All language subtitles for CI1

There is a question, a reasonable question, of:

„Okay, here's this agency and it's engaged in criminal activities around the world

some of which are quite deadly

some of which are quite provocative, in the sense of
laying the ground work for large scale military conflict.

And it's happening in a lot of countries.

This is not unique to the United States.
The US learned some of this from the British,

who've learned it, in turn, during the 19th century,

where they were a dominant imperial power around the world. They cut their teeth in this stuff.

And other major powers are definitely engaged in, and capable of, these same types of operations.

And small powers as well.
Israel is an example.

The CIA grew out of the OSS during WWII -
which had been established during WWII

Its earliest years are interesting because the new president,
Harry Truman, did not trust the OSS,

because he felt it was too dominated by parts of the Democratic Party that he didn't align himself with

so he abolished the OSS.
Then, they first created a

smaller intelligence agency from the remains of the old OSS,

called the Central Intelligence Group,

that was focused on analyzing intelligence.
It wasn't a covert operations agency.

What Truman wanted was to have one place, one inbox - and another stays (??)

– and other people don't know this –
there actually were a box made out of wood, that said ‘IN’

and in one inbox would come all information, whether it was from intercepted communications or satellite photography,

or defector reports, or clandestine reports, embassy, milly (military?)

It would all come to that one person, and that person –
and I was one of those persons, OK? – that person would be...

Not supposed to use that word, you know Washington, but if you promise not to let it get out of this room – it's:

accountable. OK?

One person would be accountable for looking at that stuff, pouring through it and if it were important -

and it often was (I was working in the Soviet Union) - then what you wrote up, assuming it was good analysis,

that could end up on the president's desk the next morning.

Unadulterated synthesis of information.

About two years after that, many of the agents who had worked on the covert operations side:

the paramilitary warfare operations, black operations, that sort of thing -

were re-established in an outfit called the Office for Policy Coordination.

And this "office" eventually grew to have about 5,000 agents in the early Cold War years.

The existence of this office was itself entirely top secret.
It had no open existence at all.

It wasn't until some years later that the Office of Policy Coordination was folded into the CIA, and the CIA became an agency

– I'm talking about the early 1950s now –

that openly had both a clandestine, black operations arm, and an intelligence analysis arm.

The OPC was set up to organize:

What happened at the end of WWII when Truman disbanded the OSS?

The covert operators were in the wilderness for a little while,

and some of them had been leading Wall Street bankers and lawyers, and there's a certain logic there:

because prior to the war, the people engaged in international trade and international law

were a relatively small number of people, and they were the specialists in international affairs for the US.

So, for example, the man who was later to become chief of covert operations, black operations, for the CIA

was a man named Frank Wisner, quite a prominent Wall Street lawyer.

The man who later became the director of the CIA was Allen Dulles.

His career, prior to WWII was basically in international law and cutting deals
of one sort or another with trade partners around the world.

Some of the trade partners included fascists,

some aspects of Nazi Germany or companies associated with Nazi Germany,

Italy, prior to the war;

in WWII, in Poland there had been a military dictatorship, very authoritarian country.

Allan Dulles made part of his living by helping to finance deals that kept that government in power.

There's many other examples along the same lines.

During the war, they went into covert operations for the US government because they had some expertise in dealing with foreign countries.

After the war, they went back to Wall Street...

For a short time.

Then, by the late 1940s, they were back in the intelligence complex, in the two examples that I mentioned, in leadership and management type roles.

From the beginning, the CIA was steeped in elitism.

Its top leadership was made up mostly of Wall Street lawyers,

while new recruits were sought through the top Ivy League universities.

Gaddis Smith, a history professor at Yale, remarked that:

One Yale institution would prove especially significant:

a ghoulish fraternity known as Skull and Bones.

Its membership has included some of the most powerful figures in American history.

Among them was F. Trubee Davison, the CIA's first director of personnel.

Skull and Bones gained national notoriety during the 2004 presidential election

when it was revealed that the Republican candidate George W. Bush,
as well as the Democratic candidate, senator John Kerry

were members of the same secret society.

The meeting place for members of Skull and Bones is known as „The Tomb“.

Inside are dozens of human skulls, including those of children,

as well as that of the famed Apache warrior, Geronimo.

According to internal records, Geronimo's grave was pilfered in 1918

by George Bush Jr's grandfather, Prescott Bush.

When in 1986, Geronimo's great-grandson demanded the skull's return, the Skull and Bones society refused.

„You both were members of Skull and Bones, the secret society in Yale. What does that tell us?“

„Uh, not much, 'cause it's a secret.“ (laughter)

„Is there a secret handshake, is there a secret code?“

„I wish there were something secret I could manifest.“

I think the role of most of the secret societies like Skull and Bones, they have histories, as I say,

terms of the splits within the class and also class hegemony.

I think when you recruit people and you get them to do something illegal,

it's similar to what the Mafia does to implicate somebody.

The Skull and Bones picks each year have to go and dig someone up out of a grave and commit a criminal act.

They are required in their initiation to admit to criminal acts that they've been part of, or sexual acts they've been part of.

I think it's more that the class uses these secret groups in order to get loyalty

and to control the coming generations and other participants in the class operations,

rather than the other way around, that there is 15 people running the world.

They do put those people once they're chosen into positions of power,

and that kind of choosing goes on with or without the secret societies

and you get a concentration of power and decision making into a very few hands

whether or not they are inter-related that way.

