Secret mind control experiments in
brothels. Weaponized sex dolls. And even CIA magicians. These are some of the weirdest things you never knew about the United
States’ Central Intelligence Agency! Fact One! Did you know the CIA built an
untraceable heart attack gun? While it seems more like something from a
James Bond movie, this really was a weapon used by the CIA - It was a pistol capable of
firing a frozen dart full of deadly shellfish toxin. The dart would pierce the skin and then
melt in the body, distributing the poison and inducing a heart attack shortly after - With no
way of tracing the murder back to the assassin. It was one of the many reasons
Senator Frank Church cited in 1975 as to why the CIA needed
greater government oversight. Fact Two! What’s the favored sidearm for a CIA Agent? Seeing as Senator Church slammed
the brakes on the heart attack gun, it never became standard issue. The general
consensus is that the Glock-19 and SIG Sauer P226 are the most popular pistols among
the CIA’s ranks. Simple, but effective! Fact Three! Some of the strangest CIA Agents
ever were literal housecats. We’re talking about one of the
CIA’s greatest embarrassments: The Acoustic Kitty project. This $20 million
1960s failure was a plan intended to turn cats into living listening devices to
infiltrate the Kremlin by implanting tiny microphones into their ear canals and a
radio transmitter in the base of their skulls. The plan failed because, as any cat owners
know, they don’t take direction well. Fact Four! If cat recorders don’t work,
what about Pigeon Cameras? The CIA’s research and development division
created tiny cameras and lights to be placed onto trained pigeons during the Cold War, owing
to pigeons’ uncanny ability to always find their way home. No prizes for guessing that this
went a lot better than the plot with the cats. Fact Five! Argo actually happened! The Oscar-winning Ben Affleck movie was
actually pretty accurate in its telling of the incredible plot to rescue six American
citizens from a politically unstable Tehran in 1979. The CIA created its own fake movie
studio, “Studio Six Productions,” and a fake science fiction movie as a pretense to sneak into
the country and liberate the trapped Americans. We hope you enjoyed the whimsy of that because
it’s all going to get darker from here. Fact Six! The CIA tortured an innocent
man because of a typo! Back in 2003, Khalid El-Masri was
arrested in Macedonia and then given to the CIA on the suspicion that he
was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He endured a living hell in two
different brutal CIA detention sites, where he was beaten, tortured,over
the course of several months. Why? Because Khalid El-Masri had a
very similar name to Khalid al-Masri, and was detained after one of history’s most
unfortunate cases of mistaken identity. The subsequent court battle in the European
Court of Human Rights marks the first time that the activities of the CIA
have been legally declared torture. Fact Seven! Did you know there’s a
Hyper-Secretive CIA Starbucks? Because even secret agents need caffeine,
the so-called “Stealthy Starbucks” in the CIA headquarters of Langley, Virginia,
has special rules for serving its unique clientele. They need to put the baristas
through intense background checks to make sure none of them is an enemy agent
eavesdropping on state secrets. This is also the only Starbucks where they don’t
do reward cards or write names on the cups, given some agents may not be at
liberty to share that information. Fact Eight! Did you know the CIA had an
arms dealer on their payroll? Edwin Wilson was arrested in 1983 for selling 20
tons of plastic explosives to Libya in what was, at the time, the biggest illegal
weapons deal in recorded history. Wilson had retired from the CIA officially
in 1971, and when the deal came to light, the CIA washed its hands of him.
