Treason
the New World Order
by GurudasChapter XI
The CIA and the
Intelligence Community
“The principles of a free Constitution are irrevocably lost when the legislative
power is dominated by the executive.”
Edward Gibbon
“During the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Lenin created the Cheka (later the
KGB), a secret organization...filled with zealots who terrorized opponents. They
made up their own rules, they chose their own missions, and they judged their
own operations. You say it can't happen here? Well, before deciding for sure, let's
look at the history of our secret government.”
Bill Moyers
In August, 1994 there was a brief uproar in Congress because it was discovered that the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which runs the spy satellites
was building a huge new headquarters in Virginia. The cost was going to be $350
million. To hide the true purpose of the building, millions of dollars in taxes were
paid by the construction company, although the federal government would not
normally pay such taxes. People in Congress were upset because they weren't informed of this project as is required. 1
When the oversight committees in Congress
cannot even keep track of such a massive building just outside Washington, D.C.,
it is obvious that the intelligence community is involved in many activities that
the American public and its representatives have no idea about. During this uproar
one representative on the oversight committee said that, while they don't learn
about various internal activities of the CIA, they are supposed to approve building
projects. What about everything else?
Clinton agreed to an open congressional hearing on the NRO building project
according to his press secretary because “the American public deserves a full accounting of how their tax dollars are being spent.” Yet during the hearing the
NRO head refused to answer questions about the agency such as the number of
buildings it owns and the related costs. It was also revealed that the building was
deliberately hidden from the oversight committees, but this was just called negligence. The incident shows the contempt the intelligence community has for
Congress.
There was also a rare admission that information on this building was considered above top secret. One of the first public discussions that there were various
security classifications above top secret was in The Politics of Lying, by David
Wise in 1973. Senator Gore and most or perhaps all of Congress were not even
aware of these higher classifications. Information that is above top secret will
rarely be discussed in Congress, because it includes secret plans to remove the Constitution and establish a dictatorship. There is also the ongoing surveillance of
Americans which is why the NRO is so secret. It uses advanced technology, much
of which has never been discussed, to spy on thousands of Americans.
According to news reports President Clinton also wasn't aware of this building project and this may well be true. There are about 10 classifications of security
above top secret and Clinton, only being the president, has a very low security
clearance barely above top secret, so he is not allowed access to most security
matters. It is partly for this reason that newspapers have stated that Clinton usually leaves security matters to others. I wrote to the House and Senate committees
that have oversight for the intelligence community and asked who had access to
information above top secret. One committee refused to answer and the other just
sent a list of their members. Perhaps no one in Congress has security clearance to
access information above top secret. If this is so, how can Congress fulfill its
constitutional mandate to provide funds and keep track of such spending?
On September 29, 1994 the ABC News show, Primetime Live, suggested
that the NRO was completely beyond the control of Congress. The NRO had
recently signed a $10 billion contract even though Congress had ordered it to not
do that without first receiving congressional approval which had not been given.
Congress, weeks later, accidently learned that this contract had been signed.
Congress doesn't understand that it is increasingly irrelevant to the national security state. In the 1970s Senator Church warned about the ability of the National
Security Agency (NSA) to monitor all forms of communication and if this isn't
stopped “There would be no place to hide. If this government ever becomes a
tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity
that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back....I know the capacity
that is there to make tyranny total in America and we must see to it that (the
intelligence agencies) that possess this technology operate within the law and
under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss
from which there is no return.”
In July, 1994 $30 billion was voted for the intelligence community. In July,
1994 an attempt to declassify the full intelligence budget was defeated in the
House, and Clinton claimed it would damage national security. Tim Weiner in
Blank Check “found hundreds of programs camouflaged under code names, their
costs deleted, their totals disguised. Code words and blank spaces stood where facts
and figures should have been.” 2
On September 24, 1995 the Washington Post said
the NRO had secretly hoarded over $1 billion without telling the CIA, Pentagon,
or Congress. Then in late January, 1996 the New York Times said the total “lost”
by the NRO was over $2 billion. 3
Next, on May 16, 1996 the New York Times
said the total money “lost” was $4 billion and there was “a complete collapse of
accountability” by the NRO.
Under the Constitution Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7, only Congress can
appropriate funds and there shall be a regular accounting of how funds are spent.
James Madison said: “This power over the purse” is “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any Constitution can arm the immediate representatives
of the people.” 4
Thomas Jefferson said controlling the purse was “one effectual
check to the dog of war by transferring the power of letting him loose...from those
who are to spend to those who have to pay.” The Founders rejected secrecy in
government and felt the people should have full knowledge of what the government was doing to keep government honest, open, and accountable to the people.
Patrick Henry said a free people must never “allow the national wealth...to be
disposed of under the veil of secrecy.” James Madison also said: “Knowledge will
forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own Governors,
must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” 5
Government agencies must submit their budgets at regular intervals to
Congress for review. Yet the CIA and most of the intelligence community violates this constitutional requirement especially with the secret or black budget.
Weiner found that most members of Congress including members of the House
Armed Services Committee had never even heard of the black budget. With a black
budget money flows in from various sources with no one to check on what is
happening. The black budget funds programs the president, head of the CIA, and
the Secretary of Defense want kept hidden from the public. Many of these
programs are also kept secret from the president, with the secret government in
charge.
In April, 1976 the Church Committee said the black budget was unconstitutional. “The budget procedures which presently govern the CIA and other agencies
of the Intelligence Community prevent most members of Congress from knowing
how much money is spent by any of these agencies or even how much money is
spent on intelligence as a whole....The failure to provide this information to the
public and to the Congress prevents either from effectively ordering priorities and
violates Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution....” A few months
earlier Senator Church said: “If we are to preserve freedom and keep constitutional
government alive in America, it cannot be left to a President and his agents alone
to decide what must be kept secret....Congress cannot now in secret matters exercise its constitutional responsibilities in an orderly way.”
“The black budget is a creature of the cold war. The policy of secret spending
began as an emergency measure at the dawn of the postwar world. It was conceived
as a shield to conceal the secret wars of the CIA....Soviet secrecy fed American
fears. Lacking facts, the U.S. assumed the worst....Fear begat funds....The obsession with secret operations spread throughout the great machinery of the American
presidency. Soon the CIA and its sister agencies were reading Americans' mail,
poring over their telegrams and tax returns, tapping their telephones, infiltrating
church groups and college organizations, penetrating the press and manipulating
the news....The secret forces created to fight communism abroad evolved into a
power that threatened constitutional government at home.” 6
The part of the secret government that involves the intelligence community
really began with the Manhattan Project, the secret program to build an atomic
bomb. Until World War II the focus of American intelligence was to gather useful
information not to conduct covert operations to change foreign governments.
However, the Office of Strategic Services, led by General William Donovan,
shifted to not only gathering intelligence but also to changing events. In 1944
Donovan sent a proposal to President Roosevelt to establish a permanent intelligence agency after the war. The plan was leaked to a reporter for the Chicago
Tribune who called it a “super-gestapo agency” while some in Congress compared
it to the Soviet secret police.
When the CIA was established in 1947 many felt it would be dangerous because it was unaccountable. A few conservatives said the CIA, with its secret
budget and cloaked activities, would give the chief executive loo much new power to conduct foreign affairs, including wars, in secret without there even first being
an open debate, approval, and appropriation. The very purpose of the CIA was to
get around the democratic processes, empowering the president in the process.
