[HN Gopher] A Timeline of CIA Atrocities (1993)
___________________________________________________________________
A Timeline of CIA Atrocities (1993)
Author : georgecmu
Score : 191 points
Date : 2021-06-15 17:18 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.huppi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.huppi.com)
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| In WW2, Britain was initially overwhelmed by the Nazi Germany
| aggression. They did have a strong military and intelligence
| know-how, but that was not enough.
|
| That is when they decided to request the help of the US. The US
| assimilated much of Britain's military technology via the Tizard
| mission.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizard_Mission
|
| From that close collaboration, the US also assimilated much of
| the British intelligence know-how and created institutions that
| mirrored the goals of British intelligence institutions.
|
| The predecessor of the CIA was meant to be an equivalent of the
| British MI6.
|
| That is to me the true start of the CIA, NSA, etc.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| >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.
|
| You're welcome Italy
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| To this day I wonder why this kind of blatant interference in
| other countries isn't considered an act of war.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| It absolutely is (or incredibly close)
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Something can be considered an act of war without leading to
| a "kinetic" response, much less a full-scale war.
|
| This still happens, especially with Russia. Putin is killing
| people with chemical weapons in NATO member nations, invading
| and annexing parts of Ukraine, and performing cyber warfare.
| All of these things are acts of war...
| [deleted]
| mchanson wrote:
| It should be. I also think economic sanctions, when done by a
| great power or groups of countries, should be considered an
| act of war.
| radmuzom wrote:
| Strongly agree. The only hope is one day there will be a
| group of strong nations who will declare that they are not
| going to respect US sanctions.
| debacle wrote:
| If any other country did it, it would be.
| peder wrote:
| You're assuming that the UK, Germany, Israel, Russia, and
| China are not all doing the same.
| debacle wrote:
| There is certainly a power law in play here.
| peder wrote:
| Or the other players work in different ways that are less
| visible. Cyber espionage and propaganda is enormous, and
| I think the average American is only slowly beginning to
| understand the depth of impact of bots, paid trolls,
| phishing, and direct cyberattacks that our adversaries
| launch against us. And it's not clear what the goals of
| these organizations are.
| [deleted]
| throwaway012922 wrote:
| > The CIA corrupts democratic elections in Italy, where Italian
| communists threaten to win the elections
|
| Italian here. In a democracy you don't "threaten to win" the
| elections. You win or not according to the will of the peple.
|
| I never vote Partito Comunista but I'd rather have any party
| win legitimate elections and have legitimate power until next
| elections rather than... secret services from another country
| undermining democracy.
|
| Also CIA did WORSE than beating up people and infiltrating
| parties: they supported terrorist groups that exploded bombs
| around Italy in 70 and 80ies.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Assuming you didn't mean /s
|
| Yeah, Italy is today known for its stable, non corrupt,
| efficient and effective governance...
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Imagine how much worse it would've been with a commie
| government and potentially outside the western sphere of
| influence
| LatteLazy wrote:
| There might be fewer Nazis. What a disaster that would
| be...
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| ????
| whydoibother wrote:
| Are you going to play ignorant about the fact that the
| CIA recruited former Nazis to suppress socialist
| movements in Europe, without the permission of the states
| they ran this operation in?
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| What's the relation?
|
| Nazis are terrible but after WW2 they posed significantly
| less of a threat than Soviet communists.
|
| Soviet and Chinese communists might not have been as evil
| as Nazis, but they sure were close
| whydoibother wrote:
| The fact that you think it was okay for the US to support
| former SS officers illegally operating in countries and
| later used to train South American death squads in
| torture techniques, all because 'commies are bad', shows
| how deranged you are.
|
| What the US has done in the name of anticommunism dwarfs
| any evils done by communism.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Millions of people were killed by communist regimes
| whydoibother wrote:
| Millions of people were killed by fascist regimes. Many,
| if not most, funded and supplied by the US gov't.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Which of them compare to the atrocities committed by
| Stalin and mao?
| whydoibother wrote:
| WW2 (Nazis are fascists) Indonesia https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19... Guatemala
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_genocide El
| Salvador
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_Civil_War Chile
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_
| in_...
|
| I can go on. And these are just the individual incidents
| we know about. Who knows how much suffering and death
| happened as a direct result of the destabilization of the
| global south.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| How did the US aid Nazis during the war?
|
| All of these incidents are bad, but none still compare to
| the mass deaths under Stalin and Mao
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I'm just gonna poke the bear by pointing out that IBM
| supplied the computers for the holocaust. Just one
| example of trade...
|
| No one is saying Mao and Stalin were great guys. They're
| just pointing out that "anyone on the right no matter how
| terrible" isn't a better choice than "anyone on the left
| no matter how reasonable". And that's without getting
| into whether any country should involve itself in other
| people's elections at all...
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Of course there were mal actors but there's a clear
| difference between the level of support and involvement.
| Stalin and Maos policies lead to the deaths of tens of
| millions of people.
|
| My main point with all of this is to put into context how
| horrifying the threat of the spread of Communism was. I
| think the actions taken at the time by the CIA need to be
| viewed through this lens.
| 74B5 wrote:
| This exact thinking leads to these bazillion dead and tortured.
| Better more totalitarianism to prevent an economic model, which
| could be revoked again in a democracy.
|
| The world welcomes you too.
| [deleted]
| hpoe wrote:
| So I have a strong distrust of the CIA, ever since I found out
| about MK ULTRA and Operation Gladios. I don't want to excuse
| their actions, and I don't really think they have a reason to
| exist now........BUT
|
| You have to think of the mindset the led to the CIA, the CIA was
| an out growth of the OSS, which was basically just the CIA/MI6
| for World War 2.
|
| The men and women who were involved in the CIA had just seen a
| terrible world war that had led to a massacre of tens of millions
| of people, devastated the entire earth, and had seen humanity
| unleash the power of the sun on the face of the earth at will. To
| boot they were now facing down an ideological enemy that wanted
| to do the exact same thing to the Jews (see the Doctors Plot),
| and had the stated aim of destroying them and their way of life.
| Beyond that the entire US had been in a mindset of full
| mobilization, that the US needed to stand as a bastion of
| freedom, and liberty against the evil barbarism of Nazism (again
| the historicity of the point is debatable but it was the
| message).
|
| So the people who were involved in the had lived through the
| storming of Omaha and been there on Iwo Jima, and so the idea was
| to create a clandestine, super powered organization that would be
| able to monitor things like the Nazis and assassinate their
| leaders before they came to power? Why, because no one alive
| wanted another world war and the devestation it had brought, not
| to mention the real risk that any significant military action
| would likely lead to literally the end of the world.
|
| Now let's look at China, where the CIA had almost no
| intervention, they currently are conducting their third genocidal
| purge within their borders within the period of 80 years (The
| Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Uighers). To me
| this speaks to some extent that the fears of the founders were
| justified.
|
| I believe that the men and women who founded the CIA and created
| it did so because they genuinely believed what they were doing
| was right, they knew they would have to make distasteful decision
| but they felt it was better than the alternatives that the faced.
| Now as the organization grew and as the original members started
| to be replaced, it became an organization obsessed with power
| brokering, using its "mission" to justify whatever it did, and
| became a tool used by powerful individuals who didn't like
| accountability.
|
| I don't excuse the CIA, I think they should be held accountable
| for their actions, but I also believe that as long as we continue
| to think of them as one dimensional cartoonishly evil bond
| villians, we will never be able to make any progress towards
| putting them right.
|
| EDIT: Just to be clear I don't want to justify or exonerate the
| CIA, the biggest problem they faced, which is the same to all
| powerful and talented individuals and organizations is that of
| hubris and believing they knew better than anyone else. This led
| to a lot of terrible and despicable things, and atrocities, and
| then lead to efforts to contain the results of their actions,
| which led to a never ending cycle of fighting, destabilization,
| rebellions, etc., but again in the minds of the people making
| these decisions the things they did and the effects they had were
| better than the alternatives they considered. Not saying they
| were right, just that we can't attribute all of it to malice, as
| in many cases they believed they were basically dealing with the
| trolley problem.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| You are giving them far too much credit. Do you really think
| Allen Dulles and the United Fruit Company murdered Jacobo
| Arbenz in Guatemala because they were worried he might become
| the next Hitler? This is just one of dozens of cases where
| their actions were clearly not meant to benefit anyone other
| than the small sliver of ruling elites sitting atop the Western
| power structure.
|
| Dulles literally passed around little copies of this mural
| because he was _proud_ of how it depicted him!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Gloriosa_Victoria
|
| And this is without even getting into the fact that the CIA's
| early leadership worked at Sullivan & Cromwell when they helped
| fund the Nazis' rise to power, or that they helped thousands of
| actual Nazis escape justice after the war in order to bring
| them to the US to aid in all kinds of research.