However, Edwin worked tirelessly to reveal that he’d still been working as a
contractor, obtaining information and running front businesses for the intelligence
agency during the time he was arrested. While he was never directly
asked to make a deal with Libya, it may have still fallen under the purview
of information-gathering activities - He was released from prison in 2003 in light of
this and was quoted saying, “I was doing it for them. If they hadn't walked away from
me, I wouldn't have ever been convicted.” Fact Nine! Did you know the CIA made
edits to Zero Dark Thirty? A declassified memo showed that the agency
had influence over the 2012 biopic about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. They wanted to
make sure they were presented in a positive light by demanding changes such as making the
protagonist an observer rather than a participant in a waterboarding scene, removing a scene where
vicious dogs are used to interrogate a prisoner, and also excising a scene where
agents party with AK47s on a rooftop. Fact Ten! The CIA also cut references to
torture in Meet The Parents! In this forgettable, franchise-spawning
2000s comedy, Ben Stiller finds out his future father-in-law, played by Robert
DeNiro, is a hard-ass ex-CIA special agent. In the original draft of the movie, this
is discovered when Stiller’s character finds a torture manual in DeNiro’s
personal effects. The CIA made them cut this from the movie and instead
replaced it with Stiller finding a series of pictures showing DeNiro
with several famous politicians. Shame. The CIA could have earned some
positive PR by just cutting the entire movie. Fact Eleven! It isn’t just movies - The CIA
has been caught editing Wikipedia! In what may have been a violation of the
website’s Conflict of Interest rules, CIA computers were found to have been making
alterations to articles about the Iraq War, Guantanamo Bay, and the profiles of former agents,
among many other diverse topics. Some of the most concerning edits have involved removing
certain pictures from the Guantanamo article and muddying the waters of death statistics in
previous conflicts in which they were involved. Little shady there, guys! Fact Twelve! They teamed up with people from Hasbro to
make a demonic Bin Laden Action figure! No, this isn’t a rejected plotline from
American Dad. It was part of a 2005-2006 psyop campaign known as “Devil Eyes,” where they
worked with former Hasbro exec Donald Levine, one of the major architects
of the G.I. Joe toy franchise, to make and distribute action figures of
Osama Bin Lade among the South Asian youth, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But like
all the best action figures, it came with a twist. Over time, the face of the action figure would
peel away and reveal a demonic stare underneath, which the CIA hoped would make people
change their minds about supporting Al-Qaeda. Opinions are split on whether more
than the three prototypes were ever made, but we can probably all agree that a
demonic action figure likely wouldn’t have brought a powerful terrorist
group to its knees. Sorry, Mr. Levine. Fact Thirteen! The CIA bribed some Afghan
tribal chiefs with Viagra! In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, the
CIA needs to be careful with its choice of confidential informants - and even
more careful about how they pay them. Monetary gifts often draw too much attention from
the Taliban, and gifts of weapons often end up in the wrong hands. That’s why the CIA has gotten
more creative with the gifts they give to the many warlords and tribal elders who give them a
steady supply of information about the region. These have included toys,
medicine, clothes, and yes, viagra - which reignited the sex life of
one older trial patriarch. Good for him. Fact Fourteen! The CIA tormented prisoners
with Barney the Purple Dinosaur! In a process disturbingly described as
“Torture Lite,” Iraqi prisoners have been interrogated by the CIA by being locked
in an enclosed room and being bombarded with a variety of songs at earsplitting volumes,
referred to by one prisoner as “The Disco.” The playlist at this nightmare disco includes,
among many others, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” Queen’s “We Are The Champions,” and “I
Love You” by Barney The Purple Dinosaur. James Hetfield, Metallica’s co-founder,
didn’t seem bothered by his music being used in torture. He said, “We've been
punishing our parents, our wives, our loved ones with this music forever.