The culture of the secret society would find a parallel in the new intelligence agency.

Internally, it was known as „The Company“.

Within just a few years, it would become one of the most powerful institutions in the American government.

Just as Eisenhower would later warn of the military-industrial complex, that he himself had helped to create,

Truman would voice alarm over the evolution of the Central Intelligence Agency.

He came to not only regret it, but to speak out about it.

In 1963, 30 days to the day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy,

Truman actually wrote an op-ed that was published in
The Washington Post in which he revealed this, and he said:

„I never intended for it to become what it has become“.

This is very interesting because that op-ed appeared in the early edition of The Washington Post

and then it was excised from all the later editions that day.

Allan Dulles, perhaps the most important of the CIA directors flew out to Independence, Missouri

to try to get Truman to retract what he had written, and he refused.

What you find really is that captors have made the state, in a way, a sight of struggle

between the public and the formal institutions of democracy

which legitimized the existence of capitalism.
between the public and the formal institutions of democracy

which legitimized the existence of capitalism.

The reality, that actually, in many ways, this was a very undemocratic system

that wasn't working in the interest of the majority of the population.

So there was this constant tension inherent to capitalism between

this hierarchical centralized elitist dynamic

and this need to legitimize itself and to say:

"No, but we are free, we are democratic and we do have these formal institutions."

So, on the one hand that required this discourse of humanitarian interventionism

and doing it for the benefit of the public good,

but it also institutionalized this new dynamic where covert action would also be much more, kind of interesting

as a way of doing things, because, again, the public wouldn't be aware of it.

At the same time the OPC became operational, the National Security Council

approved a radical new policy.

It secretly authorized the CIA to conduct programs which were officially nonexistent,

thereby passing the US Congress.

The NSC ordered that the new operations be deniable, meaning:

Here, one of the CIA's first covert operators, Kermit Roosevelt,

discusses plausible deniability in connection with the 1954 US coup

the democratically elected government of Iran:

„There was some discussion, and first of those went around the table,

and the only person on the State Department's side

whom I can remember that has taken any kind of specific position was ambassador Henderson

who was back for this meeting. He said that he wanted to know none of the details.

He felt this was a considerable departure from diplomatic tradition,

but he felt it was required by the situation. He wanted to approve it,

and he wanted to know as little about it as possible.“

“...allow union infiltrators sufficient lead time.”

Union infiltrators?

“Though CIA exposure seems unlikely, standard program of denial of involvement is recommended.”

Standard program of denial recommended.

"I made a very deliberate decision not to ask the president

so that I could insulate him from the decision

and provide some future deniability for the president, if it ever leaked out."

But there was no denying that the president's men knew what was in the president's mind.

"He had been very adamant

at the time, that he says: 'Look, I don't want to pull out

our support for the Contras for any reason. This would be an unacceptable option.’

Isn’t there something that I could do unilaterally?”

Unilaterally - in other words - without Congressional approval.

This is a T-shirt, I got it here in Washington at one of those outdoor kiosks, and it says:

“Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counter accusations.”

And that's really what plausible deniability is about.

Plausible deniability gives the people at the top of these agencies,

and most particularly the political leadership of the country, which gives orders to these agencies,

the opportunity to disavow what has in fact been carried out on the basis of orders that come from the president.

The people on the ground in El Salvador, for example,

they know darn well that death squads (I'm talking about in the 1980s) infest the country,

and that thousands, and even tens of thousands of people are being killed by these death squads.

See, you can’t hide that reality.

The people in Washington, in Congress, for example,

they are told that there is no association

between the US government and the death squads.

And in fact, here’s a press release, Mr. Congressman, that deplores the death squads.

The way that that can be done is if there is a disjuncture,

a compartmentalization between the CIA and the military-intelligence role in these death squads,

which we now know to be factual, and their higher-ups in the chain of command.

Now, what was the role of the people down here? Well, that was a little more complicated.

What the US military advisers do is to teach the people in the country

how to organize themselves and how to carry out missions

and how to keep their mouths shut about missions,

and how the be more “professional”

in the jobs that the indigenous troops want to carry out anyway.

It wasn’t quite that the American advisers said

“Thou shall create a death squad, and you’re gonna report to me.”

No. What they said was: “Here’s how to organize yourself,

to conduct missions, and don’t report to me. 'Cause I don’t wanna know.”

That’s how it’s done.

And then, back in Washington, the guys who

- or women too, certainly -

who are in charge of managing these little units, these paramilitary units around the world,

they're saying basically the same thing:

“Go take care of business in El Salvador, and don’t tell me about it. Cause I don’t wanna know.”

We don't talk about those things in this house, do we?

No, it's too elegant, too respectable.

Nice kids - party - painting of Mama up there on the wall.

No place for a stinkin' cop!

It's only a place for a hoodlum who built this house out of twenty years of corruption and murder.

I'm gonna tell you something.

You know, you couldn't plant enough flowers around here to kill the smell.

It was an attack on the whole integrity of government. If whole file cabinets can be stolen

and made available to the press, you can't have order in the government anymore. (Henry Kissinger)

“A name has now come out as a possible source of the Times’ Pentagon Documents.

It is that of Daniel Ellsberg, top policy analyst for the Defense and State Department.”

I think it is time in this country to quit making national heroes

out of those who steal secrets and publish them in the newspaper.“

He became a household name overnight. Daniel Ellsberg,

a high ranking Pentagon official, leaked a treasure trove of secret documents to The New York Times.

