In the 1980s, Samuel K. Doe was the CIA’s boy. He was one of Africa’s worst rulers, who provided bases used for subversion campaigns across Africa and upheld the interests of Firestone Rubber. When Doe lost his utility, the CIA supported Charles Taylor who helped trigger Liberia’s ruinous civil war in the 1990s.
Listen to the Mockingbird. Let early birds catch worms, but Mockingbirds sing catchy ear worms. Tone-deaf historians and criminologists continue to neglect music and thereby ignore an important soundtrack to events. Even if our frustration has now reached a boiling point as we long for information that makes sense, dubbing...
“Cuban Outbreak of Swine Fever Linked to CIA” headlined a January 9, 1977, article by Drew Featherston and John Cummings in Newsday, a Long Island, New York, daily paper. It began, With at least the tacit backing of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officials, operatives linked to anti-Castro terrorists introduced African...
Like the proverbial cat, some concepts have several lives. Or, like the mythological phoenix, they can be reborn from the ashes. This is certainly the case of the Intermarium, a geopolitical concept that envisaged an alliance of countries reaching from the Baltic Sea over the Black Sea to the...
Dusko Doder’s case has ominous reverberations in the era of Cold War 2.0 Late one February night in 1984, Dusko Doder, The Washington Post’s Soviet correspondent, noticed hundreds of lights blazing at the Soviet Defense Ministry and KGB offices in Moscow. He surmised that the Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, who had...
William J. Burns’ appointment offers little more than an image makeover for the agency. As a diplomat, Burns supported U.S. military interventions in Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria and is now stoking the coals against Russia and China. William J. Burns was confirmed by a unanimous vote in the...
By studying the CIA’s history, we can see how they cover up the identity of their agents. Officially, George H.W. Bush’s association with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began with his appointment to the post of Director of Central Intelligence by then President and former Warren Commission member Gerald...
With the confirmation of Gina Haspel as CIA director, there’s rightfully great interest in her record regarding torture. Contrary to the rhetoric--and with barely a word about the utility of torture in rigging the case for the Iraq invasion--the actual ends of torture are incredibly worse than the gruesome means. Of course, there...
The New York Times and other obituaries predictably left this out Richard Armitage, the number two official at the State Department from 2001 to 2005, died on April 13. The New York Times and other obituaries emphasized that Armitage was a Naval Academy graduate and Bronze Star recipient...
British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Queen Elizabeth and U.S. President Gerald Ford Sanctioned an Operation to Bring Left-Leaning Prime Minister Gough Whitlam Down by Having an Arms Company and Bank Run by CIA Assets Trick His Deputy Prime Minister into Accepting an Illegal Loan Danny Casolaro was a maverick investigative...