Between 1975 and 1989, the primary U.S. intelligence agency leveraged various financial assistance programs to shape Portuguese democracy and prevent the country from falling under Soviet influence. Here’s how.
The involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Portugal is widely acknowledged. In fact, it was primarily thanks to...
Ramparts magazine was a beacon of the 1960s social movements: an anti-establishment muckraking magazine that published important exposés of the CIA, including its involvement in the murder of Ché Guevara, its infiltration of the National Student Association (NSA), and its support for clandestine police training programs in South Vietnam...
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 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...
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.
"I don't think there's ever been a vice president... as much involved at the highest level in our policy-making and our decisions than George," said President Reagan in March 1985.1 At the 1988 Republican national convention, in response to the Democrats' taunt, "Where was George," during Iran-Contra, Reagan said,...
Beloved by his constituents, Vito Marcantonio spoke out against bankrupt U.S. foreign policies during the Cold War and championed Puerto Rican rights
Vito Marcantonio was a visionary left-wing congressman from East Harlem from 1935 to 1937 and 1939 to 1950 who spoke out against bankrupt U.S. foreign policies during...
Try Mark Wilding’s Wildly Funny, But Razor-Sharp, Satirical Dramatization of the CIA-Backed Fascist Coup in Chile. You may think you know what happened, but you’ll never guess how it happened
Most Americans do not remember the “other” tragic 9/11 event, which took place in 1973, when the CIA helped overthrow...
During the Vietnam War era, peace activists compared American war planners like Robert S. McNamara and Henry Kissinger to Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of War Production and Armaments who stood out for his lack of ideological zeal in supporting the Nazi cause. What motivated Speer, rather, was a cold...
Chances are Slim as Political Cowardice Reigns Supreme in America’s Second Gilded Age
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) last week asked the CIA for information related to a Yahoo News report that the Agency in 2017 had planned to kidnap or kill Wikileaks cofounder Julian Assange outside the Ecuadorean Embassy in...
