Alternative Views - CIA On Company Business (1980)

[Music] a lot of people have been involved with a CIA over the years both directly and indirectly yes a lot of people have been involved particularly this man john stockwell who is with us tonight on alternative views news magazine [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] have with us tonight john stockwell the former CIA case officer who's back for an encore performance we're going tonight to discuss the on company business the documentary film that has been made recently about the CIA will be seeing some sections of that film tonight I should have mentioned that earlier we have a few clippings that we will discuss and comment on and we're also going to discuss John stockwell's court case where the government is suing him because he allegedly broke his contractor oath with the CIA not to disclose any information about their operations and according to a recent Supreme Court decision former employees of the CIA no longer have the right to disclose secrets about the agency John could used to tell us a few things about the government lawsuit against you first of all what was the Frank's nut case what was the Supreme Court decision that's the basis of the government's or harassment of you now well Frank snap wrote a book similar to mine about the the collapse of South Vietnam and the scandal of the u.s. evacuation of South Vietnam in 1975 and he like me did not submit the book for a CIA review or censorship for the obvious reason they would not have let him publish the entire story as a result the CI sued him in a test case the reason they picked him was because his book came out before mine by a few months and then when mine came out they said that they would have preferred they wish they'd waited and got me instead for technical reasons my case would have been more interesting to them and actually would have been more interesting to me I think I could have made a better fight than Frank's nap did of it but they took it to their favorite court in Alexandria Virginia where the judges are notoriously biased in favor of the agency or the leg room that's right next door to right next door the statements the judges made during the trial like early on that the facts of the case didn't interest him one damn bit mispronouncing Frank snaps name repeatedly during the trial interrupting on behalf of the the the district attorney the prosecution to to protest testimony that the judge didn't like was going on he would say objection sustained when there had been no objection and things like this throughout the trial and then perhaps the most incredible of all when snap tried to get some waiting to get the transcript of some of the incredible statements that were made in court through the the transcript of the proceedings found that they had been expunged so they were not part of the court record even though all of the attorneys and journalists present were witness that they had been said and the CI taking snap to this court the judge referred during the proceedings to Frank snaps ill-gotten gains from his book and ruled in heavily in favor of the government that snap should have to pay the government everything he'd earned from the book even those snap never did reveal any information that was classified they never claimed that he had he had revealed a single secret their point was that he had signed a contract with the government not to attack the government without the government's permission and therefore he his book was illegal a breach of contract and that he by signing that had waived all of his First Amendment rights he no longer had freedom of speech the appeals court in Richmond Virginia ruled in in CIS favor but they ruled that the the that a judge a federal judge could not afix the damages that a jury would have to fix the damages that the judge could award for the government one dollar from Frank's net the Supreme Court in decision this last January which was described in the dissenting opinion as unique in the history of the Supreme Court it refused to hear the case he refused to hear Frank's notes arguments or the government's arguments but it ruled in favor of the government it ruled it gave the government more power than it had asked for beyond that it legislated new law it's supposed to interpret existing law but it ruled in its in its written statement that its objective was to create a situation a law that would protect the confidentiality it considered necessary to the function of the CIA now that clearly is the Congress's responsibility to legislate new law but it did it did rule that and we are now stuck with the the snap decision snip is having to pay back 120 thousand dollars from proceeds of his book three weeks later the government initiated its lawsuit against me to deprive me of my ill-gotten gain you're going to stop having parties and give away back all those roller oh yeah we laughed actually the government was not aware of the fact that a book like that does not make that much money and three years the money is long since spent three years of my travel and research costs and my taxes and the money is spent and I lived as you well know quite modestly during the interim John what are the implications of this Supreme Court decision what does this mean VESA the First Amendment rights and government secrecy and suppression of information from the public well it means very simply that in that decision that the Supreme Court has upset the delicate balance of power on which our government functions it means that people according to the to their law their ruling people who have worked for the government well are not you signed an agreement even if you did not sign an agreement you have a fiduciary responsibility not to attack the government without its permission if you work for the government if you do they cannot under that ruling put you in jail but they can sue you for whatever damages a judge without a jury decides to stick you with now that means for example that see the CIA is an office of the White House and that means that the president has in his power to do incredible things as the CI has truly