A CIA-backed military coup installs Mobutu Sese Seko as dictator. The hated and repressive Mobutu exploits his desperately poor country for billions.

1966: The Ramparts Affair
The radical magazine Ramparts begins a series of unprecedented anti-CIA articles. Among their scoops: the CIA has paid the University of Michigan $25 million dollars to hire "professors" to train South Vietnamese students in covert police methods. MIT and other universities have received similar payments. Ramparts also reveal that the National Students' Association is a CIA front. Students are sometimes recruited through blackmail and bribery, including draft deferments.

1967: Greece
A CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government two days before the elections. The favorite to win was George Papandreous, the liberal candidate. During the next six years, the "reign of the colonels" - backed by the CIA - will usher in the widespread use of torture and murder against political opponents. When a Greek ambassador objects to President Johnson about U.S. plans for Cyprus, Johnson tells him: "Fuck your parliament and your constitution."

Operation PHOENIX
The CIA helps South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in South Vietnamese villages. According to a 1971 congressional report, this operation killed about 20,000 "Viet Cong."

1968: Operation CHAOS
The CIA has been illegally spying on American citizens since 1959, but with Operation CHAOS, President Johnson dramatically boosts the effort. CIA agents go undercover as student radicals to spy on and disrupt campus organizations protesting the Vietnam War. They are searching for Russian instigators, which they never find. CHAOS will eventually spy on 7,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations.

Bolivia
A CIA-organized military operation captures legendary guerilla Che Guevara. The CIA wants to keep him alive for interrogation, but the Bolivian government executes him to prevent worldwide calls for clemency.

1969: Uruguay
The notorious CIA torturer Dan Mitrione arrives in Uruguay, a country torn with political strife. Whereas right-wing forces previously used torture only as a last resort, Mitrione convinces them to use it as a routine, widespread practice. "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect," is his motto. The torture techniques he teaches to the death squads rival the Nazis'. He eventually becomes so feared that revolutionaries will kidnap and murder him a year later.

1970: Cambodia
The CIA overthrows Prince Sihanouk, who is highly popular among Cambodians for keeping them out of the Vietnam War. He is replaced by CIA puppet Lon Nol, who immediately throws Cambodian troops into battle. This unpopular move strengthens once minor opposition parties like the Khmer Rouge, which achieves power in 1975 and massacres millions of its own people.

1971: Bolivia
After half a decade of CIA-inspired political turmoil, a CIA-backed military coup overthrows the leftist President Juan Torres. In the next two years, dictator Hugo Banzer will have over 2,000 political opponents arrested without trial, then tortured, raped and executed.

Haiti
"Papa Doc" Duvalier dies, leaving his 19-year old son "Baby Doc" Duvalier the dictator of Haiti. His son continues his bloody reign with full knowledge of the CIA.

1972: The Case-Zablocki Act
Congress passes an act requiring congressional review of executive agreements. In theory, this should make CIA operations more accountable. In fact, it is only marginally effective.

Cambodia
Congress votes to cut off CIA funds for its secret war in Cambodia.

Watergate Break-in
President Nixon sends in a team of burglars to wiretap Democratic offices at Watergate. The team members have extensive CIA histories, including James McCord, E. Howard Hunt and five of the Cuban burglars. They work for the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP), which does dirty work like disrupting Democratic campaigns and laundering Nixon's illegal campaign contributions. CREEP's activities are funded and organized by another CIA front, the Mullen Company.

1973: Chile
The CIA overthrows and assassinates Salvador Allende, Latin America's first democratically elected socialist leader. The problems begin when Allende nationalizes American-owned firms in Chile. ITT offers the CIA $1 million for a coup (reportedly refused). The CIA replaces Allende with General Augusto Pinochet, who will torture and murder thousands of his own countrymen in a crackdown on labor leaders and the political left.

CIA begins internal investigations
William Colby, the Deputy Director for Operations, orders all CIA personnel to report any and all illegal activities they know about. This information is later reported to Congress.

Watergate Scandal
The CIA's main collaborating newspaper in America, The Washington Post, reports Nixon's crimes long before any other newspaper take up the subject. The two reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, make almost no mention of the CIA's many fingerprints all over the scandal. It is later revealed that Woodward was a Naval intelligence briefer to the White House, and knows many important intelligence figures, including General Alexander Haig. His main source, "Deep Throat," is probably one of those.

CIA Director Helms Fired
President Nixon fires CIA Director Richard Helms for failing to help cover up the Watergate scandal. Helms and Nixon have always disliked each other. The new CIA director is William Colby, who is relatively more open to CIA reform.

1974: CHAOS exposed
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh publishes a story about Operation CHAOS, the domestic surveillance and infiltration of anti-war and civil rights groups in the U.S. The story sparks national outrage.

Angleton fired
Congress holds hearings on the illegal domestic spying efforts of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's chief of counterintelligence. His efforts included mail-opening campaigns and secret surveillance of war protesters. The hearings result in his dismissal from the CIA.

House clears CIA in Watergate
The House of Representatives clears the CIA of any complicity in Nixon's Watergate break-in.

The Hughes Ryan Act
Congress passes an amendment requiring the president to report non-intelligence CIA operations to the relevant congressional committees in a timely fashion.

1975: Australia
The CIA helps topple the democratically elected, left-leaning government of Prime Minister Edward Whitlam. The CIA does this by giving an ultimatum to its Governor-General, John Kerr. Kerr, a longtime CIA collaborator, exercises his constitutional right to dissolve the Whitlam government. The Governor-General is a largely ceremonial position appointed by the Queen; the Prime Minister is democratically elected. The use of this archaic and never-used law stuns the nation.

Angola
Eager to demonstrate American military resolve after its defeat in Vietnam, Henry Kissinger launches a CIA-backed war in Angola. Contrary to Kissinger's assertions, Angola is a country of little strategic importance and not seriously threatened by communism. The CIA backs the brutal leader of UNITAS, Jonas Savimbi. This polarizes Angolan politics and drives his opponents into the arms of Cuba and the Soviet Union for survival. Congress will cut off funds in 1976, but the CIA is able to run the war off the books until 1984, when funding is legalized again. This entirely pointless war kills over 300,000 Angolans.

"The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence"
Victor Marchetti and John Marks publish this whistle-blowing history of CIA crimes and abuses. Marchetti has spent 14 years in the CIA, eventually becoming an executive assistant to the Deputy Director of Intelligence. Marks has spent five years as an intelligence official in the State Department.

"Inside the Company"
Philip Agee publishes a diary of his life inside the CIA. Agee has worked in covert operations in Latin America during the 60s, and details the crimes in which he took part.

Congress investigates CIA wrongdoing
Public outrage compels Congress to hold hearings on CIA crimes. Senator Frank Church heads the Senate investigation ("The Church Committee"), and Representative Otis Pike heads the House investigation. (Despite a 98 percent incumbency reelection rate, both Church and Pike are defeated in the next elections.) The investigations lead to a number of reforms intended to increase the CIA's accountability to Congress, including the creation of a standing Senate committee on intelligence. However, the reforms prove ineffective, as the Iran/Contra scandal will show. It turns out the CIA can control, deal with or sidestep Congress with ease.

The Rockefeller Commission
In an attempt to reduce the damage done by the Church Committee, President Ford creates the "Rockefeller Commission" to whitewash CIA history and propose toothless reforms. The commission's namesake, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, is himself a major CIA figure. Five of the commission's eight members are also members of the Council on Foreign Relations, a CIA-dominated organization.

1979: Iran
The CIA fails to predict the fall of the Shah of Iran, a longtime CIA puppet, and the rise of Muslim fundamentalists who are furious at the CIA's backing of SAVAK, the Shah's bloodthirsty secret police. In revenge, the Muslims take 52 Americans hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

Lebanon: CIA Trains Phalangists on how to bomb civilians

El Salvador
An idealistic group of young military officers, repulsed by the massacre of the poor, overthrows the right-wing government. However, the U.S. compels the inexperienced officers to include many of the old guard in key positions in their new government. Soon, things are back to "normal" - the military government is repressing and killing poor civilian protesters. Many of the young military and civilian reformers, finding themselves powerless, resign in disgust.

