It is often said of the CIA that there are two words that aptly describe it: mendacity and mediocrity. And this is from the time Harry Truman initiated the agency to the present. It has never gotten any better.
If you are an incompetent liar in intelligence work, you can create a crisis and failure. If you have no patience for espionage (it takes too long for results) or dissimulation then an agent has to rely on covert operations e.g. military coups, assassinations, surveillance of dissidents or secret interventions in internal affairs of governments. Many CIA covert operations were essentially failures because of incompetence or inexperience resulting sometimes in the death of 100 to 1000 innocent individuals. CIA operatives who worked in the Middle East and knew no Arabic and had no familiarity with the culture discovered over time that the Moslems were very effective liars, much better at it than the CIA. After all, the Moslems had been lying to each other for centuries. To them “deception was the essence of survival”. In fact there is an actual Arabic word derived from Islamic texts. It is “taqiya” and it means “the necessary lie” or the lie to get what you want. The Shiites habitually lied to the Sunnis in order to survive. But when the CIA operative lied, for example, to an individual Moslem who was a likely candidate for a source of information, the CIA agent frequently was caught in his lies and his potential informer ended up dead. Moslem surveillance was so good that the agent had no clue as to how he was found out. The Moslem agents knew that the informer had been recruited by the Americans and so they killed him. And what was the lie that got him murdered? The CIA agent promised to bring him to the US, give him money and a safe place to live. The informer believed the promises because that was his dream.
In 1967 a Greek junta known as “the colonels” seized power in Greece led by a Greek undercover CIA agent recruited 20 years before by Allen Dulles, former head of the CIA.
The “colonels” and their friends had been slipping hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Nixon campaign as a gift. The money came through the Greek intelligence service which was linked to the CIA. The colonels were well known fascists, i.e. the classic fascists- Mussolini style. The trains ran on time. So here we have a bunch of fascist militants paying off the Nixon administration and at the same time planning a coup that the CIA knew nothing about despite their close relationship. In short, they had been conned by the colonels. To top it off the US sold military hardware to the junta and the CIA justified the sales with the laughable lie that it would return democracy to Greece. The CIA would not allow anything critical to be said about the junta. It was a well known fact that the junta tortured its enemies and when the question of human rights was raised, the CIA denied it by belittling the protestors.
At this point the colonels decided they would overthrow the leader of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, whom they hated. The US warned them not to do this because if they attacked, the Turks, who were only 40 miles off the coast of the island, would invade. And that was not in the plan. The colonels ignored our warning and attacked anyway. The end result was a war between the Turks and the Greeks who were both “trained and armed” by the US. The slaughter was horrendous and once again the CIA failed to warn Washington that the war was about to begin because of inept intelligence. The horror of maintaining an intimate relationship with a repressive dictatorship is readily apparent. Something we tend to do all over the world because it is good for business. In the end a popular uprising deposed the junta. However, the American Embassy was surrounded and the American Ambassador was fatally shot. Later a new CIA station chief was brought in and he also was assassinated. With this kind of history is it any wonder why we are hated throughout the world? Obviously it is not a wise choice to allow the CIA a free hand in foreign policy.
References:
Ignatius, David. Body of Lies. W.W. Norton, 2007.
Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes. Doubleday, 2007.
Wikipedia
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Korean War and the CIA [part 2 of 2]
The Korean War was the first major conflict of the cold war. It started on June 25, 1950. It was known as a Korean police action in order to avoid the need for congressional approval. North Korea had invaded the South and Truman was preparing to meet with Douglas McArthur. Truman expected useful CIA intelligence on Korea. Specifically he wanted to know whether the Chinese would cross the border. McArthur assured him that they would not. As it turned out the CIA was once again of no help because it knew nothing at all about China. What American spies we had in China at the time of Mao’s victory over Chiang Kai-shek had all left the country in a hurry. Furthermore, McArthur hated the CIA and kept its operatives out of the Far East wherever possible. The CIA had a weak group of agents left over from WWII. Its research was poor and its bulletins to the President were valueless. Its allies were Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kai-shek both of whom produced intelligence that was worthless and corruption was rampant. No information was reliable. It became apparent that the intelligence agency of the strongest country in the world was conned and deceived by crooks and foes. Exiles were once again faking intelligence for pro fit and the CIA was the patsy.
When the President traveled to Wake Island to meet McArthur the CIA headquarters assured him that the Chinese did not intend to intervene. And this was despite the warning of their Tokyo station chief that the Chinese had 300,000 troops mobilized on the border. Taiwan told headquarters the same thing. The warnings were ignored. After the American troops were attacked on the border, the CIA still insisted that a major intervention was not likely. Finally when the Chinese did invade we were so surprised and unprepared that the Chinese pushed our forces down the entire southern peninsula to the sea. Eventually we were able to force them out of the South and the conflict became a trench war until it ended on July 27, 1953. However, there were horrendous casualties on both sides. Also the agency engaged in paramilitary operations which were for the most part failures and were responsible for many more lives lost.
The CIA recruited Chinese and Korean agents and dropped them behind the lines in North Korea where they disappeared—never to be heard from. They were sent to gain intelligence or give support to resistance movements that did not exist. In short, they were suicidal assignments. The money and lives lost was way disproportional to what was gained. In fact there are those who say nothing was gained and this kind of irresponsibility continued on into the 1960’s. The CIA just kept sending agents to their death for no damn reason.
Years later, the final conclusion was that all the “secret” information collected during the war was pure fiction produced by Chinese and North Korean intelligence agents and passed on to the administration. In fact, even worse the paramilitary operations had been sold out from the very beginning. Treachery and deceit was rampant and headquarters did not have a clue.
References:
Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes. Doubleday, 2007
Wikipedia
When the President traveled to Wake Island to meet McArthur the CIA headquarters assured him that the Chinese did not intend to intervene. And this was despite the warning of their Tokyo station chief that the Chinese had 300,000 troops mobilized on the border. Taiwan told headquarters the same thing. The warnings were ignored. After the American troops were attacked on the border, the CIA still insisted that a major intervention was not likely. Finally when the Chinese did invade we were so surprised and unprepared that the Chinese pushed our forces down the entire southern peninsula to the sea. Eventually we were able to force them out of the South and the conflict became a trench war until it ended on July 27, 1953. However, there were horrendous casualties on both sides. Also the agency engaged in paramilitary operations which were for the most part failures and were responsible for many more lives lost.
The CIA recruited Chinese and Korean agents and dropped them behind the lines in North Korea where they disappeared—never to be heard from. They were sent to gain intelligence or give support to resistance movements that did not exist. In short, they were suicidal assignments. The money and lives lost was way disproportional to what was gained. In fact there are those who say nothing was gained and this kind of irresponsibility continued on into the 1960’s. The CIA just kept sending agents to their death for no damn reason.
Years later, the final conclusion was that all the “secret” information collected during the war was pure fiction produced by Chinese and North Korean intelligence agents and passed on to the administration. In fact, even worse the paramilitary operations had been sold out from the very beginning. Treachery and deceit was rampant and headquarters did not have a clue.
References:
Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes. Doubleday, 2007
Wikipedia
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