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.
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 May 26, The New York Times Magazine ran a feature story by Matthieu Aikins entitled “America’s Monster: Uncovering the Brutal Career of Abdul Raziq—And the Hidden Truths of the War in Afghanistan.”
The story detailed the U.S. military and CIA’s support for Abdul Raziq, a police commander in Spin...
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...
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...
Part 3: “Subversion.” "On Company Business" is an in-depth look into the origins, history, and inner-workings of one of the world’s most powerful, but least understood, covert intelligence gathering organization: the Central Intelligence Agency.
In October, John Brennan, CIA Director from 2013 to 2017, will release a memoir titled Undaunted: My Fight Against America's Enemies, at Home and Abroad.
Early excerpts from the book, published in The New York Times on Thursday July 30, quote Brennan expressing outrage that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell...
The effects of this poisonous coup attempt—cooked up at Langley more than 30 years ago—had lingering consequences which exacerbated income equality, stifled economic growth and undercut human rights.
Back in the 1980s New Zealand registered in the global consciousness because of its then-Prime Minister, the late David Lange, and his...
For over two years we have been told Putin’s Russia has interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. We now find the U.S. government has decided it can unilaterally invalidate the actual presidential elections in Venezuela and recognize a person of its choosing as president. This is one more...
New Documentary Explores Life and Legacy of Fletcher Prouty, who wrote about CIA covert operations in his classic book The Secret Team
In a famous scene in Oliver Stone’s epic 1992 film JFK, Kevin Costner’s character confers with a shadowy CIA operative played by Donald Sutherland known as Mr. X...
