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fourier jr
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Has anyone heard about this yet?
I emailed Bill Blum about this because it sounded a lot like what he'd already written in his book Rogue State (which OBL recommends btw). He said he'd only read the first ~100 pages & says there isn't really anything new or interesting in there. Pretty much all of it has been known for 30yrs or more. What does that say about people like Bill Blum or Noam Chomsky now? I think they can give all Americans a big "told you so". Blum wrote a couple years ago a bit on the CIA's "family jewels" but it wasn't anything that's in the recent 700-page thing. It was about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio" , which was a network of right-wing terrorist cells created after WWII to create problems for the USSR if they ever decided to take over Western Europe. So the CIA isn't "a very different agency" as the current director tried to claim. Blum also wrote a bit about this:
here's the "family jewels" @ the national security archive:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm
& the cia's site:
http://www.foia.cia.gov/
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2007/06/26/4292093-ap.htmlThe CIA released hundreds of heavily censored documents Tuesday about its spying on Americans, assassination plots and other misdeeds that triggered a scandal in the mid-1970s...
In early 1975, then CIA director William Colby told the U.S. Justice Department the documents detailed assassination plots against foreign leaders such as Cuban President Fidel Castro, the testing of behaviour-altering drugs on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters, opening of mail between the United States and the Soviet Union and China and break-ins at the homes of former CIA employees and others...
In a message to CIA employees Tuesday, Director Michael Hayden said: "It's important to remember that the CIA itself launched this process of recollection and self-examination. And it was the Agency itself that shared the resulting documents in full with Congress..." The documents provide "reminders of some things the CIA should not have done" and "a glimpse of a very different era and a very different agency," he said.
I emailed Bill Blum about this because it sounded a lot like what he'd already written in his book Rogue State (which OBL recommends btw). He said he'd only read the first ~100 pages & says there isn't really anything new or interesting in there. Pretty much all of it has been known for 30yrs or more. What does that say about people like Bill Blum or Noam Chomsky now? I think they can give all Americans a big "told you so". Blum wrote a couple years ago a bit on the CIA's "family jewels" but it wasn't anything that's in the recent 700-page thing. It was about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio" , which was a network of right-wing terrorist cells created after WWII to create problems for the USSR if they ever decided to take over Western Europe. So the CIA isn't "a very different agency" as the current director tried to claim. Blum also wrote a bit about this:
http://members.aol.com/essays6/intro.htmDoes anything done by the Bush administration compare to Operation Gladio? From 1947 until 1990, when it was publicly exposed, Gladio was essentially a CIA/NATO/M16 operation in conjunction with other intelligence agencies and an assortment of the vilest of right-wing thugs and terrorists. It ran wild in virtually every country of Western Europe, kidnapping and/or assassinating political leaders, exploding bombs in trains and public squares with many hundreds of dead and wounded, shooting up supermarkets with many casualties, trying to overthrow governments... all with impunity, protected by the most powerful military and political forces in the world. Even today, the beast may still be breathing. Since the inception of the Freedom of Information Act in the 1970s, the CIA has regularly refused requests concerning the US/NATO role in Gladio, refusing not only individual researchers and the National Security Archive-the private research organization in Washington with a remarkable record of obtaining US government documents-but some of the governments involved, including Italy and Austria. Gladio is one of the CIA's family jewels, to be guarded as such.
The rationale behind it was your standard cold-war paranoia/propaganda: There's a good chance the Russians will launch an unprovoked invasion of Western Europe. And if they defeated the Western armies and forced them to flee, certain people had to remain behind to harass the Russians with guerrilla warfare and sabotage, and act as liaisons with those abroad. The "stay-behinds" would be provided with funds, weapons, communication equipment and training exercises.
As matters turned out, in the complete absence of any Russian invasion, the operation was used almost exclusively to inflict political and lethal damage upon the European Left, be it individuals, movements or governments, and heighten the public's fear of "communism". To that end, violent actions like those referred to above were made to appear to be the work of the Left.
here's the "family jewels" @ the national security archive:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm
& the cia's site:
http://www.foia.cia.gov/
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