Asad Ismi: The CIA

"[W]e have 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population ... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will allow us to maintain this position of disparity."
--George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning, U.S. State Department, 1948.

It was an innocuous phrase in the U.S. National Security Act of 1947. But that phrase began a global reign of terror which continues today. The Act created the Central Intelligence Agency and empowered it to "perform such other functions and duties ... as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." These functions came to include the perpetration of a holocaust that has killed millions of people in the Third World.

In Vietnam, the CIA set up the Ngo Dinh Diem government in the southern half of the country in 1954. With U.S. encouragement, Diem refused to hold elections scheduled for 1956 that were to reunify the country. Diem's subsequent repression of southern communists sparked a war with the communist-ruled north which even half a million U.S. troops could not win. The American war killed three million Vietnamese.

Neighbouring Cambodia saw the CIA-sponsored overthrow of the Sihanouk government in 1970 and its replacement by General Lon Nol who allowed U.S. bombing of the countryside which led to a million deaths. Similarly, CIA attempts to impose a right-wing government in Laos led to at least 200,000 deaths in a "secret" war run by the Agency. Between 1965 and 1973, the U.S. Air Force dropped over two million tons of bombs (more than the tonnage dropped by all sides in World War II) on Laos, making it, per capita, the most bombed country on Earth.

The Vietnam War had barely ended when the CIA jumped into Angola in 1975, backing apartheid South Africa and its client Jonas Savimbi in a war against the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government. The war, which continues today, has taken more than 300,000 lives.

In 1965, General Suharto overthrew President Sukarno of Indonesia in a CIA-backed coup that was followed by the massacre of a million Indonesians by the army. The CIA provided lists of so-called subversives to the Indonesian military. The same army invaded East Timor in 1975, killing 200,000 Timorese out of a population of 600,000 - the greatest genocide (on a per capita basis) since that carried out by Hitler.

Elected governments in Guatemala and Chile were overthrown in CIA-orchestrated military coups in 1954 and 1973 respectively. Two hundred thousand Guatemalans and 30,000 Chileans were killed in the subsequent bloodbaths. In 1980, the CIA unleashed the Contra war against Nicaragua's Sandinista government, resulting in 40,000 deaths over ten years. In nearby E1 Salvador, the Agency maintained "the bloodthirstiest [government] in the hemisphere" (according to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter) which killed 63,000 Salvadorans between 1979 and 1992. The CIA flew air raids, took part in combat and trained the military units that formed the death squads.

In addition, CIA operations in Iran, Greece, Cuba, Haiti, Ecuador, the Congo, Brazil, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Iraq, Zaire and Panama have led to thousands of deaths.

In Iran, the Agency overthrew the elected Mossadegh government in 1953 and replaced it with the right-wing dictatorship of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (the Shah) who executed thousands of people until his overthrow in 1979. The CIA trained SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, in torture methods. Amnesty International noted in 1976 that "Iran had ... a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran."

The CIA's extremes shocked even U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 when he discovered the Agency's attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro (the CIA admits to eight attempts - according to Castro, there were 15). "We were running a damn Murder Incorporated in the Caribbean," Johnson remarked.

The CIA's international genocide has been driven by practical aims. The objective of U.S. foreign policy since 1945 has been to construct a world order responsive to Washington's economic, political and strategic interests. The present economic state of the world is to a significant extent, a CIA creation; the Agency has functioned as the Gestapo of globalization. The path to trade treaties and investment agreements has been paved by the murderous results of covert operations.

It was the CIA-installed General Pinochet who enforced neo-liberalism in Chile (as did Suharto in Indonesia) which was then touted by the West as a model for the rest of the Third World. This model includes low wages, dependence on raw material exports and the opening up of every Third World economic sector to multinational corporations. For this to happen, the threat of nationalism in developing countries had to be eliminated, which meant the CIA-sanctioned slaughter of millions of people. Only then could a world integrated under the control of multinational capital be created.