The publication of The Pentagon Papers seemed to affirm a widely held view:

no matter how hard you try, you can not keep secrets in Washington.

„The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society“

Yet Ellsberg himself has a radically different take.

He states that the myth of transparency is:

One of the most remarkable demonstrations of this capability was The Manhattan Project,

the gargantuan construction effort responsible for producing the atomic bomb.

Though it involved hundreds of thousands of people, not even then Vice-president Harry Truman

became aware of its existence, until assuming the top command after the death of Franklin Roosevelt.

How is this possible?

Part of the answer lies in the concept of compartmentalization.

It's very important to recognize that military intelligence is not a monolithic structure.

It's a set of different institutions; bureaucratic,

different agencies are assigned different tasks.

It's precisely because of this bureaucratic compartmentalization and this military hierarchy

that different agencies would not know what other agencies have done, in fact this is how it operates.

A particular agency may be given a task to perform a particular component of an operation.

But there is this concept of need-to-know,

so for example the agency may order, even the subsection of the agency, or a division of the agency

or a cell operated by the agency may on a need-to-know basis understand

what they need to do as a specific component of the operation.

They may know that they need to travel somewhere and plant a device,

or go somewhere and do surveillance of somebody,

but they do not necessarily know why they are doing that

or the context of what the strategic purpose is, or anything else at all.

The purpose of this is to ensure that operations are kept classified and the information remains secret,

that it's not subject to being leaked to the public,

that it's not subject to over-scrutiny from the public,or from

publicly nominated institutions of the government.

Okay, that sounds logical on some levels,

it has the effect of creating compartments

in which particular operations are carried out.

These operations, on the one hand, may have very significant effects.

I mean, that's the whole point of having an operation, right?

But, what the effects are, the existence of the operation,

the responsibility for it, and so forth,

is secret even within the CIA.

You know, the entire career that I spent in the CIA,

I was in the analysis half of the CIA.

The other half being the operational half, or, you could call it the “dirty tricks” half, you could call it

just the half that did things, rather than only talked about things and wrote about things.

I was in the analytical half of the agency.

Very rarely did people in the analytical half get overseas at all,

but I had two lengthy tours overseas: the 1950s for three years in Germany

and in the late 1960s, early 1970s for two and a half years in Vietnam.

If you just stayed in Washington as an analyst for the CIA,

you really were, pretty fully compartmentalized away from operational work done in the agency.

You did not have a need to know and the discipline in the agency was pretty darn good.

Like most bureaucracies there's tension between the people at the top of the organization

and those further down the line.
The compartmentalization,

in some instances, creates a means

for different political factions to write their own foreign policy.

One of the reasons we have trouble understanding

how things actually happen behind the scenes is because of compartmentalization.

Compartmentalization is inherent to intelligence organizations.

And so even within a very secret operation there are many more secret levels,

there are many more cells, competing factions and what-have-you,

and there are fascinating stories for example, about how OPC (Office of Policy Coordination),

which really became the hub of the covert operations the CIA would do all over the world.

Very often we had situations where the CIA was investigating something,

and OPC was actually doing something and hiding it from the rest of CIA

and putting false material into the files to prevent discovery.

This is very complex, very deep, very profound material.

It's something we need to do much, much more research on.

An important compartment of the US intelligence bureaucracy is the NGO (Non Governmental Organization).

The majority of these groups, American or otherwise,

are exactly as advertised.
Organizations set up independently of the State.

But not all NGOs live up to their title.

Like the traditional front company, a seemingly legitimate business run and staffed by criminals or spies,

some NGOs have been revealed to be thinly veiled outgrowths of government agencies, including the CIA.

"The key to CIA's current troubles is that unique American institution,

the tax-free foundation.

Here's what happened:

first, CIA itself set up a number of dummy foundations calling them by impressive-sounding, if meaningless names.

Their sole function was to channel money from the CIA to a second kind of foundation.

Now, these foundations were real.

Some obscure, some well-known, all involved in legitimate philanthropy.

But now, in addition,

they agreed to become conduits for Central Intelligence, mixing up the government money with their own

and then passing it on to the ever growing list of private organizations,

which during the 40s, 50s and 60s,

were climbing on board of the CIA payroll.

Let's take a closer look at those legitimate foundations which became CIA payout agencies.

They are among the 15,000 charitable funds

that have sprung up in America in response, partly, to the social consciences of the rich,

partly to the structure of our tax laws.

They are the operative arms of what has come to be called the American establishment,

the power structure of moneyed families, august law firms,

prestigious universities, which have had so much influence in shaping American life and national policies since WWII.

CBS newsman Norman Glubock reports on some of the foundations which channeled money for the CIA."

"This building is 73 Fremont Street in Austin.

Just under its windows lies the historic old Granary Burial Ground,

last resting place of such revolutionary patriots as Samuel Adams and Paul Revere.

The building directory doesn't list it, but tax reports of the Granary Fund show its home in room 329,

which turns out to be the law firm of Hemenway & Barnes.

No one there would talk before CBS news cameras about the Granary Fund,

a reticence which is proved universal among the foundations.

But Granary Fund reports were signed George H. Kidder.

Mr Kidder is listed in Who's who in America.

Among his former associations, the initials: CIA.“

…is the CIA going around behind the scenes and trying to manipulate the

process secretly by inserting money here and instructions there, and so forth.

They have now a sidekick,

which is this National Endowment for Democracy.

Good morning and welcome.