Secretary of State Dean Acheson had “the gravest forebodings” about the CIA
warning that once it was established neither the president “nor anyone else would
be in a position to know what it was doing or to control it.”
Despite the objection of a few people between 1947 and 1974 there was an
attitude of benign neglect because of a cold war consensus that people in the CIA
were men of honor who would do what was required to protect the nation against
communism. The power of the security state increased partly because, although a
few people in Congress were supposed to keep track of the intelligence agencies,
this never occurred. From the earliest days, the intelligence community was out of
control with no real congressional oversight.
In the mid-1950s oversight committees under the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees were established to bring more structure to congressional
oversight of the intelligence community. However, there was only occasional
oversight by senior members of Congress, like Senator Richard Russell and Rep.
Carl Vinson. Most in Congress found this sufficient, believing that the executive
branch should be in charge. In 1954 Senator Mike Mansfield warned that “Secrecy
now beclouds everything about the CIA—its cost, its efficiency, its successes, and
its failure....Once secrecy becomes sacrosanct, it invites abuse.” But this was a
lone voice. During this period the CIA provided little information to Congress,
and often years went by with the congressional subcommittees on intelligence
never meeting.
Former Rep. Stewart Udall said in the 1950s his mentor was Senator Carl
Hayden, chairman of the Appropriations Committee. For years Hayden was an
important watch dog of the intelligence agencies. One morning after a courier
dropped off a CIA summary, the senator told Udall that he didn't follow what the
CIA was doing because then he would also be responsible. Udall later said: “It was
obvious that republican self-government was losing out as citizens and their
elected representatives were kept in the dark concerning crucial facts. How could
any democracy properly function...If a 'cleared' elite was given power to frame the
action options, and members of Congress were not allowed to debate policy options or to participate in the making of decisions that affected the nation's
security?”7
Senator Allen Ellender, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Subcommittee of
the Senate Appropriations Committee, also said he didn't want to know what the
CIA was doing. In 1955 Senator Leverett Saltonstall, an influential member of the
Armed Services Committee, said: “It is a question of our reluctance...to seek information and knowledge on subjects which I personally...would rather not have.”
In 1954 Lt. General James Doolittle headed a commission to justify the ongoing
intelligence activities. He said: “Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do
not apply. If the U.S. is to survive, long-standing American concepts of 'fair play'
must be reconsidered.” The dirty business of spying was kept secret, with the executive branch providing cover in the name of national security, however criminal
or unconstitutional the conduct.
President Kennedy said, after the Bay of Pigs disaster, that he planned to
shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. In 1963 Truman
attacked the CIA as a danger to democracy. “Those fellows in the CIA don't just report on wars and the like, they go out and make their own, and there's nobody to
keep track of what they're up to. They spend billions of dollars on stirring up
trouble so they'll have something to report on....It's become a government all of
its own and all secret. They don't have to account to anybody. That's a very dangerous thing in a democratic society, and it's got to be put a stop to.” 8
Senator
Symington, while on the Committee for CIA Oversight, said “There is no federal
agency of our government whose activities receive less scrutiny and control than
the CIA.”
In the winter of 1970-1971 the press published stories that the CIA had
formed an army of 36,000 in Laos to fight communism. No one in Congress was
aware of this, although a few members were aware of a Laos operation. Congress
learned that the CIA was spending large sums of money buried in the Pentagon's
inventory of weapons. The National Security Act of 1947 did not grant the CIA
power to conduct secret wars, and there is no evidence that Congress intended to
grant such power to the CIA. However, in the spring of 1948 a presidential edict
secretly established a covert action section in the CIA with the president secretly
in charge of these activities. The CIA Act of 1949 was approved by Congress but
no one understood what was being approved because it involved secrets that
Congress could not be told. This law allowed the Office of Management and
Budget to freely transfer funds from any agency to the CIA without regard to any
laws limiting or prohibiting transfers between appropriations. The CIA did not
have to explain how the money was being used.
The CIA has always been more interested in covert operations including
foreign wars, assassinations, and overthrowing foreign governments, than in traditional intelligence gathering and analysis. This is a key reason why it has often
failed to provide accurate intelligence. The CIA has engaged in hundreds of covert
operations, like overthrowing the Salvador Allende Marxist government in Chile.
Few in Congress had any knowledge of these operations. Covert operations caused
sharp disagreements between Congress and the executive branch, and they have
been conducted because of a loose interpretation of existing laws and secret presidential edicts. Congress sometimes gave partial approval by secretly funding these
operations, often not even realizing what it was funding. The Intelligence
Oversight Act of 1980 required the CIA to keep Congress informed of covert
operations, but this act gave covert operations a degree of legitimacy for the first
time by permitting them, in special circumstances, with no Congress consent
being required.9
Our foreign policy has increasingly become a military policy. The National
Security Council (NSC) was established in 1947 to be a civilian advisory group to
the president, but it “has become a command post for covert operations run by the
military. Far removed from public view and congressional oversight, they are
accountable only to the one man they serve. The framers of the Constitution feared
this permanent state of war, with the commander in chief served by an elite private
corps that put the claims of the sovereign (president) above the Constitution.” 10
With the establishment of the Church and Pike Committees in the 1970s, the
period of benign neglect of what the CIA was doing ended and Congress tried to
control the CIA. During this period it was discovered that the CIA had a Domestic
Operations Division which spied on Americans. This was illegal under the CIA's
charter. Operation CHAOS kept tabs on thousands of Americans for over 15 years,
especially Vietnam War protesters. The CIA shared information with other law enforcement groups on 300,000 Americans and had files on over 1,000 U.S.
groups. 11
Supposedly, the object of spying on Americans is to control people in
the name of freedom. Yet in the process of saving the country, you destroy the
democratic fabric of the nation.
Senator Church called the CIA “a rogue elephant on a rampage.” The Church
Committee found that over “$10 billion was being spent by a handful of people,
with little independent supervision, with inadequate controls, even less auditing,
and an overabundance of secrecy.” The GAO was not allowed proper access to
study the books of the CIA, yet private accounting firms were allowed to audit its
books. The CIA also secretly infiltrated its personnel into various areas of the executive branch. It was found that covert actions “are irregularly approved, sloppily
implemented, and at times have been forced on a reluctant CIA by the President
and his National Security Advisor.” 12
When the Church Committee asked James Jesus Angleton, a senior CIA
official, why he disobeyed a direct order from the White House to destroy the CIAs
stockpile of poisons he responded: “It is inconceivable that a secret arm of the
government has to comply with all the overt orders of the government.” When
leaders of the CIA refuse to follow orders from Congress or the executive branch,
whose orders are they following? The CIA has for years been a law unto itself
doing what the secret government wants. This is an extremely dangerous situation
for any country.
After the late 1970s false records were again used to fool Congress and once
again Congress ignored the CIA. When Reagan appointed Casey head of the CIA,
covert operations and the black budget greatly increased. 13
In 1984 it was revealed
that the CIA had mined Nicaragua's harbor without first telling Congress as required. When an American and Chilean were killed by a car bomb in Washington,
DC in 1986, Bush pressured the Justice Department to not investigate thoroughly
because of national security concerns. CIA operatives worked with Chilean agents
in this plot. That an American citizen was killed in the nation's capital didn't
matter.
During the Iran contra affair, a CIA station chief Joseph Fernandez faced four
counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, but the Justice Department brought
no charges. Special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh said national security could be
used to cover-up the crimes of intelligence officers, making them a special class
above the law. Senator Kerry said: “They were willing to literally put the Constitution at risk because they believed somehow there was a higher order of things.
