Human Self Determination and Intelligence Operations

Last night I was listening to Glenn Greenwald

His lecture on the CIA that he provided in 2020

And it got me thinking about this question of history.

And my father being a historian who pushes back on the idea that covert operations are extremely important in the understanding of post World War Two history in particular.

So this problem really rankles. because I have always enjoyed discussing history with my father the University of Chicago and Harvard educated historian and here we come to an impasse.

so I've been making a world map of countries whose trajectory was affected by CIA covert operatives.

And when one looks at a map of the world it will gradually fill in with whatever color you choose to describe countries either being fierce enemies of the United states in other words China and Russia or countries who had their internal affairs remade through covert operations.

And then one looks at The United states itself what color shall we make it on a world map where one color is used to describe the countries whose entire political life was drastically changed due to CIA covert operations. The United states is a principle battlefield of covert operations.

the mother of all covert operations, was the assassination of JFK, and as the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime, we must assume assassination of RFK had some linkage to the assassination of JFK.

Therefore The United States itself is the principal victim of CIA covert operations.

As Victor Bevins and Glenn Greenwald described in their conversation they asked themselves has the CIA changed?

Their answer is that they don't have evidence of such a change, and this is because the only reckoning we have had with covert operations really was with the Church Commission set up after Watergate and for a couple of years thereafter, the CIA was in a bad position, and a lot of things came to light in a way that has not occurred again.

Which also makes one wonder about covert operations by the CIA being used in the 1980 presidential election. Because they were on their heels. unpleasantly, and at least not consciously, from the depths of my mind I now recall the birth of the phrase "October Surprise".

As I recall Donald Rumsfeld negotiated in Paris with representatives of the new Iranian government, to not release the 52 American hostages Until after the November 5, 1980 election.

So my father says the facts are soaked in theory. He does not like random facts being brought out and presented as evidence unless they are grounded in some theoretical framework.

It is also interesting that the man that Reagan chose as his vice president, one George HW Bush, is a scion of a prominent old intelligence family, amongst its ranks one Prescott Bush who was the senator in charge of supervising the Central Intelligence Agency in 1950s.

Under Reagan the gloves would come off, and some of the most brutal campaigns post 1980 (one might say we had passed the worst phases of the Cold War in the US, who would no longer support general campaigns of terror murder murdering 1% or more of their populations to lobotomize and terrorize the left, nor any movement that smacked of a class change in the established order.

I first really learned about these things in detail in reading Noam Chomsky's book the Washington Connection and Third World Sub-fascism when I was about 13 or 14 years old. In fact I borrowed heavily from this in my first Community College English class, and I still had a lot of growing up to do. I suppose I was about 15 years old in my first Community College class but I must confess if plagiarism is the highest form of flattery I flattered Noam Chomsky a great deal!

Yet even with the knowledge that I've carried all my life that came in little spurts with long periods of political dormancy political critique dormancy I am still outraged as I review all of these CIA influence and covert operations worldwide.

One wants to say how dare you play God with the development of the human species through imposing reactionary covert operations? The professor bill in my head, would ask "be careful of single factor reductionism! ":

And then there is the question of the CIA slowing its operations or becoming more civilized or allowing more transparency?

as the American media today becomes unhinged by the idea of fake news, which immediately creates a fork, half of the fake news is fake news, the other half of the fake news is the actual truth or things that will lead to a questioning of the official narrative.

And who is the “CIA”?

Because the CIA people themselves will complain or justify that they are after all are only carrying out what the president is asking, and sometimes he can't actually come out and say what he wants because he doesn't want to commit crimes himself, though he doesn't care if others commit crimes on his behalf as long as there is no trail to that politician.

What if the CIA removed JFK as president, which is the only possible conclusion one can come to when one looks at the stonewalling now for not 50 years but 60 soon, they are selecting their own bosses!

As we see now that the art and science of managed democracy by corporate oligarchy is becoming more and more complete..

After listening to Glenn Greenwald yesterday, and Vincent and on working on my map, I am reviewing a documentary called "Inside the CIA- on company business " (link below).

What makes this documentary powerful is it is entirely primary source accounts.

Now we have seen this sort of painful reshaping of continent wide societies in the past this is not the first time that the human race has been denied its self determination however what makes this different is that we have formally created these massive bureaucracies that are specifically allowed to operate in secret with secret budgets and secret missions that are never disclosed to the public.

Second and with the advent of technology and industrialization, these forces become several orders of magnitude more efficient, than the early intelligence agencies that even operated in the Bronze Age, the smelting of Iron was a closely guarded secret around the time that all the civilizations of the world collapse due to a perfect storm. There is a book called 1177 BC by Eric Klein that details some of these things.

There is an excellent CBS documentary from the 1960s about the CIA the details its myriad of shell organizations institutes think tanks etc. On the one hand I wish to am impelled to protest that we should not be setting the course of development of the world through intelligence agencies covert operations and propaganda. That the majority of the development of the world must be policy's made in public and approved by an educated citizenry.