It's good to have you all here to help celebrate the launching of a program with a vision and a noble purpose.

The National Endowment for Democracy is just as we've been told,

more than bi-partisan.

The establishment of the National Endowment

goes right to the heart of America's faith in democratic ideals and institutions.

The attempt at 2002 coup against leftist leader Hugo Chavez in the oil-rich nation of Venezuela

reveals the pseudo NGO at work.

Venezuela is important because they're the third largest supplier of petroleum.

I would say that Mr. Chavez - and the State Department may say this -

probably doesn't have the interest of the United States at heart.

During the coup attempt, the Bush administration immediately voiced support for the plotters.

„The Bush administration made it clear that it's happy with the change in leadership

in the country responsible for 15% of America's oil imports.“

Initially, many observers attributed this support to an ideological affinity

between the coup faction and the Bush administration.

However, it soon became apparent that the coup was actually sponsored by the US itself.

The National Endowment for Democracy had funneled millions of dollars to Venezuelan dissident groups and politicians,

many of whom took up cabinet positions in the short-lived government.

In the media, an illusion was conjured of a popular uprising and government crackdown.

In reality, Chavez had the support of the vast majority of the population.

This was soon made apparent when an actual uprising arose in response to the coup,

forcing the Venezuelan military to reinstate the deposed leader.

That the CIA has overthrown countless governments around the world, is no longer a closely held secret.

What is less known, is that its agents have engaged in similar plots against America's closest allies.

According to the CIA's charter, agents can not engage in secret operations of any kind, within the countries of the UK,

Australia, Canada and New Zealand without the explicit prior approval of the host government.

Yet not even this most basic tenet has been upheld.

The coup against Gough Whitlam's labor government in Australia, 1972,

exposes a wide variety of dirty tricks used by intelligence agencies to undermine democracy.

„We will not yield to blackmail.

We will not be panicked.

We will not turn over the government of this country

to vested interests, pressure groups,

and newspaper proprietors whose tactics would destroy the standards and traditions of parliamentary government.“

In Australia, 1972, a labor government was elected for the first time in 23 years.

It would be brought down in a de-facto coup d'etat conducted by the CIA

in liaison with the Britain's MI6, and most shockingly,

Australia's own intelligence services.

Since assuming power in Australia, Whitlam's labor government

had enacted a series of reforms.

These included: raises in wages, pensions and unemployment benefits,

free national health care, equal pay for women,

the abolishment of tuition fees, news services for Aboriginal peoples,

and the replacement of God Save the Queen with Australia's own national anthem.

Most disturbing to Washington, however,

was the withdrawal of the Australian troops from Vietnam,

the support of Palestinian rights

and the proposal of the Indian Ocean zone of peace.

Worst of all, Whitlam hinted that he may shut down a number of American military bases, including Pine Gap.

But CIA director William Colby petitioned his counterpart at MI6,

Sir Maurice Oldfield for help.

He stressed that Australia was traditionally Britain's domain,

and that if Pine Gap were closed, the alliance would be blinded strategically.

Unbeknownst to Australia's new Prime Minister, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization,

had not only been working closely with the CIA,

they have been illegally passing on dossiers concerning every member of the Labor Party,

as well as union leaders, peace activists and other Australian citizens.

A slush fund was set up to provide money to both opposition parties via the Nugen Hand Bank, a CIA front company.

This was followed up by a promise to the main opposition Liberal Party of unlimited funds.

"In recent years there have been charges from time to time,

that the CIA has involved itself in illegal activities.

Some of the most bizarre to date involve a bank in Australia known as the Nugen Hand,

and tonight Gary Shepherd has a report."

"When the Nugen Hand bank of Sydney, Australia collapsed in 1980,

it appeared at first glance to be just another bank failure,

but after Australian authorities began taking a closer look,

they discovered a tangled web of intrigue, with all the elements of a best-selling spy novel.

A mysterious death, the body later dug-up from its grave,

illegal currency transactions, big time drug operations,

and the Central Intelligence Agency.

'We were to become the paymasters for the CIA around the world.

In other words, we were putting ourselves into position to

disperse funds for the CIA

to whoever they were directed.'

Former bank executive Neil Evans, given immunity from prosecution, agreed to talk about the Nugen Hand operation on Australian television.

From his account and others, the bank had its genesis during the Vietnam War.

Four of the original stockholders were Americans who listed their addresses as:

Air America, Army Post Office, San Francisco.

Air America was the CIA airline in Indochina,

hauling men and supplies on clandestine missions,

and according to former CIA agents, even drugs,

out of the so called golden triangle,

where the borders of Burma, Laos and Thailand converge.

Nugen Hand sent Neil Evans to the Thai city of Chiang Mai, the commercial center of the drug trade.

He claims that CIA made millions and used the money to finance some of its secret projects.

'The idea was that money would be deposited with the Nugen Hand bank by the CIA

through various channels,
and also that the Nugen Hand bank would be

the repository for funds coming in from various CIA enterprises,

namely drugs in Thailand, marijuana in particular.

The Nugen Hand bank would then be responsible for re-routing that money

to an account in America, with the New York Bank.'

Nugen Hand was not your ordinary bank. There were secret numbered accounts,

and hardly any of its top people were bankers.

Many were American civilians and former high-ranking military officers with ties to US intelligence.

When they found the body of Australian businessman Frank Nugen, the bank's chairman,

shot to death a few months before the bank went under, they discovered in his pocket

the business card of this man:

William Colby, former director of the CIA.

