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COLUMN
SIXTY-SIX, DECEMBER 1, 2001
(Copyright © 2001 Al Aronowitz)
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FROM SOMEONE WHO WAS INSIDE THE CENTRAL IGNORANCE AGENCY
Subject:
Agee - 'The USA and International Terrorism'
Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 20:02:29 -0400
From: portsideMod@netscape.net
Reply-To: portside@yahoogroups.com
To: portside@yahoogroups.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/agee1.html
CounterPunch
The
USA and International Terrorism
The
Cold War never really ended. It did so along the east-west axis. But the Cold
War always had a north-south dimension-- the war against forces of liberation in
Third World countries. That never ended, and it continues today. [Through my
studies] I gradually came to the conclusion that what my CIA colleagues and I
had been doing during the 1950s and '60s was nothing more than a continuation of
nearly five hundred years of exploitation and political repression.
By
Philip Agee
I
would like to begin by citing a well-known observation of A. J. Liebling, a U.S.
journalist and media critic who was active during the mid-1900s: "Freedom
of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one," he said.
In
a sense, this has always been true. News media in general, except for
state-funded organizations, are part of the private sector. I know that, here in
Sweden as in Britain, you have state television and state radio. But generally
speaking, and certainly in the United States, the press has always been in the
private sector.
The
Power of the Word
The
United States---that is, the political class of the United States---has known
about the power of the word for a very, very long time. A personal experience
may serve to illustrate how powerful the written word can be.
For
legal reasons, I stayed away from the United States for about seventeen
years---from the time I started work on my first book, in the early 1970s, until
my autobiography was ready for publication in 1987. The publisher of the latter
was very eager for me to return to the States for the promotion of the book, but
my lawyers all warned me not to take a chance. They suspected that there could
be secret criminal indictment, as there could have been all those years, and
argued that the risk was not worth it.
My
wife and I decided that we would take that risk. We went back, and they didn't
touch me. I did the promotion of the book, and that began ten years of frequent
travel to the U.S. for lectures at universities and speeches at political
rallies, civic centres, churches, even out in the street. Altogether, and must
have spoken at more than 500 events in the United States.
One
of my trips, around 1989 or 1990, was to the University of California at Santa
Cruz. When the organizers told me that the event was scheduled to take place at
a civic centre with room for about 3000 people, my reaction was: "Oh,my
god! We are going to look like we're all alone in there. We will never attract
more than a couple of hundred people." But they said, "Don't worry.
You'll see."
Sure
enough, on the night of the meeting the arena was packed. During the discussion
period after my talk, which was about the war in Central America still going on
at the time, a man stood up way in the back. He was a very large person, with a
lot of long hair, a bushy beard, and a plaid lumberjack shirt. He paused for a
moment, and then said my name in an enormous, booming voice: "Philip
Agee!" He said, "Philip Agee, I want to thank you for saving my
life!"
With
that, the place became as quiet as you could imagine. You could have heard the
proverbial pin drop. He went on to tell the story of how he was seriously
wounded in Vietnam, and had to spend several years in a veterans' hospital in
the United States. While in hospital, he became despondent: He thought there was
no hope, and decided to commit suicide. But then someone gave him a copy of my
first book.
He
said: "When I read that book, it changed my life." He said that he
decided then not to end his life, but to spend the rest of it helping Vietnam
War veterans who had problems like his own. From that point in the mid-1970s
until the time of this meeting some fifteen years later, he had made a career of
social work among Vietnam War veterans suffering from mental problems because of
the things that they had done and seen in Vietnam.
This
is merely one personal story, but it indicates the strength of the written word.
Possibly, one life was saved---possibly.
Covert
Action
The
CIA, as you probably know, was founded in the years following World War
II---supposedly, to prevent another Pearl Harbor, the Japanese surprise attack
which brought the United States into that war. In that sense, the events of
September 11th represent a terrible failure on the part of the CIA and the rest
of the U.S. intelligence establishment.
There
are at least twelve or thirteen different intelligence agencies in the United
States, and they are spending on the order of thirty billion dollars per year--
the CIA being simply the foremost among them. Of course, the CIA was not only
established to collect information and to anticipate attacks.
From
the beginning of the CIA's existence, it was also used to intervene secretly in
the internal affairs of other countries. Virtually no country on earth was
exempt.
This
secret intervention---as opposed to the collection of information---was called
covert action, and it was used in a variety of ways to influence the
institutions of other countries. Interventions in elections were very frequent.