| ianleeclark wrote:
| > The men and women who were involved in the CIA had just seen
| a terrible world war that had led to a massacre of tens of
| millions of people
|
| At which point Dulles saw fully fit to start sneaking Nazis out
| of the way of justice. They were cartoonishly evil then, they
| were cartoonishly evil with the phoenix program, and they were
| cartoonishly evil doing Abu ghraib. Whatever they're doing now,
| it's cartoonish, as well.
|
| You don't need to force nuance in everywhere, sometimes a
| spades a spade.
| hpoe wrote:
| You're ideological little sound bytes might make you feel
| good about yourself, but the more you know about an issue the
| more nuance there is.
|
| The fact of the matter is that we knew the cold war was
| coming and we knew that we would need to beat the Soviets to
| space, that's why we tried to round up all the best minds we
| could, because the alternative risk was to lose the world to
| another regime as tyrannical and bloodthristy as the Nazis,
| but now with nukes.
|
| They were wrong in Abu Ghraib, they were wrong in the Pheonix
| Program, they made many many mistakes and committed many
| atrocities.
|
| But if you continue to view them as cartoonishly evil because
| it makes you feel smugly morally superior to pass judgement
| on people and situations that you have only partial
| information on based on your wikipedia browsing then please
| continue to do so.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ianleeclark wrote:
| There's no reason to be such a dick and accuse someone whom
| you have zero knowledge of of being a Wikipedia warrior,
| coming to do an internet maoist campaign, or whatever it is
| what you think I'm doing.
|
| The rest of the world gets that bad guys aren't twirling
| their mustaches as they bind damsels to railroad tracks.
| You should be able to piece together that, after a very
| short list of atrocities over a 70 year span, the word
| cartoonish might not actually mean cartoonish and instead
| trivialize the word given the glaring mundane history of
| the entire organization.
|
| Also, it's totally okay to feel morally superior to people
| who rape and torture. Especially those of us who do so in
| massive quantities.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > we knew the cold war was coming
|
| This takes our agency (no pun intended) out of the equation
| a little bit, don't you think? To have a cold war was a
| decision we made (we and the Soviets, of course). Whether
| one agrees with it or not is another thing, but "was
| coming" ascribes a sort of inevitability to your argument
| that I don't think is merited. Making assertions by going
| "the fact of the matter is ____" is a nice flourish but
| it's lipstick on a pig in this case: your take is just as
| interpretive as the other poster's.
|
| Re: nuance, well, yes and no. There's a lot of nuance to a
| murder case in most instances, but in the end we have to
| consult some fairly un-nuanced principles to help us make a
| decision about it: is homicide wrong or not? Saying "yes,
| it's wrong" isn't painting a killer as cartoonishly evil or
| not nuanced enough; it's just saying murder is wrong. The
| killer may have had reasons and circumstance - nuanced
| ones, even. But he's still a killer.
|
| Same goes with the US government and the CIA, etc.: all the
| reasons in the world aren't gonna excuse you from
| accusations of "cartoonish evil" if your track record -
| your real behavior out there in the world - is one of
| cartoonish evil. The CIA didn't invent couching sociopathy
| in virtue or reason, but if you look at their track record
| you'll see they've gotten pretty good at it. They deserve
| only abolition and prosecution, but until that day, in my
| interpretation, they deserve every shred of scorn they get,
| nuanced or not.
| elefanten wrote:
| Thank you for your posts, they're a needed counterpoint to
| the deeply slanted and historically decontextualized hot
| takes that make up the majority of this thread.
|
| I don't have time to add much at the moment, but it was
| nice to see at least an ounce of balance in the current
| state of this thread.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| It's circular reasoning to excuse the CIA using their own
| words. The historical accounts don't match the mainstream
| narrative the CIA manufactured.
| t8e56vd4ih wrote:
| just this list is enough to question any anti-conspiracy-theory
| knee jerk reaction. probably corona is natural, maybe it's
| manmade ... are there people who would out of greed release such
| a virus into the world? definitely yes. and that's not tin foil
| hat or crazy. it's just acknowledging history.
| legitster wrote:
| Obviously take this with a grain of salt - the entire citation
| list are two highly polemic works. This author also has no
| problem mixing facts with ascribed motives. This is a really
| _dangerous_ way of understanding history.
|
| While there is no denying some of the real atrocities committed,
| this list makes some REALLY simple narratives out of some pretty
| complicated events. Several of the "democratically elected"
| dictators were nothing of the sort, and several of them buck the
| narrative by being right-wing populists.
|
| A lot of other agencies were often complicit, in several of these
| examples the CIA was merely there holding the coats for European
| agencies or local political organizations.
|
| Indeed, this list would make you think the CIA was capable of
| creating political movements out of whole cloth. But the truth is
| much more insidious - they often empowered the existing political
| movements conveniently at hand.
|
| But I think, most importantly, is that we _know_ all of this. You
| can look at the Wikipedia pages for all of these events. And all
| of the congressional investigations into them. I want to blame
| our government for letting all this happen, but on some level I
| at least separate the ideals of the US constitution and our
| separate and distinct failure of living up to those ideals.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| Surprised to see no mention of Operation Condor (other than
| actions in Chile under Pinochet) which displaced my family in
| Argentina and destabilized a handful of counties in South
| America.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
| WaxProlix wrote:
| Yeah, they even say the list is non-exhaustive (I guess it has
| to be), but Condor is a big one to miss. Maybe it's because in
| this case the CIA was more of a conduit for long-standing
| official policy than a leading force?
| legitster wrote:
| There's already a lot of atrocities on the list that are only
| tenuously associated with the US.
|
| It seems the issue is that this list is entirely sourced from
| Killing Hope, which was published just before the Operation
| Condor information was declassified.
| mssundaram wrote:
| What will the updated timeline look like?
| ccsnags wrote:
| It will be shorter than this list and if you don't like it,
| your a traitor.
|
| Edit: i thought this was obviously a joke. I misspelled a word
| to give it less credibility.
| Black101 wrote:
| Are you talking about them silencing leakers?
| whydoibother wrote:
| Good overview, but the attacks on Cuba didn't stop after the bay
| of pigs. The CIA continued terrorist attacks on Cuba well after
| that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mongoose
| lucian1900 wrote:
| And as far as we know the attacks are ongoing.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| so fucking old
|
| look at all the wikipedia article mentions and additions in this
| comment thread.
|
| Instead of posting this, how about reference this
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_by_the...
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Sometimes propaganda is more powerful if delivered in a more
| neutral and objective tone. Also, historical accounts are more
| believable when supported by sources and evidence. Otherwise it
| feels a bit one sided.
|
| The CIA has certainly done some weird and evil shit. Slanted
| writing like this isn't going to persuade anyone, though.
| legitster wrote:
| It's not just the lack of a neutral tone, it's the way that it
| mixes real facts with (pulled from an ass) motivations.
|
| It is completely plausible that the CIA has done really evil
| things, but with honest intentions of stabilizing regions.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The CIA has one motivation: To do whatever was decided was in
| the interests of the USA at a given moment.
|
| Never fall for the PR that the CIA (or any similar agency in
| other countries) has any altruistic goals like freedom and
| democracy. Their are simply a tool of the geopolitical power
| struggle. Sometimes they are best friends with the worst
| dictators, sometimes they overthrow democratic governments.
| It does not matter as long as it was decided that the result
| would be better for the USA (again, that's the same in every
| country, I'm not attacking the USA specifically)
| luffapi wrote:
| This is literally just a timeline of known historical events.
| How is it slanted?
| l33t2328 wrote:
| It's slanted in that it's not clear how the first 5 items are
| even atrocious.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Have you read the first one or two paragraphs?
| luffapi wrote:
| Yes, and they did us the favor of backing up those
| paragraphs with detailed research and facts that support
| their argument.
|
| The meat of the content is the documented acts of the CIA.
| legitster wrote:
| The detailed research is all taken from a single source.
| luffapi wrote:
| Those are well know historical incidents that are
| documented with many, many sources. For instance:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
| elefanten wrote:
| But the narrative spin and rhetoric used are not. This is
| not an objective, dispassionate round up of the facts.
|
| Click around the website. It's a deeply ideological
| source.
| luffapi wrote:
| If you take issue with the timeline they present, you're
| free to post your own fact based argument to refute it.
| Gabriel_Martin wrote:
| "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if
| you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have
| neither the facts nor the law, pound the table" In this
| case the table pounding is in the form of saying it's not
| dispassionate enough for their high standards.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Well, then we have a slightly different view on well-
| researched, neutrally reported facts.