Which brings me to my main axe to grind, the whipping of the base. Our country's constitution was principally an instrument to protect private property. In other respects the constitution is a reasonable document but at its heart it preserves a status quo based on protecting private property. In The Federalist Papers they did discuss the evil of inherited wealth and the evil of standing armies. But the principal concern seems to have been factionalism. And there was concern about the formation of political parties. So we begin with the constitution that makes change very difficult and then we have the whipping of the base, where people become red or blue and the country appears to be relatively evenly divided with the growing blue because blue owns minorities and red owns whites (and minorities that can't stand blue). And now we see the results. If you allocate Republican Senators by population (and Democratic Senators), you will find that although the Senate is evenly divided only 140 million people elected the Republicans and 180 million people elected the Democrats.

So at this time we have to have a 40 million vote advantage in order to have equal representation in the Senate or we have to have all the blue people moved to red states or we have to split up the blue states.

We see a president unable to pass any legislation that is not right wing and an inability to call elections which is normally what one could do when one comes to impasse. OR have a maechanism for a national plebiscite. But the levers of power are far removed from the people. but it's OK in the United states for the federal government to do nothing that slows corporate power, the corporate structures is quite happy with a hung Congress and a hung Presidency if they can't get the Congress and Presidency they actually want.

So who are the people that run the CIA today the covert operation side of our government and who do they listen to who do they obey and who do they run?

And this brings us to Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was considered a president who was suspicious of the CIA and only gave them a mandate to operate aggressively in the last two years of his presidency.

Now we stub a thread here on the covert operations playbooks. What is unbelievable to me was the repeat of the operation against Goulart in Brazil against Lula 50 years later. In the case of Goulart they penetrated the trade unions and created various dummy local movements one of which was a woman's movement and to appeal to family and tradition. These playbooks were done twice with the addition of lawfare but this lawfare was also used against Goulart because the first process if you have a radical President is to get the Congress to oppose him and we have the testimony of Phillip Agee, a CIA officer, who attested to the fact that most of the key figures they needed in Ecuador's Congress and presidency were receiving regular salaries from the CIA, back in 1960s, and then with WikiLeaks we discovered that this same thing was done in Ecuador in the period of Rafael Correa, when he discovered that the local police and other key officials were receiving salaries from The United states.

Returning to the narrative, the transition of power from Clinton to Bush was a ""deep event". But here we see that the covert operations was beginning to be deeply privatized. with the advent of mass computers it was inevitable that private industry would rival intelligence agencies and covert operations are just one playbook. The people in the CIA have friends in private industry and vice versa then we can presume that it was the private industry side possibly in connection with voting machine companies were owned by exactly the sort of people that would be friends with the director's of the covert operations, so other forces fulfill the function. a function to maintain the privilege and private property Of the key influential leaders in business and government and inherited wealth.

And here we have a national security family the Bush family return to power 8 short years later. One could say we had a brief period of civilian rule with Carter and Clinton, though Carter was a former nuclear sub officer I believe.

Under Bush after 911 we have a national security covert state on steroids. a new period Breaks out where the US has received a cassus belli, and rains wore down upon the world. Underground the time of the transition from one national security president and family the Bush is to another national security president and family, the family of Ann Dunham. and we have a president who moves from direct warfare two covert operations very smoothly with President Obama. Obama is said to have told the CIA they could have anything they wanted in Afghanistan and he clearly preferred covert operations such as drone strikes and he made revealing covert operations extremely painful for people by using the Espionage Act to punish whistleblowers. in my view the modern use of the Espionage Act should be solely for traitors and spies serving foreign powers, and not for people coming forward because of their conscience. or because of their journalism as in the case of Julian Assange.

and the final transition of power in the United states the arrival of Joe Biden. Joe Biden on the surface has supported a very progressive platform. but Joe Biden also has deep links to the national security state. he is the consummate insider. and what have we gotten from Joe biden's presidency, we've gotten the right rhetoric to a large extent, but none of the right policy's no actual legislation passed that challenges inherited wealth. now the things the executive branch can do without Congress are generally negative, we have pressure on Venezuela, we have pressure on Cuba, we have pressure on China we have pressure on Russia. we come to climate talks with little in our hands other than rhetoric. so the jury is out on Joe Biden, but the Biden presidency came about because of the intervention of Barack Obama in the primaries.

and what comes from the legacy of Barack Obama, well he certainly has very poor taste for sensitivities to the suffering of the American people, my hosting swanky exclusive parties at his multimillion dollar mansion. the only real policy of Obamas that helped people other than not being a right wing ideologue all the time, was his health care plan which did not involve one dime of corporate profit declination.

Barack Obama came from a national security family all be at much less prominent, the family of his mother Anne Dunham. he told the CIA that they could have an open hand in Afghanistan, he prosecuted whistleblowers such as Julian Assange and others in the government using the Espionage Act which should not be used against whistleblowers nor journalists but should be used strictly against spies for foreign powers literally. he allowed the financial crisis Lords to get off Scott free not a single banker going to jail when even under Reagan we had several hundred bankers go to jail in the Silverado and the savings and loan scandals. Obama was a big fan of drones and it was generally regarded as a president who preferred covert operations to direct military operations. and presumably that instinct was simply reinforced by Libya which I genuinely believe he regretted how it came out. but we don't know how cold blooded these calculating sociopaths can be. we don't know if people like Barack Obama have blackmail against them we don't know why people who seem to share our values in reality appear to operate under a very different set of values.

So for the CIA people who may read this document, I ask can the people have self determination with such a powerful sector of our society operating in secrecy And permitted to break the law. if we have the western intelligence community literally dictating the development of the human race what sort of human race do you think we will have?