Nicaragua
Anastasios Samoza II, the CIA-backed dictator, falls. The Marxist Sandinistas take over government, and they are initially popular because of their commitment to land and anti-poverty reform. Samoza had a murderous and hated personal army called the National Guard. Remnants of the Guard will become the Contras, who fight a CIA-backed guerilla war against the Sandinista government throughout the 1980s.

1980: El Salvador
The Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, pleads with President Carter "Christian to Christian" to stop aiding the military government slaughtering his people. Carter refuses. Shortly afterwards, right-wing leader Roberto D'Aubuisson has Romero shot through the heart while saying Mass. The country soon dissolves into civil war, with the peasants in the hills fighting against the military government. The CIA and U.S. Armed Forces supply the government with overwhelming military and intelligence superiority. CIA-trained death squads roam the countryside, committing atrocities like that of El Mazote in 1982, where they massacre between 700 and 1000 men, women and children. By 1992, some 63,000 Salvadorans will be killed.

1981: Iran/Contra Begins
The CIA begins selling arms to Iran at high prices, using the profits to arm the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. President Reagan vows that the Sandinistas will be "pressured" until "they say 'uncle.'" The CIA's Freedom Fighter's Manual disbursed to the Contras includes instruction on economic sabotage, propaganda, extortion, bribery, blackmail, interrogation, torture, murder and political assassination.

1983: Honduras
The CIA gives Honduran military officers the Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983, which teaches how to torture people. Honduras' notorious "Battalion 316" then uses these techniques, with the CIA's full knowledge, on thousands of leftist dissidents. At least 184 are murdered.

1984: The Boland Amendment
The last of a series of Boland Amendments is passed. These amendments have reduced CIA aid to the Contras; the last one cuts it off completely. However, CIA Director William Casey is already prepared to "hand off" the operation to Colonel Oliver North, who illegally continues supplying the Contras through the CIA's informal, secret, and self-financing network. This includes "humanitarian aid" donated by Adolph Coors and William Simon, and military aid funded by Iranian arms sales.

1986: Eugene Hasenfus
Nicaragua shoots down a C-123 transport plane carrying military supplies to the Contras. The lone survivor, Eugene Hasenfus, turns out to be a CIA employee, as are the two dead pilots. The airplane belongs to Southern Air Transport, a CIA front. The incident makes a mockery of President Reagan's claims that the CIA is not illegally arming the Contras.

Iran/Contra Scandal
Although the details have long been known, the Iran/Contra scandal finally captures the media's attention in 1986. Congress holds hearings, and several key figures (like Oliver North) lie under oath to protect the intelligence community. CIA Director William Casey dies of brain cancer before Congress can question him. All reforms enacted by Congress after the scandal are purely cosmetic.

Haiti
Rising popular revolt in Haiti means that "Baby Doc" Duvalier will remain "President for Life" only if he has a short one. The U.S., which hates instability in a puppet country, flies the despotic Duvalier to the South of France for a comfortable retirement. The CIA then rigs the upcoming elections in favor of another right-wing military strongman. However, violence keeps the country in political turmoil for another four years. The CIA tries to strengthen the military by creating the National Intelligence Service (SIN), which suppresses popular revolt through torture and assassination.

1989: Panama
The U.S. invades Panama to overthrow a dictator of its own making, General Manuel Noriega. Noriega has been on the CIA's payroll since 1966, and has been transporting drugs with the CIA's knowledge since 1972. By the late 80s, Noriega's growing independence and intransigence have angered Washington. So out he goes.

1990: Haiti
Competing against 10 comparatively wealthy candidates, leftist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide captures 68 percent of the vote. After only eight months in power, however, the CIA-backed military deposes him. More military dictators brutalize the country, as thousands of Haitian refugees escape the turmoil in barely seaworthy boats. As popular opinion calls for Aristide's return, the CIA begins a disinformation campaign painting the courageous priest as mentally unstable.

1991: The Fall of the Soviet Union
The CIA fails to predict this most important event of the Cold War. This suggests that it has been so busy undermining governments that it hasn't been doing its primary job: gathering and analyzing information. The fall of the Soviet Union also robs the CIA of its reason for existence: fighting communism. This leads some to accuse the CIA of intentionally failing to predict the downfall of the Soviet Union. Curiously, the intelligence community's budget is not significantly reduced after the demise of communism.

1992: Economic Espionage
In the years following the end of the Cold War, the CIA is increasingly used for economic espionage. This involves stealing the technological secrets of competing foreign companies and giving them to American ones. Given the CIA's clear preference for dirty tricks over mere information gathering, the possibility of serious criminal behavior is very great indeed.

1993: Haiti
The chaos in Haiti grows so bad that President Clinton has no choice but to remove the Haitian military dictator, Raoul Cedras, on threat of U.S. invasion. The U.S. occupiers do not arrest Haiti's military leaders for crimes against humanity, but instead ensure their safety and rich retirements. Aristide is returned to power only after being forced to accept an agenda favorable to the country's ruling class.

1993: World Trade Centre

1995: Oklahoma City Federal Building

2001: World Trade Centre

 

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EPILOGUE

In a speech before the CIA celebrating its 50th anniversary, President Clinton said: "By necessity, the American people will never know the full story of your courage." Clinton's is a common defense of the CIA: namely, the American people should stop criticizing the CIA because they don't know what it really does. This, of course, is the heart of the problem in the first place. An agency that is above criticism is also above moral behavior and reform. Its secrecy and lack of accountability allows its corruption to grow unchecked. Furthermore, Clinton's statement is simply untrue. The history of the agency is growing painfully clear, especially with the declassification of historical CIA documents. We may not know the details of specific operations, but we do know, quite well, the general behavior of the CIA. These facts began emerging nearly two decades ago at an ever-quickening pace. Today we have a remarkably accurate and consistent picture, repeated in country after country, and verified from countless different directions.

The CIA's response to this growing knowledge and criticism follows a typical historical pattern. (Indeed, there are remarkable parallels to the Medieval Church's fight against the Scientific Revolution.) The first journalists and writers to reveal the CIA's criminal behavior were harassed and censored if they were American writers, and tortured and murdered if they were foreigners. (See Philip Agee's On the Run for an example of early harassment.)

However, over the last two decades the tide of evidence has become overwhelming, and the CIA has found that it does not have enough fingers to plug every hole in the dike. This is especially true in the age of the Internet, where information flows freely among millions of people. Since censorship is impossible, the Agency must now defend itself with apologetics. Clinton's "Americans will never know" defense is a prime example.

Another common apologetic is that "the world is filled with unsavory characters, and we must deal with them if we are to protect American interests at all." There are two things wrong with this. First, it ignores the fact that the CIA has regularly spurned alliances with defenders of democracy, free speech and human rights, preferring the company of military dictators and tyrants. The CIA had moral options available to them, but did not take them.

Second, this argument raises several questions. The first is: Which American interests? The CIA has courted right-wing dictators because they allow wealthy Americans to exploit the country's cheap labor and resources. But poor and middle-class Americans pay the price whenever they fight the wars that stem from CIA actions, from Vietnam to the Gulf War to Panama. The second question is: Why should American interests come at the expense of other peoples' human rights?

The CIA should be abolished, its leadership dismissed and its relevant members tried for crimes against humanity. Our intelligence community should be rebuilt from the ground up, with the goal of collecting and analyzing information.

As for covert action, there are two moral options. The first one is to eliminate covert action completely. But this gives jitters to people worried about the Adolph Hitler's of the world. So a second option is that we can place covert action under extensive and true democratic oversight. For example, a bipartisan Congressional Committee of 40 members could review and veto all aspects of CIA operations upon a majority or super-majority vote. Which of these two options is best may be the subject of debate, but one thing is clear: like dictatorship, like monarchy, unaccountable covert operations should die like the dinosaurs they are.

 

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1.  All history concerning CIA intervention in foreign countries is summarized from William Blum’s encyclopedic work, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995. Sources for domestic CIA operations come from Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen's The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1997.

2.  Coleman McCarthy, "The Consequences of Covert Tactics", Washington Post, December 13, 1987.

 

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A REPEAT OF THE OFFENSES CITED ABOVE, PLUS SOME EXTRAS

Director Of Central Intelligence of the CIA Richard Helms and the CIA's involvement in the "Bay Of Pigs" incident in Dallas 1963

The killing of Lee H. Oswald by Jack Ruby. E. Howard Hunt (former CIA station chief Mexico) being one of the hobos on the Grassy Knoll on November 22nd 1963 and later (oddly) being caught in the Watergate building with our old friend CIA "G-Man" G. Gordon Liddy.