|
| And I somehow suspect you would be absolutely outraged by
| an equally poorly written summary that has the opposite
| viewpoint. Just a guess...
| porphyra wrote:
| Ironically the CIA themselves is very good at writing
| propaganda with a neutral and objective tone. For example Radio
| Free Asia is generally considered neutral and objective despite
| its ties to the CIA.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > 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.
|
| This was actually a good thing. Che Guevara was a psychopathic
| murderer and war criminal.
|
| Looking through this list, it is interesting how it minimizes the
| atrocities of communists.
|
| Lest there be an accusation of "both sides", you really have to
| consider the contexts in which things occurred. For example
| during WWII, you could easily do a huge article about Allied
| atrocities in fighting the Nazis and how civilian and industrial
| areas were targeted and often included as collateral damage
| during night time bombing. But it is also true that the bombing
| of cities and destruction of German industrial capacity
| contributed to the collapse of the Nazis.
|
| The truth is that Communists have killed more people and been
| responsible for more human misery than any corresponding movement
| or ideology in the 20th century. In addition, for the most part,
| the countries that joined the US Bloc ended up doing well for
| their citizens in the long term, even when they started out as
| authoritarian (see for example South Korea and Singapore) while
| countries that embraced Communism screwed over their people (See
| East Germany and North Korea).
| whydoibother wrote:
| > This was actually a good thing. Che Guevara was a
| psychopathic murderer and war criminal.
|
| No, he wasn't.
|
| >The truth is that Communists have killed more people and been
| responsible for more human misery than any corresponding
| movement or ideology in the 20th century.
|
| No, it hasn't. Stop spreading worthless VoC propaganda.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| I think it is useless to group atrocities by ideology. Not the
| least because the distinctions are somewhat arbitrary.
|
| What the writeup is missing is a contemporary context. It also
| tries to fault the current CIA, and by association the current
| US government, for mistakes or even crimes committed by
| different human beings decades ago. In order to make an
| ideological point.
| cholantesh wrote:
| I mean, there isn't any indication that they've changed
| course since 1993, so what's the issue?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Is there a list somewhere of actual CIA successes? I'm no fan,
| but it sometimes seems like the CIA has never really succeeded at
| any intervention. Have they ever had an unqualified success that
| actually helped people?
|
| Edit: I mean by any measure. They don't seem to actually succeed
| in furthering any of the possible motives, whether you think it's
| about democracy or business interests, as soon as the CIA touch
| it it gets worse.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| You assume the CIA's only purpose is to conduct covert
| assassinations and overthrow "legitimate governments", as the
| OP is alleging.
|
| Which is just as far from the truth as some of the lies the CIA
| has told over the years.
|
| The CIA has always been involved in intelligence gathering,
| which means among other things preventing terrorist attacks and
| discovering the capabilities of potential enemy nations. Like
| it or not, both are necessary tasks.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I'm just asking about the interventions. Intelligence
| gathering is more benine at least...
| colechristensen wrote:
| Well publicizing your success would often be conterproductive.
| It is also easy to dismiss the contributions of covert actions
| when they work, by design.
|
| You might say the success of the European Union has some CIA
| fingerprints on it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Committee_on_United_E...
| whydoibother wrote:
| They don't do it to help people. They do it to advance western
| business interests, usually at the expense of the people.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| That's sort of my point: they don't even seem to succeed at
| helping western business interests.
|
| Their efforts in Iran ruined any chance of western countries
| doing business there for decades...
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| It preserved Iran's oil assets in the hands of Western
| companies for 26 years, from the time of the 1953 coup
| until the Iranian Revolution in 1979. I'm sure they counted
| that as a win, if not a permanent one.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Thanks, that's a good example. I always forget how long
| the Shah held on...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The thing is, they probably do suceed but you never hear
| about it. It's difficult to get information for sure.
| debacle wrote:
| Including western people.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| That is a common anti-american talking point that is at best
| an extremely narrow view of the truth.
| whydoibother wrote:
| No, it isn't extremely narrow. It is based on the truth, as
| shown in the article. What purpose has the CIA served other
| than business interests and anti-socialist ops (tied to
| business interests, can't have your oil fields nationalized
| by the local savages after all)?
|
| How did allying with former SS commanders and other Nazis
| help the people? How did them stealing children from Cuba
| help the people? How did them supporting Cuban exiles
| ongoing terrorism help the people? How did Gladio ops
| killing any sort socialist movements in Europe help the
| people?
|
| Maybe you should take a second to realize a lot of 'anti-
| american talking points' are actually valid criticisms of a
| corrupt and deranged government.
| ewmiller wrote:
| I don't see how you can look at the many coups against
| democratically elected foreign leaders who sought to
| nationalize their countries' natural resources being
| anything other than protecting the interests of
| American/British companies who wanted those resources for
| themselves.
| kiliantics wrote:
| It depends on your definition of success. Here is a fairly
| detailed discussion of the CIA's exploits in Angola:
|
| https://howardlsalter.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/the-cias-fail...
|
| Despite it looking like a failure by many metrics, they show
| that it can definitely be considered a success from the
| perspective of large multinational companies dealing in oil and
| other resources. CIA director during part of that time was
| George H W Bush, who may have had some interest in getting
| access to cheap oil.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Is there a list somewhere of actual CIA successes?
|
| Probably, but if you are asking you probably don't have the
| security clearance to see it.
|
| > it sometimes seems like the CIA has never really succeeded at
| any intervention.
|
| Well, duh. If it _seems like_ the CIA was involved in an
| intervention, then it, _ipso facto_ , seems like they failed:
| while interventions aren't the primary job of the CIA, _overt_
| interventions aren't any part of their job.
|
| > Have they ever had an unqualified success that actually
| helped people?
|
| If the CIA had a success (qualified or otherwise), helping
| people would be a side effect (or maybe instrumental but not
| ultimate goal). The CIA isn't the Peace Corp or US AID, along
| with "overt intervention", another thing that _isn't_ their job
| is "helping people".
| radmuzom wrote:
| One of my ideas over the last decade has been to create a website
| of resources to demonstrate to the world that USA should be an
| example of a country no one else should aspire to be.
| Unfortunately, I never got the time or patience to create it.
| Seeing this is motivating - I need to find that time after all.
| [deleted]
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The awkward thing is that there is always a dissenting or
| misaimed fandom who sees an action no matter how horrific as a
| good thing. "They oppressed everyone don't do it." is read as
| some as "They have power over all if you do it nobody could
| stop you."
| refurb wrote:
| Do you think you actually possess information others don't and
| such a website would make difference at all?
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Which countries are aspirational then?
|
| Most of Europe has shown that it can't be trusted with power.
| Same with most of Asia.
|
| The past 80 years under pax americana have seen the greatest
| reduction in global poverty in history.
| mc32 wrote:
| Do you think aspirational countries would rethink their vision
| or see it as a recipe to follow?
|
| (I think almost any country with our resources would project
| their vision vigorously to maintain stability)
|
| That's to say were China to emerge as the world power, I don't
| think they would take pause and just let things be.
| ewmiller wrote:
| > That's to say were China to emerge as the world power, I
| don't think they would take pause and just let things be.
|
| I've heard that a lot, but I actually wonder if that's true
| or if it's just American paranoia projected onto a different
| ascendant power.
| mc32 wrote:
| Just look at smaller players: Iran, Turkey, etc. Look at
| China's activities in SE Asia via a vis their neighbors.
| Look at their activities in international waters. They all
| project at least regional power.
|
| You're saying given a larger playing field, they would
| forgo it. Let someone else project?
| radmuzom wrote:
| I looked - could not find any examples remotely
| comparable to those mentioned in the article.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| They will never have such a playing field. China will
| never achieve global hegemony. Only the US can for
| geographic and economic reasons.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| China simply won't ever acceed to the US's role as a Hegemon,
| no matter what. The only country in the world that can even
| remotely do so is the US because of its geographical position
| that allows purely offensive military positioning and solid
| economic control of a whole continent as well as access over
| all the oceans.
|
| It's even less likely that China could even surpass the US in
| relative terms without relying very heavily on other powers
| such as Russia, some African powers and so on, because of
| their geography and lack of resources. So even then they
| wouldn't be able to project their mode of governance or
| impose social overhaul on other countries in the way the US
| did.
| ccsnags wrote:
| The US spent the first 100 years not living up to it's own
| ideals. When we started figuring that out, we stopped caring
| about them altogether. It's as if things like constitutions and
| conventions exist to provide the illusion of legitimacy to
| systems that ignore them.
| sneak wrote:
| > _The US spent the first 100 years not living up to it's own
| ideals._
|
| https://www.insider.com/inside-forced-sterilizations-
| califor...