That's the most Marxist, totalitarian doctrine I've ever hear of in my life.... You've
done the very thing that James Madison and others feared the most when they were
struggling to put the Constitution together, which was to create an accountable
system which didn't have runaway power, which didn't concentrate power in one
hand so that you could have one person making a decision and running off against
the will of the American people.” [STFU Kerry, that is funny given what transpired during the 8 years of Homey the cocksucking Clown,and his tranny 'wife' D.C]
The intelligence community has infiltrated all walks of life in America. The
fight to publish The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence exemplifies how the CIA
uses pressure and threats to keep newspapers and book publishers from releasing
negative information about it. The CIA has gotten professors to manipulate
student groups and to build files on students who may be targeted for future
activities. It has paid professors and journalists to write over 1,200 books. 14
The
Church Committee couldn't force the CIA to reveal the names of these people. In
The CIA and the Intelligence Community 143
1980 when Harvard passed an internal regulation requiring professors to report any
relationships with the CIA, the CIA sued Harvard and won claiming its First
Amendment rights were being violated. The Intelligence Authorization Act for
1992 contained the National Security Education Act with the goal of using the
higher education system to train and recruit intelligence agents especially with
foreign language and area training skills. CIA recruiters remain quite active on
many college campuses.
The intelligence community has also long had a close relationship with the
banking and financial communities and their federal regulators. The CIA can usually violate banking regulations with little or no consequence. There is a constant
pattern of intelligence operatives using national security claims to avoid public
scrutiny and criminal prosecution. The courts usually allow this sham. In 1988
Robert Maxwell sued the First National Bank of Maryland and later agents of the
CIA, FBI, and Justice Department. This Baltimore banker in 1986 told Treasury
Department officials that the bank had violated the law by laundering money.
Maxwell was forced to quit as manager of international letters of credit when he
questioned the legality of transactions for an account, Associated Traders Corporation, which he claimed was a CIA front for illegal operations.
Maxwell has been unable to get another job in banking and he suffered a
mental breakdown. The CIA threatened to have his lawyer disbarred and to have
Maxwell indicted for releasing classified information, and it filed a motion asking
that the information not be released because of national security. Naturally, the
court agreed. National security should mean the protection of a citizens' rights, but
this ruling meant that Maxwell lost his chance for justice. This ruling also extended government secrecy to private businesses, which would give immunity to
CIA's contractors. 15
U.S. intelligence agencies used BCCI extensively for covert operations. 16
According to Newsweek there is even evidence that the CIA helped establish
BCCI. The key players in establishing this bank were all connected with U.S.
intelligence. 17
The CIA worked very closely with BCCI and had accounts in the
bank throughout the world. The secret arms deal with Iran, which violated the
Arms Export Control Act, was financed by BCCI, and there is evidence that BCCI
helped transfer Saudi money to the Contras. 18
During the BCCI investigation,
people close to the intelligence community advised the bank on how to mislead
congressional investigators.
That the CIA is a law unto itself was also demonstrated in the S&L scandal.
Pete Brewton, in The Mafia CIA and George Bush, described how this fiasco was a
scam operation carried out by the bankers, big business, mafia, and the CIA often
under the protection of certain Washington politicians. Loose alliances were
formed by these groups to raid the same banks. Sometimes they worked together
and sometimes they were just aware of each other's activities. The taxpayer was
left with the bill. There were instances, during an FBI investigation, when the
CIA said the person was working for the CIA so he was released. “The S&L
crimes and debacles illustrate the servile quality of Presidents and Congresses, who
view themselves primarily as agents of business, serving up a costly feast of corporate socialism for which powerless taxpayers get the check.” 19
Crucial bank documents such as loan records, title company disbursement
sheets, and federal and state examination reports were not available to reporters,
but Congress had the authority to obtain and make these documents public. This was never done. Few people in Congress, the FBI, or the Justice Department ever
asked where the money went and what could be done to get it back, because this
was an inside job with many allies of Congress and the bureaucracy involved in
the theft. The public can pay for all the losses, but we have no right to see where
the money went! Colleagues involved in the S&L scam were let off easily by the
rest of Congress.
“In fact, the Justice Department itself has become a major layer of protection
for the main beneficiaries of the savings-and-loan crisis.” 20
Yet the Justice
Department managed to trace some of the Medellin Cartel's drug money in more
difficult circumstances. The organized strike force that conducted successful S&L
prosecutions in several states was closed during the S&L crisis. This was an inside
operation and the government didn't want to arrest its own supporters. Instead law
firms were hired to track the money, but they accomplished almost nothing because they were generally allied with the Washington politicians and the people
they were supposedly investigating. During the 1988 elections the S&L scandal
was kept out of the news and it only broke months later. Congress, the Justice
Department, and the press focused on flamboyant crooks in the S&L industry,
while the main recipients of the money escaped untouched. Poor business judgment was used as an excuse, but this was rarely the case.
In one $200 million transaction involving 21,000 acres in Florida, the
borrowed money went to St Joe, a paper company owned by the Du Pont empire.
This was learned because of a dedicated federal regulator Kenneth Cureton, but
when he tried to obtain records of the bank on the Isle of Jersey, England where
the money went, the Department of Justice's International Division, which
approves subpoenas to offshore banks, blocked him. Several banks lost huge sums
of money in this transaction. 21
In February, 1990 Rep. Frank Annunzio ask CIA Director William Webster
to appear before his Financial Institutions Subcommittee, just after the Houston
Post reported alleged CIA involvement in the S&L scandal. Webster refused saying he should instead appear before the intelligence committee. Webster lied, saying that CIA officials were in touch with the Assistant U.S. Attorney in Houston
mentioned in the article. As usual the House Intelligence Committee refused to
conduct a full investigation. It made no real attempt to track the money or explore
allegations of CIA and mafia collusion. The Houston Post article named six CIA
people tied to financial institutions and the CIA admitted to Congress that it had a
relationship with five people connected to failed S&Ls and it had done business
with four banks that failed. There are also indications that failed S&L money went
to operations controlled by the CIA, such as the Iran-contra affair. The CIA said
this was classified information, and the committee refused to pursue the matter
further.
The director of the intelligence committee's staff was Dan Childs, a 26 year
veteran of the CIA. Placing such people at the disposal of key congressional oversight committees is one way the CIA effectively makes such oversight ineffective.
In January, 1991, just after the House Intelligence Committee released its
CIA/S&L report, Childs went back to work for the CIA.
Part of the reason this fraud succeeded and little money was ever returned was
because the press refused to do its job. While several good books were written, few
newspapers tried to discover where the money went and fewer explored the CIA and
mafia involvement in the scam that Pete Brewton and later Stephen Pizzo, in Inside Job The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, had discussed. Pizzo also
asked if some of the stolen billions had gone into illegal covert operations. 22
In
1995 Rep. Spencer Bachus, head of a committee studying government efforts to
recover $2 billion stolen from a Texas S&L, said the Treasury Department repeatedly refused to cooperate and provide records for their investigation.[We just happen to have that one in our arsenal here DC]
“All government bureaucracies perpetuate a certain exclusivity. But shrouded
in secrecy, the CIA—like other spy agencies—is culturally more insular than
most agencies....In the CIA the natural bureaucratic impulse to protect the
institution is compounded by the bond of secrecy. And a culture is spawned that
shields the agency from FBI investigations, congressional busybodies, and
citizens....” 23
William Colby, former head of the CIA, said many employees of
the CIA separated themselves from involvement in normal activities and became
exclusively involved in intelligence activities. This created a distorted outlook on
life. There developed “an inbred distorted elitist view of intelligence that held it to
be above the normal processes of society with its own rationale and justification,
beyond the restraints of the Constitution, which applied to everything and everyone else.”
