CIA... the secret government within a government

“I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo” – Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), 33rd President of the United States 1945-1953

Controversial journalist and author Christopher Hitchens once wrote that in the “Nixon era, the United States was in essence a ‘rogue state’. It had a ruthless, paranoid and unstable leader who did not hesitate to break the laws of his own country”. I would contend that for close on a century, and certainly since 1947 when the power brokers within the financial, industrial, military and intelligence communities came together and were given official bureaucratic recognition in the form of the Central Intelligence Agency, that a secret government has existed in the United States, one that has corrupted and usurped the country’s political and democratic institutions, been responsible for the waging of covert wars in dozens of countries and deeply complicit in the murder of thousands of Americans; a list that includes dozens of political, cultural and social leaders and to its eternal shame, at least one president.

The concept of the existence of a secret government is not a new phenomenon. Writing in 1922, and referring to the challenges he faced as then New York City mayor, John F. Hylan provided this revealing insight, “The real menace to our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses, generally referred to as ‘international bankers’. This coterie of powerful international bankers virtually runs the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business. These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen and seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection”. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that over the next three generations, one Rockefeller would become governor of New York and Vice President of the United States and many notable members of these banking and oil companies, including W. Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush (father to George H.W. Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush) would go on to become governors, senators and presidents.

I am the first to admit that I am a conspiracy theorist at heart. However, by the same token I am not naïve enough to believe that random, so called unrelated coincidences just happen. Born out of the old wartime intelligence organization that was known as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA was created by an act of Congress in 1947 at a time when anti communist sentiment was beginning to reach fever pitch. Woven deep in to the DNA of the CIA were prominent members of America’s banking, oil and industrial corporations. For the next forty years the agency would use fear of the red menace, and the fulfillment of its own warped ideology, to justify the most despicable acts of treason and violence. Sadly, CIA had willing and enthusiastic support in every branch of federal, state and local government, law enforcement and the media. Perhaps most famously, future President George H.W. Bush was a secret, high level CIA operative for over 20 years before being named head of the agency by Gerald Ford in 1976. Bush has repeatedly denied being a CIA agent despite a huge volume of evidence to the contrary, evidence that includes his presence in Dallas on November 22nd 1963 and a documented telephone call that he made to the FBI on the day of Kennedy’s assassination from Tyler, Texas (less than an hour’s drive from Dallas).

In a 1977 article that he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine, Watergate investigative journalist Carl Bernstein wrote that there was “…more than 400 journalists, who in the past 25 years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists' relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services -- from simple intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America's leading news organizations”.

We now know that some of the executives that Bernstein was referring to were William Paley, chief executive of CBS, Henry Luce, founder of Time Inc and Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, among others. It is perhaps not surprising that the national media would row in behind the government in endorsing the lone assassin theory in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination (and indeed has continued to do so to this day); in fact the person that purchased the famous Zapruder film footage of Kennedy’s murder, two days after the assassination, was none other than Henry Luce of Time magazine, who then proceeded to hide it from public view for 6 years until District Attorney Jim Garrison subpoenaed it as part of his investigation.

The reason for the background is this. The CIA is once again back in the news, again, for all the wrong reasons, and again a large segment of the media is complicit in the narrative being served up to the American people. In the wake of the ongoing investigation into advanced interrogation techniques and torture carried out by the CIA during the Bush administration, focus is being placed on what information was made known to members of Congress about the specifics of these interrogation techniques and whether the CIA withheld vital information from leading politicians. In the past couple of weeks, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has gone public, saying she was lied to by the CIA about whether or not water-boarding and other forms of torture were being used in the name of Bush’s war on terror. The CIA of course has denied it lied. Many leading politicians and newspaper editors have since come to the defense of the CIA, saying that whatever about lying to overseas governments and law enforcement organizations (as if this was somehow acceptable), the CIA would never lie to a member of Congress.

Really? Firstly, do these political leaders really expect Americans to believe that the CIA is so holier than thou that it would never lie to the United States Congress, when it has done nothing but lie for over 60 years? Secondly, why would politicians and the public be even surprised that they would be lied to by the CIA? Every dog on the street knows that CIA has indulged in every form of skullduggery known to man; from illegal wiretapping to opening the mail of regular Americans, from political espionage and covert paramilitary operations to coup d’états and assassinations, from carrying out torture to creating real life Manchurian candidates. The history of the CIA has left a black mark on the fabric of American society and this country has been the worst for its existence.