Why should the Iraqis be any different?” We’re still waiting on an
official comment from Barney. Fact Fifteen! The CIA tried to use the power
of the mind to escape spacetime! This consciousness-altering series of
experiments was known as the Gateway Process, and it theorized, in a highly simplified sense,
that certain kinds of audio stimulation could alter the mind. What kind of effects
would these alterations offer the CIA? Nothing much, really. Aside from
gaining an intuitive knowledge of the universe and an ability to commune with
extradimensional beings outside of spacetime. Given that the CIA doesn’t - as far as
we know - have agents like Glorbo the Immaculate from Dimension X on the payroll,
this plan didn’t bear much fruit. These days, it’s just another form of viral
hippie pseudoscience on TikTok. Fact Sixteen! The CIA had the Dalai Lama on its payroll! This one was just a conspiracy theory for
the longest time until access to certain US Intelligence bank accounts revealed
that the CIA had been giving the Tibetan spiritual leader a generous $180,000 yearly
stipend in the 1960s to help fan the flames of the Tibetan Exodus and weaken China’s
potential for expansion during the Cold War. Maybe next, we’ll find out they
really do have Glorbo the Immaculate… Fact Seventeen! During the Cold War, the CIA and MI6
built a giant spy tunnel under Berlin! In one of the most ambitious
espionage operations of all time, Operation Gold was an impressive sequel to
Operation Silver in Vienna. The goal was to tap into Russian landline communications
in Soviet-occupied Berlin by building a huge spy tunnel under the city, which took
eight months from its start date in 1954. But there’s a twist: The Soviets
knew about this the whole time, thanks to George Blake, a double
agent in MI6. They kept their knowledge under wraps until 1956
to avoid exposing a valuable mole. Fact Eighteen! The CIA figured out how to
turn sex dolls into spy tools! During the 1970s, CIA spies in Moscow needed a
quick distraction when they were being pursued by Soviet counter-spies. One proposed idea
was known as the Jack In The Box, or JIB, inspired by inflatable sex dolls. It would be a
small device that, upon the press of a button, would essentially inflate a fake agent
to momentarily confuse the pursuer. Get Smart, eat your heart out! Fact Nineteen! Time for a CIA Vs Castro Lightning Round! There were over 600 unsuccessful
attempts on the Cuban leader’s life, and many of them were performed by the CIA!
But don’t worry, they had helpful advice from seasoned murder professionals - like mobsters Sam
Giancana, Santos Trafficant, and Carlos Marcello. They recommended that the CIA
take out Castro with poisoned pills slipped into the ice cream of his
favorite milkshake - because Sam, Santos, and Carlos seemed to be almost
comically evil movie mobsters. Diabolical as it seemed, though, this attempt did
not succeed in putting Castro out of commission - but none of the three mobsters would survive
into the 2000s, so Castro had the last laugh. Fact Twenty! When poisoned ice cream failed,
the CIA tried poisoned cigars! Some of Castro’s favorite
Cubans - That’s the cigars, not the citizens - were spiked with botulinum
toxin and delivered to an anonymous assassin in 1961. But it’s unclear what happened
after that - So it’s very possible that a random innocent person or people
ended up getting smoked by their smokes. Fact Twenty-One! The CIA also tried to kill Castro
with an exploding seashell! Castro loved scuba diving, so in 1963, the
CIA floated the idea of finding and painting a particularly magnificent shell and planting it
where Castro would often dive. The plan was to implant an explosive into the shell and detonate
it when El Commandante was in close proximity. Obviously, this didn’t work, and it wasn’t even
the only scuba-related assassination attempt against Castro - The CIA also tried to bump
Castro off, or at least horribly disfigure him, by giving him a diving suit and breathing
apparatus infected with a deadly fungus. Fact Twenty-Two! The CIA also tried to get one of Castro’s
lovers to kill him on their behalf! Marita Lorenz, who was involved with Castro
in 1959, claims that the CIA tried to make her a professional femme fatale - giving her
some poisoned pills to sneak into Castro’s drink. But the plan was another disaster -
She stored the pills in a cold cream jar, rendering them unusable. Castro also figured
out the plan and held Lorenz at gunpoint, saying, “You can’t kill me. Nobody can kill me.” They then apparently made love cause
that’s just the kind of guy Castro was. Fact Twenty-Three! When the CIA couldn’t kill him, they settled for
trying to make Castro look completely insane! When Castro was scheduled to give a
speech to the Cuban people over the radio, the CIA hoped to dose him with LSD, which