The "mysterious" death of CIA DCI William Colby

The work of Admiral John Poindexter and General Richard V. Secord with arms-dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar

CIA DDCI Robert Gates and his "breakdown"

Ollie North's handy ability to take the Fifth Amendment in the spotlight

George H.W. Bush (DCI 1974) facilitating drug deals

John Hull's plane procurement skills

Ronald Wilson Reagan's convenient memory lapses and the old bastard Knight Of Malta DCI Bill Casey promoting the selling of snorting gear in the 1980's

Casey giving $3m to the Saudi Arabians in return for punting drugs money to buy arms for the Nicaraguan Contras (Adolfo Calero being a very charming man apparently;-)

Kidnapped (and subsequently murdered) CIA station chief William Buckley

Operation Phoenix in Vietnam

The secret army training in Aden

Dhofar

War and bombing of Laos, Cambodia

Restoration of the Greek monarch in 1946

Installing (and killing) Vietnamese Diem

Overthrowing the democratically elected Mossadegh in Iran and installing the Shah 1953

Supporting Gehlen's Nazis in 1946

Running the Burmese Nationalist incursions into China for about 12 years

Overthrow of Albania's Enver Hoxha in 1950

Attempted killing of Huk in the Phillipines 1953

Kidnap of Otto John in West Germany

Installation of Armas in Guatemala (1954) strangely after they'd nationalized the land of US companies (no connection honest)

Attempts to overthrow Nasser

Assassinating Chou En-Lai 1955

Overthrowing Prince Sihanouk and the CIA-sponsored coup of March 18 1970 via Lon Nol Chief of the CIA-backed Cambodian army

Fidel Castro (fucking hundreds of times-they still didn't manage to kill him or poison his cigars)

Overthrowing the Portugese government of 1975

Destablizing Angola by killing 300,000 in the backing UNITA's Jonas Savimbi until 1984

The death of Werner Lamberz and Paul Markowski

Discrediting of Harold Wilson

Evicting Gough Whitlam in Australia by blackmailing Governor-General John Kerr to dissolve the left-wing elected government

The diabolic murders in Haiti by "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier

The support for CIA torturer Dan Mitrione in Uruguay in 1969

The coup in Granada 1980 to remove Maurice Bishop

1981 Seychelles military coup

Bribery in Mauritius 1982

Successful coup in Guatemala 1982

At least 3 attempts to overthrow Bouterse's Surinamese government

Bribery of candidates in the 1984 El Salvador election

Casey buying anti-Communist votes in trying to rig the 1987 Italian election

Dopey "Bud" McFarlane

Support for Juan Peron's old mate Michele Sindona supplying French Exocet missiles to Argentina during the Falklands War 1982...

The deaths of freelance journalists Danny Casolaro and Jonathan Moyle (hanged in a Chilean hotel wardrobe, following a lethal injection in the heel-Hotel Carrera room 406 to be precise) while investigating British and American dealings with Dr. Carlos Cardoen and Augusto Pinochet in punting coke (and the Helios Weapons Guidance System and Stonefish mine system from our old friends at Marconi Underwater Systems) to Iran and Iraq with the full knowledge of CIA and MI6 (31 March 1990)

The "blind" which is Area 51

The long-history of the CIA's coke dealing with Panama's Manuel Noriega ("Just Fly Low" - the US spent 900 trillion dollars on a ultra-high-tech stealth plane that couldn't be detected by radar and they could have just borrowed Manuel Noriega's tiny low-tech Cessna which managed to fly huge quantities of drugs into the US for years without anyone noticing...)

The corruption of BCCI...the S and L scandal

Global money-laundering

Banco Ambrosiano

The death of Pope John Paul I

Roberto Calvi found in "Hanged Man" tarot card mode under Blackfriars Bridge

The drug and arms dealings of the Shah Of Iran

The Chilean coup ousting democratically elected Marxist Salvador Allende ("make the economy scream" said Kissinger to CIA DCI Richard Helms at the time)

UK/US counter-insurgence and spying on huge populations under the auspices of Echelon

The stitch-up of Richard Nixon in Watergate

The Clintons and Whitewater

CIA ambassador mad bitch April Glaspie giving Saddam Hussein the official green light to invade Kuwait in 1990

Fawn Hall's monster crack-cocaine addiction (how ironic)

Operation Screw Worm - the plan by CIA and Oliver North to flood the US with an extra 50000 kilos a month of uncut cocaine to depress the price of street coke in May 1986 (nice folks huh?)

The helping of the FBI to harass songwriter Phil Ochs

The CIA's backing of SAVAK

The Iranian Shah's secret police (which caused the taking of 52 American hostages in the US embassy Teheran)

The aid to right-wing Roberto D'Aubuisson in shooting Oscar Romero Archbishop of San Salvador through the heart after his pleading to Jimmy Carter to stop the CIA aiding the military government slaughtering the people

Secret agent Mindfuck with the IRA

ETA

Red Brigade

Bader Meinhof

Semtex smuggling

Infiltration of Panavia

The CIA "men of influence" at the heart of governments in Sweden, Holland, UK and Italy

EC/CIA drug running via safe houses in London, Brussels and Strasbourg

Moles at London Circus

The leaking of commercial British Aerospace faxes from Airbus to Boeing intercepted on British territory via Men with Hill Yorkshire at the expense of UK taxpayers money in 1991

Numerous racketeering front-companies 

Interference and messing in almost every country in the world

The blowback of CIA/UK support for the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan with US-supplied Stinger missiles being used by terrorists

The usage of CIA assets Jean-Michel Francois and Venezuelan General Davila in the importation to the US of 20 and 33 tons of cocaine respectively in 1996 (both convicted)

The traditional rigmarole of getting the US government to blame their political enemies for the flooding of drugs onto the streets of the US (i.e. CIA getting Harry Anslinger in the 50's to blame the social ills of America on the flood of Red Communist Chinese heroin coming into the country - later turning out to be an unfounded lie)

Former CIA director Bush getting Reagan to denounce Red Sandanista cocaine as the reason for their moral crusade in Nicaragua (strangely, also later turning out to be an unfounded lie, when the press more closely quizzed the DEA)

Little Georgie warning about Taleban heroin (no doubt, this too will turn about to be CIA intelligence propaganda to support the war effort after the fact)

The Votescam fixing of every US election since 1970

Helping install the puppet Grenada government

CIA directing Iranian marine invasion in the Omani civil war 1970

CIA support of US marines landing during the election campaign of the Dominican Republic 1965-66

The covert intervention with Green Berets against rebels in Guatemala 1966-67

CIA-assisted raids on Bolivian cocaine dealers in 1987 against the wishes of the government

Murder of almost everyone in Dealey Plaza 22/11/63

French aerospace kickbacks via European defence ministers

Shipping of Tow missiles via Wafic Said

Skimming of drugs money post Al-Yamamah and the £10 million kickback to Mark Thatcher

Payments via Saudi Arabia in oil/gold to Messrs

Smith/Weston/Evans

Attempts to shutdown Dr. Chris Cowley's revelations about the CIA and the 1989 Arms Fair in Baghdad (and some wonder why American foreign policy is unpopular!)

Vince Foster's odd death

22 tons of coke being imported using US taxpayers money in 1991

Political murders on behalf of the Vatican

Training of Chilean death-squads

Protection of war-time Nazis

Funding US mob extortion and trafficking rackets

Illegal phone-tapping of journalists

Black-bag jobbing

Lousy security on remote islands

Internet surveillance

Illegal IRS harassment

Complicity with alien implant projects

The killing of Pablo Escobar

The work of Ari Ben-Menashe ensuring American hostages remained locked up until Reagan and Bush had been elected (organized by Bush in Paris)

Trying to use Zbigniew Bryzynski in a game of scrabble

The murder of Georgi Markov with a poisoned umbrella

Rocket-designer Gerald V. Bull rubbed out in Brussels with the help of the Mossad

Running missions with Abu Nidal

_______________________________________________________________

News That Will Be Used Against You

Big Brother is in the "Homeland": Total(itarian) Information Awareness

FROM THE ACLU's SITE:

 Law-abiding people should be protected from government snooping.  It has been a hallmark of American democracy that our individual privacy is protected against government intervention and snooping as long as we are not guilty of wrongdoing.