|
| It still isn't.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Interesting idea, but I don't see why you should single the USA
| out, other than by the fact that it's the most powerful nation
| that declassifies a certain amount of information about itself.
| Every powerful nation has had some involvement in election
| interference, propaganda, wars, slavery, torture, and so on.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| Totally, but not all of them brand themselves as Arbiters of
| Freedom and such. There's a strong current of nationalist
| exceptionalism that could use a counter-narrative (or a
| reality check).
| ameister14 wrote:
| >There's a strong current of nationalist exceptionalism
| that could use a counter-narrative (or a reality check).
|
| To what purpose? Do you believe that it would result in a
| happier and more successful populace/world?
|
| If so, what is the foundation for that belief? If not,
| again, why? I'd argue these counter-narratives already
| exist, so why do we need a new one/more of them/them to be
| stronger?
| WaxProlix wrote:
| > To what purpose? ? Do you believe that it would result
| in a happier and more successful populace/world?
|
| No, just in the interest of promoting a varied selection
| of ideological opinions and in support of the search for
| truth.
|
| > I'd argue these counter-narratives already exist, so
| why do we need a new one/more of them/them to be
| stronger?
|
| My contention is exactly that they are insufficiently
| represented in the current cultural zeitgeist! You're
| free to disagree, but the context here is that the parent
| post expressed an interest in 'signal boosting' this
| narrative, and I was agreeing. Sounds like you disagree.
| ameister14 wrote:
| >No, just in the interest of promoting a varied selection
| of ideological opinions and in support of the search for
| truth.
|
| I get that, makes sense. I don't think what the gp said
| was consistent with that, though.
|
| I think that if your goal is to boost the viewpoint that
| the USA should be an example of a country no one else
| should aspire to be while also attempting to support the
| search for truth, hypocrisy shouldn't really play into it
| much, unless of course that is the sole reason you find
| the actions of the US distasteful. For me, whether you
| killed people and then pretended it was for the greater
| good or just killed them, the chief crime is murder, not
| lying about it.
|
| The reasons not to aspire to be like the US are the same
| as the reasons not to aspire to be like the UK, France,
| Spain, Russia etc. Highlighting them as unique to the US
| wouldn't appear to improve the varied selection of
| ideological opinions (a lot of people already don't like
| the US) and certainly doesn't improve the level of truth
| present. I'd also argue that doing so would be playing
| into a different type of the same exceptionalism.
|
| Nationalist exceptionalism created a foundation for the
| US to do things nobody had done before. Unfortunately,
| the US also did things a lot of countries had done before
| and it should definitely be noted that those things are
| not exceptional nor are they particularly good for the
| idealized nation.
| ku-man wrote:
| Do you know why there aren't military coups in the US?
|
| Because in the US there isn't embassy of the US.
| luffapi wrote:
| Also see the CIA trafficking cocaine through Mena Airport.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mena_Intermountain_Municipal...
| sneak wrote:
| Fun fact: Amazon runs a special AWS installation on an air gapped
| network at Langley just for the CIA, staffed with Amazon staff.
|
| This is one of many reasons why I don't use Twitch and avoid
| using AWS and amazon.com whenever possible.
|
| Please read this webpage in full before you enrich those who
| collaborate with this organization.
|
| If you work at AWS, you should consider quitting. If you are
| applying to jobs, you should skip Amazon. AWS are the CIA's
| sysadmins.
| motohagiography wrote:
| It's as though they became what they were fighting.
| Totalitarianism is old enough that people now even seem nostalgic
| for it, but it was really awful, and it was worth preventing
| pretty much everywhere. A few assasinations to prevent the
| otherwise inevitable purges and massacres was ugly, but in the
| context of what they witnessed before and after the second world
| war, worth it. Their calculus appeared to be to accept a few
| thousand casulties to prevent the extermination of millions. When
| they succeed, it's really ugly, but when you look at the great
| 20th century failures of the CIA (China, North Korea, Cambodia,
| Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela) the consequences were even more
| terrible.
|
| What seems to have changed is they're not trying to prevent it
| anymore, but making sure it's one they can manage. Imo, I think
| they got completely taken by Russia, where they thought when the
| wall came down the cold war was over, but really it had just
| started in earnest, and now every single new CIA recruit is fully
| indoctrinated into their old enemies' ideology before they even
| fill out an application. The movements behind the former Russian
| oppression very much exist as non-state actors today, and instead
| of mere nation states, they form pan-national networks
| facilitated by colleges, NGO's, and foundations.
|
| It's so subtle. If you believe the biggest problems facing the
| world today are rooted in some other people lacking social
| accountability, that it is limits to the ability of institutions
| to organize, fund, and plan society, and that it is religion
| creating identities that cannot be reconciled with society, you
| may already have been subverted.
| jolux wrote:
| > every single new CIA recruit is fully indoctrinated into
| their old enemies' ideology before they even fill out an
| application
|
| What? Every CIA recruit is an acolyte of the immortal science
| of Marxism-Leninism?
| johnknowles wrote:
| and yet, the machine churns on. Just wanted to put a reminder
| here that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has not been
| able to audit the CIA for over 40 years [0]. Evil likes to be
| unaccountable, and it's gotten just that. How much more blood
| will we allow to spill as an American populace before we demand
| an end to the CIA? This list focuses mainly on foreign
| engagements by the agency. The domestic activities by the CIA are
| vast and unaccounted for, bordering on the unimaginable.
|
| We (Americans) have been living in lies, living in shadows,
| living in death. There is no tangible difference between the
| acronyms USA and CIA. We have been sold to the devil, and we've
| made him our master.
|
| [0] https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-01-975t.pdf
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The GAO not being able to audit the CIA != CIA currently
| committing atrocities.
|
| Your last sentence is also needlessly inflammatory.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The GAO being unable to audit the CIA, and the CIA still
| having the same incentives and structure as during an
| uninterrupted 60+ year spree of committing atrocities almost
| non-stop is a very good indicator that yes, they are still
| committing atrocities.
|
| Which ones, we couldn't tell, that's kind of the point of the
| CIA. But in this case, the incentives are the same, the
| structure is the same, the unaccountability is the same, so
| past behaviour is a good predictor of future behaviour.
| johnknowles wrote:
| Yes, I'm sure the fact that they are denying any public
| oversight wouldn't suggest any nefarious activities.
| Obviously it is not directly equatable, but to dismiss their
| history and pattern of actions as not continuing into the
| present day is ridiculous, frankly. To say that I'm being
| "needlessly" inflammatory. Are you kidding me?
|
| The CIA has murdered and lied with reckless abandon for
| almost a century. They murdered at least one US president
| (JFK), and have controlled more (HW, Clinton,..). The CIA has
| infiltrations in major media, in our news, in our bestselling
| novels, the top tv shows and movies, the celebrity culture.
|
| Their shape on the world is immense, and immensely evil. So
| I'm sorry if that is too far for you, but its not even close
| to far enough to account for the depths of darkness to the
| CIA.
| [deleted]
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Written like a true spook!
| StreamBright wrote:
| And surprisingly few people are aware. They chose to ignore or
| simply does not at all.
| justin66 wrote:
| > We (Americans) have been living in lies, living in shadows,
| living in death. There is no tangible difference between the
| acronyms USA and CIA. We have been sold to the devil, and we've
| made him our master.
|
| At night, the ice weasels come.
| luckyorlame wrote:
| but we have cookies
| zepto wrote:
| > There is no tangible difference between the acronyms USA and
| CIA. We have been sold to the devil, and we've made him our
| master.
|
| What are you talking about? Every country has spy agencies and
| almost every country conducts covert operations.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I'm thinking that spy organizations should still have
| accountability when they fuck up which ultimately could be
| complete reorganization.
| mc32 wrote:
| No, Cuba never intervened in the politics of other countries
| or engaged in assassination in other countries or sent
| mercenaries to other countries or exported their ideology to
| other countries. Only bad countries did that. That's right
| Cuba did not send 4,000 troops to Syria to fight against
| Israel in the Yom Kippur war. They also probably didn't send
| troops into Somalia nor support the MIR and FPMR to
| destabilize Chile.
| legitster wrote:
| Also, one of the events on this list (The CIA's protection
| of "Baby Doc" Duvalier) was in no small due to the US's
| interest in defending off Cuban attempts at invading Haiti.
| refurb wrote:
| Have you not heard of Cuba's role in Angola?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_intervention_in_Angol
| a
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Fidel Castro urged Russia to nuke the US during the Cuban
| Missile Crisis.
|
| http://www.errolmorris.com/film/fow_transcript.html
|
| >"Mr. President, I have three questions to you. Number one:
| did you know the nuclear warheads were there? Number two:
| if you did, would you have recommended to Khrushchev in the
| face of an U.S. attack that he use them? Number three: if
| he had used them, what would have happened to Cuba?"
