CIA : The Mother of All Terrorist Organisations

[Chinmayanand]

The CIA as a Terrorist Organization

CIA was created just after the end of World War II (from an OSS riddled with Nazis) by an act of Congress (and Congress can eliminate it in the same way). Its official purpose is to function primarily as an intelligence-gathering organization (at least, that's what we are supposed to believe) but in fact it has always been something different from that.

The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the President's foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while reporting "intelligence" justifying those activities. It shapes its intelligence, even in such critical areas as Soviet nuclear weapons capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target of its lies. — Ralph McGehee, Deadly Deceits

The CIA has been a terrorist organization from its beginnings, when it included a large number of former Nazis — former members of the Gestapo and the Nazi military intelligence (such as Reinhard Gehlen). Unlike smaller terrorist organizations such as ETA the CIA does not normally engage in terrorism by sending its employees to plant bombs, etc. Rather, it tends to act through intermediaries and agents, sometimes making use of U.S. military personnel.

That the CIA is a terrorist organization is clear from its record of terrorist activities (sometimes called "counterinsurgency" or "low intensity conflict"). Here are just a few examples:

During the Vietnam war the CIA conducted Operation Phoenix, an assassination program. The goal was not only to eliminate those Vietnamese who might oppose the U.S. (which in practice meant most of the population of Vietnam) but also to terrorize the entire population of South Vietnam and to suppress opposition to the occupying U.S. forces. Over 20,000 Vietnamese were murdered, often at random.

The CIA also recruited a mercenary army in Vietnam (financed by profits from the CIA's heroin smuggling), particularly from among the Hmong villagers, which was used to terrorize the civilian population and to prevent them from assisting the Viet Cong.
The CIA organized and financed (with the profits from its cocaine smuggling) the activities of the Contras in Nicaragua, who murdered tens of thousands of civilians, and tried to disrupt the economy, in an attempt to destabilize the legitimate Sandinista government. (For this the U.S. was condemned in the World Court for engaging in international terrorism, and it rejected a U.N. security council resolution calling upon it to observe international law.)

The CIA planned and organized the military coup d'etat in 1973 in Chile which overthrew the legitimately elected government of Salvador Allende (because he would not implement economic policies designed in Washington to favor American corporations doing business in Chile) and brought to power the regime of General Augusto Pinochet; this regime abducted, tortured and killed thousands of Chilean citizens in an attempt to suppress opposition.

The CIA organized and supported the Turkish government's persecution of its Kurdish minority during the 1990s, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and millions of refuges; the aim being the suppression of Kurdish culture and the elimination of Kurdish demands for a separate state.

The September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are widely regarded as terrorist acts. There is evidence of CIA involvement. See Michael Ruppert's Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIA's Highest Ranks.

Further examples could very easily be given (and may be found documented in the many books, magazine articles and web pages about the CIA). Much relevant information will be found in Ralph McGehee's CIA Support of Death Squads, which gives details about the CIA's terrorist activities in over forty countries.


It's not that the CIA is a rogue organization, out of control. The CIA implements the policies of the President of the United States. The CIA carries out unofficial U.S. government policy. That the CIA is a terrorist organization implies that the United States is a terrorist state. Considering the millions of deaths that the U.S. has caused and the enormous suffering that its international policies produce, its hypocrisy in condemning other countries as "terrorist states" would be ludicrous if it were not so tragic.

[Chinmayanand]

Is the U.S. a Terrorist State?

This is an extract from an interview with Noam Chomsky on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program Hot Type with Evan Solomon, April 16, 2002, as edited by Sunil Sharma and published July 28, 2002, in Dissident Voice as "Noam Chomsky on the Middle East and the US War on Terrorism".

Chomsky: On October 12th [2001], a couple of days after the bombing [of Afghanistan] started, [George W.] Bush publicly announced to the Afghan people that we will continue to bomb you, unless your leadership turns over to us the people whom we suspect of carrying out crimes, although we refuse to give you any evidence. That's probably because they don't have any. And we dismiss without comment the offers of your leadership for negotiations about extradition.