incredible things depraved things and people who know what these secrets are are not allowed to speak out about it much less do anything about it is quite literally an official secrets ruling it's not an act of Congress but it's an act of the Supreme Court they under this ruling they cannot put you in jail but they can sue any former government employee for damages if he attacks the government now by attacking the government mind you I didn't write a book calling for a violent overthrow of the government I wrote a book which exposed a war the CIA had done in Angola an irresponsible war in which 10,000 people were killed needlessly not even to protect our national security and about Henry Kissinger and William Colby lying to the Congress to cover up that war I felt that I was in a position where my boss's head consciously and flagrantly defied the Constitution and were functioning as a secret police separate apart and above the Constitution and I struggled with my conscience at length but I decided that if it comes down to loyalty to the CIA and loyalty to the Constitution you must choose in favor of the Constitution I was wrong according to our Supreme Court it is the heaviest blow to the First Amendment and the history of this country it's also very interesting that the people like the ACLU Civil Liberties Union and the press had roundly criticized the Supreme Court for this decision what was the vote by the way in the court remember three dissenting opinions Theresa so this is sort of Nixon's revenge the Supreme Court on the American people well I must say though that this is really not an unusual attack we've seen from the Trilateral Commission the book crisis of democracy indicating that they want legislation to do just what the Supreme Court has done and the Senate bill one and the son of Senate bill one which has been pushed so hard by Senator Kennedy and which has been thought so much by and successfully so far by the ACLU also would legalize exactly what the Supreme Court has already done so it isn't at the Supreme Court is such a maverick in this end wasn't there another bizarre decision that came a week or two a courtly after the snap decision and I didn't the Supreme Court gave Henry Kissinger the right to use secret government documents when he was Secretary of State to write a book that he was writing and moreover not to let any other scholars even look at them to sort of withhold them from the Freedom of Information Act can you a comment on this and some of the implications yeah this was also verbalized by the judge in the Frank snap case who ruled who stated that that it was his opinion that high-level government employees should be free to write books and and whatnot but middle and lower level employees should not and read that that if you you are a high level employee and you write something that is patently false and full of lies it's okay if it's an apology for the crimes you've committed or those around you have committed it's okay but if you're someone who is in the middle levels deeply involved in what really happened want to tell the American public about what was done with our tax dollars often to the American public that is not permissible we're speaking of telling about the CIA and what is happening in it this movie which which will see parts this evening is really one of the most effective pieces of filmmaking I've ever seen it just hits you emotionally time and time again how did it how'd it happen how it all start well you know I wasn't involved in it in any way in its production I was just interviewed on it for a hour - but we do have someone with us here by extraordinary good luck and good fortune who was very much involved Molly Doherty of his from Austin and happens to be visiting in town and she helped on Franco [ __ ] get this film moving how long did it take Allen to make this movie or the whole film crew Molly it's an extraordinary collection of news reels of interviews a must have taken a long time to make how long was he working on this I think he was working on it close to seven years and while the problem was it's not just an extraordinary amount of research involved in such a film in order that every detail be totally accurate and corroborated by several sources but also that he had to spend a lot of time fundraising because there he couldn't find anybody to financially back up the movie would he put up a million dollars no no they weren't very supportive and the movie costs altogether around three hundred and fifty thousand dollars and that was mostly raised in $50 $100 and a few thousand dollar increments so that's one reason the film took so long to make words have been shown I know it's been here on PBS it's been around the country on PBS and what about outside the country well as shown at con Film Festival last week I believe what was the reaction there I am in her at the Berlin festival one yeah one the critics award for the for the best movie it's it's it's unbelievable some of the material they have even the tape recording of the two / maro guerrillas holding the CIA butcher and talking to him and you can see him denying that he's and you hearing denying that he's a member of the CIA and talking about oh how how sorry he is that people are going to be hurt and here he was involved in torturing and training other people that torture you know it's been it's been said in the reviews of this movie that trying to document for for a film see I passed secret operations it's like trying to catch a vampires image in the mirror you know it's it seems to be impossible but these filmmakers by interviewing people and taking film clips of situations what really happened and working very very hard for a long period of time they've come up with incredible documentation not one reviewer that I've read has challenged the accuracy or authenticity of any point they make in this film there are some people who have said that the film was biased against the CIA because Colby and Helms look like such hard people and that it was there for the filmmaker was trying to catch the pro CIA people in order to make them look harsh and hard and of course that's