To the CIA Congress is the enemy, and when investigated, the CIA's usual
response is to lie or deceive with disinformation. This is why Congress has never
understood what the CIA was doing. Ralph McGehee, a former CIA agent, said, in
Deadly Deceits, in 25 years he had never seen the CIA tell Congress the truth. The
only thing guaranteed is that the CIA will lie, and no one in Congress will do
anything. The CIA encourages perjury before Congress, such as when the Church
Committee investigated the CIA's involvement in Allende's removal as president
of Chile. 24
In November, 1980 John Gentry, a CIA analyst resigned, charging that
the agency had lied to support executive branch policies. Later the CIA lied several
times before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about when it had
stopped transferring intelligence information to Iraq. 25
When Congress questions the intelligence community about suspicious activities, intelligence agents often refuse to release information. During the BCCI
investigation, the CIA refused to discuss the activities of Abdul-Raouf Khalil,
Saudi Arabia's liaison to the CIA. The State Department even refused to help
locate this person to serve legal papers, until regulators learned he often visited the
CIA station chief in Saudia Arabia. The manager of the BCCI branch in Panama
testified that the bank laundered drug profits for Noriega. When Senator Kerry
requested records on Noriega the CIA, NSC, and other intelligence agencies refused
to comply. Several people admitted that the Federal Reserve destroyed files revealing the relationship between BCCI and the CIA and NSC.
John Stockwell, a former CIA field agent in Angola in the late 1970s, headed
the CIA's Angola desk in Washington. In The Praetorian Guard, he described how
a lawyer entered his office and purged his files of incriminating evidence of illegal
CIA activities in Angola. George Bush, then head of the CIA, who had previous
testified that no illegal activities had taken place in Angola, returned to Congress
and reaffirmed that he could find no files involving CIA misconduct in Angola.
Congress dropped its investigation. 26
After Stockwell resigned from the CIA in
1977, he provided five days of detailed testimony to a closed congressional committee about illegal CIA activities in Angola. Congress listened and did nothing.
With Watergate so recent, Congress didn't have the stomach for another big
scandal, so the problem of an out-of-control intelligence agency got worse.
Early in 1995 the House Intelligence Committee threatened to subpoena a
former top CIA official after he refused to discuss the agency's attempts to hide the
loss of Soviet-bloc agents in recent years. According to the Washington Post, this
committee found evidence that there was “a plan to restrict telling Congress about
what was going on” so the CIA could “keep it under wraps.”
In March, 1995 there was another uproar when Rep. Robert Torricelli revealed
that one or more Americans, including Michael DeVine, had been killed by CIA
informants in Guatemala. Torricelli received information from Clinton officials
angry with the CIA actions. This link was covered up for some time by the CIA,
which upset many people. The CIA reportedly paid $44,000 to Guatemalan
Colonel Alpirez after learning that he had killed DeVine. According to former
DEA agent Celerino Castillo, DeVine was killed because he learned of Guatemalan
military drug trafficking. 27
Rep. Torricelli even received a report allegedly from
someone in the NSA that internal documents were being destroyed to remove
evidence. The FBI conducted an investigation but naturally found nothing.
Since 1976 twenty U.S. citizens have been attacked or killed in Guatemala.
We may never know how many of them were attacked by CIA informants. Rep.
Torricelli is to be congratulated for speaking up. Newt Gingrich attacked Torricelli
saying he violated his oath of secrecy as a member of the House Intelligence
Committee. However, the information Torricelli released was not received during
any Intelligence Committee meetings, and Torricelli said “Under circumstances
where the issue is criminal conduct, I believe that oath is in direct conflict with
the oath that every member takes to adhere to the Constitution and the laws of the
U.S.” When one learns of a criminal act, one must speak up or become an accomplice to that crime. People should ask Gingrich how many Americans have to be
murdered before it is acceptable to criticize the CIA for its criminal activities.
Gingrich and his crowd will do anything to protect the secret government. 28
On December 3, 1995 CBS's 60 Minutes interviewed Toto Constant. For
several years, while a paid CIA informant and senior Haitian official, he actively
worked to defeat U.S. policy towards Haiti. On October 3, 1993 Constant led a
protest demonstration against the landing of 400 U.S. and Canadian troops in
Haiti. Then at a White House meeting the CIA said there would be considerable
violence if the troops landed, although others disputed this. During this period the
CIA leaked information to Congress challenging Aristide's mental stability, when
Clinton wanted to restore Aristide to power in Haiti. The U.S. government has its
policies, but so does the CIA. When there is a conflict, the CIA will sometimes
disrupt administration policies. In this instance the CIA was probably protecting
its drug supply lines through Haiti. The only thing unusual about this case was
that part of the CIA's disinformation efforts surfaced.
In recent years seven or more CIA station chiefs have been removed from their
posts because of illegal or unsavory activities. A station chief in Cyprus stole at
least one valuable religious icon from a church. Instead of being arrested, these officials were transferred and then sometimes allowed to resign. The arrest of Richard
Ames for spying is not the only instance of an intelligence agent gone bad.
According to Ames, “the espionage business as carried out by the CIA and a
few other American agencies, was and is a self-serving sham, carried out by careerist bureaucrats who have managed to deceive several generations of American
policymakers and the public about both the necessity and value of their work. The
information our vast espionage network acquires at considerable human and ethical costs is generally insignificant or irrelevant to our policymakers' needs. Our espionage establishment differs hardly at all from many other federal bureaucracies,
having transformed itself into a self-serving interest group immeasurably aided by
secrecy.”
Some in Congress have acknowledged that this traitor has accurately describe
the sham that is the CIA. Little of value is really accomplished, but you always
had to look busy. Ames exposed almost every important CIA operation and agent
in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the mid-1980s, but the CIA ignored
evidence that he was a spy. The FBI even saw Ames improperly meeting secretly
with the Soviets in 1986, but the CIA did nothing. By 1989 the CIA knew that
Ames had paid $540,000 cash for a home; yet he only earned $69,000 a year. In
1991 Ames failed a lie detector test, but was passed anyway. The CIA took two
years to investigate a report that Ames was living well beyond his means. 2 9
Ames was once found drunk in a Rome gutter while working for the CIA. It
was also fairly common for him to fall asleep at his desk in the afternoon after his
drinking binge during lunch. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Dominion
Bank of Virginia told the IRS that Ames was depositing large sums of money but
no action was taken. 30
A child could have identified Ames as a high security risk,
yet people on the Senate oversight committee were amazed at all this, because
they have no understanding of what takes place in the CIA. Naturally CIA director
Woolsey fired no one over the Ames affair.
There is more to this fiasco than we have been told. On the day Ames was
arrested the New York Times reported that he worked in the CIAs “narcotics intelligence operation.” 31
In a detailed article on Ames' involvement in the drug war,
The Wall Street Journal said Ames was “a key figure” in stopping drug trafficking,
and asked if he was somehow involved with the KGB in the drug trade? 32
Another
suspicious fact is that Ames often visited Columbia where his wife is from. Part
of the money paid to Ames by the KGB came from U.S. taxpayers out of western
aid money sent to Russia. 33
However, did the money he received come only from
the KGB or also from Colombian drug gangs?