Every CIA station, that is the undercover CIA office inside a U.S. embassy,
included agents who were involved in covert action. In addition to intervention
to ensure the election of favoured candidates and the defeat of disfavoured
candidates, the CIA also infiltrated the institutions of power in countries all
over the world. I am sure that Sweden is noexception, and was not an exception
during all the years of the Cold War.
There
was electoral intervention, propaganda via the media, and also the penetration
and manipulation of women's organizations, religious organizations, youth and
student organizations, the trade-union movement---very important---but also the
military and security services and, of course, political parties. All of these
institutions were free game for penetration and manipulation by the CIA.
In
short, the CIA influenced the civic life of countries all around the world. It
did this due to a lack of faith in democracy in other countries.
There
was a desire for control. The secret U.S. policy was to not leave things to
"chance", that is to the will of the people in whatever country it
might be. They had to be tutored, they had to be "guided" in such a
way that they would be safe for U.S. control. Control was the key word. None of
this was done for altruistic or idealistic reasons.
Three
key factors
Where
the media are concerned, there are three important factors involved: sources,
selection and the slant. With regard to sources, it is my understanding that
Swedish news media have very few of their own people working abroad. That means
that they are dependent on what they get from other sources, for example the
Associated Press, Reuters, BBC or CNN.
Those
huge organizations which have people all over the world are, of course, selling
their products here.
So
you receive those products here, and an editor takes uses them in any way he
chooses. What seems to be happening with globalization is that the treatment of
news is becoming more and more homogeneous. Sweden, of course, is a unique
society with a unique history, culture and language. You would surely have a
unique way of viewing and interpreting world events---a vision of the world that
is Swedish, in contrast to that of the U.S., Germany or any other nationality.
But
how do you maintain this cultural identity with regard to international news, if
the media here are dependent on foreign sources? These sources are, of course,
becoming fewer and fewer, as the process of monopolization continues. Consider
the mergers that have occurred just during the past ten years or so--- for
example, Time merging with Warner, then taking over CNN and now merging with
AOL. Or General Electric, another giant corporation, taking control of NBC. This
is a process that has been going on for a long time, resulting in fewer and
fewer independent sources.
Selection
may be the most important factor of the three, because what is most important in
the news is what is left out. It is a form of censorship.
There
is a lot of news out there; but editors determine what is news and what is not.
Whatever is overlooked, not reported, says a lot about the media.
Invisible
background
This
has been very well illustrated during the past two weeks. I imagine that we have
all seen the same reports over and over again, on what happened in New York and
Washington, along with the demonization of Osama bin Ladin.
There
has been some reporting, but not very much, about the fact that bin Ladin is a
product of the United States. He is a creature of the CIA, having gone to work
for it in Afghanistan. It was the largest operation ever carried out by the CIA,
and its purpose was to bleed the Soviet Union.
Bin
Ladin was one of thousands who volunteered to fight with the mujihadin against
the Soviets. As I recall, there were seven different groups. All seven were
basically fundamentalist Islamic forces, who felt that the Soviet invasion
defiled an Islamic country. Bin Ladin was among those who did not stop fighting
after the Soviets were expelled. In fact, he started laying plans for the future
while the war against the Soviet Union was still going on. He was able to
develop a world-wide network which today is operating in sixty countries or
more.
Very
little of this background on bin Ladin as a creation of the United States has
been brought to public attention during the past two weeks. Most of what we have
seen and heard is related to the "solution", which is war.
How
much have we read or heard about those voices calling for alternative solutions
to the problem of international terrorism? How much reporting have we seen on
analyses of what has driven these people to such desperation that they carried
out those attacks on September 11th?
I
have not seen very much of that. This may be due to the fact that I am living in
Cuba at present. But I do read the New York Times on the Internet every morning,
for example, and have access to quite a lot of other news.
When
it comes to alternative solutions to the problem, such as a re-examination of
U.S. policy in the Middle East, particularly with respect to the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I don't think I have seen anything. The only thing
we get is Bush saying "this is war, we are at war, this is the first war of
the 21st century, this is a question of good versus evil, whoever is not with us
is against us", and so on.
That
is pretty much the attitude we had in the CIA during the 1950s. When we analysed
the operational climate and all the political forces in any given country, we
had our friends and we had our enemies. There was no one in between. The friends
were centre and right-wing social democrats, conservatives, liberals, in some
cases all the way over to neo-fascists.
The
enemies were left-wing social democrats, socialists, communists, all the way to
those advocating armed struggle.
This
is the way we saw the world. It was a strictly dualistic view of the political
climate in any given country where we were operating. It was very much like what
we are hearing today from Washington.
The
Uses of Journalists
The
third important factor affecting the news is, of course, the slant or bias. It
reflects the moral, social and political values of the person doing the writing,
or at least the editor. This is where the CIA played a very fundamental role in
years past, and I cannot imagine that it suddenly stopped when the Cold War came
to an end.