that's nonsense these gentlemen were in fact are in fact very hard individuals who were running an organization that was into some very heavy stuff yeah he basically let those people dam themselves with their own words I mean he has films or has a film clip of George Meany denying that they got any money from the CIA and then in the next segment he documents how they did get money from the CIA Bayview category now that it is not true well under no circumstances have we ever received or solicited any money from the CIA doesn't say that the afl-cio receipt it was thirty three million doesn't go to the afl-cio goes to the AI any LD state that these unions you mention have stated just as categorical as I have that they do not receive and have not received the Iowa the IH trade union operations are affected through a vast bureaucracy of people these are the officers of the international trade unions and of the national unions especially in the United States through which the CIA is able to infiltrate and manipulate the international unions of course mr. Meany is has been in the past one of the principal it's not the principal US trade unionist through which these operations are affected in may and the McClellan I'm the inter-american representative of the afl-cio and have been the since 1964 prior to that time I was the associate into American representative and prior to that time I was an American representative of the International Union of food and allied workers based in Geneva but working in Latin America I'm the executive director of the American Institute for free labor development prior to that time as a matter of act I've been the executive director now for some 10 years and I've been with the American is to free labor development since its founding in 1962 for the period immediately prior to 1962 I was the inter-american representative the postal Telegraph and telephone International which has headquarters in Switzerland but I was there their representative in the Western Hemisphere there have been some people who accused the afl-cio collaborating with the CIA and what would be your response to that accusation I think that it's so ridiculous and so infantile so juvenile to make such an accusation in you mr. Doherty oh I agree I don't know of any labor leader that wouldn't deny such an accusation it's just not true in that in America one of the principal and most effective of the trade unionists of the American trade unions who worked with us was bill Doherty he had originally started in the post Telegraph and telephone workers International coming up through the Communications Workers of America later on he was transferred into the American Institute for free labor development this was set up during the Kennedy period and is a joint effort by American trade unionists like George Meany and the heads of American based multinational corporations which operate in Latin America restored but not before eleven persons are killed and a crippling general strike is called over the power struggle between the president and the Parliament of Brazil says mr. Dority quote what happened in Brazil on April 1st did not just happen it was planned and planned months in advance many of the trade union leaders some of whom were actually trained in our Institute were involved in the revolution and in the overthrow of the Goulart regime immediately part of the the the military takeover in Brazil there was a group of students from the zillion unions and training in Front Royal this wasn't the first of the Brazilian groups that have been here nor has it been the last we've had them continuously they weren't in any kind of a course training for revolutionary activities or clandestine activities they were in a regular collective bargaining course it so happens that when many of those students went back home from that course their unions were involved in this struggle against the attempt of the Commons to take over some of the unions and that's precisely what I meant by the statement one aspect of the film is that that's I think very important is it has no narration that it doesn't tell you what to think about what you're seeing what it does is it was an incredible research job and all these interviews with people from various points of view it lets those people tell the story and get exposes what the public record is and then lets you draw your own conclusions and it shows the cause and effect for instance it will take a look at CIA torture schools held in the United States the police program began on a large scale under Dwight Eisenhower he felt there was a need to train the police to help with the fighting of communism after the Second World War he recruited for the purpose a man named Byron angle Byron angle was by the time he came into this program a member of the CIA so the only way they'd get their information is to torture whenever one could get the information about a specific high-ranking official in in torture not one of these men off the street but a man who had based his career on his ability to extract information from political prisoners in the cases that I investigated I found that they had been trained at a United States base torture electric shocks and beatings in telephones they finally I feel always like that many of the people I spoke with exiled political exiles in Europe had been tortured with US Army Field telephones they were simple they were easy to operate and we had sent them in large numbers as part of our military assistance plan you hook up wires to the telephone and you put one wire perhaps on a man's penis when women are tortured oftentimes the higher ranking officials will find an excuse to come by and watch the torture I decided that I would confirm everything they wanted it was in such a condition and they said we wouldn't settle for less and I didn't want to go through any more torture with ideological I was weak enough to say we stay no why not what we brought to it what we the United States through our efficient system brought was the sense that you used only the amount of torture appropriate to get information and the reason torture persists is that although