This new system would obliterate these protections -- the government would simply collect data on everyone so as to be able to investigate any one of us if and when they so decide to do so. Doing so would make us all suspects and in effect eliminate our personal privacy.

 In searching for terrorists, we must not investigate everyone.  It has been suggested that searching for terrorists in our midst is like looking for a needle in a haystack.  If this is true, then it certainly makes no sense to make the haystack even bigger by creating the means to investigate hundreds of millions of law-abiding Americans rather than focusing in on real suspects.

 We must not sacrifice our freedom and liberty in order to prosecute the "War on Terrorism."  As Americans, we have every right to be proud of our constitutional rights and freedoms. And in being proud of these rights, we must make every effort to promote and enlarge our privacy rather then sacrifice it in a time of anxiety and concern.

From what I have heard the Department has recently been "abandoned." I'm not sure, and will let you know as soon as I find the time to find out. I believe it involves strictly a name change? Terrorist Threat Integration Center? Sort of like Bush's change from preemptive to preventive war. 

_________________________________________________________________

The information to follow is from the Office of Information Awareness itself, a subsidiary of  DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). From DARPA's site: "DARPA is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions." 

• DARPA: http://www.darpa.mil/

• DoD: http://www.defenselink.mil/

• Office of Information Awareness: http://www.darpa.mil/iao/index.htm (Where the information below comes from):

Total Information Awareness (TIA) System

Program Objective: 

The Total Information Awareness (TIA) program is a FY02 new-start program. The goal of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program is to revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists – and decipher their plans – and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist acts.  To that end, the TIA program objective is to create a counter-terrorism information system that: (1) increases information coverage by an order of magnitude, and affords easy future scaling; (2) provides focused warnings within an hour after a triggering event occurs or an evidence threshold is passed; (3) can automatically queue analysts based on partial pattern matches and has patterns that cover 90% of all previously known foreign terrorist attacks; and, (4) supports collaboration, analytical reasoning and information sharing so that analysts can hypothesize, test and propose theories and mitigating strategies about possible futures, so decision-makers can effectively evaluate the impact of current or future policies and prospective courses of action.

Program Strategy:  

The TIA program strategy is to integrate technologies developed by DARPA (and elsewhere as appropriate) into a series of increasingly powerful prototype systems that can be stress-tested in operationally relevant environments, using real-time feedback to refine concepts of operation and performance requirements down to the component level.  The TIA program will develop and integrate information technologies into fully functional, leave-behind prototypes that are reliable, easy to install, and packaged with documentation and source code (though not necessarily complete in terms of desired features) that will enable the intelligence community to evaluate new technologies through experimentation, and rapidly transition it to operational use, as appropriate.  Accordingly, the TIA program will work in close collaboration with one or more U.S. intelligence agencies that will provide operational guidance and technology evaluation, and act as TIA system transition partners.  

Technically, the TIA program is focusing on the development of: 1) architectures for a large-scale counter-terrorism database, for system elements associated with database population, and for integrating algorithms and mixed-initiative analytical tools; 2) novel methods for populating the database from existing sources, create innovative new sources, and invent new algorithms for mining, combining, and refining information for subsequent inclusion into the database; and, 3) revolutionary new models, algorithms, methods, tools, and techniques for analyzing and correlating information in the database to derive actionable intelligence.  

IAO Vision:  The most serious asymmetric threat facing the United States is terrorism, a threat characterized by collections of people loosely organized in shadowy networks that are difficult to identify and define.  IAO plans to develop technology that will allow understanding of the intent of these networks, their plans, and potentially define opportunities for disrupting or eliminating the threats.  To effectively and efficiently carry this out, we must promote sharing, collaborating and reasoning to convert nebulous data to knowledge and actionable options.  IAO will accomplish this by pursuing the development of technologies, components, and applications to produce a proto-type system. Example technologies include:
 

• Collaboration and sharing over TCP/IP networks across agency boundaries
• Large, distributed repositories with dynamic schemas that can be changed interactively by users
• Foreign language machine translation and speech recognition
• Biometric signatures of humans
• Real time learning, pattern matching and anomalous pattern detection
• Entity extraction from natural language text
• Human network analysis and behavior model building engines
• Event prediction and capability development model building engines
• Structured argumentation and evidential reasoning
• Story telling, change detection, and truth maintenance
• Business rules sub-systems for access control and process management
• Biologically inspired algorithms for agent control
• Other aids for human cognition and human reasoning

It is difficult to counter the threat that terrorists pose. Currently, terrorists are able to move freely throughout the world, to hide when necessary, to find unpunished sponsorship and support, to operate in small, independent cells, and to strike infrequently, exploiting weapons of mass effects and media response to influence governments.  This low-intensity/low-density form of warfare has an information signature, albeit not one that our intelligence infrastructure and other government agencies are optimized to detect.  In all cases, terrorists have left detectable clues that are generally found after an attack.  Even if we could find these clues faster and more easily, our counter-terrorism defenses are spread throughout many different agencies and organizations at the national, state, and local level.  To fight terrorism, we need to create a new intelligence infrastructure to allow these agencies to share information and collaborate effectively, and new information technology aimed at exposing terrorists and their activities and support systems.  This is a tremendously difficult problem, because terrorists understand how vulnerable they are and seek to hide their specific plans and capabilities. The key to fighting terrorism is information.  Elements of the solution include gathering a much broader array of data than we do currently, discovering information from elements of the data, creating models of hypotheses, and analyzing these models in a collaborative environment to determine the most probable current or future scenario.  DARPA has sponsored research in some of these technology areas, but additional research and development is warranted to accelerate, integrate, broaden, and automate current approaches.

Human ID at a Distance (HumanID)

Program Objective: 

The goal of the Human Identification at a Distance (HumanID) program is to develop automated biometric identification technologies to detect, recognize and identify humans at great distances.  These technologies will provide critical early warning support for force protection and homeland defense against terrorist, criminal, and other human-based threats, and will prevent or decrease the success rate of such attacks against DoD operational facilities and installations.  Methods for fusing biometric technologies into advanced human identification systems will be developed to enable faster, more accurate and unconstrained identification of humans at significant standoff distances.

Program Strategy: 

HumanID program has developed a pilot force protection system for standoff human identification in outdoor operational DoD settings, and has performed preliminary assessments of current and future technologies.  HumanID will determine the critical factors that affect performance of biometric components, and identify the limits of range, accuracy, and reliability. The program will also conduct multi-modal fusion experiments and performance evaluations, and will demonstrate advanced human recognition capabilities in multiple force protection and/or homeland defense environments.

Planned Accomplishments:

FY 02 Accomplishments:  

• Designed and administered the Face Recognition Vendor Test 2002.  Results will be used to direct face recognition research and provide input to the design of the United States Border Entry/Exit System.
  
• Performed an operational evaluation of a long range (25-150 feet) face recognition system developed under the HumanID Program.
  
• Developed a multi-spectral infrared and visible face recognition system.
  

• Developed a low power millimeter wave radar system for wide field of view detection and narrow field of view gait classification.
  

• Characterized gait performance from video for human identification at a distance.

FY 03 Plans:  

• Develop multi-model fusion algorithms for human identification.
  

• Develop algorithms for locating and acquiring subjects out to 150 meters (500 ft) in range.
  

• Continue the development of the most promising biometric technologies based upon experimental evaluation performance.

FY 04 Plans:

• Develop and demonstrate a human identification system that operates out to 150 meters (500 ft.) using visible imagery.
  

• Fuse face and gait recognition into a 24/7 human identification system.
  

• Perform an operational evaluation of a multi-model human identification system.

 

______________________________________________________________

I don't have anything to say at this time, but wanted to post this to inform people. Perhaps I will add my two cent rant at a later date. 

For now I'll ask: Am I dreaming? Is this a movie? Wake up, it's a nightmare about a movie, a spy-fi horror thriller! No judges, no juries, no trials and soon a repeal of our Moranda Rights so information can be coerced out of us...where the hell are we living, besides in fear? The USSRA-- the United Security States of  Repressive America? Hell...

______________________________________________________________

Protect your Privacy

Oppose the Homeland Security Act

If you are already a member of TrueMajority, you can take action on this issue by simply hitting REPLY to this message and then SEND. A letter will automatically be faxed to your Senators on your behalf. Please forward this message to your friends, family and colleagues!