|
| He said, "Number one, I knew they were there. Number two, I
| would not have recommended to Khrushchev, I did recommend
| to Khrushchev that they be used. Number three, 'What would
| have happened to Cuba?' It would have been totally
| destroyed." That's how close we were.
|
| EM: And he was willing to accept that?
|
| Yes, and he went on to say: "Mr. McNamara, if you and
| President Kennedy had been in a similar situation, that's
| what you would have done." I said, "Mr. President, I hope
| to God we would not have done it. Pull the temple down on
| our heads? My God!"
| alrs wrote:
| Well, kinda.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_intervention_in_Angola
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| It's not even well kinda, Cuba absolutely did intervene
| heavily in Africa. The stereotype of some old south
| African mercenary that loves to kill communists is
| directly as a result of this war.
| alienthrowaway wrote:
| > It's not even well kinda, Cuba absolutely did intervene
| heavily in Africa.
|
| As did the US - the CIA was instrumental in the arrest of
| Nelson Mandela while he was on the lam. A number of
| Vietnam vets went on to "fight communism" in African wars
| of independence.
|
| African decolonisation and the cold war was a complex
| mix.On one side, you had a white settler minority ruling
| class, ostensibly on the side of Capitalism and western
| values. On the other side, you had the majority agitating
| for _full_ democracy with voting rights extended beyond
| the minority, but found no help from the west when they
| requested it.
|
| The same story played out in multiple countries,
| including Vietnam: they'd be rebuffed by the west, and
| these groups, in need of training and materiel, would
| look to the USSR, China and Cuba who were happy to help
| if the rebels/terrorists/freedom fighters could help make
| socialism global.
| whydoibother wrote:
| > 4,000 troops to Syria to fight against Israel in the Yom
| Kippur war
|
| Supporting Arabs retaliating against an illegal land grab
| by Israel.
|
| >They also probably didn't send troops into Somalia
|
| Helping Ethiopia defend itself against aggression from
| Somalia, the issue of which was caused by western meddling
| and colonialism.
|
| >nor support the MIR and FPMR to destabilize Chile.
|
| Supporting forces revolting against the horrible Pinochet
| dictatorship.
|
| Really, why list any of this when we are talking about
| unwanted CIA intervention, which usually backed murderous
| right wingers? Cuba's interventions were at least battling
| western imperialism and had the support of part of the
| local populations and not just the rich land owners.
| cholantesh wrote:
| Most of HN's userbase will offer the same asinine
| responses to questions like that:
|
| "because western imperialism/protecting the interests of
| rich land owners is good",
|
| "because the alternative is worse, just trust me bro", or
|
| "because the local population doesn't know what's good
| for them and/or are/were brainwashed"
| johnknowles wrote:
| Not every country has yielded control of their top-level of
| government to their intelligence wing(Bushes, Clinton, Obama
| and their teams all have ties), nor do other countries have
| the operational resources to conduct as far-reaching
| activities as the US.
|
| No other country purposefully develops the types of
| technologies and techniques that we engage with to monitor
| and affect global power structures.
|
| No other country develops propaganda networks (Radio Free
| ___) like we do, in order to corrode the trust of non-US
| citizens towards their governments. We literally have to
| invent stories of "Russian hacking" and "Russian
| interference" to try and conjure up some parity.
|
| Don't try and make false equations. We are not like the
| world. We may possess the same apparatuses, but we use them
| as the devil would.
| hpoe wrote:
| Couple of points you say "no other country" but Russia and
| China are definitely engaged in both.
|
| Quite frankly it's probably only a matter of time until
| India develops them as well. The fact of the matter is all
| our history, doctrine, tactics, and studying come from
| living in a bi-polar world.
|
| We aren't living in the 1940's or the Cold War, we are
| living in the early 1900's and we need to start studying
| that time to understand how to navigate and succeed in a
| multi-polar world (Russia, China, US, India?), or we will
| be fighting a trench war, while the enemy comes in with
| tanks and machine guns.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| As far as I know both the MSS and the FSB are pretty
| solidly subordinate to the rest of their government.
|
| The US is not playing to suceed in a multipolar world.
| The US is playing to maintain hegemony, ie, a monopolar
| world. All US strategy I've seen so far, especially
| economic, is focused on creating two spheres of power
| with the US being at the helm of the dominant one.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > FSB are pretty solidly subordinate to the rest of their
| government.
|
| A strange statement. Putin was put in power by it.
|
| If I were Yelzin, I would've ordered firing squads for
| every KGB officer above a major.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Putin wasn't put in power by the FSB. He was put in power
| by the oligarchs. Certainly during the unstable period
| between 1991 and 2006 more or less the FSB had
| considerable influence however, but that has since been
| resolved. Beforethen the KGB was not afforded much
| lattitude. The only time I can think of where the KGB
| attempted to go against the wishes of the government
| above them was in 1964, but even then they needed support
| from within the Politburo and still failed miserably.
|
| Yeltsin had no choice but to collaborate with the KGB if
| he wanted them to execute his machinations. The rogue
| elements from the KGB were the reason why Yeltsin was in
| power to begin with. Without the KGB he would never have
| been able to illegally arrest Gorbachev and execute a
| coup.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Without the KGB he would never have been able to
| illegally arrest Gorbachev and execute a coup.
|
| I read many books on events 1990-1993. Even the two
| soldiers who were guarding the door when Yelzin was
| arresting his cabinet were hand picked through a very
| tight network of loyalists in the most extreme secrecy.
|
| They had an order "see anybody resembling KGB? Fire at
| will"
|
| It's a grandiose conspiracy theory of CPSU holdouts that
| "KGB subverted the Union!" I will believe more that Trump
| Donald was a communist spy, than KGB nibbling at hand
| that fed, and _protected it from decimation at the hands
| everybody wanting to return the favour._
| jolux wrote:
| What makes you think the CIA isn't subordinate to the
| rest of the government? And moreover, what does being
| subordinate to the government mean when that government
| is a dictatorship?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The CIA has literally invaded another country by lying
| and deceiving the entire executive branch. That's clear
| cut evidence they aren't practically subordinate to the
| rest of the government.
|
| Dictatorships might not be elected, they still have
| structure and procedure. If the Chinese MSS obeys the
| Politburo and doesn't withhold information from them,
| then they are subordinate to the government.
| jolux wrote:
| > The CIA has literally invaded another country by lying
| and deceiving the entire executive branch.
|
| When?
|
| > Dictatorships might not be elected, they still have
| structure and procedure. If the Chinese MSS obeys the
| Politburo and doesn't withhold information from them,
| then they are subordinate to the government.
|
| I think you vastly overestimate the efficiency of
| authoritarian bureaucracies. Much has been written about
| this, there is a strong taboo directly against sharing
| information because sharing the wrong information can
| have lethal consequences. Authoritarian governments are
| marred from top to bottom by problems caused by friction
| in sharing information, and subsequent Balkanization.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I'm talking about the Bay of Pigs invasion.
|
| You can criticize the efficiency of authoritarian
| governments. That doesn't have much to do with their
| structure. Sure, the MSS may have some issues with
| command, though there is no evidence for them so far, but
| they are still subordinate to their hierarchy.
|
| Besides, we're in 2021 now, data issues are a lot easier
| to audit in these situations.
| jolux wrote:
| Bay of Pigs was before the Church committee, do you know
| the history of intelligence reform in the 1970s?
|
| As for authoritarian governments, and their intelligence
| agencies, it's not so much about "efficiency" in a
| technocratic sense so much as it is that I see no reason
| to believe that the government is in full control of
| them. How would we know if they weren't? Authoritarians
| project an image of total control that often papers over
| a reality of internal disorder and dysfunction. We know,
| for example, that there was at least a brief coverup of
| the COVID-19 pandemic in China, just recently, to say
| nothing of the more famous examples, like Chernobyl.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The temporary coverup of the pandemic was done by a local
| branch of the CCP. The coverup of Tchernobyl was done by
| the CPSU itself. The internal disorder was a matter of
| dealing with a bad situation more than antyhing else.
|
| You would know if the CCP wasn't in control of the MSS or
| if the CPSU wasn't in control of the KGB if documents
| were leaking, if people were being assassinated, and so
| on. But as far as anyone can tell the opposite happened,
| and the Politburo got rid of Zhou Yongkang, the removal
| by Deng Xiaoping of Luo Qingchang, and so on, there is a
| clear pattern of heads of the MSS being removed and
| changed by the Politburo when they step out of line or
| don't follow the direction of the government, and so on.