they can't among the police officers is that torture is not an effective way to get information and of course is it torture is a necessity of the system not that because some minds sick minds think of it and then they would show they had for instance AG talking about how they would attempt to subvert the democratic process of a particular country at any one time down in latinum in Ecuador we had on our payroll or in a intimate working relationship with our station one vice president a president of the Chamber of Deputies a president of the Senate a vice president of the Senate a number of senators a number of Deputies the Secretary General of the Democratic Socialist Party we even created a party down there which we called the popular revolutionary Liberal Party which would appeal to a lot of different people we had extensive propaganda operations during this period also like they love to brag about inside the agency about the situations the CIA helped create that were so favorable to the United States now what they talk about the common denominator is strong men they were able to put in power in key situations and governments they were able to reverse one of these was the Shah who was ousted in a coup in the sea I had a counter-coup and brought him back and the CIA used to love to brag about this and what a great man the Shah was as they proceeded to train SAVAK and and its forces they were of course very close to Batista they were very close to just about Mike's a say the the and the current President of the Philippines back in South Korea in country after country after country of our allies or our client states in the third world is you've you find that the CI helped put in power the dictator or reinforced someone who had just gotten into power train their police train them in oppression a suppression of the people and it worked for a decade a decade and a half sometimes for twenty years but unfortunately the people of the world say unfortunately from the CIA point of view the people of the world have become too Restless and they're kicking out the dictators one after the other and turning on the United States in the process it was a short-sighted policy and a policy that's now I believe it's thoroughly bankrupt John something has struck me about the movie on company business the documentary was how it revealed the relationship between the CIA and other parts of what might be called the American power structure in other words the unions were very active in CIA operations business the multinationals were the media we're on CIA payrolls or were used as CIA mouthpieces federal government agencies were working in cooperation with the CIA I think that their it proves that there has been a desire a compulsion by the leaders of this country and the leaders of industry to to function with and through a secret police organization ie to bypass and subvert the the way the Constitution maps out the way our government should run for example in Angola the what the war that I wrote about that I was so deeply involved in that there were various elements in the society the American community that that had no interest whatsoever in having a war happen there it was not in our national security interests in any sense of the word but by having the CI do it you did not have to have public debate the to Nationals that actually were opposed to the war couldn't debate in Congress nor could the missionaries nor could the academics nor could the smaller business people with interest in Angola you can do it secretly and you don't have government by the people and he's very curious this is a turning upside down of what one of the men in the documentary said he was one of the ex-cia people who did a lot of talking but he said I'm not one of those Kissin tell people like Stockwell and he said I think somewhere yeah he said somewhere in that what problem is the CIA that we were sending in the CIA to do things that we should have sent our army into do you know and back to the subject of the objectivity of this film I I would like to point out that that alan frank ovitch and howard reg went so far and a couple points that i they gave the establishment figure the CI figures such an opportunity to speak that III think that they went beyond fairness for example one element in the film one point in the film that simply makes my blood boil is where they let this ad Lee Phillips who is who resigned from the CIA to create the CIA X's organization to go about propagandizing and and lobbying on behalf of the CIA they they allow him to say in the film that he is convinced that Phil Agee as the agent of some foreign government and that to me is outrageous that one that he would say it but that doesn't surprise me but it should not be included in an objective film because of course that is the cheapest kind of a shot just about on a part of the level of dignity or non dignity of the CIA to say that well he attacked us so he must be an agent of a foreign government there was something interesting though about AG in the second part of that film it was widely reported in the media in America I believe this myself that a CIA case officer in Greece was killed because Phil Agee had revealed his address his name his location and that he was therefore responsible for this CIA age that well AG denied that and pointed out that it was well known in Athens that for the last twenty years a CIA case officer had lived in a certain house and a certain you know the station chief had lived in the same house for successions of station Chiefs had lived in the same house and they were public figures and I mean they had cocktail parties that the the diplomatic and police community went to that the you know they were all going to the CIA station Chiefs house everyone in town you that was a CI House meanwhile the station and Athens had supported engineered if you will more than one coup of the the government of Greece and also had dabbled in every situation in the Middle East so they had a lot of bitter enemies with the station chief living in the same house and as they point out in this to AG points out in his film the station chief had