If this message was forwarded to you, visit the TrueMajority Action Center and send your own letter. Just click this link:

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The Senate is poised ON TUESDAY to pass a version of the "Homeland Security Act" that would create a single database to round up personal information on every American. If the Senate passes this bill, the government will bring together in one grand database all the public and private information they can get their hands on including your credit history, the magazines you subscribe to, your banking, travel information, etc. Even conservative columnist and former Nixon administration official William Safire is frightened by the prospect -- see his column below.

Americans need to stop this. If you are already a member of TrueMajority, simply hit REPLY and then SEND to send your faxes. If this message was forwarded to you, visit the TrueMajority Action Center and send your own letter. Just click this link:

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____________________________________________________________

1984 Is Here!

Nat Hentoff

The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2.

Throughout our history, the Bill of Rights has been often held in contempt by our government—witness the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts; Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and the mass jailing of opponents of his policies during the Civil War; Woodrow Wilson’s near-extinction of the First Amendment during the First World War; the “Red Scare” raids and deportations of the early 1920s; the internment of Japanese-Americans in the Second World War; and the depredations of “Tailgunner Joe” McCarthy. But the extent and depth of the subversion of civil liberties by the Bush administration is far more dangerous and will have much longer-lasting effects, because the war on terrorism is not going to have a definitive end for decades to come.

The difference between the present powers of the national government to track, chill, and punish dissent as subversion has been underlined by George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley in the November 17 Los Angeles Times:

For more than two hundred years, our liberties have been protected primarily by practical barriers rather than constitutional barriers to government abuse. Because of the sheer size of the nation and its population, the government could not practically abuse a great number of citizens at any given time. In the last decade, however, these practical barriers have fallen to technology.

George Orwell died in 1950, and as powerful a warning as 1984 was of the exportability of Stalinism, Orwell could not have envisioned how far advanced and pervasive electronic surveillance technology could become.

Now, at the Pentagon, in the Information Awareness Office, retired Navy Admiral John Poindexter is creating—with an initial $200 million of taxpayers’ money—a Total Information Awareness system that, as the November 15 Washington Times reported, “would be authorized to collect every type of public and private data” on any of us to discern patterns of activities that might reveal links to terrorism.

By mining the data banks of all American intelligence agencies—now mandated to share information under the Homeland Security Act, along with continually expanding commercial data banks—these interconnected computers will be able to scoop up: telephone calls, passport applications, medical records, court records, the pay-per-view movies we order; travel reservations; drugstore prescriptions; and much more, including e-mail messages and what else you write on your computers.

“How often, or in what system, the Thought Police plugged in an individual wire,” Orwell wrote, “was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate, they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to.”

The Total Information Awareness preparations have been underway without any congressional hearings, and with no official public notice. Once some of the press began to awaken to a future in which an unblinking government eye would be able to plug into any wire of any citizen, much of the attention was focused on Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s strange choice to head this omnivorous spying operation. As Jonathan Turley summarized the past history of this new grandmaster of privacy invasions, Poindexter, convicted of five felony counts of lying to Congress and destroying documents, was deeply involved in “the criminal conspiracy to sell arms to a terrorist nation, Iran, in order to surreptitiously fund an unlawful clandestine project in Nicaragua.” Otherwise known at the time as the Iran-Contra scandal. His conviction was overturned because he had been granted testimonial immunity.

The president, to whom Donald Rumsfeld reports, had only this to say about the Defense Secretary’s disgraced hire: “Admiral Poindexter has served the nation very well.”

There were a number of stories—mainly in print media—that went into chilling depth on the consequences of this massive electronic dragnet. But the twenty-four-hour news cycle and the impending war on Iraq, along with vivid crime news, have largely driven the Total Information Awareness program off the news pages and television channels.

However, worth keeping in mind was this augury in the November 12 Washington Post by Robert O’Harrow, Jr.: “Paul Werbos, a computing and artificial intelligence specialist at the National Science Foundation, doubted whether such [interconnected, far-flung technology] can be calibrated to filter out details about innocent people that should not be in the hands of the government. By definition, they’re going to send ‘highly sensitive, private personal data,’ he said. ‘How many innocent people are going to get falsely pinged? How many terrorists are going to slip through?’”

Conservative libertarian Republican Congressman Bob Barr called this inadvertent government tribute to Orwell “outrageous,” but he was defeated for re-election. One congressman concerned with reining in the real-time Big Brother, is Senator Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), the only member of that body to vote against John Ashcroft’s USA Patriot Act, which itself enables the government to conduct secret searches of offices and homes as well as to get into what citizens send to—and receive from—the Internet.

Feingold demands that Congress immediately cut off the funding for Poindexter’s operation until a thorough review is conducted by the Senate and House of the Total Information Awareness system. It may well be, however, that the extent to which Congress will concentrate, and for how long, on getting control of this operation that can make us all suspects will depend on how outraged we are.

Will there be a cascade of e-mails, letters, and other forms of communication to members of Congress? The odds are not promising. And possibly, as a trial run of this developing eye that never sleeps, Admiral Poindexter may click into whatever protesting messages we send to our representatives, and electronically file them.

As of January the Senate has temporarily delayed the Total Information Awareness system, but there is no guarantee that the privacy protection they want will be meaningful at all.

Nat Hentoff is a regular columnist for the Village Voice, Washington Times, and Editor & Publisher, a United Media syndicated columnist, and the author of Living the Bill of Rights (University of California Press).

_________________________________________________________________

The New York Times William Safire Piece:

You Are a Suspect
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON - If the Homeland Security Act is not amended before passage, here is what will happen to you:

Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend - all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you - passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance - and you have the supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S. citizen.

This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what will happen to your personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the unprecedented power he seeks.

Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to national security adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in Nicaragua.

A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court overturned the verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the White House staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful decisions that might prove embarrassing.

This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a plan even more scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the "Information Awareness Office" in the otherwise excellent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which spawned the Internet and stealth aircraft technology. Poindexter is now realizing his 20-year dream: getting the "data-mining" power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.

Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened the scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and weakened 15 privacy laws, raised requirements for the government to report secret eavesdropping to Congress and the courts. But Poindexter's assault on individual privacy rides roughshod over such oversight.

He is determined to break down the wall between commercial snooping and secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral dismisses such necessary differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping." And he has been given a $200 million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million Americans.

When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood foursquare in defense of each person's medical, financial and communications privacy. But Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of oversight drew the Reagan administration into its most serious blunder, is still operating on the presumption that on such a sweeping theft of privacy rights, the buck ends with him and not with the president.

This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open. In the past week John Markoff of The Times, followed by Robert O'Harrow of The Washington Post, have revealed the extent of Poindexter's operation, but editorialists have not grasped its undermining of the Freedom of Information Act.

Political awareness can overcome "Total Information Awareness," the combined force of commercial and government snooping. In a similar overreach, Attorney General Ashcroft tried his Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), but public outrage at the use of gossips and postal workers as snoops caused the House to shoot it down. The Senate should now do the same to this other exploitation of fear.

The Latin motto over Poindexter's new Pentagon office reads "Scientia Est Potentia" - "knowledge is power." Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you. "We're just as concerned as the next person with protecting privacy," this brilliant mind blandly assured The Post. A jury found he spoke falsely before.

________________________________________________________________________________

Letter to Senators:

If you are a member of True majority you can just click REPLY and SEND to this email and the following letter will be faxed to your Senators on your behalf. If this message was forwarded to you or you would like to customize this letter, visit the True Majority Action Center. Just click this link:

http://www.truemajority.com/index.asp? action=2291&ms=priv1&ref=33280

Dear Senator:

I write as a constituent of yours to urge you to oppose any bill that would create the kind of centralized database of information about every American currently included in the version of the Homeland Security Act passed by the House. This massive invasion of privacy is frightening and Un-American. We can not hope to protect our freedoms by surrendering them.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

Your name here

For more on the horror:

http://www.etherzone.com/2002/raim112902.shtml

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2002/11/dod112002.html

http://www.talkleft.com/archives/001422.html

http://www.co-freedom.com/2002/11/total.html

also check out www.counterpunch.org

Hung Out to Dry: How Webb's Series Died

By Georg Hodel
From the Consortiumnews.com's Archives

Editor's Note: We published the following story in 1997 when senior editors at the San Jose Mercury News were pulling the plug on Gary Webb's investigation into the Reagan-Bush administration's contra-cocaine scandal. Our article was written by Georg Hodel, a journalist working with Webb at the Mercury News. We are republishing Hodel's story now to help readers better understand how Webb's journalistic career was shattered, beginning his decline toward suicide last week.