|
| This isn't unique to China, by the way. The French also
| keep a much tighter leach on their intelligence agencies,
| first by separating domestic activities from foreign
| activities, and then by putting them tightly in the
| control of the Ministry of the Interior for the first and
| the military for the second, affording them very little
| latitude.
|
| The Church committee made a lot of things public, but as
| far as how things were done in the CIA there weren't much
| big changes. There are credible reports that the Church
| committee even covered up the worst of it, see the
| reporting by Carl Bernstein.
|
| And we know that many things the Church committee
| supposedly addressed, such as direct involvement by the
| IC into domestic politics, did not actually stop.
| jolux wrote:
| > The internal disorder was a matter of dealing with a
| bad situation more than antyhing else.
|
| This is questionable, but it's clear at least that
| China's eventual response was more successful than the
| US's, so there is that. Whether we'll ever know the true
| origins of the virus is a different question of course.
|
| > You would know if the CCP wasn't in control of the MSS
| or if the CPSU wasn't in control of the KGB if documents
| were leaking, if people were being assassinated, and so
| on.
|
| I asked mainly because the KGB seems to have functioned a
| bit like a shadow government and operated with a high
| degree of autonomy, another commenter mentions that Putin
| himself is ex-KGB.
|
| > The Church committee made a lot of things public, but
| as far as how things were done in the CIA there weren't
| much big changes.
|
| There was an executive order signed banning political
| assassinations, and all evidence suggests that there were
| significant changes after their accountability was made
| clear.
|
| > And we know that many things the Church committee
| supposedly addressed, such as direct involvement by the
| IC into domestic politics, did not actually stop.
|
| [citation needed]
|
| I have no particular affinity for the CIA. I am
| particularly disgusted by COINTELPRO, regime change
| efforts, and CIA's use of torture during the Iraq war. I
| think it would make a lot of sense to split the covert
| operations and intelligence-gathering parts of the
| organization, but these reforms do not interest most
| politicians. However, I think one is hard pressed to
| prove that the situation with the CIA is substantially
| different from that of other intelligence agencies around
| the world, outside of the issues I mentioned. For one
| thing a lot of European intelligence agencies operate
| with even less transparency than the US IC (among them
| GCHQ, famously), so raising them up as a model gives me
| pause.
| johnknowles wrote:
| While other countries engage to some degree, I'm
| attempting to be hyperbolic to emphasize the sheer
| difference between US and them, which often (as it is
| now) gets downplayed and filtered out.
|
| How, in the face of being presented with a list of evils
| the world over, are we all (us Americans) not prostrate
| in shame? Why do we search for some other vestige of evil
| to make rational our actions?
|
| There is no rationality to the atrocities. There is no
| "other countries". There is US, and there is evil that
| must be admitted and atoned for.
| MikeUt wrote:
| > How, in the face of being presented with a list of
| evils the world over, are we all (us Americans) not
| prostrate in shame?
|
| You're asking Americans to feel shame for the actions of
| an unelected agency that has subverted their democracy?
| And lied to them and hid those actions? Americans, as a
| whole, should be ashamed, not just the CIA?
|
| Do you also demand Russians feel guilty for allowing
| Stalin to take power?
| johnknowles wrote:
| Yes, we should feel deep shame. We have benefitted from
| this for years, with lives of convenience, at the expense
| and exploit of millions of our brethren worldwide. It
| would only be naturally American to attempt to distance
| ourselves, to say its "just" the CIA, not us.
|
| But it is our greed, our demand for cheaper and faster,
| our uncaring nature to the extractive business practices
| that push the CIA into action. We are complicit, every
| one of us, and it is only after we admit this that we can
| start to change. Its not about burying our heads in the
| sand in shame, but about understanding what we are
| benefitting from and having a heart for the millions
| pushed down to push you, as an American, up.
|
| I don't care about the Russians. That's their problem.
| I'm an American. This is MY problem.
| jolux wrote:
| Russian hacking and Russian interference is not an
| invention, they're widely acknowledged throughout the West
| right now.
| owl_troupe wrote:
| >We literally have to invent stories of "Russian hacking"
| and "Russian interference" to try and conjure up some
| parity.
|
| Which of these stores, specifically, were invented?
|
| State-sponsored "hacking" and "interference" (by any
| definition of those terms) on the part of the Russian
| government are as frequent as they are well-documented.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| 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."
|
| Stimson was a moron. Sure, being polite and respectful of other
| people's mail/privacy is a socially responsible thing to do, but
| if _EVERYBODY_ else is reading other people 's mail, then it puts
| you at a serious disadvantage when you choose not to.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| How far is this taken?
|
| What actions are too far?
|
| What if EVERYONE else is doing it?
|
| Having a moral standard and sticking to it no matter what
| somebody else is doing makes you a moron now?
|
| You're part of the problem.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Here's a list of questions I really want to know about the CIA,
| which I've come to deeply distrust since the 2000s.
|
| 1. What is the CIA involvement in mainstream US media? How and
| why do they shape American perspective via the news?[1]
|
| 2. Why are so many (former? current?) CIA agents running for
| congress?[2]
|
| 3. To what extent and purpose is the CIA spying domestically on
| American citizens and the US congress?[3]
|
| 4. What was the true purpose of "fusion cells", where the CIA was
| partnered with the FBI for local law enforcement?[4]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
|
| [2]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-2...
|
| [3]
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/a-brief...
|
| [4]
| https://twitter.com/fool_nelson/status/1305599303906406402?l...
| truffdog wrote:
| The National Endowment for Democracy is the official media
| influence stuff, which funds NPR domestically, and only really
| goes wild abroad.
|
| The biggest and most obvious way the CIA impacts media is
| through leaks to journalists, though.
| luffapi wrote:
| David McGowan suggests that a lot of the pop/drug culture of
| the late 60s was driven by the CIA as an attempt to subvert the
| anti-war movement.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-Canyon-Laurel/dp/...
|
| I don't think is anywhere near conclusive, but it's definitely
| plausible given the information he lays out.
|
| Fun fact: Jim Morrison's dad literally started the Vietnam War
| when he led the fleet that fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin
| Incident:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| The CIA didn't mastermind the Vietnam war. That would have
| been politicians.
| luffapi wrote:
| I don't think the suggestion is that the CIA masterminded
| the war, it's that they were employed to squash dissent
| against the war/test out what they learned with Operation
| Paperclip and Mk Ultra.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Then there's the other big McGowan thesis, which is that the
| Phoenix Program was imported to the US to terrorize the
| domestic populace into dissociation and submission, an effort
| whose fingerprints can be seen in the sudden rise of serial
| killings in the 1960s: https://www.amazon.com/Programmed-
| Kill-Politics-Serial-Murde...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Jim Morrison's dad literally started the Vietnam War when
| he led the fleet that fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin Incident:
|
| No, he didn't, because the Vietnam War (the US involvement,
| which itself arguably was merely a continuation of the French
| colonial conflict) started long before the Gulf of Tonkin
| incident.
| luffapi wrote:
| The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was directly used by LBJ to
| start the war. The act of Congress was called The Gulf of
| Tonkin Resolution:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Resolution
|
| Yes, there's a lot of events that led to this, but this is
| the act that started the war, and it was completely
| fabricated.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was directly used by LBJ to
| start the war.
|
| The US had been fighting the war since 1954.
|
| > The act of Congress was called The Gulf of Tonkin
| Resolution:
|
| Acts of Congress may authorize or declare wars, but they
| only _start_ wars if the armed conflict isn't already
| underway when Congress acts.
|
| The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution didn't start the Vietnam
| War (or US involvement in that war), much as the "Joint
| Resolution Declaring that a state of war exists between
| the Imperial Government of Japan and the Government and
| the people of the United States and making provisions to
| prosecute the same" of December 8, 1941, didn't start
| WWII, or US involvement therein (though the latter was
| closer in time to the start of US involvement in WWII
| than the former was to the start of US involvement in the
| Vietnam War.)
| luffapi wrote:
| The military exercises Morrison was executing were
| obviously also pre-war. This was the official start of
| the war.
| [deleted]
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| The involvement in fictional media is pretty out in the open at
| this point.
|
| Here's John Krasinski, star of Amazon's _Jack Ryan_ series,
| talking about how he was welcomed at the CIA and "we should
| thank them every day":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9Yg6y6bFeM
|
| A good article on how the writers for _Homeland_ closely
| collaborated with representatives from the US intelligence
| community: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-
| features/home...
| jjgreen wrote:
| Art for one: Pollock, de Kooning and others (unwittingly)
| supported by the CIA.