Notice that is a textbook illustration of international terrorism, by the US official definition. That is the use of the threat of force or violence, in this case extreme violence, to obtain political ends through intimidation, fear and so on. That's the official definition, a textbook illustration of it.

Three weeks later, by the end of October, the war aims had changed. They were first announced as far as I can find out, by the British Defense Minister, Sir Admiral Boyce. Admiral Boyce informed the Afghan population that we will continue to bomb you until you change your leadership. Well, that's an even more dramatic illustration of international terrorism, if not aggression. And that was the goal that was followed. This had nothing to do with finding the criminals and bringing them to justice.

ES: You say one of the great hypocrisies here is that the United States, as you say, is a leading terrorist state.

Chomsky: Well, these two examples illustrate it. And these are minor ones. You know there are much more serious ones than this.

ES: The question that arises is if the United States is a leading terrorist state, if as you say, Britain is another example of a terrorist state, how do you distinguish between what you describe as terrorism and what they are saying — Osama Bin Laden who's a terrorist? Make the distinction.

Chomsky: It's very simple. If they do it, it's terrorism. If we do it, it's counter-terrorism. That's a historical universal. Go back to Nazi propaganda. The most extreme mass murderers ever. If you look at Nazi propaganda, that's exactly what they said. They said they're defending the populations and the legitimate governments of Europe like Vichy from the terrorist partisans who are directed from London. That's the basic propaganda line. And like all propaganda, no matter how vulgar, it has an element of truth. The partisans did carry out terror, they were directed from London. The Vichy government is about as legitimate as half the governments the US has installed around the world and supports, so yes, there was a minor element of truth to it, and that's the way it works. If somebody else carries it out, it's terror. If we carry it out, it's counter-terror. I think perhaps one of the most dramatic examples right at this moment is a place where I just was a couple of weeks ago, southeastern Turkey. Southeastern Turkey is the site of some of the worst terrorist atrocities of the 1990s.

ES: This is the attacks on the Kurds.

Chomsky: The attacks on the Kurds created a couple of million refugees. It left much of the countryside devastated. Tens of thousands of people killed. It was every imaginable barbaric form of torture you can dream of. It's all well documented in Human Rights Watch reports and so on. How did they do it? Well, they did it with a huge flow of U.S. arms, which peaked in 1997. In that one year, the arms transfers to Turkey from the United States were higher than the entire Cold War period. You know up until the counter-insurgency started. But look at the way it's treated. This massive international terrorism run and supported by the United States is considered a great triumph of counter-terrorism.

If you read the State Department reports on terror they praise Turkey for its success in showing how to counter terror. You read a front page article in the New York Times and it praises Turkey for showing how to deal with terror. Turkey was selected as the country to provide the forces for what they call the international force for Afghanistan. Actually it's for Kabul alone. It's Turkey that's being paid by the United States extensively to carry out the repression of terror, thanks to their achievements in countering terror — namely by carrying out some of the worst terror of the 1990s. Massive ethnic cleansing and atrocities with U.S. support. Now you know this is a real achievement of the intellectual culture to be able to do this. But it illustrates very well the answer to your question. Terror and counter-terror. If some enemy state did this, we'd be not just outraged, we'd be bombing them.

ES: Is Bush justified in calling Bin Laden a terrorist when, as you say, he's running a terrorist state himself?

Chomsky: Yeah, I agree that he should call him a terrorist.

ES: But you say even Jonathan Swift would be baffled at the irony of that?

Chomsky: To say that Bin Laden is a terrorist, a murderous terrorist is certainly correct, but what about Clinton [and Bush]? I just described one of his [Clinton's] minor escapades in Turkey [and Bush's terrorism in Afghanistan]. This example is particularly striking, not only because of the massive atrocities, but because of the way it's treated, and because remember this was at the same time when there was an orgy of self-congratulation among Western intellectuals because of their magnificence in opposing terrorism by bombing Serbia because of what Milosevic had done in Kosovo.