Nugen's partner was Michael Hand, an American green beret,

who served two tours in Vietnam, one of them for the CIA.

He disappeared a short while after the bank collapsed, and is now believed to be dead.

Australian newspapers reported a connection between Nugen Hand

and the US navy's super secret intelligence unit, known as Task Force 157.

Among its top agents, CIA man Edwin Wilson,

now under indictment for selling arms and explosives to Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

And a man named Patry E Loomis has also been implicated.

He was the apparent CIA-Nugen Hand go-between.

It was Loomis who helped Wilson recruit a team of green berets to train terrorists in Libya.

The Nugen Hand affair has caused an uproar in Australia where authorities are trying to find out what involvement

the bank might've had in the 1975 downfall of the Labor Party government.

Meanwhile, investigators on three continents are attempting to trace 15 million dollars

missing from the accounts of depositors, including many Americans.

Here in this country, the CIA denies any involvement with drug operations in Indochina,

the Nugen Hand bank itself or the deaths of two men who ran it.

Gary Shepherd for CBS news, Los Angeles."

In addition to the slush fund, the CIA created a series of forged documents

implicating high-ranking members of the Labor Party in succession of scandals.

No hard evidence was ever produced to substantiate the allegations,

but a complicit Australian media, spearheaded by a young Rupert Murdoch, fanned the flames of discontent.

"Do you think the newspaper will have any political orientation, like The Sun and its predecessor, The Daily Herald?"

"No, no, no fixture orientation in a sense to be allied to any party, certainly not, it will be quite independent."

One of the most damaging of the forgeries was a report indicating that the Labor ministers

have received kickbacks during the so-called "loans affair".

In 1981, a CIA contract agent named Joseph Flynn

admitted that he had forged these documents at the behest of Michael Hand,

co-founder of the CIA's Nugen Hand bank.

As the contrived scandals escalated, a state of emergency was declared.

Invoking the authority of the British crown, attorney-general John Carr dismissed Whitlum as Prime Minister.

When compared to many other leaders targeted by the CIA, Whitlum and Wilson got off easy.

The CIA attempted to assassinate several dozen leaders during the Cold War.

Often times, they succeeded.

"This is Fort Detrick, Maryland.

This once secret facility was home to CIA experiments with drugs like LSD.

It was also an armory for the agencies executive action capability.

A program begun under the Eisenhower administration for disposing of unwanted foreign leaders.

Some of the plots called for lethal poisons that were manufactured here.

Dr. Everett Hanel, a microbiologists at Fort Detrick for three decades,

worked in association with the CIA.

'These are what we call Class 3 cabinet systems, they are gas-type systems

for working with almost complete safety with any infectious diseases, toxins.

Things such as the shellfish toxin, which is very toxic indeed,

particularly when highly purified and I understand that these could be

placed on steel needles and fired with air guns

into an animal and induce death almost immediately.

So they were apparently a very effective, or could be, a very effective type of covert weapon.'

Among the most disturbing CIA documents from the Cold War period

is the agency's How to guide on assassination.

Beginning with the ironic disclaimer that murder is not morally justifiable,

it goes on to state:

From there, the guide highlights potential methods.

The simplest local tools are often the most efficient.

A hammer.

A screwdriver.

A fire poker.

A kitchen knife.

A lamp stand, or anything hard, heavy and handy will suffice.

A length of rope, or a wire or a belt will do if the assassin is strong and agile.

For secret assassination either a simpler chase (?),

a contrived accident is the most effective technique.

When successfully executed, it causes little excitement and is only casually investigated.

The most efficient accident is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface.

Elevator shafts, stairwells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve.

Falls into the sea, or swiftly flowing rivers will suffice if the subject can not swim.

Arson could cause accidental death if the subject is drugged and left in a burning building.

Reliability is not satisfactory unless the building is isolated and highly combustible.

If the subject drinks heavily, morphine or similar narcotic

can be injected at the passing out stage and the cause of death will often be held to be acute alcoholism.

Puncture wounds of the body cavity may not be reliable unless the heart is reached.

The heart is protected by the rib cage and is not always easy to locate.

Absolute reliability is obtained by severing the spinal chord in the cervical region.

This can be done with the point of a knife or a light blow of an axe or a hatchet.

Another reliable method is the severing of both jugular and carotid blood vessels on both sides of the wind pipe.

"…that the officers of the CIA

do it because they love this country.

We believe in a free and open society

and we deeply believe in upholding the laws and the values of this society.

That's why we defend it,

so that, in the words of my immigrant father,

we can pass those values onto our children."

What sort of philosophy could possibly justify such carnage?

During the Cold War, the official justification was to prevent the spread of communism

and to promote what was termed 'the national interest'.

What does national interest mean to you?

If you have the feeling that there is some

document that is revised every year or every couple of years,

some document that exists in the US government

that is headlined "US National Interests"

and every year, or every other year this is gone over carefully by

groups of people high in the government and approved – these are our national interests;

that never, ever, once, happens.

Every single administration

has, and is able to make up as it goes along

what it thinks the US national interests are.

Every single individual who works in the government

may very well have in his own mind a list of what he thinks

the national interest of the country are.

Neither the phrase national security nor the phrase national interest has real meaning,

other than to be a political tool

for keeping the public uninformed.

Essentially, the elite, in its ignorance,

and in its obsessive desire to maintain secrecy and not be accountable to the public,

seeks simple explanations.