would cause severe hallucinations and make him give a bizarre and incoherent
speech. This plan never came to fruition because the LSD compound they
hoped to use proved to be too unstable. And believe us when we tell you, as
you’ll find out later in the video, this doesn’t even break the top twenty most
insane things the CIA has done with LSD. Fact Twenty-Four! The CIA also tried to assassinate Castro’s beard! In perhaps the greatest sign that the CIA was
clutching at straws with some of these attempts, someone in the CIA Castro Assassination
Brain Trust suggested dusting the man’s shoes with Thallium, a poison that would
cause his iconic beard to fall out. Once again, this plan failed, and Castro took
his mighty beard to the grave with him in 2016. Fact Twenty-Five! The CIA may have gotten people killed with pizza! Specifically, we’re talking about one of the most
terrible code words of all time. Back in 2011, a group of CIA informants was rumbled by
Hezbollah in Beirut after they used the code word “Pizza” to describe a secret
intelligence meeting… At a Pizza Hut. While an anonymous US Official denies that
the meeting happened in an actual Pizza Hut, retired CIA Official Robert Baer was
quoted saying, “If they were genuine spies, spying against Hezbollah, I don't
think we'll ever see them again.” Yikes. Fact Twenty-Six! The CIA tried to weaponize a sex tape! We know that sex dolls were not out of
the question for Cold War espionage, but both the CIA and the KGB wanted
to use sex tapes as kompromat against extremely popular Indonesian President
Sukarno. Some reports even allege that the CIA did this by using a performer in an
incredibly realistic rubber Sukarno mask. This plot was a failure, however, and
possibly for an extremely funny reason. Some reports indicate that Sukarno was
strangely flattered by the sex tapes and asked the CIA and KGB to send him copies. You
can’t blackmail a man who’s immune to shame. Fact Twenty-Seven! The CIA was a patron of abstract art! During the early 1950s, the CIA pursued any
angles of resistance against the Soviets that they could find, and one of these was promoting
American ideals through art. To this end, the CIA helped fund galleries showing abstract art from figures like Jackson Pollock and
Willem De Kooning across the world. Their logic was that such art could never be
produced under a Communist state where free thought was suppressed, so by promoting this
art, they were promoting the American ideal. We don’t know if this actually achieved its
intended purpose, but it’s nice to know that at least some CIA money went to funding the arts
rather than haphazard attempts to take on Cuba. Speaking of which… Fact Twenty-Eight! The CIA had a plan to blame Cuba
if America’s space missions failed! In a subdivision of Operation Northwoods,
literally called Operation Dirty Trick - because the CIA seemingly isn’t big on irony -
the John Glenn MERCURY space mission in 1962 had a plan to blame it all on Cuba
if the astronaut ended up dying in space. The plan stated their intention to, “Provide
irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the
Communists et al Cuba… by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic
interference on the part of the Cubans.” Thankfully, John Glenn returned to Earth safely, so this shockingly petty plan didn’t see
the light of day until decades later. Fact Twenty-Nine! The CIA faked a vampire attack in the Philippines! As part of their plan to crush the Huk
Rebellion in the Philippines in the early 1950s, they brought in psywar expert
and mythology enthusiast Edward Lansdale, who had a unique plan for clearing
a particularly difficult Huk fort. He used his knowledge of local myth
to fake the attack of an Aswang - a frightening Filipino vampire - by puncturing
the neck of a Huk rebel and bleeding him dry. It was a truly horrific method, but it
was effective. The Huk fort was rattled and soon cleared when word spread
of the potential Aswang attacks, proving that the CIA can often come in clutch
with the scariest idea you’ve ever heard. Fact Thirty! The CIA tried to create a
weaponized weather machine! During the Vietnam War, Operation Sober Popeye
was the CIA’s plan to seed clouds and extend Vietnam’s natural monsoon season to wage a
weatherized war of attrition against their jungle commando enemies. But this plan was
scuppered in 1978 when international courts declared the use of weather-manipulating
devices in warfare as a war crime. Though in fairness, things being a war crime
has never stopped the CIA before. They’ve been known to do some truly horrifying
things to their own people, such as… Fact Thirty-One! The CIA’s horrifying mind
control experiments - MKUltra! That’s right - time for an
MKUltra lightning round! This brainchild of chemist and spymaster
Sidney Gottlieb is still one of the most infamous things the CIA has ever done.