Reportedly Ames was paid several million dollars by the KGB which he spent
lavishly. We are told he was quite careless or stupid in not hiding such wealth. It
is one thing to believe that Ames was careless or stupid, but it goes beyond belief
to agree with the press that several regulatory agencies were also so negligent.
Many regulatory agencies are well aware that the CIA has been heavily involved in
illegal drug trafficking for many years, and that especially when national security
is proclaimed, the CIA is left alone. As a kingpin in the CIA's drug operations,
Ames would be justified in believing that he was protected. As one more drug
dealer in the CIA no one would touch him. Many in the CIA have large sums of
money from their illegal drug operations.
Peter Maas, in Killer Spy, said after some months of investigating Ames,
enough evidence had been gathered so that the FBI wanted him arrested. They
needed permission from the Justice Department which initially refused, supposedly
because if Ames and his wife were arrested, there would be no one to take care of
their young son, and the press would be very upset. Remember Ames had caused
the arrest and death of many CIA agents in the Soviet Union, and he was suspected
of being one of the worst spies in our nation's history. Aside from the fact that a
grandmother was available to care for the son, we are supposed to believe that the
Justice Department suddenly became a social welfare department. Certain people in the Justice Department and CIA were very nervous that Ames' arrest would reveal
illegal drug trafficking operations.
In late 1995 it was revealed that Ames helped the Russians plant double
agents, who for years fed false information to the CIA. The CIA realized in 1991
these agents were providing disinformation but 95 reports were provided to policy
makers including two presidents, usually without even a warning that the information provided might be false. These reports overestimated Soviet economic and
military strength, probably causing the U.S. to needlessly spend billions of dollars
for defense. The New York Times, in an editorial, said when an intelligence
agency willingly misleads the government with disinformation from the communists this “is as out of control as it gets.” 34
Senator Specter interviewed a Russian
expert in the CIA for 42 years. The retired agent said providing information from
suspected double agents was proper and it was the role of the CIA not higher
officials to make this decision. Not understanding that Congress is irrelevant to
the intelligence community, Senator Specter was shocked. 35
The last president who tried to curtail the CIA was President Kennedy. This is
one reason he was killed. In the name of national security, the mantra of the intelligence community, any act is acceptable even if it destroys the democratic fabric
of our Republic. Many in the intelligence community feel their experience enables
them to understand the security needs of the U.S. better than America's elected
officials. The dangerous fanatics who have perpetuated so many atrocities upon the
American people in the name of national security are far more dangerous to the
survival of this Republic as a free society than was ever the case with communism. People in the security state felt international communism needed to be
stopped even if America was turned into a police state in the process.
A good example of what a career in the CIA does to people is the book, The
Twilight of Democracy, by Patrick E. Kennon. He worked in the CIA for 25 years
and concluded that instead of a democracy run by the people we need a society run
by skilled technocrats. Efficiency is more important than free will and freedom.
Run by “faceless but expert bureaucrats” democracy has triumphed as an ideology
but not as a system of government. He said democracy “has become marginal as a
system of government” so we should turn to bureaucratic experts in the “relentless
march of specialization.” Specialization demands bureaucracy.[This asshole is so far gone,he can not see the forest for the trees, democracy in and of itself has NOT triumphed as an ideology, democracy in theory of majority rules,which is the blatant propaganda they have fed the people is a utopian pipedream. The democracy being practiced in the United States can best be understood when it is viewed as 'perfected communism'.If you folks cannot understand by now what has gone on around you over the last 56 years, you are beyond hope.WE do not have a democracy,this country is being run by a vicious MINORITY, and has been for a long damn time!DC]
George McGovern said: “If it is acceptable for the CIA to break the law in the
name of national security, why shouldn't others place national security above and
beyond the reach of the Constitution?” The Founding Fathers “would have been
appalled by the secretive, unchecked unilateral operations that have been carried on
by the Presidents and their staffs in recent decades....Unfortunately, many of our
Presidents since the end of World War II have violated the law and the Constitution. From Korea, the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam to Watergate, Iran and the covert
war in Nicaragua, Presidents have weakened the nation and their own credibility by
dishonoring the Constitution. Most of these violations have been made in the
name of national security....” 36
At what point does the incessant paranoia over
national security, which is so often just an excuse for illegal criminal activities,
become treason. Thousands of American citizens have lost their constitutional
rights, sometimes being killed, in the name of national security. [damn good question,one still being asked long after this book was penned,25 years?DC]
Many Americans think congressional oversight committees are actually keeping track of the intelligence community, but this has always been a complete
myth. How can the oversight committees do their job when for years they have no idea what programs the money is being spent on? Congress is told the magic
words, national security, and an inquiry ends. In 1987 the National Academy of
Public Administration concluded that congressional oversight is “more geared to
garnering media attention than making government work better....” In 1991
Common Cause Magazine published a review of the congressional oversight
committees. They concluded that “Congress on the whole is failing to carry out its
government oversight responsibility.” Oversight is a key role of Congress to see
where money is spent and how programs are carried out, but our representatives are
more interested in raising money to be reelected.
In the 1970s Congress changed the federal budget-writing process so that
budget power was concentrated on new budget committees. Other committees lost
control over the federal budget. During the 1980s many committees rewrote their
rules removing the power to issue subpoenas or launch investigations. Today,
oversight committees rarely conduct serious investigations. Constitutional checks
and balances no longer apply. Experienced investigators like Thomas Trimboli get
fired from oversight committees, because they take their job seriously. Few
whistleblowers are now willing to come to Congress because nothing is done. [Except when they are A Criminally Insane Asset determined to usurp an election DC]
Many have provided evidence to Congress that the CIA and other government
agencies are flooding the country with illegal drugs, but Congress does nothing.
Congress had evidence of the S&L scam long before anything was done. By the
time action was taken the cost was far higher than it needed to have been. There
was evidence that the Reagan administration was illegally supporting the
Nicaraguan contras at least two years before the Iran-contra hearings. Congress refused to investigate the charges by Knight Ridder that there were detailed plans to
remove the Constitution and establish a police state with FEMA arresting over
100,000 people. And no one in Congress is willing to find out where the $28-30
billion annual black budget goes in the intelligence community. 37
Congress is worried about leaks of classified information when it should focus
on the abuses of power by the intelligence agencies. Ralph McGhee said in Deadly
Deceits: “There is a little bit of fear that if you go after the intelligence community your career is threatened.” Stich in Defrauding America, said the CIA has the
power to destroy any politician who threatens it. 38
The CIA is getting increasingly
involved in domestic politics, which is illegal. When Rep. Henry Gonzalez attacked the Bush regime for helping arm Iraq before the Gulf War, Bush used the
CIA to block this investigation and had the CIA investigate Gonzalez for revealing
supposedly top secret information. 39
It is extremely dangerous in a free society to
use the CIA to attack one's political foes.