[Chinmayanand]

Link

The Bush administration has appointed the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations John D. Negroponte to take on the the position of US ambassador to Iraq. Negroponte is slated to take on the position, when the coalition authority, headed by L. Paul Bremer, formally relinquishes control on June 30th.

Viewed as a "seasoned career" diplomat, the nomination of Negroponte is presented by the US media as "a bridge to the international community".

He is expected to "smooth the way for a U.N. resolution that would boost the new Iraqi government's legitimacy. The U.N. already is helping to lay the groundwork for the election expected in January, 2005, and is likely to oversee it." (Business Week, April 26, 2004)

His mandate, however, is not assume the usual diplomatic functions of an Ambassador in a foreign country.

What is envisaged is not an "embassy" but a full-fledged occupation government, whose primary mandate will be to impose US military rule and curb the resistance movement.

In the absence of a real Iraqi government, to whom will he present his credentials as ambassador?

Negroponte's "embassy" in Baghdad will, according to press reports, constitute the largest US "embassy staff" in the world with some 3000 employees, including up to 1,000 Americans.

In Washington, there is discussion as to whether the "embassy" should be under the jurisdiction of the State Department (which normally oversees US diplomatic missions in foreign countries) or the Pentagon. In practice, the embassy staff, including CIA and military attachés will be in permanent liaison with the Pentagon, the US military high command in Iraq and the CIA

Who is John Negroponte

What is the background of John D. Negroponte and why is he being sent to Iraq?

John Negroponte served as US ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. As Ambassador in Tegucigalpa, he played a key role in supporting and supervising the Nicaraguan Contra mercenaries who were based in Honduras. The cross border Contra attacks into Nicaragua claimed some 50 000 civilian lives.

During the same period, Negroponte was instrumental in setting up the Honduran military death squads, "operating with Washington support's, [they] assassinated hundreds of opponents of the US-backed regime." (See Bush Nominee linked to Latin American Terrorism, by Bill Vann, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/VAN111A.html )

"Under the rule of General Gustavo Alvarez Martnez, Honduras's military government was both a close ally of the Reagan administration and was "disappearing" dozens of political opponents in classic death squad fashion.

In a 1982 letter to The Economist, Negroponte wrote that it was "simply untrue to state that death squads have made their appearance in Honduras." The Country Report on Human Rights Practices that his embassy sent to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took the same line, insisting that there were "no political prisoners in Honduras" and that the "Honduran government neither condones nor knowingly permits killings of a political or nonpolitical nature."

Yet according to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun in 1995, in 1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and kidnappings by the Honduran military. The Sun described the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 316, that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves."

On August 27, 1997, CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz released a 211-page classified report entitled "Selected Issues Relating to CIA Activities in Honduras in the 1980's." This report was partly declassified on Oct. 22, 1998, in response to demands by the Honduran human rights ombudsman. Opponents of Negroponte are demanding that all Senators read the full report before voting on his nomination.[to the position of US Permanent Representative to the UN}" (See Face-off: Bush's Foreign Policy Warriors by Peter Roff and James Chapin, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ROF111A.html

In a cruel irony, the Bush administration has appointed a bona fide "terrorist" to wage its "war on terrorism" in Iraq.

In the words of Human Rights Watch's executive director Kenneth Roth: "There are serious unanswered questions about his complicity with the atrocities in Honduras and the war in Nicaragua."

But "atrocities" are part of the Bush Administration's agenda in Iraq. Negroponte is "the man for the job". He has as the required skills from his stint in organizing death squadrons in Honduras.

The hidden agenda is to replicate in Iraq, the Central American death squadrons of which Negroponte was one of the main architects.

Negroponte is not being nominated for his diplomatic skills. His mandate does not consist in "peace-keeping" or "peace-making" in liaison with the UN, nor is it concerned with post-war "reconstruction".