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...
| trefoiled wrote:
| Possible answer to question 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
| peder wrote:
| What are the aims of the CIA? Are all the divisions within the
| CIA rowing in the same direction? Is it possible there are
| multiple CIA operations in direct conflict with each other,
| without any awareness of the others' involvement? What are CIA
| strategy sessions like? How far out are they planning, or do
| they tend to be weirdly reactionary?
| the_only_law wrote:
| I've also wondered just how independent the CIA is from the
| rest of the state. Surely, they don't seem to face any
| consequences when they are caught doing something bad, even
| to US citizens. Is it possible they have any sort of rouge
| work or do much work not on behalf of the US.
| hpoe wrote:
| Actually it's a pretty open secret that the CIA, and SOCOM
| are heavily involved in the drug trade that they use to
| fund other black ops.
| truffdog wrote:
| The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia has a great,
| exhaustive overview of the earlier iteration of that.
| Drug money is very attractive for intelligence
| agencies/militaries- it's free and off the books.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Statecraft involves a whole lot of dirty tricks and grey areas.
| It is not clear if a modern power could survive without
| participating in this game to some degree, it is also not clear
| when and how to draw the line.
|
| The struggle is that once it becomes normalized it grows, and
| anyone with the power tends to want to increase it. If you are a
| rational and pragmatic person you have to be able to accept some
| things as necessary and seek punishment for others... while
| seeing that there is rarely much difference between one and the
| next.
|
| One can also be an idealist and believe that none of this should
| be necessary and fight against every instance; perhaps that is
| the stable outcome, some people participating in things they see
| as necessary fighting against others who want everything to be
| perfect -- the stalemate between them being some kind of solution
| to the problem.
| pydry wrote:
| The US would survive. It's basically uninvadeable.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > It's basically uninvadeable.
|
| Why?
| pydry wrote:
| Two enormous oceans on either side, Sierra Madres to the
| south. Arctic and a small number of friendly neighbors to
| the north.
|
| You couldn't ask for more favorable geography.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| The Sierra Madres clearly do not protect our southern
| border.
| pydry wrote:
| You're saying because refugees manage to slip through
| it's clearly vulnerable to an army?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| It protects the Baja portion, not the whole border.
| Significant because of the population center though and
| considerable logistics of taking ports intact.
|
| Plotting exercises of invading nuclear powers is still a
| pretty masturbatory exercise either way.
| FredPret wrote:
| If that border wall were made out of tanks, as it would
| be in an invasion, it would be a different story!
| pydry wrote:
| It used to be Mexico way north of the border too.
|
| The inaccessibility caused by the mountains are largely
| what prevented Mexico from holding on to the territory.
| colechristensen wrote:
| This is a very 19th century attitude. Who says invasion is
| the primary action of concern?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The "greyness" is nothing more than self fuffilling prophecies
| writ large. There is nothing forcing nations to act like the
| utter psychopaths they do. It is to their own detriment too.
| Seriously every remotely modern empire which has fallen has
| done so by fighting wars that didn't need fought and commiting
| travesties which were the root of their downfall. World War 1
| ended ruling royals by fighting wars everybody already knew
| would be disastrous but thought nobody would be stupid enough
| to fight because it would be disastrous to the intertwined
| powerhouses.
| RocketOne wrote:
| This is my favorite.
|
| >1979: Afghanistan -- The Soviets invade Afghanistan. The CIA
| immediately begins supplying arms to any faction willing to fight
| the occupying Soviets. Such indiscriminate arming means that when
| the Soviets leave Afghanistan, civil war will erupt. Also,
| fanatical Muslim extremists now possess state-of-the-art
| weaponry. One of these is Sheik Abdel Rahman, who will become
| involved in the World Trade Center bombing in New York.
|
| The US literally armed its own enemies.
| pope_meat wrote:
| To be fair, it was extremely profitable to arm our enemies at
| the time, what were we supposed to do, not make money? That
| sounds like communism.
| derriz wrote:
| In what way can the first 4 items in the list be considered
| atrocities? And how can they be considered _CIA_ atrocities given
| they occur before the formation of the CIA?
|
| The fifth (Operation Paperclip) was conducted by US Army
| Intelligence.
|
| I gave up at that point. The list is obviously a product of its
| time - before the explosion of the web. I actually remember when
| this sort of list was popular - similar lists often appeared and
| re-appeared on Usenet or were circulated widely by email.
|
| These days it's just too easy to factcheck stuff
| wikipedia/google/etc. so after checking out the first few items,
| the list comes across like a sort of Gish gallop.
|
| To be clear, I'm not defending the CIA or its actions here - but
| this particular list hasn't aged well.
| CalChris wrote:
| 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.
|
| No, Radio Free Europe was _not_ an atrocity.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Just logged in to say the same. For millions behind the Iron
| Curtain, it was a breath of fresh air, it was like a ray of
| hope. It was liberating just hear someone speaking publicly
| things you could not. You could write long stories about that.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It was liberating to hear a different kind of propaganda
| whose purpose was even less aligned with your own? I guess I
| can understand, but let's not pretend the goal of RFE was
| anything except increasing American power over Eastern
| Europe, against the will of the majority.
| masklinn wrote:
| Aye, RFE was not "forbidden" in the US because it was
| propaganda (though it was that), but because it was considered
| way soft on communist, if not outright socialist. Fulton Lewis
| (Tucker Carlson's predecessor, essentially) was a big critic of
| RFE, and a big fan of McCarthy (even after the latter's fall
| from grace).
|
| Because it was not officially under governmental control (the
| ties to the CIA would only be revealed after Rampart's
| investigation released in 1967) it was spared from a
| McCarthyist witch-hunt, otherwise there's little doubt it would
| have taken several hatchet hits.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| It's part of why capitalism was restored as part of a coup in
| my country in 89. Millions are far poorer for it.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I don't understand why this is downvoted. Capitalism was in
| fact restored undemocratically and against the wish of the
| majority and millions of people literally died from that.
|
| Just because you personally like capitalism doesn't mean that
| forcing it as part of coup which led to millions of death
| isn't an atrocity. And yes propaganda was part of it.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| What country?
| 99_00 wrote:
| They aren't going anywhere and they aren't going to stop.
|
| When Trump was in power the intelligence agencies were actively
| trying to undermine him and half of America loved them for it.
| They believed every anonymous intelligence official whisperings
| to journalists. Ate it up.
|
| Divide and concur. You can just imagine the kind of operations
| they constantly do in foreign countries.
|
| They are just too smart and the public is too dumb.
| bronzeage wrote:
| So many overthrows and coups, and I'm on the other hand just
| pissed that they still fail to overthrow the Iranian Islamist
| government, and that nothing was done about China. They had good
| relations with the Iran millitary and they didn't do shit when
| Islamists took over the country.
| legitster wrote:
| Ironically, the entire book this list is taken from is available
| for free from the CIA website, owing to it being part of the
| trove of books found during the raid on Osama Bin Laden's
| compound:
|
| https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/13/130AEF153...
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" it was fun, fun, fun. Where else could a red-blooded American
| boy lie, kill and cheat, steal, deceive, rape and pillage with
| the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?"_
|
| -- George White, commenting on his work on CIA's MK-ULTRA
| program.
|
| https://www.sfweekly.com/news/operation-midnight-climax-how-...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Are CIA agents really known for rape? I would love an example.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I'm assuming he didn't mean he personally partook in all
| those things, more of that it's a place where you're free to
| do things otherwise viewed as terrible crimes without
| consequence.
| smashah wrote:
| Just like with UK spy cops, it's, rightly, considered rape to
| have sex with someone under false pretences... But this is
| the CIA we're talking about, I'm sure they've committed
| atrocities they themselves would consider to be rape.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >it's, rightly, considered rape to have sex with someone
| under false pretenses
|
| Like saying you're on birth control when you're not?
|
| Firstly, that's not the legal or common usage definition or
| rape anywhere that I know of. (I'm sure some jurisdiction
| somewhere includes it as a catchall though.)
|
| Secondly, I don't understand how someone can say "rightly"
| with a straight face.
|
| People lie or stretch the truth to comical levels about
| age, marital status, number of prior partners,
| employment/wealth, etc. in order to get laid all the time.
| A man or woman pretending to be someone they're not in
| order to reel in a partner they couldn't otherwise is a
| pretty universal trope across cultures. Unethical? Yes. But
| I don't think anyone considers that sexual assault let
| alone rape.
|
| I'm pretty sure it was Dave Chappelle who said "you faked
| your orgasm but I faked my entire personality".
| zepto wrote:
| > it's, rightly, considered rape to have sex with someone
| under false pretences.
|
| What are you talking about? Rape is forced sex. Lying to
| someone about who you are is not use of force.
| mc32 wrote:
| I think some places like Sweden might consider that rape.
| Recall the Assange [accusation of rape] where not wearing
| a condom when he had indicated he had resulted in it
| being seen as rape (even when the 'witness' withdrew the
| accusation)?
| sneak wrote:
| There was no "Assange trial" in Sweden. More than that,
| Sweden didn't even charge him with a crime at all.
| mc32 wrote:
| I never mentioned anything about a trial; however he was
| accused of rape[1] because he did not wear a condom
| during sex.
|
| [1]https://www.law.cornell.edu/women-and-
| justice/resource/assan...