The experiments ran from 1953 to 1973 and primarily involved explorations into the
interrogation and mind-control applications of LSD - as well as MDMA, heroin, mescaline,
barbiturates, meth, and magic mushrooms. And you’d be amazed at the level
of mind-boggling insanity Sidney Gottlieb and his associates managed
to fit into those 20 years of testing. Fact Thirty-Two! The CIA hired Nazi war criminals from the
Dachau concentration camp for help with MKUltra! Vivisectionists and war criminals who
worked for both the Nazis and Japan’s infamous Unit 731 were brought to Fort
Detrick in Maryland to lecture CIA agents on their findings. The Dachau staff were of
particular interest due to their experiments on concentration camp prisoners using
mescaline, and some of the experiments conducted under the MKUltra banner were
even modeled after Nazi methodology. Fact Thirty-Three! There were allegedly CIA sites across the globe
where these experiments were being conducted! There is evidence of MKUltra experiments
being undertaken throughout Europe and Asia, where unwitting enemies of the state were
subjected to extreme experimentation without the same “legal entanglements” the CIA
would face experimenting on American soil. The purpose of these experiments was the
destruction of the human ego - through drugging, electroshock therapy, isolation, temperature
control, and psychological torture. The purpose was to essentially render
the mind a blank slate where Gottlieb and his coconspirators could
build whatever they pleased. Fact Thirty-Four! Some nightmarish experiments
unfolded in Canada under MKUltra! The Allan Memorial Institute, under the
direction of Scottish psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron, played host to the Montreal
Experiments, which were funded by the CIA front organization, The Society for
the Investigation of Human Ecology. Some of these experiments involved shocking
drugged patients with significantly more power than in typical electroshock therapy,
while others involved inducing months-long comas while the subjects were forced
to listen to looping audio tapes. Some people subjected to Cameron’s
experiments effectively lost their minds, entering an infantile state where they
experienced symptoms like urinary incontinence, severe amnesia, and even the belief
that the researchers were their parents. Fact Thirty-Five! Gottlieb and the CIA director tried
to destroy the evidence of MKUltra! In 1973, in one of the few good
decisions of President Richard Nixon, he removed Richard Helms as Director of the
CIA. Helms was one of the greatest supporters of Sidney Gottlieb’s continued research, so with
him out, MKUltra’s days were thankfully numbered. Knowing they’d committed a lot of horrific
violations of both the law and general ethics, Helms and Gottlieb conspired to eliminate as
much evidence of MKUltra as they possibly could. Gottlieb even loaded boxes of files from the
CIA archive into his car and instructed them to be destroyed, but Helms and Gottlieb
missed files that were stored elsewhere. As a result, the existence of MKUltra was
revealed to the world two years later, in 1975, by Senator Frank Church, in the very
same committee hearings where he debuted the Heart Attack Pistol. This would only result in
more horrifying discoveries about the project. Fact Thirty-Six! MKUltra killed a Tennis Player! Many people lost their lives and minds to
MKUltra, but one of the strangest ones is the tragic case of Harold Blauer. This unfortunate
professional tennis player checked into New York State Psychiatric Institute in 1952 due to
suffering from a bout of depression following his divorce. There, he became a lab rat for the
Army Chemical Corps under the MKUltra umbrella. He was injected with various chemical
analogs for mescaline throughout his stay, experiencing severe hallucinations.
Eventually, he was given an overdose of the chemical 3,4-Methylenedioxyamphetamine,
also known as MDA, which caused him to slip into a coma and die later that day. The
CIA and the state of New York covered this up for 22 years until the revelations
eventually came out during committee hearings. But it wasn’t just innocent tennis
players who became unwitting guinea pigs! Fact Thirty-Seven! The CIA performed MKUltra experiments
on infamous gangster Whitey Bulger! While imprisoned for his extensive life
of crime, Bulger was coerced into MKUltra experiments that he was told were research
for the benefit of mental health. He and other inmates were given drug cocktails
and were subjected to batteries of the typical strange and unethical tests.