His background is CIA. His nomination responds in a very direct way to the current situation, with a mounting resistance movement, which is challenging US military presence throughout Iraq. In other words, his mandate is to mount an effective counterinsurgency, using both overt a covert operations.

According to The Los Angeles Times, "he could begin to reverse occupation head L. Paul Bremer III's foolish decision to dissolve the entire Iraqi army. He could follow the recommendation of U.S. generals to allow some former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to occupy government jobs. As in postwar Germany and Japan, such ex-party members are usually the ones who have experience in running a government." (Los Angeles Times, 22 April 2004).

While the Administration's policy with regard to the Baathist party remains ambiguous, what is being envisaged is the recruitment of loyal collaborators. Under this scenario, part of the repressive apparatus (of course under US supervision to ensure "good governance") could be handed back to officials of the former Baathist police and intelligence apparatus.

Acting on behalf of the CIA and the Pentagon, Negroponte's mandate is to quell the insurgency by creating a reign of terror. It should come as no surprise that "on the day he was appointed to Iraq, Honduras decided to bring its troops in Iraq home." (Financial Times, April 21, 2004)

What form will the Iraqi death squadrons take under Negroponte's mandate?

In all likelihood, a new wave of covert civilian killings and targeted assassinations will be unleashed, to weed out civilian support for the insurgency. In this task, the "embassy" will attempt to enlist the support of officials of the former Baathist regime.

[Chinmayanand]

Not to forget the role of CIA in Mumbai attacks. In general , the purpose of this thread is to discuss the role of CIA in formenting and promoting terror in India and across the globe.

I am not sure how long the IB4TL crowd will wait before attack ...

[Chinmayanand]

Is the CIA Behind the Iraqi "Insurgents"--and Global Terrorism?

The requirement of an ever-escalating level of social violence to meet the political and economic needs of the insatiable "anti-terrorist complex" is the essence of the new US militarism.

What is now openly billed as "permanent war" ultimately serves the geo-political ends of social control in the interests of US corporate domination, much as the anti-communist crusade of the now-exhausted Cold War did.

Back in 2002, following the trauma of 9-11, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld predicted there would be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. How could he be so sure of that? Perhaps because these attacks would be instigated on the order of the Honorable Mr. Rumsfeld. According to Los Angeles Times military analyst William Arkin, writing Oct. 27, 2002, Rumsfeld set out to create a secret army, "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" network that would "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception," to stir the pot of spiraling global violence.

According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization--the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)"--would actually carry out secret missions designed to provoke terrorist groups into committing violent acts. The P2OG, a 100-member, so-called "counter-terrorist" organization with a $100-million-a-year budget, would ostensibly target "terrorist leaders," but according to P2OG documents procured by Arkin, would in fact carry out missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among "terrorist groups"--which, according to the Defense Secretary's logic, would subsequently expose them to "counter-attack" by the good guys. In other words, the plan is to execute secret military operations (assassinations, sabotage, "deception") which would intentionally result in terrorist attacks on innocent people, including Americans--essentially, to "combat terrorism" by causing it!

This notion is currently being applied to the problem of the Iraqi "insurgency," it seems. According to a May 1, 2005 report by Peter Maass in the New York Times Magazine, two of the top US advisers to Iraqi paramilitary commandos fighting the insurgents are veterans of US counterinsurgency operations in Latin America. Loaning credence to recent media speculation about the "Salvadorization" of Iraq, the report notes that one adviser currently in Iraq is James Steele, who led a team of 55 US Army Special Forces advisers in El Salvador in the 1980s. Maass writes that these advisors "trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses."

The current senior US adviser at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which Maass writes "has operational control over the commandos," is former top US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official Steve Casteel, who worked "alongside local forces" in the US-sponsored "Drug War" in Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, "where he was involved in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin cocaine cartel."