--Robert Parry, Editor, December 16, 2004

Hung Out to Dry (Summer 1997)

By Georg Hodel

The "Dark Alliance" contra-crack series, which I co-reported with Gary Webb, has died with less a bang or a whimper than a gloat from the mainstream press.

"The San Jose Mercury News has apparently had enough of reporter Gary Webb and his efforts to prove that the CIA was involved in the sale of crack cocaine," announced Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, who has written some of the harshest attacks on Webb. "Editors at the California newspaper have yanked Webb off the story and told him they will not publish his follow-up articles. They have also moved to transfer Webb from the state capital bureau in Sacramento to a less prestigious suburban office in Cupertino." [Washington Post, June 11, 1997]

Webb got the news on June 5, 1997, from executive editor Jerry Ceppos, who had publicly turned against the series several weeks earlier with a personal column declaring that the stories "fell short of my standards" and failed to handle the "gray areas" with sufficient care. [San Jose Mercury News, May 11, 1997]

In killing the new stories, Ceppos said Mercury News editors had reservations about the credibility of a principal Webb source, apparently a reference to convicted cocaine trafficker Carlos Cabezas, who has claimed that a CIA agent oversaw the transfer of drug profits to the contras. Ceppos also complained that Webb had gotten too close to the story.

Ceppos then ordered Webb to the paper's San Jose headquarters the next day to learn about his future with the newspaper. On June 6, 1997, as that final decision was coming down, I called Ceppos to protest. I wanted him to understand the human as well as journalistic costs of what he was doing, not just to Webb but to other journalists associated with the story in Nicaragua where I have worked for more than a decade.

I thought he should know that his decision to distance himself from the "Dark Alliance" series -- combined with earlier attacks from major American newspapers -- had increased the dangers to me and others who have been pursuing this story in the field.

Just as Webb has been under personal attack in the United States, I have faced efforts from former contras to tear down my reputation in Nicaragua. Ex-contras also have harassed Nicaraguan reporters who have tried to follow up the contra-cocaine evidence.

In one paid advertisement, Oscar Danilo Blandon, a drug trafficker who has admitted donating some cocaine profits to the contras in the early 1980s, called me a "pseudo-journalist" and accused me of having some unspecified links to an "international communist organization." Blandon also accused Nicaraguan reporters from El Nuevo Diario of "trying to manipulate" members of the U.S. Congress looking into the contra-cocaine charges.

Former contra chief Adolfo Calero declared in an article in La Tribuna what he thought should be done to these politically suspect Nicaraguan and foreign reporters. He used metaphorical language that refers to leftist Nicaraguan journalists as "deer" and fellow-traveling foreign reporters as "antelopes." "The deer are going to be finished off," Calero wrote on Feb. 2, 1997. "In this case, the antelopes as well." As a Swiss journalist, I would be an "antelope."

Less subtly, there have been threatening phone calls to my office. In late May 1997, a male voice shouted obscenities at me over the phone and threatened to "screw" my wife who is a Nicaraguan lawyer representing Enrique Miranda, one of the Nicaraguan cocaine traffickers who has spoken with congressional investigators.

Earlier I had sent Ceppos a letter which complained that his May 11 "column provoked ... a series of very unfortunate reactions that seriously affect my working environment and exposes unintentionally everybody here who has been involved in this investigation." In the phone conversation on June 6, 1997, Ceppos first denied having received the letter, but then admitted that he had it. Still, he refused my request that the letter be published.

A Clear Message

My appeal also did not stop Ceppos from informing Webb later that day that the investigative reporter would be transferred to a suburban office 150 miles from his home where he and his wife are raising three young children. That would mean that Webb would have to relocate from Sacramento or not see his family during the work week. The message was clear and Webb did not miss its significance: he saw the transfer as a clear message that the Mercury News wanted him to quit.

The retributions against Webb were a sad end to the "Dark Alliance" series which has been enveloped in controversy since it was published in August 1996. The series linked contra-cocaine shipments in the early 1980s to a Los Angeles drug pipeline that first mass-marketed "crack" cocaine to inner-city neighborhoods.

The series drew especially strong reactions from the African-American community which has been devastated by the crack epidemic. In fall 1996, however, The Washington Post and other major newspapers began attacking the series for alleged overstatements. The papers also mocked African-Americans for supposedly being susceptible to baseless "conspiracy theories."

The furor obscured the fact that "Dark Alliance" built upon more than a decade of evidence amassed by journalists, congressional investigators and agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration who found numerous connections between the contras and drug traffickers. Some of that evidence was compiled in a Senate report issued in 1989 by a subcommittee headed by Sen. John Kerry. Other pieces came out during the Iran-contra scandal and still more during the drug-trafficking trial of Panamanian Gen. Manuel Noriega in 1991.

But the contras were always defended by the Reagan-Bush administrations which saw the guerrillas as a necessary geo-political counterweight to the leftist Sandinista government that ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s. With a few exceptions, the mainstream media joined the White House in protecting the contras -- and the CIA -- on the drug-trafficking evidence. [For details, see Robert Parry's Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.']

Contra Cocaine

Still, from time to time, even The Washington Post has acknowledged legitimate concerns about contra drug trafficking. In fall 1996, for instance, after initiating the attacks on "Dark Alliance," the Post ran a front-page article describing how Medellin cartel trafficker George Morales "contributed at least two airplanes and $90,000 to" one of the contra groups operating in Costa Rica. The story quoted contra leaders Octaviano Cesar and Adolfo "Popo" Chamorro as admitting receipt of the contributions, although they insisted that they had cleared the transactions with their contact at the CIA. [Washington Post, Oct. 31, 1996]

The Post did not mention the name of that contact, an omission that angered Chamorro. He told me that the CIA man was Alan Fiers, who served as chief of the CIA's Central American Task Force in the mid-1980s. Fiers has denied any illicit involvement with drug traffickers, although he testified to the congressional Iran-contra investigators that he knew that among the Costa Rican-based contras, drug trafficking involved "not a couple of people. It was a lot of people."

While admitting some truth to the contra-cocaine allegations, the Post story stopped short of any self-criticism about the newspaper's failure to expose the contra-drug problem in the 1980s as the cocaine was entering the United States. In the Oct. 31, 1996, story, the Post only noted that "a broad congressional inquiry from 1986 to 1988 ... found that CIA and other officials may have chosen to overlook evidence that some contra groups were engaged in the drug trade or were cooperating with traffickers."

The Post then added obliquely: "But that probe caused little stir when its report was released." With that indirect phrasing, the Post seemed to be shunting off blame for the "little stir" onto the congressional report. The newspaper did not explain why it buried the Senate report's explosive findings on page A20. [Washington Post, April 14, 1989]. Instead, last fall, the Post and other big papers focused almost exclusively on alleged flaws in "Dark Alliance."

When that drumbeat of criticism began, Ceppos initially defended the series. He wrote a supportive letter to the Post (which the newspaper refused to publish). But the weight of the attacks from major newspapers and leading journalism reviews eventually softened up the Mercury News. Inside the paper, young staffers feared that the controversy could hurt their chances of getting hired by bigger newspapers. Senior editors fretted about their careers in the Knight-Ridder chain, which owns the Mercury News.

New Leads

In the meantime, Webb and I continued following contra-drug leads in Nicaragua and the United States. The new information eventually became the basis for Webb's submission of four new stories to Ceppos. Webb has described these stories as completed drafts although Ceppos called them just "notes."

Though I have not seen Webb's drafts, I know they include two stories relating to witnesses in Nicaragua who were part of the cocaine networks of Norwin Meneses, a longtime Nicaraguan drug trafficker who was based in San Francisco and who collaborated closely with senior contra leaders.

Meneses's operation surfaced with the so-called Frogman case in 1983 when the FBI and Customs captured two divers in wet suits hauling $100 million worth of cocaine ashore at San Francisco Bay. The federal prosecutor ordered $36,020 captured in that case be given to the contras who claimed it was their money.