But this is particularly interesting because Bulger was able to describe his
own experience in the program first-hand. “Eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state.
Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and
feeling violent. We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming
out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a camera change into the
head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane.” It definitely doesn’t sound like a good
trip. But we can think of a worse one… Fact Thirty-Eight! The CIA performed experiments
on unwitting brothel patrons! No, you didn’t hear that wrong. It was part
of an MKUltra subdivision known as OPERATION MIDNIGHT CLIMAX. Primarily operated by
ex-narcotics investigator George White, the CIA rigged certain rooms and safe
houses with surveillance equipment and recruited sex workers to bring their clients
here and dose them with LSD for observation. The women were paid in both small cash tokens
and immunity from prosecution for their sex work, and George White would later say that he enjoyed
this work mainly because he liked getting to spy on people having sex while drugged. In his
own words, “I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun. Where
else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal… and pillage with the
sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?” It seemed that pretty much everyone involved
in this project was a massive weirdo. Fact Thirty-Nine! The MKUltra experiments inspired Stranger Things! In the hit Netflix show, Eleven has psychic
powers because of her mother being an experimental subject of the MKUltra experiments
- and the show’s creators, the Duffer Brothers, have said multiple times that the experiments
were one of the major inspirations behind the government conspiracy side of the show -
along with the conspiratorial Project Montauk. The CIA never encountered a real
psychic little girl or a Demogorgon during their experiences, though, mainly
just huge amounts of horrific malpractice. Fact Forty! The CIA tried to control the news! Operation Mockingbird was the pet project
of Frank Wisner, head of the CIA’s Office of Special Projects, to get a stranglehold
over American print media and broadcasting during the early years of the Cold War. He gained
influence over key figures in The New York Times, CBS, and members of the Washington
Press Corps, allegedly having 3000 CIA employees embedded throughout major news
organizations at the height of the project. These employees suppressed certain
stories and planted others, making sure the media narrative could
be massaged in the interests of the CIA. So when you watch the news, you never
really know what message you’re receiving! Fact Forty-One! They tried using poisoned toothpaste
to kill a Congolese prime minister! Patrice Lumumba oversaw the Democratic Republic
of the Congo split from Belgian rule in 1960, leading the CIA to worry that he’d drag
the country towards Communism - Mainly due to Lumumba’s anti-colonial policies and his
desire to preserve his country’s independence. Of course, the Congo also contained mineral
deposits sought after by both the US and Belgium, so the CIA drew up plans to assassinate
Lumumba and install someone more sympathetic to American interests in his place.