been ordered by headquarters to get a new house a clean house and he'd refused because he didn't want to drive the extra twenty minutes AG had not known this man it while he was in the CIA and had not revealed his name and yet very conveniently the CI has used that man's death as the they're their cudgel to go after AG and try to make him out as to a traitor and a killer of American agent well they pounded him all over the all over the Western Hemisphere and they said whenever they've gotten him run out of four countries in Europe he was trying to live I think one of the most interesting things about the film AG is such a controversial character made so by our media and by our government and yet I've met him I had the pleasure in in January when I was traveling through Europe he is an individual who comes across as very calm extraordinarily warm and human vibrations very intellectual he was deeply troubled by what he saw the CIA doing in Latin America and concluded the only way to fight it was to get out and write about it and expose its operations he had a fascinating exchange with the New York Times recently where someone wrote an article saying that AG had his right I believe it was to his passport but that they they disagreed with him otherwise because of his exposing names so Phil wrote a rebuttal which they did publish in which he pointed out that he had not revealed a CI officer's name in well over three years whereas and he listed all of the cases and it must have been a dozen where the New York Times had revealed CIA officers name and just nailed him to the wall with their hypocrisy well as you've said on previous programs that we've had with you that overseas it's common knowledge as who is CIA age absolutely or at least the American maybe not the contract agent but leads the case later and where he lives and all 85% of the CIA case officers not only are well known but they play to that because it's glamorous to be the CIA guide to spook plus the fact that the KGB the Russian KGB officials have social relationships with the CIA I was in Germany once and I picked up this book who's who and the CIA and they had literally thousands of people listed including three of the neighbors that I grew up with in Falls Church Virginia that in certain areas of the world it's no secret the CIA officers this gets back to the crux of the whole matter of government secrecy in that it is the the purpose of government secrecy in terms of the CIA is to keep the American public from knowing what the government is doing the victims the people in the countries overseas almost always know the full truth about the bloody operations that are killing them and messing up their lives secrecy is designed to keep the American people from knowing about it the point of that is the CIA's big push for greater secrecy and protection of its secrets is not to keep enemy agents from knowing what it's doing they know it's to keep its political it's to keep the American public the electorate from knowing what it's doing because the American public could rise up and vote the CIA out of existence therefore it's hammering away to muzzle me and snap and age it cannot exist with an educated public if it continued its operations of killing people overseas of experimenting on American citizens with drugs and drugs sex mind-control experiments the American people would rise up and put it out of business the only way it can continue its operations is to have secrecy to keep the American public from knowing what it's doing with this particular 13 billion dollars a year that it's been I think one of the distressing issues of this whole complex of things that you just raised is how the media has been up until this movie on company business and a couple other PBS discussions or documentary the media has been glorifying the CIA the most striking example and I think the on company business really reveals this is the story of Dan Patroni a CIA agent in a way we were unsuccessful in our efforts to weaken the left in her glide during the period when I was in Erlewine 1964 to 1966 our job in the face of the growth of the strength of the left during that period was to promote repression it was the only alternative we had in 1966 we brought in a CIA officer who set up his office in the police department under the cover of the public safety mission of AI D this officer was to work exclusively with the police intelligence trying to improve its capabilities this officer was still there in 1970 at the time that the American Public Safety mission Chief Dan Mitrione II was kidnapped and executed by the Tupamaros Mitrione was the small city cop in Richmond Indiana he had advanced to the position of chief of police and had heard about Byron angles program in Washington applied and of course he was exactly the sort of person they were looking for sent abroad diligent hard-working Dan exemplified the highest principles of the police profession that of social service he served in Brazil for seven years at the International police academy in Washington for two and in Montevideo for one there are quarter billion people in Latin America many of these countries the communist terrorists are trying to tear the fabric of democracy of them some of these countries or apply among them realize that the best protection against this is the development of a democratic police and asked the United States to help and this is what Dan was doing in Toorak he went to arrghh wide to get information this is part of the testimony of Mauna Loa via a Budig why he said regarding Janette rioni this question of perfectionism he insisted on an economy of effort he used to say precise pain in the precise place at the precise time one of the pieces of equipment that had been found useful or was a liar so very thin that it could be fitted into the mouth between the teeth and by pressing against the gums increased the electrical charge and it was through the diplomatic pouches that Mitrione got some of the equipment he needed for the interrogations including these fine wires several Street beggars were picked up whose disappearance would attract no attention this was a