For the new "Dark Alliance" stories, we interviewed Carlos Cabezas who was convicted of conspiracy in the Frogman case. Cabezas insisted that a CIA agent -- a Venezuelan named Ivan Gomez -- oversaw the cocaine operation to make sure the profits went to the contras, not into the pockets of the traffickers.

Last year, Cabezas outlined his claims in a British ITV documentary. "They told me who he [Gomez] was and the reason that he was there," Cabezas said. "It was to make sure that the money was given to the right people and nobody was taking advantage of the situation and nobody was taking profit that they were not supposed to. And that was it. He was making sure that the money goes to the contra revolution."

The ITV documentary, which aired on Dec. 12, 1996, quoted former CIA Latin American division chief Duane Clarridge as denying any knowledge of either Cabezas or Gomez. Clarridge directed the contra war in the early 1980s and was later indicted on perjury charges in connection with the Iran-contra scandal. He was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush in 1992.

The new "Dark Alliance" stories also would have examined the claims of other contra-connected drug witnesses in Nicaragua as well as the career problems confronted by DEA agents when they uncovered evidence of contra drug trafficking. But prospects that the full contra-cocaine story will ever be told in the United States have dimmed with the shutting down of "Dark Alliance."

I am also afraid that Ceppos's decision to punish Webb will strengthen the campaign of intimidation inside Nicaragua. But beyond the personal costs to Webb and me, Ceppos's actions sent a chilling message to all journalists who some day might dare investigate wrongdoing by the CIA and its operatives.

What's especially troubling about this new "Dark Alliance" tale is that the investigative spotlight was turned off not by the government, but by the national news media.

Editor's Post-Script: For more on the aftermath of this betrayal of the contra-cocaine investigation, see Consortiumnews.com "America's Debt to Journalist Gary Webb."

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SEE GARY'S BOOK:

Webb, Gary. THE DARK ALLIANCE: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.

________________________________________________________________

By Robert Parry
December 13, 2004

In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy – the Reagan-Bush administration’s protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s.

For his brave reporting at the San Jose Mercury News, Webb paid a high price. He was attacked by journalistic colleagues at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the American Journalism Review and even the Nation magazine. Under this media pressure, his editor Jerry Ceppos sold out the story and demoted Webb, causing him to quit the Mercury News. Even Webb’s marriage broke up.

On Friday, Dec. 10, Gary Webb, 49, died of an apparent suicide, a gunshot wound to the head.

Whatever the details of Webb’s death, American history owes him a huge debt. Though denigrated by much of the national news media, Webb’s contra-cocaine series prompted internal investigations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department, probes that confirmed that scores of contra units and contra-connected individuals were implicated in the drug trade. The probes also showed that the Reagan-Bush administration frustrated investigations into those crimes for geopolitical reasons.

Failed Media

Unintentionally, Webb also exposed the cowardice and unprofessional behavior that had become the new trademarks of the major U.S. news media by the mid-1990s. The big news outlets were always hot on the trail of some titillating scandal – the O.J. Simpson case or the Monica Lewinsky scandal – but the major media could no longer grapple with serious crimes of state.

Even after the CIA’s inspector general issued his findings in 1998, the major newspapers could not muster the talent or the courage to explain those extraordinary government admissions to the American people. Nor did the big newspapers apologize for their unfair treatment of Gary Webb. Foreshadowing the media incompetence that would fail to challenge George W. Bush’s case for war with Iraq five years later, the major news organizations effectively hid the CIA’s confession from the American people.

The New York Times and the Washington Post never got much past the CIA’s “executive summary,” which tried to put the best spin on Inspector General Frederick Hitz’s findings. The Los Angeles Times never even wrote a story after the final volume of the CIA’s report was published, though Webb’s initial story had focused on contra-connected cocaine shipments to South-Central Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Times’ cover-up has now continued after Webb’s death. In a harsh obituary about Webb, the Times reporter, who called to interview me, ignored my comments about the debt the nation owed Webb and the importance of the CIA’s inspector general findings. Instead of using Webb’s death as an opportunity to finally get the story straight, the Times acted as if there never had been an official investigation confirming many of Webb’s allegations. [Los Angeles Times, Dec. 12, 2004.]

By maintaining the contra-cocaine cover-up – even after the CIA’s inspector general had admitted the facts – the big newspapers seemed to have understood that they could avoid any consequences for their egregious behavior in the 1990s or for their negligence toward the contra-cocaine issue when it first surfaced in the 1980s. After all, the conservative news media – the chief competitor to the mainstream press – isn’t going to demand a reexamination of the crimes of the Reagan-Bush years.

That means that only a few minor media outlets, like our own Consortiumnews.com, will go back over the facts now, just as only a few of us addressed the significance of the government admissions in the late 1990s. I compiled and explained the findings of the CIA/Justice investigations in my 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth.’

Contra-Cocaine Case

Lost History, which took its name from a series at this Web site, also describes how the contra-cocaine story first reached the public in a story that Brian Barger and I wrote for the Associated Press in December 1985. Though the big newspapers pooh-poohed our discovery, Sen. John Kerry followed up our story with his own groundbreaking investigation. For his efforts, Kerry also encountered media ridicule. Newsweek dubbed the Massachusetts senator a “randy conspiracy buff.” [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Kerry’s Contra-Cocaine Chapter.”]

So when Gary Webb revived the contra-cocaine issue in August 1996 with a 20,000-word three-part series entitled “Dark Alliance,” editors at major newspapers already had a powerful self-interest to slap down a story that they had disparaged for the past decade.

The challenge to their earlier judgments was doubly painful because the Mercury-News’ sophisticated Web site ensured that Webb’s series made a big splash on the Internet, which was just emerging as a threat to the traditional news media. Also, the African-American community was furious at the possibility that U.S. government policies had contributed to the crack-cocaine epidemic.

In other words, the mostly white, male editors at the major newspapers saw their preeminence in judging news challenged by an upstart regional newspaper, the Internet and common American citizens who also happened to be black. So, even as the CIA was prepared to conduct a relatively thorough and honest investigation, the major newspapers seemed more eager to protect their reputations and their turf.

Without doubt, Webb’s series had its limitations. It primarily tracked one West Coast network of contra-cocaine traffickers from the early-to-mid 1980s. Webb connected that cocaine to an early “crack” production network that supplied Los Angeles street gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, leading to Webb’s conclusion that contra cocaine fueled the early crack epidemic that devastated Los Angeles and other U.S. cities.

Counterattack

When black leaders began demanding a full investigation of these charges, the Washington media joined the political Establishment in circling the wagons. It fell to Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s right-wing Washington Times to begin the counterattack against Webb’s series. The Washington Times turned to some former CIA officials, who participated in the contra war, to refute the drug charges.

But – in a pattern that would repeat itself on other issues in the following years – the Washington Post and other mainstream newspapers quickly lined up behind the conservative news media. On Oct. 4, 1996, the Washington Post published a front-page article knocking down Webb’s story.

The Post’s approach was twofold: first, it presented the contra-cocaine allegations as old news – “even CIA personnel testified to Congress they knew that those covert operations involved drug traffickers,” the Post reported – and second, the Post minimized the importance of the one contra smuggling channel that Webb had highlighted – that it had not “played a major role in the emergence of crack.” A Post side-bar story dismissed African-Americans as prone to “conspiracy fears.”

Soon, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times joined in the piling on of Gary Webb. The big newspapers made much of the CIA’s internal reviews in 1987 and 1988 that supposedly cleared the spy agency of a role in contra-cocaine smuggling.

But the CIA's decade-old cover-up began to crack on Oct. 24, 1996, when CIA Inspector General Hitz conceded before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the first CIA probe had lasted only 12 days, the second only three days. He promised a more thorough review.

Mocking Webb

Meanwhile, however, Gary Webb became the target of outright media ridicule. Influential Post media critic Howard Kurtz mocked Webb for saying in a book proposal that he would explore the possibility that the contra war was primarily a business to its participants. “Oliver Stone, check your voice mail,” Kurtz chortled. [Washington Post, Oct. 28, 1996]

Webb’s suspicion was not unfounded, however. Indeed, White House aide Oliver North’s emissary Rob Owen had made the same point a decade earlier, in a March 17, 1986, message about the contra leadership. “Few of the so-called leaders of the movement … really care about the boys in the field,” Owen wrote. “THIS WAR HAS BECOME A BUSINESS TO MANY OF THEM.” [Capitalization in the original.]