In Chile, the Agency intervened on behalf of International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), Anaconda and Kennecott (both U.S. copper companies). In Guatemala, the CIA advanced the interests of the United Fruit Company, while the Iran operation was undertaken to give U.S. multinationals, including Standard Oil (owned by the Rockefellers), a share of that country's oil wealth.

Today, the CIA is portrayed by some commentators as bereft of purpose following the collapse of its supposed main enemy, the Soviet Union. But the latter's containment was only one part of the U.S.'s attempt to maintain "preponderant power" globally as stated in NSC 68 (the main Cold War planning document written in 1950). For this reason, the CIA's budget has not been substantially reduced six years after the end of the Cold War; neither has overall U.S. military spending, which remains at $275 billion annually (more than that spent by the five next most heavily armed countries combined). Approximately 223,000 American troops are presently stationed in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, backed by twelve aircraft carriers. Rather than containment, the main imperative of U.S. foreign policy has been global control, especially over the resource-rich Third World. In pursuit of this objective, the CIA continues to carry out hundreds of covert operations world-wide.

The Agency has been wracked by scandals in recent years involving murders committed by its Guatemalan agents, the Aldrich Ames spy case (a high-level CIA official convicted of selling secrets to the Soviets), and allegations that the CIA flooded black neighbourhoods in the U.S. with crack cocaine. Related to the Ames case has been the Agency's most stunning failure: its inability to predict the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. (ostensibly, the CIA's main focus).

None of this has, however, brought on a serious challenge to the CIA's funding level or function. Proposals for changes in the intelligence community, emanating from the White House and Congress, have focused on improving its performance within the $26.6 billion intelligence budget (of which the CIA gets more than $3 billion). This reflects a broad consensus within the U.S. elite on a concept of national security which continues to define the state as "servant and protector of private capital." As long as the CIA acts as the secret police arm of U.S. multinationals in the Third World, eliminating those who oppose the impoverishment of humanity, it will remain indispensable and untouchable.

Published in:

Briarpatch, April 1998

The Atkinsonian, January 1998


	THE CIA: Fifty years of Murder Incorporated

"[W]e have 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population ... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will allow us to maintain this position of disparity." --George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning, U.S. State Department, 1948. It was an innocuous phrase in the U.S. National Security Act of 1947. But that phrase began a global reign of terror which continues today. The Act created the Central Intelligence Agency and empowered it to "perform such other functions and duties ... as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." These functions came to include the perpetration of a holocaust that has killed millions of people in the Third World. In Vietnam, the CIA set up the Ngo Dinh Diem government in the southern half of the country in 1954. With U.S. encouragement, Diem refused to hold elections scheduled for 1956 that were to reunify the country. Diem's subsequent repression of southern communists sparked a war with the communist-ruled north which even half a million U.S. troops could not win. The American war killed three million Vietnamese. Neighbouring Cambodia saw the CIA-sponsored overthrow of the Sihanouk government in 1970 and its replacement by General Lon Nol who allowed U.S. bombing of the countryside which led to a million deaths. Similarly, CIA attempts to impose a right-wing government in Laos led to at least 200,000 deaths in a "secret" war run by the Agency. Between 1965 and 1973, the U.S. Air Force dropped over two million tons of bombs (more than the tonnage dropped by all sides in World War II) on Laos, making it, per capita, the most bombed country on Earth. The Vietnam War had barely ended when the CIA jumped into Angola in 1975, backing apartheid South Africa and its client Jonas Savimbi in a war against the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government. The war, which continues today, has taken more than 300,000 lives. In 1965, General Suharto overthrew President Sukarno of Indonesia in a CIA-backed coup that was followed by the massacre of a million Indonesians by the army. The CIA provided lists of so-called subversives to the Indonesian military. The same army invaded East Timor in 1975, killing 200,000 Timorese out of a population of 600,000 - the greatest genocide (on a per capita basis) since that carried out by Hitler. Elected governments in Guatemala and Chile were overthrown in CIA-orchestrated military coups in 1954 and 1973 respectively. Two hundred thousand Guatemalans and 30,000 Chileans were killed in the subsequent bloodbaths. In 1980, the CIA unleashed the Contra war against Nicaragua's Sandinista government, resulting in 40,000 deaths over ten years. In nearby E1 Salvador, the Agency maintained "the bloodthirstiest [government] in the hemisphere" (according to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter) which killed 63,000 Salvadorans between 1979 and 1992. The CIA flew air raids, took part in combat and trained the military units that formed the death squads. In addition, CIA operations in Iran, Greece, Cuba, Haiti, Ecuador, the Congo, Brazil, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Iraq, Zaire and Panama have led to thousands of deaths. In Iran, the Agency overthrew the elected Mossadegh government in 1953 and replaced it with the right-wing dictatorship of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (the Shah) who executed thousands of people until his overthrow in 1979. The CIA trained SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, in torture methods. Amnesty International noted in 1976 that "Iran had ... a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran." The CIA's extremes shocked even U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 when he discovered the Agency's attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro (the CIA admits to eight attempts - according to Castro, there were 15). "We were running a damn Murder Incorporated in the Caribbean," Johnson remarked. The CIA's international genocide has been driven by practical aims. The objective of U.S. foreign policy since 1945 has been to construct a world order responsive to Washington's economic, political and strategic interests. The present economic state of the world is to a significant extent, a CIA creation; the Agency has functioned as the Gestapo of globalization. The path to trade treaties and investment agreements has been paved by the murderous results of covert operations. It was the CIA-installed General Pinochet who enforced neo-liberalism in Chile (as did Suharto in Indonesia) which was then touted by the West as a model for the rest of the Third World. This model includes low wages, dependence on raw material exports and the opening up of every Third World economic sector to multinational corporations. For this to happen, the threat of nationalism in developing countries had to be eliminated, which meant the CIA-sanctioned slaughter of millions of people. Only then could a world integrated under the control of multinational capital be created. In Chile, the Agency intervened on behalf of International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), Anaconda and Kennecott (both U.S. copper companies). In Guatemala, the CIA advanced the interests of the United Fruit Company, while the Iran operation was undertaken to give U.S. multinationals, including Standard Oil (owned by the Rockefellers), a share of that country's oil wealth. Today, the CIA is portrayed by some commentators as bereft of purpose following the collapse of its supposed main enemy, the Soviet Union. But the latter's containment was only one part of the U.S.'s attempt to maintain "preponderant power" globally as stated in NSC 68 (the main Cold War planning document written in 1950). For this reason, the CIA's budget has not been substantially reduced six years after the end of the Cold War; neither has overall U.S. military spending, which remains at $275 billion annually (more than that spent by the five next most heavily armed countries combined). Approximately 223,000 American troops are presently stationed in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, backed by twelve aircraft carriers. Rather than containment, the main imperative of U.S. foreign policy has been global control, especially over the resource-rich Third World. In pursuit of this objective, the CIA continues to carry out hundreds of covert operations world-wide. The Agency has been wracked by scandals in recent years involving murders committed by its Guatemalan agents, the Aldrich Ames spy case (a high-level CIA official convicted of selling secrets to the Soviets), and allegations that the CIA flooded black neighbourhoods in the U.S. with crack cocaine. Related to the Ames case has been the Agency's most stunning failure: its inability to predict the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. (ostensibly, the CIA's main focus). None of this has, however, brought on a serious challenge to the CIA's funding level or function. Proposals for changes in the intelligence community, emanating from the White House and Congress, have focused on improving its performance within the $26.6 billion intelligence budget (of which the CIA gets more than $3 billion). This reflects a broad consensus within the U.S. elite on a concept of national security which continues to define the state as "servant and protector of private capital." As long as the CIA acts as the secret police arm of U.S. multinationals in the Third World, eliminating those who oppose the impoverishment of humanity, it will remain indispensable and untouchable. Published in: Briarpatch, April 1998 The Atkinsonian, January 1998

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