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" he was accused of rape because he did not wear a
| condom during sex"_
|
| According to the very article you link to his wearing of
| a condom was only an aggravating circumstance, and not
| the primary reason for the charge of rape.
|
| The primary reason was that he had sex with the woman
| while she was asleep, in a helpless state (in which she
| could not give consent).
|
| Here's the full quote:
|
| _" Mr. Assange visited Sweden to give a lecture. He had
| sexual relations with two women there. In the home of the
| injured party, Assange deliberately consummated sexual
| intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she,
| due to sleep, was in a helpless state. It is an
| aggravating circumstance that Assange, who was aware that
| it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a
| prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used,
| still consummated unprotected sexual intercourse with
| her. The sexual act was designed to violate the injured
| party's sexual integrity. Mr. Assange was accused of
| rape. Allegedly, the women agreed to sex on the condition
| Mr. Assange wear a condom. He did not do so throughout
| intercourse. Although the English courts had previously
| ruled that one cannot give conditional consent, in order
| to be able to allow extradition to Sweden, the Supreme
| Court ruled that his actions would constitute a crime
| under English law - thus allowing conditional consent to
| become valid in English law."_
|
| And to describe even just the aggravating circumstance
| described here as merely "not wearing a condom" omits
| that the reason for it being a problem: because Assange
| knew the woman would not have sex without a condom.
|
| So (if true) there are 2 reasons to think he was having
| sex without consent, which is rape.
| sneak wrote:
| > _primary reason for the charge of rape._
|
| > _The primary reason was_
|
| Assange was not charged. Please stop spreading this
| falsehood.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Recall the Assange trial where_
|
| Yes, you did.
| mc32 wrote:
| Apologies, fixed.
| sneak wrote:
| You "fixed" it to a rape accusation; Assange was also not
| accused of rape by anyone in Sweden.
| mc32 wrote:
| You're saying he wasn't accused of rape? Cornell has it
| wrong ?
| sneak wrote:
| If you believe the opposite, please name the name of the
| natural person so accusing him, and quote them
| specifically.
|
| No victims, nor officials, have accused him of any such
| thing. The arrest warrant that was issued was because he
| was wanted for questioning/investigation, and the direct
| statements of the women involved in the matter are very
| illuminating.
| [deleted]
| birdyrooster wrote:
| I think manipulation for sex can be rape too in the right
| context
| admash wrote:
| "Rape: unlawful sexual activity and usually sexual
| intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of
| injury against a person's will or with a person who is
| beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent
| because of mental illness, mental deficiency,
| intoxication, unconsciousness, or deception."
|
| Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rape
|
| The key point being "valid consent" and its contravention
| by deception. i.e. It's not valid if what you are
| consenting to is a lie, namely who you think you are
| having sex with.
| zepto wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| The problem with that definition is that it doesn't
| define what kinds of deception are sufficient to make sex
| qualify as rape.
|
| Does any lie automatically turn sex into rape, or are
| there limits, e.g. only if you lie about working for the
| state?
|
| Why for example would not disclosing that you are a cop
| be different from not disclosing that you are a doctor or
| an engineer?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Rape is sex without consent.
|
| If you have sex with someone because you think you're in
| love with them and they're in love with you, but in fact
| they're not who you thought they were but they're just
| putting on an act, don't love you, and are using you then
| it's most definitely rape because you haven't given
| consent to have sex with someone you don't actually know
| and who's deceiving you in the most despicable way.
| refurb wrote:
| No, that's not rape at all. That's kind of ridiculous to
| make that claim and doesn't even hold up to logical
| scrutiny.
| setr wrote:
| Eh this gets really iffy really fast. What becomes of
| casual hookups or third-dates, where both sides are
| running almost entirely on false pretenses, incomplete
| truths, and a swath of assumptions?
|
| What turns it into villainy is the explicit intent to
| deceive for nefarious purposes, but calling it rape feels
| like a serious dilution of the word
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Rape was commonly used in the Phoenix Program, a CIA effort
| to terrorize the North Vietnamese people during the war.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the
| United States Army and the CIA committed a series of human
| rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu
| Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical and sexual abuse,
| torture, rape, sodomy, and murder."_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone.
| ..
| user982 wrote:
| _One CIA cable released in the report reveals that detainee
| Majid Khan was administered by enema his "'lunch tray'
| consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins was
| 'pureed and rectally infused'". One CIA officer's email was
| in the report quoted as saying "we used the largest Ewal
| [sic] tube we had".
|
| Rectal feeding is of limited application in actually keeping
| a person alive or administering nutrients, since the colon
| and rectum cannot absorb much besides salt, glucose and a few
| minerals and vitamins. The CIA administered rectal
| rehydration to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "without a
| determination of medical need" and justified "rectal fluid
| resuscitation" of Abu Zubaydah because he "partially
| refus[ed] liquids". Al-Nashiri was given an enema after a
| brief hunger strike.
|
| Risks of rectal feeding and rehydration include damage to the
| rectum and colon, triggering bowels to empty, food rotting
| inside the recipient's digestive tract, and an inflamed or
| prolapsed rectum from carless insertion of the feeding tube.
| The report found that CIA leadership was notified that rectal
| exams may have been conducted with "Excessive force", and
| that one of the detainees, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, suffered from
| an anal fissure, chronic hemorrhoids and symptomatic rectal
| prolapse.
|
| The CIA's chief of interrogations characterized rectal
| rehydration as a method of "total control" over detainees,
| and an unnamed person said the procedure helped to "clear a
| person's head"._
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/09/cia-
| torture-...
| pmoriarty wrote:
| There's more in the Senate Intelligence Committee report on
| CIA torture[1]
|
| _" The CIA had force-fed some prisoners orally and/or
| anally in order to establish "total control over the
| detainee."^[47] The report notes that CIA documents
| indicate "Chief of Interrogations [redacted] also ordered
| the rectal rehydration of KSM without a determination of
| medical need, a procedure that the chief of interrogations
| would later characterize as illustrative of the
| interrogator's 'total control over the detainee.'"^[1]^:82
| of 499"_
|
| _" The Committee found that "[a]t least five CIA detainees
| were subjected to 'rectal rehydration' or rectal feeding
| without documented medical necessity."^[48] These detainees
| are listed as Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Shaykh Mohammad, Majid
| Khan, and Marwan al-Jabbur.^[1]^:114 of 499"_
|
| _" At least one prisoner was "diagnosed with chronic
| hemorrhoids, an anal fissure and symptomatic rectal
| prolapse," symptoms normally associated with a violent
| rape.^[49] The report identified this detainee as Mustafa
| al-Hawsawi.^[1]^:100 of 499"_
|
| _" CIA officials, including general counsel Scott Miller
| and deputy director of operations James Pavitt, were told
| that rectal exams of at least two prisoners had been
| conducted with "excessive force."^[49] A CIA attorney was
| asked to follow up on these incidents, but the report
| states that "CIA records do not indicate any resolution of
| the inquiry."^[1]^:100 of 499"_
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Com
| mittee_...
| reddog wrote:
| Last year, I read Tim Weiner's devastating book, "Legacy of
| Ashes: History of the CIA". It goes into detail about many of the
| events on this timeline.
|
| I thought the book was a bit overly hostile -- surely the CIA
| isn't _that_ incompetent -- and in looking for a rebuttal I found
| this on the CIA web site written by the "CIA History Staff":
| https://www.cia.gov/static/49561e0c75f85cc633453c8d40888e94/... .
| I found this a weak argument against the points made by Weiner
| but its interesting to read what the CIA thinks of its own
| history.
| vondur wrote:
| Does this list mention the really dumb stuff like trying to use
| thallium salts to cause Fidel Castro's beard to fall out?
| beaner wrote:
| ITT: people who believe it's undeniably true that this has
| happened everywhere else, who also believe that it is impossible
| that it's happened here in the US.
| nextstep wrote:
| I would nightly recommend "The Jakarta Method", published last
| year, and a very personal telling of the CIA's support of the
| mass-murder program in Indonesia in the 1960's (and then how this
| tactic was reused in a few other coups in Latin America when
| things were dangerously close to becoming too democratic).
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jakarta_Method
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| It's power seeking to perpetuate itself. It more or less works
| the same in every part of the world and every country and always
| has. Thinking otherwise is a bit naive.
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