technique that Mitrione II had developed or rather perfected in Brazil using these beggars experiments were conducted with different forms of interrogation letting the students see the effects of different voltages on different parts of the human body male and female all those unhappy people died without really knowing why they were undergoing this pain without even having the cowardly solution of answering any questions because they were not asked questions they were simply guinea pigs Dan exemplifies the highest principles of the police professional this callous murder emphasizes the essential inhumanity of the terrorist the American people joined the president in condemning this cold-blooded crime against a defenseless human being mr. Mahoney's devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress and an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere you seen this movie state of siege the coastal cigar dismayed Eastmont on plays than Matrona and shows the story of the two Pereiro guerrillas and the CIA operations in regret and why they kidnapped him well the US media made natrone iottie he they made him out a victim of irrational and despicable violence whereas it appears from his documentary that met Ronnie had his hands in some of the most savage butchery imaginable and the the point is that we're not talking about a Gestapo officer and all Schwitzer somewhere experimenting on people or torturing people we're talking about a fine upstanding CI officer doing his Commission thing by the CIA these apparatuses of torture paid for by the American government had given to these people produced in America and they're even trained here how to use them what's the CIA role in that school you know the CIA set up several in the 50s and throughout the 60s several what they call police training schools and which included all of these techniques they also had a school or two in all the location I never I never was in them teaching people how to make plastic bombs how to blow up things how to throw Molotov cocktails into crowds and and what not how to destabilize a country I don't know I cannot testify that the CIA is still doing that now the film on company business brings us out very well I presume they are but I don't I don't know that jaundice raises the question of sort of the balance sheet on the CIA what is it accomplished has it produced useful intelligence I mean this is what the CIA is supposed to do and it's a charter it's supposed to be a Central Intelligence Agency what sort of intelligence political military and otherwise has it produced what's its record in terms of producing information for the American government to make intelligent political decisions well the congressman Pike put together committee and investigated the CIA's intelligence gathering capability and he concluded in his own words that it was lousy list of CIA failures - gathering together accurate intelligence to analyze it digest it and disseminate it to the leaders of the country accurately what's going to happen is a long list of incredible bungled failures numerous ones of which have led this country to the brink of World War 3 time after time after time take a situation look at what the CIA did during it and you'll find if not the entire situation at least major elements of it were inaccurately reported by the CIA in a way which screwed up our government government's ability to react to the situation but John what about just the gathering of information of intelligence as distinguished from the dirty tricks business than going out the overt aggressive type of behavior the point is that secrecy doesn't work very well spies are the poorest source of intelligence that you can get anywhere you're talking about it play gossip that the next time you have a party over with intelligent friends and just start something verbally and let it come back around the room and see how it resembles what happened what was said originally the point is it rarely does when you get an agent who is reporting to you in secret he is he is you can't go with him to his office to see what was really said he may be working for you he may be working for you and his government to give you false information he may be working for the Soviets to give you false information about his government he may be a nut he may be exaggerating stay on your payroll and if you take ten agents eight of them or nine of them are going to be all of these things and you'll be lucky to come up with one agent who is it was sort of true and honest and conscientious and this is not stockwell's lone criticism or sour grapes every case officer in the CIA if they're speaking candidly will tell you this the first thing you do if you're a case officer and you get your notes from a good agent is you take out your blue pencil and you X out all of the things that you know to be false and if you find some paragraph or thread in there that looks interesting you put a big circle around it then you use that type of an intelligence report so you will screen out from your best agents reporting 80% of the stuff that he reports because you think it's false of course if your basis of information is false then you're you're come you're feeding the government what it wants to know or what you think will sell or what you think your bosses will publish secrecy makes for lousy intelligence the third Intelligence Agency that we provide political intelligence on the Soviet Union on different European or third world countries what would it do as opposed to what the CIA does there was how would you reform the intelligence agent well first let's say categorically and unfetter in our national security interests we closed down the CIA dirty tricks office completely and and I mean that in in the coldest most immoral terms of evaluation if you don't care about the 300,000 people the CI killed in the third world just in terms of US national security the CIT has gotten us into far far more trouble than it's gotten us out of by that I mean Vietnam was the CI operations for seven years before it managed to get the the presidency and the Army involved and the Bay of Pigs and Angola and