The November, 1993 issue of Criminal Politics reported that NAFTA passed
by a much higher vote than had been expected partly because the CIA lobbied intensely, even threatening to expose illegal activities by certain members of
Congress if they didn't approve NAFTA. Worth magazine also reported on this
lobbying, although the discussion was toned down in this widely read financial
magazine. 40
Close monitoring including electronic surveillance of Congress by the
intelligence community has gone on for decades. Evidence is gathered to blackmail
people. The CIA reportedly threatened to reveal the pedophile activity of a senator
in 1991 to force him to vote a certain way. His vote was switched. The CIA has
long provided children to certain members of Congress and other influential people
partly to blackmail them. Along with the CIA and FBI, the mob and foreign
intelligence agencies also have prostitute rings in Washington to gather information. 41
Hoover kept detailed files on many people in Congress and this
information was used at times. This was discussed in various books such as From
the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover by Athan Theoharis. Members of Congress
may be investigated by federal agencies or as with Senator Church after his investigation of the CIA, the opposition may be funded to defeat someone. 42
The
president and key people in Congress must support the intelligence community or
they will be black mailed, defeated in office, or even be executed by a heart attack
or an accident.
157s
Former Nebraska state representative John W. DeCamp wrote The Franklin
Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska describing how young
children were kidnapped and used for sex. Some were taken to Washington parties
and the 1992 Republican convention for sex. Some were also killed in satanic
activity. State and federal prosecutors took part in the cover-up, and various public
officials identified in the book threatened to sue DeCamp, but no one ever did.
Perhaps fifteen people were murdered, including the chief investigator for the
Nebraska legislature in this cover-up.
The CIA is an extremely dangerous organization that is anathema to the survival of America as a free society. Its continued existence is a disaster waiting to happen. In 1991 and again in 1993 Senator Daniel Moynihan introduced the End of the Cold War Act, proposing to abolish the CIA and transfer its activities to the State Department and Pentagon, where there could be more political oversight. Moynihan said: “We have become a national-security state, a country mobilized for war on a permanent basis, and we got into the business of saying everything is secret. Can we recover the memory of what we were before we became what we are now? Can we recover a sense of proportion in the national-security state? The task of purging the Cold War from our institutions is enormous.”
Former CIA agent McGehee feels that the CIA should be abolished and that it isn't salvageable. It is too much under the political control of presidents and the NSC to produce accurate intelligence. The CIA is only one of 13 intelligence gathering agencies. While it analyzes foreign economics, many think tanks and universities do the same. There is vast duplication and waste of spending with the $28-30 billion intelligence budget that would be lessened if the CIA was closed. The Ames fiasco was only one example of bureaucratic sclerosis. Many intelligence reports produced by the CIA have been extremely inaccurate. The CIA also often blocked military intelligence from deploying officers who spoke foreign languages and who could mix with the local population. 43
I. F. Stone said: “The biggest menace to American freedom is the intelligence community.” Presidential edicts that place the intelligence community above the law should be cancelled. No one should be above the law. National security should never be a valid excuse to prevent someone from defending themself. Most forms of covert operations should be criminalized. This would help shift the intelligence community to intelligence gathering and analysis. And the intelligence community should be required to submit its budget for a full review each year as required by all branches of the government under Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution.
There should be a new monitoring agency carefully directed by Congress with the job of closely monitoring all intelligence agencies. This organization should have the power to, at any time, without advanced notice, review any files and at any installation throughout the country. The members of this agency should have the highest security clearance and be carefully chosen because of their belief and loyalty to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. There are many retired CIA agents who are disgusted by the illegal activities of that organization. Some of these people would be excellent leaders of this new agency. The government already has similar agencies with agents to monitor, for example, banks and stock brokers, so this proposal is not unique. This is the only way a Republic can survive with an intelligence community. It must be closely monitored.
Government wiretaps and searches should only be done with a court order that also fulfills the standards of the Bill of Rights. National security should never be used as an exception. Government bureaucrats who destroy or refuse to provide evidence as required by Congress should automatically be fired and then face civil and criminal charges including obstruction of justice. There is no room in government for people who deliberately hide information from the people's elected representatives. Congress with its investigative, subpoena, contempt, grant of immunity, and perjury powers already has the ability to control the bureaucracy. Unfortunately, this power is rarely exercised.
Despite the end of the cold war there have been few changes in the American intelligence community. Instead of working to dismantle the CIA and the intelligence community, the emphasis has been to develop new roles to maintain it. “The CIA of the 1990s is a vast global bureaucracy in search of a mission.” 44 The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence proposed in February, 1992 that the CIA focus more on terrorism, environmental intelligence, and aiding transnational corporations with economic intelligence. 45 If the intelligence community expands into numerous areas not directly involving intelligence, we will inevitably suffer from the same pattern of abuses and criminality that has existed for so many years.[92, then comes Al Qaeda, ISIS...environment, then comes global warming,climate change,and whatever else anything gray they have thrown into the narrative.DC]
Already the CIA has shifted more to economic espionage. R. Buckminster Fuller said the CIA was “Capitalism's Invisible Army.” 46 “The CIA, the FBI and other parts of the intelligence community are working hand in hand with the U.S. Fortune 500 and high-tech 'Third Wave' firms to spy on corporate and government officials overseas—and to thwart foreign economic espionage aimed at American companies.” Many CIA agents now serve overseas, working undercover in businesses to gather intelligence, and people working in certain industries are recruited as spies. 47 Yet the CIA continued proclaiming that the Soviet Union was an economic giant until the fall of the Berlin wall. “And while the CIA uses our tax dollars to slavishly serve the interests of megacorporations, these same firms are busy exporting jobs and bilking the government on taxes and Pentagon contracts.” 48
Ever since World War II the military and secret police power of the U.S. has steadily increased, while our national security has decreased. The cold war against the Soviet Union is over and now the enemy is the American people. In the name of protecting the country our constitutional form of government is gradually disappearing. A security apparatus doesn't just close up shop. However devoid of reality, from the bomber and missile gap in the 1960s and the errors in estimating Soviet military spending, the CIA always came up with excuses to justify its budget and continued existence. To restore constitutional government the CIA must be disbanded with all its drug traffickers arrested.
notes
Chapter XI The CIA and the Intelligence Community 1 Tim Weiner, “Senate Committee Receives Apology From Spy Agency,” New York Times, August 11, 1994, p. Al, C19.
2 Tim Weiner, Blank Check The Pentagons Black Budget (N.Y: Warner Books, 1990), p. 7.
3 Walter Pincus, “Spy Agency Hoards Secret $1 Billion,” Washington Post, September 24, 1995, p. Al, A22; Tim Weiner, “A Secret Agency's Secret Budgets Yield 'Lost' Billions, Officials Say,” New York Times, January 30, 1996, p. Al .
4 Federalist 58, Final Report p. 412.
5 G. Hunt, ed., Letter to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822, The Writings of James Madison, Vol. 9 (N.Y: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1910), p. 103.
6 Weiner, op. cit., Note 2, p. 24, 111.
7 Stewart L. Udall, The Myths of August (N.Y: Pantheon, 1994), p. 7.
8 Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (N.Y: Berkeley Publishing, 1974), p. 392.
9 Steven Emerson, Secret Warriors (N.Y: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1988).
10 Bill Moyers, The Secret Government: The Constitution In Crisis (Washington, D.C: Seven Locks Press, 1988), p. 92.
11 Verne Lyon, “Domestic Surveillance: The History of Operation CHAOS,” Covert Action, Number 34 (Summer, 1990), 59-62.
12 “The Select Committee's Investigative Record” The Village Voice, February 15, 1976, p. 72-91.
13 Tim Weiner, “The Pentagon's Secret Stash,” Mother Jones, XVI I (March/April, 1992), 22-28.
14 John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard (Boston: South End Press, 1991), p. 101.
15 Peter Cassidy, “The Banker Who Said No to the CIA,” The Progressive, 56 (June, 1992), 24-25.
16 James R. Adams and Douglas Frantz, A Full Service. Bank (N.Y: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1992), p. 326-7.