The US "drug war" in Latin America also serves as a cover for ongoing counterinsurgency, employing terrorist methods to achieve two aims: one, actually combating genuine insurgency; two, the ratcheting up of a "strategy of tension," heightened social violence designed to induce fear among the citizenry and the subsequent call for greater "security."

This was the essence, for example, of Operation Gladio, a decades-long covert campaign of provocateur-style terrorism and deceit. The ostensible purpose of Gladio, officially launched as a covert NATO program in 1952, was to establish a clandestine network of "stay-behind" teams which would organize armed resistance and sabotage in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. But the network actually took a far more proactive role. Directed by US/NATO intelligence services of the West against their own populations, Operation Gladio led to possibly hundreds of innocent people being killed or maimed in "terrorist" attacks which were then blamed on "leftist subversives" or other political opponents. The most notorious such attack was the 1980 bombing of the train station at Bologna, which left 85 dead. Initially blamed on left-wing radicals, the blast was revealed upon investigation to be the work of an ultra-right network linked to the Italy's Gladio team; four Italian neo-fascists were eventually convicted of the crime.

The purpose was again twofold: to demonize designated enemies (the "communists") and to frighten the public into supporting ever-increasing powers for the national security state. It appears the Pentagon has been implementing Gladio-style operations for quite some time--possibly including 9-11. A stretch? Maybe not.

Witness the US Joint Chiefs discussion of "Operation Northwoods" back in 1962, a plan to blow up U.S. "assets"--including U.S. citizens--in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. Later, US Army Field Manual 30-31B, entitled "Stability Operations Intelligence - Special Fields," dated March 18, 1970 and signed by Gen. William C Westmoreland, promoted terrorist attacks (and the planting of false evidence) in public places which were then to be blamed on "communists" and "socialists." It called for the execution of terrorist attacks throughout Western Europe, carried out through a network of covert US/NATO armies, in order to convince European governments of "the communist threat."

What is striking is that during this period the primary source for US government info on the Russian "threat" was coming from the Gehlen Organization, Hitlers eastern front intelligence apparatus, which in the aftermath of World War II had cut a deal with the CIA's Allen Dulles and worked out of Fort Hunt, just outside Washington DC, before being relocated back to Munich. Headed up by super-spy Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, the Org's "special operations" expertise was heeded, financed and well-protected by U.S. tax dollars well into the 1970's. Could the Gehlen Org have had an influence in the production of FM 30-31B?

According to FM 30-31B,

"there may be times when Host Country Governments show passivity or indecision in the face of communist subversion and according to the interpretation of the US secret services do not react with sufficient effectiveness. Most often such situations come about when the revolutionaries temporarily renounce the use of force and thus hope to gain an advantage, as the leaders of the host country wrongly consider the situation to be secure. US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger."

The U.S. Army now claims the document was a Russian forgery. Journalist Allan Francovich in his BBC documentation on Gladio and US/NATO "special operations" terrorism, asked Ray Cline, CIA deputy director from 1962 to 1966, if he believed FM 30-31B was for real and he replied: "Well, I suspect it is an authentic document. I don't doubt it. I never saw it but it's the kind of special forces military operations that are described," to be implemented at the discretion of the president and Defense Department on the "appropriate occasion."

It could be that in Iraq--and elsewhere around the world--the "appropriate occasion" has arrived. Bush's war on terrorism could be the ultimate manifestation of the provocateur state; carrying out of clandestine "executive actions" and "special operations" directed against populations, including our own, who are truly ignorant of the real "enemy" in the face of the ever-present manufactured one, traumatized by strategic terror designed to engender fear and acquiescence to further "security measures"--thereby enriching the military, police agencies, and munitions and nuclear business enterprises.

[Chinmayanand]

Mumbai terror suspect David Headley was ‘rogue US secret agent’

A key terror suspect who allegedly helped to plan last year’s attacks in Mumbai and plotted to strike Europe was an American secret agent who went rogue, Indian officials believe.