Iran in Nicaragua and Cuba and Chile and Indonesia the list is endless of situations where the CI has gotten us in and not the KGB not our enemies but the CI has led us into these the 18 year war against China which made it almost impossible for well over 20 years for the United States to do business with this huge country and we almost got the decision made to drop atomic bombs in almost all these cases in almost all these cases we were on the brink of World War 3 of the Holocaust because of CIA activities not because of the KGB of these 300,000 victims of CI operations not any of them of those countries were actively involved in terrorism or war against the United States China wasn't dropping parachutist into the United States to blow up our installations and kill people nor was Cuba nor was Angola or any of these places it was one-sided Wars killing people but in addition to that only perhaps six maybe ten people out of those 300,000 actually worked for the KGB the CIA was not fighting the KGB it was killing people in the third world and perhaps 5% of them at the most and I doubt that seriously where Communist Party members are communists we were talking about 300,000 just just dead people caught on the battlefield now aside from all that which is to say close the dirty tricks division down play to our strengths be public tell the world what we believe in and deal with them openly and we would be further ahead in our international affairs now then then we are but aside from that what do you do about gathering intelligence so you close the operations division down and but you say you argue that the nation does need good intelligence in order to function I fully agree but intelligence gathered through covert sources it produces a long history of failures of corruption you're in the chain of command from the president right down to you and you're working for these people and you're reporting on a situation about which they have an important policy like during the collapse of Vietnam the the kissinger's policy was Vietnamization it would succeed we would give them arms and they would defend themselves that was his policy we were ordered not to report that the elimination was not working until one day suddenly the South collapsed to everybody's surprise except for the case officers that were there looking around that things to the right in the left and you were there at that time you were I was there oh yes I was there up country in Vietnam if we had had public debate the intelligence gathered in a more open way and shared with the academic community and the world we would have had the failure the collapse of Iran for example the famous case were they had in its typewriters the reports that concluded that there was no serious opposition to the Shah in Iran it was in the typewriters the same weekend that Iran first fell apart in the country and that was for the same reason you were not permitted to report that the Shah was a monster and that our policy in our relationship with with Iran was fallacious and that that the Shah was bankrupt in his own country you think that the CIA is even capable in its present organization and with his present members do you think it's even capable of providing intelligence if they're they have the sort of James Bond mentality or the covert operations mentality are these types of people even capable of getting intelligence that's not the bungle rot in other words if you're into playing spy chances are you can have a bizarre view of the world and being capable of getting rational objective intelligence and secondly you're going to have difficulty cultivating sources we're going to be reliable I fully agree and that's that gets down to the very core of my point my argument that the CI should be closed down in our national security interest the the managers of the CI are activists they're trained to do things to take action they enjoy it it's exciting to mount a war and to sit in Washington and send people over to fight it excites a certain kind of person and that kind of person is the one that gravitates to the top of organizations like that and those individuals are going to seek information and favor people who report information that creates a hostile adversary situation in the world so they will have excuses to continue doing their thing John let me ask you this it ties in a lot of the things which we are talking about it seems that the Rockefellers David Rockefeller and the Chase Manhattan Bank the Rothschild who were the Rockefeller counterparts in France and the crime syndicate was represented by Resorts International and the he was the big man of the head of the Mafia Oh his name escapes my rant yeah Meyer Lansky they invested in an organization all three of the underworld in the overworld right they invested in an organization which provides security service and intelligence service for anybody who will hire it they hired ex-cia people they hired people from Interpol National Security Agency from the FBI they hired an excel force general whose main job was security they hired an X district attorney whose main job it was to investigate and ferret out and to prosecute the crime syndicate and they also have ties through the Rothschilds with Mossad now to me this is the outline don't know haven't heard anything about since then but this seems to me the outlines of a really a monstrous organization with them hi all of these together yes one of the things wrong with secret intelligence agencies is that it feeds right-wing paramilitary groups there's a lot of private intelligence operating companies that do sort of dirty work for corporations industrial spine and probably worse who are often former CIA or FBI agencies so it just creates a climate and operations and practices in society that are anti-democratic and are dangerous there's an art another article in penthouse talking about the epic which is El Paso Information Center by the it's run by the Drug Enforcement Agency and it has inputs from all the police and intelligence organizations from all over the country including an interface into Interpol this is a result of Nixon's decision several