There were many plots to kill Lumumba, with the strangest being an
attempt to poison his toothpaste, which was quickly discarded by the recruit
they’d put in charge of carrying it out. The CIA still got what they wanted in the
end, as Lumumba was eventually captured and executed by Katangan Separatists. To this
day, he’s seen as a martyr by the people of the pan-African movement for his fearless adherence
to his principles, even in the face of death. Fact Forty-Two! They used a fake vaccine
plot to help catch Bin Laden! As part of their ongoing quest to find
Osama Bin Laden, the architect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the CIA set up
a fake hepatitis vaccination scheme in the neighborhood of Bin Laden’s compound
as a front to investigate the area and possibly collect a DNA sample confirming
the presence of one of his many children. This method was strongly
condemned by Unni Karunakara, the international president of the
non-profit Doctors without Borders, who claimed it would encourage distrust between
citizens and medical professionals, saying, “The risk is that vulnerable communities — anywhere —
needing access to essential health services will understandably question the true motivation
of medical workers and humanitarian aid.” Fact Forty-Three! The CIA reads five million tweets per day! Just in case you need to feel better about
your own potential Twitter addiction, the CIA has reported that it studies 5 million
different tweets in a variety of languages to assess the mood of different areas in the
aftermath of major foreign policy decisions. For example, in the aftermath
of Bin Laden’s assassination, the Open Source Center was wired into the
collective reaction of Middle East Twitter’s feelings on the matter. We would hate to be
one of the many employees tasked with wading through the Twitterscape every day, whether for
general impressions or actionable intelligence. Fact Forty-Four! They had a manual on deception
written by a master magician! John E. McLaughlin, former deputy
director of the CIA, once said, “Magic and Intelligence are really kindred
arts.” This must be why they hired magician John Mulholland to write a handbook on
deception and trickery for $3000 in 1953. It was just another one of the
many insane documents created under the MKUltra Banner and was
thought to have been destroyed in 1973 - Until two agents realized
they happened to still have copies. It was full of handy little tips, like the fact
that agents who look dopey or disheveled are less likely to be noticed, how secret pockets
are perfect for hiding weapons or documents, and how you can smuggle yourself out of a
building inside a crate. Useful stuff, really. Fact Forty-Five! The CIA is less than a century old! Despite having an insanely storied history, the CIA as it is today wasn’t created until 1947
- though it had a few precursor organizations, including The Office of the Coordinator of
Information, The Office of Strategic Services, The Strategic Services Unit, and The
Central Intelligence Group, in that order. Fact Forty-Six! They kept a bizarre list of Soviet
jokes for the Deputy Director! We don’t have much of an explanation
for this one - It could have been for the Deputy Director’s personal use
or some kind of social function, but we will share one of the jokes from
the official CIA Soviet joke list here: “What’s the difference between
Gorbachev and Dubcek? Nothing, but Gorbachev doesn’t know it yet.” Uhhh… We guess you had to be there. Fact Forty-Seven! The CIA armed Islamic Extremists
in the Iran Contra affair! In probably the most famous CIA scandal of
all time, the CIA facilitated the illegal sale of arms to Iran, which was subject to an
arms embargo at the time. Why? Because they were hoping to use the proceeds to fund the
Contras, a gang of Anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua. It’s considered one of the biggest
embarrassments of the Reagan Administration. Fact Forty-Eight! They’re alleged to have helped
depose an Australian Prime Minister! Gough Whitlam, an Australian Prime Minister
from 1972 to 1975, made enemies of both MI6 and the CIA when he strove to make Australia
a more independent nation from the British and the United States - even threatening
to shut down a CIA base in Pine Gap. While opinions are divided on the issue, it
is believed by many that the CIA influenced Governor-General Sir John Kerr to dismiss Whitlam
from the position of Prime Minister and place a politician from the opposition who was far more
sympathetic to the CIA’s interests in his place. This resulted in the 1975
Australian Constitutional Crisis, one of Australia's most controversial
political incidents. To this day, both the CIA and Kerr deny
any collusion took place. Fact Forty-Nine! The CIA has a kill list! Maintained by the Counterterrorism Center, or
CTC, this list of individuals is the top priority for assassination under the CIA’s mandate.
After the CTC puts the information together, the CIA’s lawyers, the general counsel,
and the head of the National Clandestine Service make the determination on
whether the hit will be carried out. If this raises certain questions about
extrajudicial executions and the lack of a fair trial, well, you definitely
wouldn’t be alone on those criticisms. Fact Fifty! The CIA had a torture training manual! Titled “Human Resource Exploitation Training
Manual”, this book of torture techniques was distributed to the Honduran military by
the CIA. In what feels like an almost comical attempt at plausible deniability,
the book opens with a note that says: “We will discuss some of those coercive
techniques that have been used by many and the reasons why we are against
the use of these techniques. We do not use these techniques, nor
do we condone the use of them.” It was very generous of the CIA
to give the Honduran militants a list of exact instructions on how to
torture people, just to make sure none of them did it by accident. The CIA
is just very humanitarian like that. Now check out “Was President JFK Really Killed
by the CIA.” Or watch this video instead!