17 “The BCCI-CIA Connection: Just How Far Did It Go?” Newsweek, December 7, 1992, p. 49.
18 Tom Post, Daniel Pedersen, and Sieve Le Vine, “The CIA and BCCI,” Newsweek, August 12, 1991, p. 16-19, 21; Jack Calhoun, “BCCI: The Bank of the CIA,” Covert Action, Number 44 (Spring, 1993), 40-45.
19 Ralph Nader, “How Clinion Can Build Democracy,” The Nation, November 30, 1992, p. 649, 652-3.
20 Pete Brewton, The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (N.Y: Shapolsky Publishers, Inc., 1992), p. 384, 385.
21 Ibid., p. 343-357.
22 Steve Weinberg, “The Mob, the CIA and the S&L Scandal,” Columbia Journalism Review, XXIX (November/December, 1990), 28-35; Rebecca Sims, 286 Treason The New World order “Operatives and S&Ls: The CIA and Financial Institutions,” Covert Action, Number 35 (Fall, 1990), 43-48.
23 David Corn, “The Company They Keep,” The Washington Monthly, XXVI (July/August, 1994), 34-38.
24 David Corn, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIAs Crusaders (N.Y: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
25 Marcus Raskin, “Let's Terminate the C.I.A.,” The Nation, June 8, 1992, p. 776-7.
26 Stockwell, op. cit., Note 14, p. 51-2.
27 Frank Smyth, “My Enemy's Friends,” The New Republic, June 5, 1995, p. 18.
28 James Risen, “Congressman Under Fire for CIA Disclosures,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1995, p. Al, 14.
29 Tim Weiner, “Spy Suspect Relied Deceptively On Lie Test in 1991, F.B.I. Says,” New York Times, March 8, 1994, p. 1, 18.
30 Ronald J. Ostrow and Robert L Jackson, “CIA Overlooked Red Flag From Ameses' Bank,” Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1994, p. Al, 16.
31 David Johnston, “Prosecutors Say Official At C.I.A. Spied For Russia,” New York Times, February 23, 1994, p. Al .
32 Mark Almond, “The KGB and America's War on Drugs,” Wall Street Journal, March 10, 1994, p. A18.
33 Bill Gertz, “CIA: IMF Aid to Moscow Paid Ames,” The Washington Times National Weekly, December 4-10, 1995, p. 17.
34 “The C.I.A.'s False Intelligence,” New York Times, November 29, 1995, p. A14.
35 Jack Anderson and Michael Binstein, “Testifying to the CIA's Arrogance,” Washington Post, January 11, 1996, p. 10.
36 George McGovern, “We Need A Constitutional Presidency,” Parade Magazine, August 9, 1987.
37 Jeffrey Denny, “See No Evil,” Common Cause Magazine, XVII (July/August, 1991), 23-27, 40.
38 Rodney Stich, Defrauding America (Alamo, Ca: Diablo Western Press, Inc., 1993), p. 312.
39 Jack Colhoun, “Bush Administration Uses CIA To Stonewall Iraqgate Investigation,” Covert Action, Number 42 (Fall, 1992), 40-41.
40 David Andelman, “The CIA's Trade Secret,” Worth, II (December/January, 1994), 19.
41 Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, 50 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time (N.Y: A Citadel Press Book, 1995), p. 157-164.
42 Stich, op. cit., Note 38, p. 286-287, 431, 517.
43 Angelo Codevilla, “Get Smart-Eliminate the CIA.” Wall Street Journal, January 18, 1995, p. A16.
44 David Ignatius, “Reinvent the CIA,” Washington Monthly, XXVI (April, 1994), 38; Rob Norton, “The CIA's Mission Improbable,” Fortune, 132 (October 2, 1995), 55.
45 Raskin, op. cit., Note 25, p. 776-784.
46 R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path (N.Y: St. Martin's Press, 1981), p. 116. Notes 287
47 Robert Dreyfuss, “Spying For Dollars,” In These Times, March 20, 1995, p. 24-26; Anthony L. Kimery, “The CIA: Banking On Intelligence,” Covert Action, Number 46 (Fall, 1993), 55-59.
48 Russ W. Baker, “CIA Out of Control,” Village Voice, September 10, 1991, p. 35-41.
The CIA is an extremely dangerous organization that is anathema to the survival of America as a free society. Its continued existence is a disaster waiting to happen. In 1991 and again in 1993 Senator Daniel Moynihan introduced the End of the Cold War Act, proposing to abolish the CIA and transfer its activities to the State Department and Pentagon, where there could be more political oversight. Moynihan said: “We have become a national-security state, a country mobilized for war on a permanent basis, and we got into the business of saying everything is secret. Can we recover the memory of what we were before we became what we are now? Can we recover a sense of proportion in the national-security state? The task of purging the Cold War from our institutions is enormous.”
Former CIA agent McGehee feels that the CIA should be abolished and that it isn't salvageable. It is too much under the political control of presidents and the NSC to produce accurate intelligence. The CIA is only one of 13 intelligence gathering agencies. While it analyzes foreign economics, many think tanks and universities do the same. There is vast duplication and waste of spending with the $28-30 billion intelligence budget that would be lessened if the CIA was closed. The Ames fiasco was only one example of bureaucratic sclerosis. Many intelligence reports produced by the CIA have been extremely inaccurate. The CIA also often blocked military intelligence from deploying officers who spoke foreign languages and who could mix with the local population. 43
I. F. Stone said: “The biggest menace to American freedom is the intelligence community.” Presidential edicts that place the intelligence community above the law should be cancelled. No one should be above the law. National security should never be a valid excuse to prevent someone from defending themself. Most forms of covert operations should be criminalized. This would help shift the intelligence community to intelligence gathering and analysis. And the intelligence community should be required to submit its budget for a full review each year as required by all branches of the government under Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution.
There should be a new monitoring agency carefully directed by Congress with the job of closely monitoring all intelligence agencies. This organization should have the power to, at any time, without advanced notice, review any files and at any installation throughout the country. The members of this agency should have the highest security clearance and be carefully chosen because of their belief and loyalty to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. There are many retired CIA agents who are disgusted by the illegal activities of that organization. Some of these people would be excellent leaders of this new agency. The government already has similar agencies with agents to monitor, for example, banks and stock brokers, so this proposal is not unique. This is the only way a Republic can survive with an intelligence community. It must be closely monitored.
Government wiretaps and searches should only be done with a court order that also fulfills the standards of the Bill of Rights. National security should never be used as an exception. Government bureaucrats who destroy or refuse to provide evidence as required by Congress should automatically be fired and then face civil and criminal charges including obstruction of justice. There is no room in government for people who deliberately hide information from the people's elected representatives. Congress with its investigative, subpoena, contempt, grant of immunity, and perjury powers already has the ability to control the bureaucracy. Unfortunately, this power is rarely exercised.