They seek reasons that they can use as a jingle

that will allow the public to believe in what they're doing or to ignore what they’re doing.

What most Americans don’t realize is that we, the people, are being held accountable by foreign publics for what is done in our name.

Almost immediately after the CIA’s founding,

the national interest was revealed to be a highly flexible frame of reference.

In the coups against Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran

and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala,

neither country had communist governments,

nor any links to the Soviet Union.

What they did have were leaders that threatened to nationalize major industries,

thereby threatening the profits of western corporations.

In Iran, it was oil.

In Guatemala, land.

I’m John Perkins and I am a former economic hit-man.

What we economic hit-men did, essentially was to create the world’s first truly global empire.

I was recruited by the NSA

while I was attending Boston University back in the 60s.

They put me through a series of tests, including:

lie detector tests, psychological tests,

and in that process, they determined that I had the potential

for being a good economic hit-man.

They also discovered a number of weaknesses in my character that would make it

fairly easy for them to hook me into doing this job.

So they offered me a job as a trainee

and it’s interesting, when you accept a job like that with the NSA

they don’t tell you exactly what you’re gonna be doing.

They tell you that for the next year or so,

you’re gonna be training, and then at the end of that period of time

they'll really determine what you’re going to be doing,

but ultimately, I ended up becoming an economic hit-man.

We did it by using many different means, perhaps the most common was

to identify a third world country

with resources that our corporations covet, like oil,

and then range a huge loan to that country from organization like The World Bank or one of its sisters,

but that country never actually received the money. Instead, the money went to our own corporations

to build big infrastructure projects in that country like power plants and industrial parks,

things that would help the very rich people in that country

as well as our own corporations,

but not the majority of the people who are too poor to buy electricity or don’t have the skills to get jobs in industrial parks.

And yet, they, the whole country, would end up holding a huge debt,

such a big debt that they couldn’t possibly repay it.

"When I lose, I pay and when I win I expect to get paid.

I don’t ask anybody to trust me and I don’t trust anybody: big shot or a penny ante chiseler"

"But I tell ya, I haven't got it, if I have I'd give it to ya,

now don't be like that, Blackie, give me a couple of days"

So at some point, we, economic hit-men,

go back and say: "Listen, you owe us a lot of money.

You can't pay your debts – sell us your oil real cheaply",

or "Vote with us on the next critical UN vote",

or "Send troops in support of ours" to someplace

in the world, like Iraq

and in that way we've created this empire.

On the few occasions when we economic hit-men fail,

the jackals go in.

These are people who will overthrow governments or assassinate the leaders

of the countries that didn't accept the loans.

I failed as an economic hit-man with Jaime Roldos,

the president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos of Panama,

and because I failed to corrupt them, failed to bring them around,

failed to get them to take on these loans that were so destructive to their countries,

they were both assassinated by the CIA supported jackals.

The words economic hit-man and jackal

are kind of tounge-in-cheek words, we use them,

but it's like the word spy,

or snoop,

spook, or even CIA agent.

People don't really use any of those terms.

If you're a true CIA agent, a spy,

you may talk about it tounge-in-cheek, but you've got a fancier title like

attache, a commercial attache at some embassy,

we economic hit-men all had fancy titles, too.
My title was Chief Economist.

But we would use this term 'economic hit-man' in tounge-in-cheek.

And the jackals are usually people who worked for private, what they call security firms:

a company that will have a semi-legitimate contract

with some branch of the government to do something,

such as protect our personnel at an embassy overseas, or maybe protect

a media crew overseas and they will be paid to do that,

but there will be one person

in that organization who's managed,

coming through these other channels.

Sometimes the channels are what they call the 'black box monies' from the CIA.

The money coming through these channels to hire this one person,

who is, essentially, an assassin.

On a few occasions when the jackals

and economic hit-men both fail,

then we send in the military.

When you have an empire, you have to ask yourself:
who is the emperor?

Well, an emperor is someone who is not elected, doesn't serve a limited term

and doesn't report to anyone.

We do have a group of people that I call the corporatocracy,

which are the people who run our biggest corporations,

who do fit that definition.

They're not elected,

they don't serve a limited term,

and they don't report to anyone.

They like to say they report to their boards of directors,

but they are all on each others' boards of directors,

and board of directors is basically a rubber stamp of what the CEO wants to do.

So, this is the modern equivalent of the emperor.

They're all driven by one, single motive. One goal,

and that is to maximize profits regardless

of the social and environmental cost.

In heading for that goal,

they've created a world that's very dangerous,

very unfair,

unsustainable.

A world that I certainly don't want to pass onto my grandson.

Beginning in earnest under president Clinton

and expanding still further during the Bush Jr. And the Obama administrations,

the use of private contractors by the US has increased dramatically.

Bearing names like Titan and Aegis,

they are the modern equivalent of the mercenary army.

"Today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq

will come home by the end of the year."

When president Obama announced the withdrawal of troops from Iraq,

many Americans did not realize that thousands of mercenaries,

funded by the US tax payer, would remain in place.

Far from saving costs,

these private contractors have repeatedly robbed the US tax payer

for millions of dollars.

But from a military-intelligence perspective,

they perform useful purposes.

They establish plausible deniability,

they further minimize Congressional oversight,

they bypass rules of war, such as the Geneva Conventions,

and they create enormous profits for their benefactors.