Nevertheless, the pillorying of Gary Webb was on, in earnest. The ridicule also had a predictable effect on the executives of the Mercury-News. By early 1997, executive editor Jerry Ceppos was in retreat.

On May 11, 1997, Ceppos published a front-page column saying the series “fell short of my standards.” He criticized the stories because they “strongly implied CIA knowledge” of contra connections to U.S. drug dealers who were manufacturing crack-cocaine. “We did not have proof that top CIA officials knew of the relationship.”

The big newspapers celebrated Ceppos’s retreat as vindication of their own dismissal of the contra-cocaine stories. Ceppos next pulled the plug on the Mercury-News’ continuing contra-cocaine investigation and reassigned Webb to a small office in Cupertino, California, far from his family. Webb resigned the paper in disgrace.

For undercutting Webb and the other reporters working on the contra investigation, Ceppos was lauded by the American Journalism Review and was given the 1997 national “Ethics in Journalism Award” by the Society of Professional Journalists. While Ceppos won raves, Webb watched his career collapse and his marriage break up.

Probes Advance

Still, Gary Webb had set in motion internal government investigations that would bring to the surface long-hidden facts about how the Reagan-Bush administration had conducted the contra war. The CIA’s defensive line against the contra-cocaine allegations began to break when the spy agency published Volume One of Hitz’s findings on Jan. 29, 1998.

Despite a largely exculpatory press release, Hitz’s Volume One admitted that not only were many of Webb’s allegations true but that he actually understated the seriousness of the contra-drug crimes and the CIA’s knowledge. Hitz acknowledged that cocaine smugglers played a significant early role in the Nicaraguan contra movement and that the CIA intervened to block an image-threatening 1984 federal investigation into a San Francisco-based drug ring with suspected ties to the contras. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’]

On May 7, 1998, another disclosure from the government investigation shook the CIA’s weakening defenses. Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, introduced into the Congressional Record a Feb. 11, 1982, letter of understanding between the CIA and the Justice Department. The letter, which had been sought by CIA Director William Casey, freed the CIA from legal requirements that it must report drug smuggling by CIA assets, a provision that covered both the Nicaraguan contras and Afghan rebels who were fighting a Soviet-supported regime in Afghanistan.

Justice Report

Another crack in the defensive wall opened when the Justice Department released a report by its inspector general, Michael Bromwich. Given the hostile climate surrounding Webb’s series, Bromwich’s report opened with criticism of Webb. But, like the CIA’s Volume One, the contents revealed new details about government wrongdoing.

According to evidence cited by the report, the Reagan-Bush administration knew almost from the outset of the contra war that cocaine traffickers permeated the paramilitary operation. The administration also did next to nothing to expose or stop the criminal activities. The report revealed example after example of leads not followed, corroborated witnesses disparaged, official law-enforcement investigations sabotaged, and even the CIA facilitating the work of drug traffickers.

The Bromwich report showed that the contras and their supporters ran several parallel drug-smuggling operations, not just the one at the center of Webb’s series. The report also found that the CIA shared little of its information about contra drugs with law-enforcement agencies and on three occasions disrupted cocaine-trafficking investigations that threatened the contras.

Though depicting a more widespread contra-drug operation than Webb had understood, the Justice report also provided some important corroboration about a Nicaraguan drug smuggler, Norwin Meneses, who was a key figure in Webb’s series. Bromwich cited U.S. government informants who supplied detailed information about Meneses’s operation and his financial assistance to the contras.

For instance, Renato Pena, a money-and-drug courier for Meneses, said that in the early 1980s, the CIA allowed the contras to fly drugs into the United States, sell them and keep the proceeds. Pena, who also was the northern California representative for the CIA-backed FDN contra army, said the drug trafficking was forced on the contras by the inadequate levels of U.S. government assistance.

The Justice report also disclosed repeated examples of the CIA and U.S. embassies in Central America discouraging Drug Enforcement Administration investigations, including one into alleged contra-cocaine shipments moving through the airport in El Salvador. In an understated conclusion, Inspector General Bromwich wrote: “We have no doubt that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy were not anxious for the DEA to pursue its investigation at the airport.”

CIA's Volume Two

Despite the remarkable admissions in the body of these reports, the big newspapers showed no inclination to read beyond the press releases and executive summaries. By fall 1998, official Washington was obsessed with the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, which made it easier to ignore even more stunning contra-cocaine disclosures in the CIA's Volume Two..

In Volume Two, published Oct. 8, 1998, CIA Inspector General Hitz identified more than 50 contras and contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan-Bush administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations, which had threatened to expose the crimes in the mid-1980s. Hitz even published evidence that drug trafficking and money laundering tracked into Reagan’s National Security Council where Oliver North oversaw the contra operations.

Hitz revealed, too, that the CIA placed an admitted drug money launderer in charge of the Southern Front contras in Costa Rica. Also, according to Hitz’s evidence, the second-in-command of contra forces on the Northern Front in Honduras had escaped from a Colombian prison where he was serving time for drug trafficking

In Volume Two, the CIA’s defense against Webb’s series had shrunk to a tiny fig leaf: that the CIA did not conspire with the contras to raise money through cocaine trafficking. But Hitz made clear that the contra war took precedence over law enforcement and that the CIA withheld evidence of contra crimes from the Justice Department, the Congress and even the CIA’s own analytical division.

Hitz found in CIA files evidence that the spy agency knew from the first days of the contra war that its new clients were involved in the cocaine trade. According to a September 1981 cable to CIA headquarters, one of the early contra groups, known as ADREN, had decided to use drug trafficking as a financing mechanism. Two ADREN members made the first delivery of drugs to Miami in July 1981, the CIA cable reported.

ADREN’s leaders included Enrique Bermudez, who emerged as the top contra military commander in the 1980s. Webb’s series had identified Bermudez as giving the green light to contra fundraising by drug trafficker Meneses. Hitz’s report added that that the CIA had another Nicaraguan witness who implicated Bermudez in the drug trade in 1988.

Priorities

Besides tracing the evidence of contra-drug trafficking through the decade-long contra war, the inspector general interviewed senior CIA officers who acknowledged that they were aware of the contra-drug problem but didn’t want its exposure to undermine the struggle to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government.

According to Hitz, the CIA had “one overriding priority: to oust the Sandinista government. … [CIA officers] were determined that the various difficulties they encountered not be allowed to prevent effective implementation of the contra program.” One CIA field officer explained, “The focus was to get the job done, get the support and win the war.”

Hitz also recounted complaints from CIA analysts that CIA operations officers handling the contra war hid evidence of contra-drug trafficking even from the CIA’s analytical division. Because of the withheld evidence, the CIA analysts incorrectly concluded in the mid-1980s that “only a handful of contras might have been involved in drug trafficking.” That false assessment was passed on to Congress and the major news organizations – serving as an important basis for denouncing Gary Webb and his series in 1996.

Though Hitz’s report was an extraordinary admission of institutional guilt by the CIA, it passed almost unnoticed by the big newspapers.

Two days after Hitz’s report was posted at the CIA’s Internet site, the New York Times did a brief article that continued to deride Webb’s work, while acknowledging that the contra-drug problem may indeed have been worse than earlier understood. Several weeks later, the Washington Post weighed in with a similarly superficial article. The Los Angeles Times never published a story on the release of the CIA’s Volume Two.

Consequences

To this day, no editor or reporter who missed the contra-drug story has been punished for his or her negligence. Indeed, many of them are now top executives at their news organizations. On the other hand, Gary Webb’s career never recovered.

At Webb’s death, however, it should be noted that his great gift to American history was that he – along with angry African-American citizens – forced the government to admit some of the worst crimes ever condoned by any American administration: the protection of drug smuggling into the United States as part of a covert war against a country, Nicaragua, that represented no real threat to Americans.

The truth was ugly. Certainly the major news organizations would have come under criticism themselves if they had done their job and laid out this troubling story to the American people. Conservative defenders of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush would have been sure to howl in protest.

But the real tragedy of Webb’s historic gift – and of his life cut short – is that because of the major news media’s callowness and cowardice, this dark chapter of the Reagan-Bush era remains largely unknown to the American people.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

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