In
fact, like many others, I believe that the Cold War never really ended.
It
did so along the east-west axis. But the Cold War always had a north-south
dimension---the war against forces of liberation in Third World countries. That
never ended, and it continues today.
I
also believe that the CIA's media operations have continued. They involve the
recruitment and payment of editors and reporters who take the CIA's material and
publish it as if it were their own. Taken all together---the sources and
selection of material, and the point of view or slant---the result is
essentially what is known as propaganda, but which passes for "unbiased
news".
Journalists
are also very important to the CIA for non-journalistic activities. They serve
as very convenient agents of access for the Agency.
Particularly
since they come from a country with a neutral tradition, Swedes in general have
always been of great interest to the CIA. This is because they do not carry a
lot of political baggage, as do people from most other countries. I am aware of
the ongoing debate here concerning just how neutral Sweden has or has not been.
But in the rest of the world, the neutrality of Sweden has created a special
attraction for U.S. intelligence agencies, because Swedes have readier access to
certain target individuals than, say, an American or a German would.
The
fact is that journalists are used for non-journalistic purposes---as collection
agents for intelligence, and for making contacts, because a journalist can
approach practically anyone and ask for an interview or develop some type of
relationship. Of the hundreds of journalists who have come to me over the years,
I have no idea how many have been sent by the CIA. I get some idea when I read
what they write. But I learned to be cautious, early on.
Education
in Injustice
The
covert action operations to which I referred earlier were carried out all over
the world, and certainly in Latin America where I was posted. I spent three
years in Ecuador, then three more in Uruguay. In both cases, my cover was as a
political attaché in the U.S. embassy.
I
then returned to Washington, pretty disillusioned with the work. I was a product
of the U.S. education system of the 1950s, which provided me with a very good
liberal education, but no political education at all. I was simply brought up to
believe that whatever the government did was good, and that it was doing these
good things in the name of us all.
It
was not until I got down to Latin America that I began to get a political
education. Whatever my ideas when I went down there, I saw things around me
every day that influenced me. I saw the terrible economic and social conditions,
and the injustices that could not be ignored.
The
two most fundamental, interrelated problems were the grossly unequal
distribution of land and the unequal distribution of wealth. In the early years
of the Kennedy administration---I had gone down to Latin American toward the end
of the Eisenhower period---there was much talk about land reform as a way of
dealing with those problems.
But
with the success of the Cuban revolution, and its success in surviving U.S.
attempts at invasion and other hostilities, land reform in the rest of Latin
America was put aside. "Stability" was the order of the day. The view
in Washington was that, if reform programmes were pushed, it could lead to
instability and create openings for liberation forces all over Latin America
that were inspired by the Cuban revolution.
So,
the aim of our programmes was to support the status quo, to support the
oligarchies of Latin America. These are the power structures that date back
centuries, based on ownership of the land, of the financial resources, of the
export-import system, and excluding the vast majority of the population.
With
all of our programmes, we were supporting these traditional power structures.
What first caused me to turn against these people were the corruption and the
greed that they exhibited in all areas of society. My ideas and attitudes began
to change, and eventually I decided to resign from the CIA.
It
is widely believed that, once you have joined the CIA, it is likely being in the
mafia, that you can never leave. But that is actually not the case.
The
CIA does not want people working within the organization who are not happy and
do not want to be there. They are security risks, for one thing.
So,
people are coming and going all the time in that large organization of some
18,000 employees.
Maddening
Diary
I
decided to start a new career in teaching, and enrolled as a Ph.D. student in a
programme of Latin American studies at the National Autonomous University of
Mexico. In the course of those studies---of the Spanish Conquest, the colonial
period, and all the horrors that have occurred over the centuries in Latin
America---I gradually came to the conclusion that what my CIA colleagues and I
had been doing during the 1950s and '60s was nothing more than a continuation of
nearly five hundred years of exploitation and political repression.
It
was then that an idea entered my mind which had previously been unthinkable---to
write a book that would show how all this works. The research required me to
spend a year in Paris, and then another year in London where the British
Library's newspaper archive proved to be invaluable. There, I was able to read
all the news reports relating to the places that I had worked in Latin America,
in many cases dating back to the 19th century.
When
the book finally came out---the title was Inside the Company: CIA
The
book had a tremendous effect on the Agency's effectiveness, its ability to
continue its standard operations. The most gratifying result was that many Latin
Americans told me how important the book was for defending themselves and their
organizations from destruction by the CIA. In the broadest sense, the purpose of
the Agency's various activities was to prop up those forces that were considered
to be friendly to U.S. interests, while penetrating, dividing, weakening and
destroying those forces that were regarded as unfriendly to U.S. interests---the
forces of the political left that I mentioned earlier.