A case in point, is DynCorp, whose clients have included:

the Drug Enforcement Agency,

the Department of Defense,

Department of State,

the IRS, FBI,

and of course, CIA.

About half of DynCorp's revenue

comes from the Department of Defense.

„Every day, the people of DynCorp International are hard at work

supporting defense, diplomacy,

and development initiatives.

Because we believe in the relentless commitment that has made us a leader

in providing government support solutions.

With 22,000 employees in 39 countries,

we provide total support

in aviation and land systems,

logistics,

training and mentoring,

intelligence, international development,

anti-corruption, and base operations.

We believe in doing the right thing

always. For our customers,

our employees and those we serve."

In 1999, it was revealed that employees of DynCorp

were NOT doing the right thing.

They were working with the Serbian mafia in the trafficking of sex slaves,

including children.

"Mr. Secretary, I watched President Bush

deliver a moving speech at the UN in September, 2003

in which he mentioned the crisis of the sex trade.

The president called for the punishment of those involved in this horrible business.

But at the very moment of that speech,

DynCorp was exposed for having been involved in the buying and selling

of young women and children.

While all of this was going on, DynCorp kept the Pentagon contract

to administer the smallpox and anthrax vaccines

and is now working on a plague vaccine through the joint vaccine acquisition program.

Mr. Secretary, is it policy of the US government to reward companies that traffic in women and little girls?"

"Uhm... Thank you, eh, representative.

First, the answer to your first question is no,

absolutely not, the policy of the US government is

clear, unambiguous and opposed

to the activities that you described.

The, uhm... second question..."

"Well, how do you explain the fact that

DynCorp and its successor companies have

received and continue to receive government contracts?

"I would have to go and find the facts,

but there are laws and rules and regulations with respect to government contracts,

and there are times that corporations do things they should not do in which case they tend to be suspended for some period.

There are times then that the,

under the laws and rules and regulations,

passed by the Congress and implemented by the executive branch,

that corporations can get off of,

out of the penalty box if you will, and be permitted to

engage in contracts with the government.

They are generally not barred in perpetuity."

"This contract, this company,

was never in the penalty box. If you could proceed to my second question, please."

DynCorp was not placed in the penalty box and was soon back to its old tricks.

In 2009, WikiLeaks cables revealed

that DynCorp was arranging sex parties for Afghan politicians,

involving small boys.

One of these politicians was the minister of education.

Nor has the intelligence bureaucracy itself remained idle since the founding of the CIA.

Under the Reagan administration, a new player emerged:

JSOC, or the
Joint Special Operations Command.

JSOC was ostensibly created as a response

to the failed 1980 hostage rescue attempt

of American embassy personnel in Iran.

It went on to conduct operations in
Honduras, El Salvador,

Nicaragua, and countless other nations.

"The basic premise that I was saying, is there's a unit known as

the Joint Special Operations Command - JSOC.

It's a separately independent unit that does not report to Congress,

at least in the years I know about, and I spent,

if people read a story I wrote last summer in New Yorker, the Congresspeople are very upset to see new leadership.

It has been given executive authority by the president in as many as 12 countries

to go in and kill, we are talking about high value targets.

That's absolutely correct."

Recently, it was revealed that JSOC has been training members of the MEK,

an Israeli-backed terrorist group, on US soil.

At the very same time that MEK

was cited on the State Department's own list of terrorist organizations.

"If they're killing people that we don't like, it's not terrorism, by the way, we should add

that BRICS and even the EU had basically

moved away from that terrorism name, because, again,

they like having these guys.

If somebody else can do the dirty work and you can make an absolute denial,

as we have seen from the likes of our Secretary of State, who said:

"We are absolutely not involved in the assassination of these 5 scientists.

And we have absolutely said it definitively!"

Isn't it nice to have an organization
- I'm not suggesting this is the organization -

but it's nice to have an organization

that can do something, so you can say: "It wasn't me. It must've been...

somebody else."
Y'know what I mean?"

The United States now has 16 separate intelligence agencies,

ranging from the ONI,
the Office of Naval Intelligence,

to the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Admiral Dennis C. Blair, whom president Obama appointed Director of National Intelligence,

disclosed in 2012 that the current annual budget

for America's 16 intelligence agencies

is a remarkable 75 billion dollars.

More than the entire military budgets of major powers,

such as the UK, France and Germany.

It employs more than 200,000 operatives worldwide,

many of whom are mercenaries.

Giving the intelligence community more money is like pouring gasoline onto a fire,

it is a really bad idea.

There is no oversight. There is no accountability, and therefore,

they'll go on, I mean, general Haden who has now violated the constitution twice,

once with wireless wiretapping and the second time with torture and rendition.

Haden is on record as saying that any time he wanted to close down a program at NSA,

the guy who would lose his status and his money and his program was the only who could tell him about it.

So, no oversight has really created a monster.

There are 16 intelligence agencies.

It turns out that the State Department costs almost nothing,

produces the most value with open-source intelligence,

with information that is not stolen and is legal and ethical.

Then you have the CIA,

which has a mish-mash of analysis and a mish-mash of clandestine collection,

and then after that come the technical agencies.

The NSA which does signals intelligence,

including warrantless wiretapping, and some other elements.

The long and the short of it is that

we're spending 60-75 billion dollars of which CIA spends no more than 6 billion,

and we're spending it on things that don't work.

Lockheed will spend a hundred million dollars of the taxpayer's money

on a satellite that will self-destruct on the launch pad,

and Lockheed will be given a contract to build another one.

