Reply #19: Expanding on CIA lies.

[reprehensor]

There is a fundamental misconception about the role of "intelligence agencies", like the CIA;

"The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the President's foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while reporting "intelligence" justifying those activities. It shapes its intelligence, even in such critical areas as Soviet nuclear weapons capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target of its lies."

-Ralph McGehee, "Deadly Deceits" frontispiece. Ocean Press, 2002.

The CIA is expected to lie, even (especially?) under oath. I assume the same parameters apply to the other "intelligence" agencies. The tone was set for this type of activity by none other than Allen Dulles during his testimony before the Warren Commission;

(From Paul Hoch's chapter in The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond, A Guide to Cover-Ups and Investigations.)

The Commission members clearly understood the worthlessness of a categorical denial from an intelligence agency. As a matter of policy, they were told, the CIA would lie to protect an informant or agent, unless otherwise instructed by the President:

REP. BOGGS: Let's say Powers did not have a signed contract but he was recruited by someone in CIA. The man who recruited him would know, wouldn't he?

MR. DULLES : Yes, but he wouldn't tell.

THE CHAIRMAN : Wouldn't tell it under oath?

MR. DULLES: I wouldn't think he would tell it under oath, no.

THE CHAIRMAN: Why?

MR. DULLES: He ought not tell it under oath. Maybe not tell it to his own government but wouldn't tell it any other way.

MR. McCOY: Wouldn't he tell it to his own chief?

MR. DULLES: He might or might not. If he was a bad one then he wouldn't ... I would tell the President of the United States anything, yes, I am under his control. He is my boss. I wouldn't necessarily tell anybody else, unless the President authorized me to do it. We had that come up at times.

Scott, Peter Dale; Hoch, Paul; Stetler, Russell. 1976. The Assassinations. New York: Vintage Books. p.137

With the tone set by an agency stalwart like Dulles, Richard Helms took this advice to heart in 1977. John Stockwell describes his less than positive experience with the CIA in his book, "In Search of Enemies";

"...What about the oath of secrecy I signed when I first joined the CIA in 1964? I cannot be bound to it for four reasons: First, my oath was illegally, fraudulently obtained. My CIA recruiters lied to me about the clandestine services as they swore me in. They insisted the CIA functioned to gather intelligence. It did not kill, use drugs, or damage people's lives, they assured me. These lies were perpetuated in the following year of training courses. It was not until the disclosures of the Church and Pike Committees in 1975 that I learned the full, shocking truth about my employers...

...the congressional committees disclosed CIA activities which had previously been concealed, which I could not rationalize...

...There were other disclosures which appalled me: kinky, slightly depraved, drug/sex experiments involving unwitting Americans, who were secretly filmed by the CIA for later viewing by pseudo-scientists of the CIA's Technical Services Division.

For years I had defended the CIA to my parents and to our friends. "Take it from me, a CIA insider," I had always sworn, "the CIA simply does not assassinate or use drugs..."

But worse was to come. A few short months after the CIA's shameful performance in Vietnam, of which I was a part, I was assigned to a managerial position in the CIA's covert Angola program. Under the leadership of the CIA director we lied to Congress and to the 40 Committee, which supervised the CIA's Angola program. We entered into joint activities with South Africa. And we actively propagandized the American public, with cruel results - Americans, misguided by our agents' propaganda, went to fight in Angola in suicidal circumstances... Our secrecy was designed to keep the American people from knowing what we were doing - we fully expected an outcry should they find us out.

The CIA's oath of secrecy has been desecrated in recent years, not by authors - Philip Agee, Joe Smith, Victor Marchetti, and Frank Snepp - but by the CIA directors who led the CIA into scandalous, absurd operations...

Their cynicism about the oath, and their arrogance toward the United States' constitutional process, were exposed in 1977, when former director Richard Helms was convicted of perjury for lying to a Senate committee about an operation in Chile... After receiving a suspended sentence, Helms stood with his attorney before television cameras, while the latter gloated that Helms would wear the conviction as a "badge of honor". Helms was proud of having lied to the Senate to protect a questionable CIA operation..." - pp. 9-11.

...

"...our secret little drama of Angola was played before a splashy backdrop of disclosures made by the Church Committee. The former deputy director of plans (operations), Richard Bissell, testified that feasibility studies of how to assassinate Patrice Lumumba had been made in 1961. Sid Gottlieb, the CIA chief of the Office of Technical Services had hand-carried poison to Kinshasa for the Lumumba operation. Gottlied himself testified that, years later, the CIA director, Richard Helms had ordered him to destroy all records of the tests he had run of specific poisons to be used in killing Lumumba. The CIA's Chile operation was further exposed; its relationship with the Chileans who killed General Schneider was admitted. Under intense pressure, Colby disclosed CIA control of large supplies of deadly poison gases, which President Nixon had ordered destroyed some months earlier. Director Colby also testified about the CIA's development of exotic weapons, the press was permitted to photograph Colby showing the committee an electric pistol which fired dissolving poison pellets. The agency also admitted, in a more bizarre vein, that it had conducted drug experiments on hundreds of unwitting American citizens by hiring prostitutes to lure them into apartments, feed them drugs and seduce them,so their activities could be filmed secretly for later viewing by pseudoscientists of the CIA's Office of Technical Services." - pp. 172-173. Norton hardback.

In the Turner (!) production, "Secrets of the CIA" several ex-CIA agents and assets tell it like it is;

"The CIA is a state-sponsored terrorist association... You don't look at people as human beings, they're nothing but pieces of material." - Verne Lyon, ex-CIA deep cover asset.