David Headley, 49, who was born in Washington to a Pakistan diplomat father and an American mother, was arrested in Chicago in October. He is accused of reconnoitring targets in India and Europe for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Pakistan-based terror group behind the Mumbai attacks and of having links to al-Qaeda. He has denied the charges.

He came to the attention of the US security services in 1997 when he was arrested in New York for heroin smuggling. He earned a reduced sentence by working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) infiltrating Pakistan-linked narcotics gangs.

Indian investigators, who have been denied access to Mr Headley, suspect that he remained on the payroll of the US security services — possibly working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — but switched his allegiance to LeT.

“India is looking into whether Headley worked as a double agent,” an Indian Home Ministry official said yesterday.

Mr Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani, was in Mumbai until two weeks before the attacks on the city, which claimed 166 lives last November. It is alleged that he spent months checking targets in India’s commercial capital, using his Western looks and anglicised name to move in elite social circles, hobnob with Bollywood actors and even to pass himself off as Jewish.

Despite being firmly on the radar of the US intelligence agencies, he was allowed to return to India as recently as March. Indian officials are furious that their American counterparts did not share details of that visit at the time. The Indian media has raised the possibility that Mr Headley was being protected by his American handlers — a theory that experts say is credible.

“The feeling in India is that the US has not been transparent,” said B. Raman, a former counter-terrorism chief in the Indian foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing.

“That Headley was an agent for the DEA is known. Whether he was being used by the CIA as well is a matter of speculation, but it is almost certain that the CIA was aware of him and his movements across the subcontinent.”

According to Mr Raman, it is probable that Mr Headley, who was arrested when the US authorities learned that he was about to fly to Pakistan, was listed on the main database of the US National Counterterrorism Centre, a facility used by the CIA and several other American agencies to track terror suspects.

Indian officials suspect that US agencies declined to share intelligence to avoid compromising other secret operations and to to be able to deny any link with Mr Headley.

Analysts believe that the US may also have been anxious to avoid sharing information that could further raise tensions between India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed neighbours who have fought three wars.

According to documents put before a court in Chicago, Mr Headley had links with the Pakistan Army and, through it, with al-Qaeda.

As well as helping to co-ordinate the Mumbai atrocity, Mr Headley is accused of planning attacks on Mumbai’s Bollywood film industry, the Shiv Sena, a Hindu extremist group also based in Mumbai, a major Hindu temple, and a Danish newspaper that had published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

The US authorities allege that he was close to Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a former Pakistani schoolmate and businessman who is also being charged with planning to attack the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten. Mr Rana is accused of having known about the attack on Mumbai in advance.

The CIA denied that Headley had worked for the organisation.

“Any suggestion that Headley was working for the CIA is complete and utter nonsense. It’s flat-out false,” Paul Gimigliano, from the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs, said.

The Indian Home Secretary, Gopal Krishna Pillai, has said that his Government would seek the extradition of Mr Headley — a request that has so far been stonewalled by US officials.

[Chinmayanand]

[googlevideo]8028007074233952313[/googlevideo]

The War on Democracy - Covert CIA Terrorism and Subversion in Latin America

Since the mid 19th Century Latin America has been the 'backyard' of the US, a collection of mostly vassal states whose compliant and often brutal regimes have reinforced the 'invisibility' of their majority peoples. The film reveals similar CIA policies to be continuing in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon. The rise of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez despite ongoing Washington backed efforts to unseat him in spite of his overwhelming mass popularity, is democratic in a way that we have forgotten or abandoned in the west. True Democracy being a solid 80% voter turnout in support of Chavez in over 6 elections. The War on Democracy demonstrates the brutal reality of the America’s notion of 'spreading democracy'; that, in fact, America is actually conducting a war on democracy, and that true popular democracy is now more likely to be found among the poorest of Latin America whose grassroots movements are often ignored in the west.

[Ambar]

Either your id has been hacked or you are cracked! IB4TL!