years ago that all the intelligence agencies should funnel provide information the Drug Enforcement Agency so they have computers now that bring in all this information from their information banks into this area so raw data unsubstantiated unevaluated it goes into the computer so anybody can be tabbed by them and this is another area where the intelligence where the CIA is creeping into out of the CIA and into the rest of our lives a small thing perhaps but an X X CIA agent who is involved in these cop training programs torture places just been made head of the New Mexico prison where they had the uprising a while back but you see it more and more well John thanks a lot for coming on our program again let's move now from 1980 to 1987 and check out some news stories about the subject we've been talking about every month or so I get a publication from Amnesty International since I'm a member it's called appropriately enough amnesty action I guess it's just a newsletter of some sort they give a rundown on who's being tortured in the world they have one particular section I always look at gives a rundown on Central America and what's going on down there and I'd like to read you a little bit of it I think it's interesting for instance in Brazil their new civilian government is introducing measures to protect human rights although Amnesty continues to receive reports of torture and killings in that country and Argentine government is proceeding with trials against nine military commanders for the disappearances that occurred between 76 and 82 and efforts they're continuing to find a hundred children and they're still missing that disappeared during this reign they say also arbitrary arrests torture and killings by Guatemalan and Salvadoran military and paramilitary forces appear to be more selectively directed against suspected government opponents last year this is more so than in previous years both governments are also targeting trade unionists and human rights workers for oppression in Honduras opposition forces the torture and assassinate their citizens their amnesty sites indication that the United States assistance to these forces encourages or condones these abuses in Colombia there's increased disappearances and political killings by government agencies and there's a steep rise in abductions and killings in Chile and there go on to say that in Mexico there's also a number of documented cases the thing that's interesting about this is that they also mentioned Nicaragua this is the Amnesty International remember and the only thing they say about Nicaragua is quote Anestis concerns in Nicaragua focused on short-term detention of prisoners of conscience so no matter what the Reagan administration tells you the people who are really in the business of documenting torture tell it completely different on September 8th of 1985 the White House asked Congress from 54 million dollars to counter the terrorist threats to start this business all over again of training and supervising the Central American police and army forces same thing that they were stopped from doing a few years ago but the administration says that likes this program so much they plan to make it the global one so to serve as a model in the worldwide fight against terrorism speaking of state-sponsored terrorism and torture there is a report just released today by the Americas Watch Group which is in New York based civil rights organization that indicated that the Contras have one of the worst records in the world for civil liberties violations according to this 170 page report that was just released the content of the conduct of the military conflict particularly by the insurgent forces which are the Contras continued to have a severe impact on the rural civilization rural civilians in Nicaragua violations of the law of armed conflicts by the Contras caused great suffering to the Nicaraguan people at a news conference releasing the report their chairman I retire said that the country is still engaged in selective that systematic killing of persons they receive as representing the government in indiscriminate attacks against civilians or in disregard for their safety and in outrages against the personal dignity of prisoners one of the worst things that the countries have been doing is setting lion minds and I just saw on c-span an interview with Elliott Abrams who is the Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Central America and he was claiming that the Contra land mines are only set off by remote control and only are targeted against military targets what did they've made a few mistakes where as I've read report after report that was confirmed in this America Watch report that indiscriminately they put land mines all over different rural areas of Nicaragua that whoever goes over them civilian-military innocent tourist is going to get blown up and that that's part of a policy of systematic terrorism by the countries that have been denounced in this America watch and Craig just like Amnesty International they said that the Nicaraguan government had not engaged in any systematic violation of civil liberties that they've been somewhat rough in their interrogation activities of people suspected of aiding the Contras but there was no evidence of torture and murder of any political prisoners and they say that the Nicaraguans in this report Nicaraguan sandanista government has improved in recent years in their civil rights livered civil rights record particularly as they've treated the mosquito indians who at one time were subject to government repression but now have been treated better in recent years by the sandanista government whereas the Americas Watch report concluded that the Contras were becoming worse in their violation of civil liberties and that was alternative views for this evening alternative views is a production of the alternative Information Network p.o box 7279 Austin Texas seven eight seven one three

Channel: reelblack

Views: 45,446

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Id: _bCBNdknUy4

Length: 59min 13sec (3553 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 01 2018