Despite the end of the cold war there have been few changes in the American intelligence community. Instead of working to dismantle the CIA and the intelligence community, the emphasis has been to develop new roles to maintain it. “The CIA of the 1990s is a vast global bureaucracy in search of a mission.” 44 The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence proposed in February, 1992 that the CIA focus more on terrorism, environmental intelligence, and aiding transnational corporations with economic intelligence. 45 If the intelligence community expands into numerous areas not directly involving intelligence, we will inevitably suffer from the same pattern of abuses and criminality that has existed for so many years.[92, then comes Al Qaeda, ISIS...environment, then comes global warming,climate change,and whatever else anything gray they have thrown into the narrative.DC]
Already the CIA has shifted more to economic espionage. R. Buckminster Fuller said the CIA was “Capitalism's Invisible Army.” 46 “The CIA, the FBI and other parts of the intelligence community are working hand in hand with the U.S. Fortune 500 and high-tech 'Third Wave' firms to spy on corporate and government officials overseas—and to thwart foreign economic espionage aimed at American companies.” Many CIA agents now serve overseas, working undercover in businesses to gather intelligence, and people working in certain industries are recruited as spies. 47 Yet the CIA continued proclaiming that the Soviet Union was an economic giant until the fall of the Berlin wall. “And while the CIA uses our tax dollars to slavishly serve the interests of megacorporations, these same firms are busy exporting jobs and bilking the government on taxes and Pentagon contracts.” 48
Ever since World War II the military and secret police power of the U.S. has steadily increased, while our national security has decreased. The cold war against the Soviet Union is over and now the enemy is the American people. In the name of protecting the country our constitutional form of government is gradually disappearing. A security apparatus doesn't just close up shop. However devoid of reality, from the bomber and missile gap in the 1960s and the errors in estimating Soviet military spending, the CIA always came up with excuses to justify its budget and continued existence. To restore constitutional government the CIA must be disbanded with all its drug traffickers arrested.
notes
Chapter XI The CIA and the Intelligence Community 1 Tim Weiner, “Senate Committee Receives Apology From Spy Agency,” New York Times, August 11, 1994, p. Al, C19.
2 Tim Weiner, Blank Check The Pentagons Black Budget (N.Y: Warner Books, 1990), p. 7.
3 Walter Pincus, “Spy Agency Hoards Secret $1 Billion,” Washington Post, September 24, 1995, p. Al, A22; Tim Weiner, “A Secret Agency's Secret Budgets Yield 'Lost' Billions, Officials Say,” New York Times, January 30, 1996, p. Al .
4 Federalist 58, Final Report p. 412.
5 G. Hunt, ed., Letter to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822, The Writings of James Madison, Vol. 9 (N.Y: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1910), p. 103.
6 Weiner, op. cit., Note 2, p. 24, 111.
7 Stewart L. Udall, The Myths of August (N.Y: Pantheon, 1994), p. 7.
8 Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (N.Y: Berkeley Publishing, 1974), p. 392.
9 Steven Emerson, Secret Warriors (N.Y: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1988).
10 Bill Moyers, The Secret Government: The Constitution In Crisis (Washington, D.C: Seven Locks Press, 1988), p. 92.
11 Verne Lyon, “Domestic Surveillance: The History of Operation CHAOS,” Covert Action, Number 34 (Summer, 1990), 59-62.
12 “The Select Committee's Investigative Record” The Village Voice, February 15, 1976, p. 72-91.
13 Tim Weiner, “The Pentagon's Secret Stash,” Mother Jones, XVI I (March/April, 1992), 22-28.
14 John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard (Boston: South End Press, 1991), p. 101.
15 Peter Cassidy, “The Banker Who Said No to the CIA,” The Progressive, 56 (June, 1992), 24-25.
16 James R. Adams and Douglas Frantz, A Full Service. Bank (N.Y: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1992), p. 326-7.
17 “The BCCI-CIA Connection: Just How Far Did It Go?” Newsweek, December 7, 1992, p. 49.
18 Tom Post, Daniel Pedersen, and Sieve Le Vine, “The CIA and BCCI,” Newsweek, August 12, 1991, p. 16-19, 21; Jack Calhoun, “BCCI: The Bank of the CIA,” Covert Action, Number 44 (Spring, 1993), 40-45.
19 Ralph Nader, “How Clinion Can Build Democracy,” The Nation, November 30, 1992, p. 649, 652-3.
20 Pete Brewton, The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (N.Y: Shapolsky Publishers, Inc., 1992), p. 384, 385.
21 Ibid., p. 343-357.
22 Steve Weinberg, “The Mob, the CIA and the S&L Scandal,” Columbia Journalism Review, XXIX (November/December, 1990), 28-35; Rebecca Sims, 286 Treason The New World order “Operatives and S&Ls: The CIA and Financial Institutions,” Covert Action, Number 35 (Fall, 1990), 43-48.
23 David Corn, “The Company They Keep,” The Washington Monthly, XXVI (July/August, 1994), 34-38.
24 David Corn, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIAs Crusaders (N.Y: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
25 Marcus Raskin, “Let's Terminate the C.I.A.,” The Nation, June 8, 1992, p. 776-7.
26 Stockwell, op. cit., Note 14, p. 51-2.
27 Frank Smyth, “My Enemy's Friends,” The New Republic, June 5, 1995, p. 18.
28 James Risen, “Congressman Under Fire for CIA Disclosures,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1995, p. Al, 14.
29 Tim Weiner, “Spy Suspect Relied Deceptively On Lie Test in 1991, F.B.I. Says,” New York Times, March 8, 1994, p. 1, 18.
30 Ronald J. Ostrow and Robert L Jackson, “CIA Overlooked Red Flag From Ameses' Bank,” Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1994, p. Al, 16.
31 David Johnston, “Prosecutors Say Official At C.I.A. Spied For Russia,” New York Times, February 23, 1994, p. Al .
32 Mark Almond, “The KGB and America's War on Drugs,” Wall Street Journal, March 10, 1994, p. A18.
33 Bill Gertz, “CIA: IMF Aid to Moscow Paid Ames,” The Washington Times National Weekly, December 4-10, 1995, p. 17.
34 “The C.I.A.'s False Intelligence,” New York Times, November 29, 1995, p. A14.
35 Jack Anderson and Michael Binstein, “Testifying to the CIA's Arrogance,” Washington Post, January 11, 1996, p. 10.
36 George McGovern, “We Need A Constitutional Presidency,” Parade Magazine, August 9, 1987.
37 Jeffrey Denny, “See No Evil,” Common Cause Magazine, XVII (July/August, 1991), 23-27, 40.
38 Rodney Stich, Defrauding America (Alamo, Ca: Diablo Western Press, Inc., 1993), p. 312.
39 Jack Colhoun, “Bush Administration Uses CIA To Stonewall Iraqgate Investigation,” Covert Action, Number 42 (Fall, 1992), 40-41.
40 David Andelman, “The CIA's Trade Secret,” Worth, II (December/January, 1994), 19.
41 Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen, 50 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time (N.Y: A Citadel Press Book, 1995), p. 157-164.
42 Stich, op. cit., Note 38, p. 286-287, 431, 517.
43 Angelo Codevilla, “Get Smart-Eliminate the CIA.” Wall Street Journal, January 18, 1995, p. A16.
44 David Ignatius, “Reinvent the CIA,” Washington Monthly, XXVI (April, 1994), 38; Rob Norton, “The CIA's Mission Improbable,” Fortune, 132 (October 2, 1995), 55.
45 Raskin, op. cit., Note 25, p. 776-784.
46 R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path (N.Y: St. Martin's Press, 1981), p. 116. Notes 287
47 Robert Dreyfuss, “Spying For Dollars,” In These Times, March 20, 1995, p. 24-26; Anthony L. Kimery, “The CIA: Banking On Intelligence,” Covert Action, Number 46 (Fall, 1993), 55-59.
48 Russ W. Baker, “CIA Out of Control,” Village Voice, September 10, 1991, p. 35-41.
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