Thus,
for Latin American revolutionaries to come to me and say how much they
appreciated the book, with all its details on how the CIA works to subvert
institutions in other countries, was extremely gratifying.
Suitable
enemy
Since
the events of two weeks ago, there has been much comment and speculation about
the new era we may now be entering. Looking back, there was a long Cold War that
had already begun during World War II. An important turning point occurred in
1950, when it was decided to start an arms race that would serve the dual
purpose of forcing the Soviet Union into bankruptcy while stimulating the U.S.
economy. Since the Soviet Union was still recovering from the devastation of
World War II, it would never be able to catch up; but it would be compelled to
make the effort, nevertheless. Meanwhile, military spending in the U.S. would
keep going up and up, which in turn would stimulate the U.S. economy through a
sort of "military Keynesianism". This continued through the Reagan
administration of the 1980s.
But
in the decade since the end of the Cold War until September 11th, the U.S.
security establishment---the political class, the CIA, the people who fought the
Cold War---had no real enemy to focus on. True, they had Saddam Hussein for
awhile, and they might have had a minor enemy here, another one there. But there
was no real world-wide threat similar to that of the Cold War. Well, now it
seems that they have one again.
What
this means is that the United States is going to be in this for quite some time.
I have feeling that it is going to go on for ten or fifteen years, because they
are not going to wipe out international terrorism or something like bin Ladin's
group overnight. During this period, they are going to be doing the same things
they did in the Cold War. We can already hear it in such expression as,
"Whoever is not with us is against us."
They
are going to be trying to use every bit of power they have to bring countries in
line behind the United States.
It
also means important changes within the United States, because the war on
terrorism will serve as the justification for restraints on civil liberties.
They
are building a huge crisis in the United States. They are building the
psychological climate for broad-based acceptance of an ongoing war, for which
there will be no quick resolution. There will be no great battles, either.
Little
Room for Alternatives
During
this period, there will be very little room for alternative views and
alternative solutions in U.S. news media. What are the alternatives? Well, one
is obviously to address the question of why these people are doing these things:
What are the roots of international terrorism? How does U.S. foreign policy
create this type of reaction? How does U.S. support of everything that Israel
does, including the oppression of the Palestinian people, influence
fundamentalist Islamic groups?
In
other words, a feasible alternative would be a reconsideration of U.S. foreign
policy, to see if it would not be possible to create a more just situation in
the Middle East. But the United States is stuck. It is stuck with an
authoritarian regime in Egypt, which is one of the really shaky countries at the
moment. Algeria has gone through a horrible period, and the fundamentalist
movement there has not died away at all. In Pakistan the government could fall;
fundamentalists there could take over, and they would then have nuclear weapons
in their hands. So, a lot of things can happen in the months and years ahead.
Unfortunately,
I suspect that there will be greater self-censorship by U.S. media in order to
line up behind the government, however its policy of war may turn out. There is
already talk of a personal identification system of some kind for the entire
country, together with large-scale surveillance of the population---especially
immigrants, and Muslim immigrants in particular.
There
will be some opposition to this; but historically, the courts have usually gone
along with the government, even though they are theoretically supposed to be the
guarantors of civil liberties. For example, the courts went along with the
internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
So,
it will be possible to restrict, and even infringe upon, civil liberties and
human rights in the U.S.
It
is early days to draw any conclusions about how all this is going to develop,
since it is still in the planning stage. But in my opinion, if they carry out
this military solution---with an attack or a series of attacks, or the
establishment of military bases in Islamic countries---they will be doing
exactly what bin Ladin wants them to do. It would turn more and more people to
fundamentalism and to his organization. They could kill him tomorrow, but the
organization that he has established will live on, and it will be nearly
impossible to penetrate.
My
reading of the situation is that there have been a few defectors from bin
Ladin's organization who have provided valuable information. But the U.S. has
not been able to have anyone working in these clandestine groups around the
world and reporting from the inside. It has had to make do with whatever it can
learn from a few defectors. Certainly, the CIA and the other components of the
U.S. intelligence apparatus will be using all available technical means to
locate and attack these groups, wherever they may be.
They
should certainly know where all the training bases are located, since they were
established by the CIA itself. But that will not be nearly enough.
[Philip
Agee is a former CIA officer and author of Inside the Company. This
article is adapted from the text of a speech Agee gave at ABF House, in
Stockholm on 24 September 2001] ##
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