I mean, this is nuts! Policy makers are so stupid,

they would rather a secret picture than an intelligent human analysis.

So the whole system is rotten.

The next president can safely cut the secret budget by 80%

and move that money into education and open sources

and do vastly better, not just for America,

but for the rest of the world to whom that information can be given for free,

in sense-made form.

So, right now our government is completely out of touch with reality

and it's the Keystone Cops on steroids and armed, okay?

We are really in deep, deep trouble here.

Have a nice day! (:

"Rumsfeld promised change,

but the next day, the world changed,

and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism,

the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.

'My '03 budget

calls for more than

48 billion in new defense spending.'

More money for the Pentagon, when its own auditors admit

the military can not account for 25% of what it already spends.

'According to some estimates, we cannot track 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions.'

2.3 trillion! With a T.

That's 8,000$ for every man, woman and child in America.

20 years ago, Pentagon employee
Franklin C. Spinney made headlines

exposing what he calls The accounting games.

He's still there, and although he does not speak for the Pentagon,

he believes the problem has gotten worse.

'Those numbers are pie in the sky, the books are cooked, routinely,

year after year after year.'

Retired vice-admiral Jack Shanahan commanded the navy's second fleet,
year after year after year.'

Retired vice-admiral Jack Shanahan commanded the navy's second fleet,

the first time Donald Rumsfeld served as Defense Secretary.

'With good financial oversight

we could find 48 billion dollars in loose change in that building without

having to hit the taxpayer.'

In the two and a half minutes since this report began,

the Pentagon has spent nearly 2 million dollars

and it may never know where 25% of those tax dollars went."

When it comes to waste by a particular agency,

few can rival the NSA, or National Security Agency.

Its headquarters, nicknamed Cryptocity,

employs over 40,000 people.

More than the CIA and FBI combined.

As documented by journalist James Banford,
it encompasses 525 acres

with floor space totaling more than 7 million square feet.

Its yearly consumption of electricity is 409 million kWh,

equaling Maryland's capital, Annapolis.

It has its own film festival,

yacht club,

and ski club with yearly trips to Austria and Switzerland.

Its budget for 1995 to 1999

totaled $17,570,600,000.

Apparently, not even this was enough.

In 2012, Wired magazine reported that the NSA

was building an even more gargantuan complex in Utah.

A former NSA official, quoted in the article,

claims that:

Though the official mandate of the NSA

is to eavesdrop on foreign communications,

we now know that it has long been pointing its instruments inward.

In the Phillipines, circa 1950,

CIA psy-war operative Ed Landsdale,

employed a technique known as The eye of god.

At night, operatives would paint an eye on the wall of a house

facing a suspected communist or a communist sympathizer.

The message: "We are watching you."

In some respects, the NSA's well publicized spying on American citizens has the same effect.

In the late 18th century, an English social theorist

named Jeremy Bentham designed a prison known as The Panopticon.

It was a circular structure with a central command center,

built so that prisoners would never know if they are being watched.

French philosopher Michel Foucault stated that the goal was to:

Regardless of intent, NSA agents can only analyze a tiny portion of the information they intercept.

Yet, the very fact that they have claimed the right to spy on American citizens is a gross violation of their mandate.

Similarly, the CIA, which is prohibited from conducting internal security functions within the US,

has repeatedly broken its own rules.

Under operation CHAOS, the agency spied on leftists during the Civil Rights era.

Under MKULTRA, they used thousands of American citizens as human guinea pigs.

During operation MOCKINGBIRD they illegally propagandized the American public.

"Do you have any people being paid

by the CIA

who are contributing

to a major circulation, American journal?"

"We do have people who submit thesis to American journals."

"Do you have any people

paid by the CIA

who are working for

television networks?"

"This, I think, gets into the kind of, getting into the details, Mr. Chairman, that I'd like to get into in executive session."

"It is a great honor to be here with the men and women of the CIA.

I've been eager to come out here, to Langley, for some time,

so I can deliver a simple message to you in person,

on behalf of the American people.

Thank you.

Thank you for all the work that you do to protect

the American people and the freedom that we all cherish."

Today, it is widely accepted that secret organizations with extraordinary special powers

are necessary for stability, for democracy, and for defense against foreign enemies.

Yet this viewpoint has not always been the dominant one.

In A Modern History of England,

published in the 19th century, its author notes:

"Nothing is more revolting to Englishmen than the espionage which forms parts of

the administrative system of continental despotisms.

Similarly, in 1798, a congressman colorfully warned

that if a system of espionage is established,

the country will swarm with informers, spies,

and all the odious reptile tribe that breed in the sunshine of despotic power.

If the corporatocracy has become the de-facto emperor of the US,

the shadow government has become its elite guard.

In the late 1980s, CIA whistleblower John Stockwell

compared the military-intelligence complex to the praetors of ancient Rome.

'The praetors came to exercise great power', Stockwell wrote,

'making and unmaking emperors and allowing political and military action outside of the law.

What rules that were observed, were announced by the issuance of edicts.

The guard was characterized by corruption and political venality

and was closed down by Constantine in 312 A.D.'

353 years earlier, Julius Caesar crossed the river Rubickon.

Roman law specified that only elected magistrates could hold imperia, or right of command, in their provinces.

Therefore, Caesar's act directly challenged the power of the elected government.

Today, the idiom "Crossing the Rubickon" is used to describe

the devolution of a republic into an empire.

It is also used to mean a point of no return.