In this episode, we highlight the struggle of the workers at the Ford Cuautitlán Assembly Plant, just outside Mexico City. On January 8, 1990, workers at the plant were attacked by police and private hired thugs wearing Ford jackets. This happened during a prolonged period of labor action by the workers, and kicked off an occupation of the plant. This attack didn’t happen in a vacuum and the CIA played a role in squashing labor at the plant.
The CIA likes to fashion itself as a heroic agency that helps to protect national security and uphold democracy around the world.
However, Hugh Wilford’s book, The CIA: An Imperial History (Basic Books, 2024), shows that the CIA draws directly from British and French colonial precedents, and adopts the same...
The name Allard Lowenstein (1929-1980) may not mean too much to political activists today, but in the 1960s and 1970s he was a well-known liberal figure associated with many of the progressive causes of the day.
For this reason, it would come as something of a shock to many of...
In early 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower authorized the CIA to provide secret campaign funds to Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and other select members of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which favored close integration with the U.S during the Cold War.
According to historian Michael Schaller, between 1958 and 1960...
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...
The CIA has been implicated in many of the murkiest incidents of the latter half of the 20th century. From the Kennedy assassination and Project MK-ULTRA, to what Wikipedia dubs the “alleged” Operation Mockingbird, a clandestine program which recruited prominent American journalists into a CIA propaganda network funded by...
Dirty Wars follows investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill, author of the international bestseller Blackwater, into the hidden world of America's covert wars, from Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond. Part action film and part detective story, Dirty Wars is a gripping journey into one of the most important and under-reported stories of our time.
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...
The arch neo-conservative wants the CIA to become “bolder and more innovative in covert action”
The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was established in the late 1970s as a watchdog designed to ensure greater transparency for CIA operations in the wake of the 1975-76 Church Committee hearings.
The Church Committee...
On March 17, William H. Blum, the feisty investigative journalist who (literally) wrote the book on CIA crimes and coverups – and who passed away on December 9 at age 85 – was remembered and celebrated at a public memorial in Washington, D.C. The event, which took place at...
