I’m not a huge fan of Nietzsche, but he was right on the money when he said, He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. The CIA, and its predecessor the WWII-era OSS, was created to fight some truly fearsome monsters (Nazism and Communism) – and duly became too often a monster in itself.
Some of its now-declassified secret activities were quite brilliant and sometimes indeed served the cause of good. These include Project ARGO, where the CIA and Canadian intelligence created a bogus movie-production studio, under the cover of scouting movie locations in Khomeini’s Iran, in order to exfiltrate American hostages.
When a Soviet nuclear submarine sunk to the bottom of the Pacific, Project Azorian built a ship called the Glomar Explorer to retrieve it. Under a cover story that Howard Hughes was investigating deep-sea mining technology, the Glomar Explorer duly retrieved part of the submarine (the rest broke off while being lifted from the ocean floor) and the bodies of six crewmen, who were given a formal burial at sea (film of the ceremony was later presented to Boris Yeltsin). Before the rest of the sub could be retrieved, the cover was broken. The ship was mothballed, but was eventually brought back into service to undertake genuine undersea mining exploration — a task it still continues to fulfil.
Other operations were the stuff of Get Smart-level comedy. Project Acoustic Kitty was as ridiculous as it sounds.
Acoustic Kitty came about in the 1960s, and involved surgically placing a tiny microphone within a cat’s ear canal, and sending the felines out on patrol near Soviet embassies.
Predictably, the cats weren’t great at following orders, and, after the first four-legged agent was almost immediately hit by a taxi and another few wandered away from the objective, the project was sacked.
A great many other CIA operations, though, are far less benign.
The organization has become notorious for an apparent disregard of federal and international law, and is suspected to handle some projects that even the president of the United States is unaware of. From toppling governments and staging false flag operations, to introducing one of the world’s most addictive drugs to the US, the covert operations of the CIA that have come to light are, if nothing else, fascinating to read about.
One of the most notorious is MK-Ultra, the CIA’s long investigation into using mind-altering drugs and other mind-control techniques.
Started in 1953 and led by Sydney Gottlieb, the project used at least US$10 million ($87.5 when accounting for inflation) of taxpayer dollars to study the effects of various chemicals, specifically LSD, on unsuspecting subjects.
Numerous CIA agents as well as members of the general public were administered the drug without their informed consent, a direct violation of the Nuremberg Code. One victim, a patient in a Kentucky mental institution, was given LSD every day for 174 days.
At least one high-ranking Army scientist, Frank Olson, committed suicide when he was secretly given LSD. Although Olson’s family received a personal apology from then-President Gerald Ford, their continued fight to find the full truth has so far been unsuccessful.
Other projects stretched the bounds of morality, if nothing else.
After World War II, the allyships that helped win the war and defeat the Nazis quickly dissolved with the start of the Cold War, which saw the United States and the Soviet Union move swiftly from allies to enemies.
One of the more questionable and little-known strategies devised by the American government was known as Operation Paperclip, in which they rounded up all of the very best Nazi scientists that weren’t tried in the Nuremberg Trials and offered them jobs within the US government. Many of these individuals, including high-ranking member of the Nazi party Wernher von Braun, would go on to work with NASA on their space program.
Some of these men weren’t just in the Nazi party as a smart career move, either. At least one was indicted in the Dachau trials, but escaped conviction due to a lack of evidence. The most famous scientist involved, Werner von Braun was a former SS-Sturmbannführer (Major), though he denied any strong pro-Nazi ideology.
Then there’s the just plain illegal. Despite the United State’s own laws specifically forbidding it, the CIA mounted nearly 600 attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. At least one involved bribing Mafia boss Sam Giancana to carry out a hit.
Project Mockingbird was a warrantless wiretapping operation carried out on the orders of President John F Kennedy between March and June of 1963. It was kept under wraps until 2001.
The initial target of the wiretaps was New York Times reporter Hanson Baldwin, who had gotten on the president’s bad side for putting confidential information comparing the atomic arsenals of the United States and the USSR in an article. However, over the course of the operation, two other newsmen were also targeted […]
A slightly less secretive agency of the United States government, the FBI came under widespread scrutiny in 2015 after an investigative report published by the Associated Press revealed they had been surveilling the general public from above.
The report explained that the FBI had been using small aircraft registered to fake private companies all across the country to listen in on cell-phone conversations and record video footage from above. Within one 30-day period, these surveillance planes had been spotted in 30 different US cities.
MSN
To further rub the American people’s nose into it, officials like James Clapper lied under oath about such illegal mass surveillance of American citizens.
Today, Clapper works for CNN.
Go figure.
