by StarmanSkye » Tue Jan 24, 2006 6:02 am
Thanks for this posting, Albion.<br><br>The more I read about the past history of US/CIA covert ops, whether thru Gladio and P2 in Europe with NATO and allied gov. complicity, or in Latin/South America, Indonesia, Eurasia, the Balkans, Africa, New Zealand and Australia, the more I'm convinced that the CIA, as the world's most dangerous and criminal terrorist network that is actively opposed to peace, justice, democracy and human rights, is completely unreformable. Only until the CIA can be completely disbanded (and also, arguably, the NSA) and these agencies NOT just reformed or its agents folded into 'other' secret intelligence services, that the chances will be nil for US and global competant governance working constructively and cooperatively to allow citizens to participate in creating a truly civilized world based on universal principles of freedom, justice, peace and respect for life.<br><br>This following article (excerpted) provides a good overview context for Turkey's corrupt and criminal military aligned with organized crime and an equally corrupt and criminal government. Turkey's fascist facade is the unavoidable consequence of CIA/NATO subversion through placing protected NAZI assets in key positions to persecute and undermine all liberal movements under the pretext of 'defending' the nation against a hyped anti-Communist threat. The 'cost' to Turkey (and the world) of so much suffering, destruction, crushed dreams, inhibited progress and impeded development, murder, wasted resources and violence, is simply incalculable.<br><br>Something that esp/ caught my eye:<br>"According to Loftus and Aarons, for example, CIA Director Allen Dulles'61 "State Department files show that he was the man (previously) assigned to cover up the Armenian massacre (genocide) ... Simpson's research62 (also) fully documents the equally repugnant cover-up engineered by Dulles and his sources during the Jewish Holocaust of World War II."63<br><br>No WONDER American's are kept in such a carefully-managed state of political and historical ignorance.<br><br>BTW: Very informative & important, re: the second article Albion referenced, Turkey's Pivotal Role in the International Drug Trade at <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://mondediplo.com/1998/07/05turkey.">mondediplo.com/1998/07/05turkey.</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> It's hard to read this without seeing the same policies and agenda on behalf of the US military/corporate kleptocracy being repeated around the world.<br><br>Starman<br>***<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:reeuq4s_YzQJ:www.variant.randomstate.org/12texts/Fernandes.html+Turkey,+Gladio,+drugs,+corruption&hl=en">64.233.161.104/search?q=c...tion&hl=en</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>(note: the above is from google cache, as the original link is oddly 'unavailable' -- scrubbed from cyberspace as per 'censored'?)<br><br>United States and NATO inspired 'psychological warfare operations' against the 'Kurdish communist threat' in Turkey<br><br>Desmond Fernandes and Iskender Ozden1<br><br>The sheer extent to which the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) have been responsible for consciously and structurally providing aid, training and technical expertise to Turkish contra-guerrilla death squads, repressive state forces and far right fascist groups makes for chilling reading. In pursuit of US governmental and NATO Cold War and post Cold War agendas, secretive and often publicly unaccountable initiatives have been undertaken in order to organise, protect and support repressive and anti-democratic Turkish state military mechanisms in their targeting actions against the internal 'communist threat'. The internal 'communist threat', observes Chomsky, is "used here in the technical sense (which) has (been) assumed in American political discourse, referring to labour leaders, peasant organisers ... organising self-help groups, and anyone who has the 'wrong' priorities and thus gets in our way."2 Kurdish 'nationalist' and/or pro-democratic/pro-socialist movements which have sought to defend peoples' labour and human/cultural/political rights within the region, and/or query the 'colonial/neo-colonial/pro-NATO/repressive' orientation of the militarised Turkish state, have similarly been targeted as 'communist threats'.3<br><br>The Truman Doctrine, the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) and psychological warfare initiatives.<br><br>With the Truman Doctrine of 1947, millions of dollars worth of military equipment assistance was provided to the Turkish terror state to counter the internal and external 'communist threat.' As President Truman's address to Congress on March 12th, 1947, made all too clear: "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures ... Should we fail Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour, the effect will be far reaching to the West as well as to the East. We must take immediate and resolute action."4<br> <br>By the end of fiscal year 1950, resolute action had been undertaken: Over US $ 200 million in military aid had been received by Turkey, "along with 1,200 US military advisers."5 Between 1950 and 1979, a further $ US 5.8 billion in official military aid was forthcoming: "Arms supply and training programmes helped to integrate the Turkish military, police and intelligence services into those of the United States. Under the Military Assistance Programme, 19,193 Turks received US training between 1950 and 1979."6 Lord Kinross, indeed, suggests that a much higher number of Turkish troops were, in fact, trained. By 1954 alone, "the American Military Mission claim(ed) to have trained, in the Turkish army, a force of thirty thousand technicians."7<br><br>US advisors also assisted Turkish authorities with their covert monitoring activities of Kurdish political prisoners. Musa Anter, for example, confirms - in his Memoirs - that a 'Special Team' from the US was sent in 1959 to the Turkish prison he was in, to assist the authorities with the decoding of messages between Kurdish prisoners.8 Turkish Interior Ministry reports further reveal that Turkish governing circles clearly understood that they would be provided with economic support and US military and political encouragement in their implementation of the on-going Kurdish genocide9 as long as they could keep officially identifying the Kurds as a 'communist threat' to American officials (even at times when they clearly did not represent such a threat, and could not produce any evidence to the Americans to that effect): "This (Kurdish targeting) operation should be used ... to obtain economic aid from the US. The event should (merely) be represented to the American authorities as a 'Communist Kurd Movement'. To the relatives of the suspects (targeted), the event should be explained as a 'Communist Movement' (despite the fact that) ... so far, there's no evidence that can be used against the suspects."10<br>Ghassemlou and Kendal have also established that the US government, which was "in control of all (the) military decisions"11 of a Cold War Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) Pact between Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Britain, had decided that a central purpose of this pact was to assist the Turkish and Iranian governments with their psychological warfare operations against "any attempts on the part of the Kurdish people."12 As Randal has confirmed: "In the 1950's, the Baghdad Pact - rebaptised CENTO when Iraq dropped out following the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958 - amounted to Western approval of anti-Kurd animus, enshrined in the Saadabad Treaty of 1937."13<br><br>Besikci further argues that US government supported 'psychological' research projects were conducted in the 1960's in order to strategically assist the Turkish state with its assimilation and anti-Kurdish policies: "In 1962, Professor Frei, an American, carried out a survey throughout Turkey, in conjunction with the Bureau of Research and Testing at the Ministry of Education, and the US government's Agency for International Development (AID) ... <br><br>From the information provided at the end of the research project, it becomes clear that American government officials proposed to the Turkish government that the best way to fight against the spread of the Kurdish struggle was through the creation and institutionalisation of a party based on religion."14 As Besikci confirms, this advice "was taken seriously by the Turkish government."15 There was also an apparent offer by the US government in 1962 to establish a 'Kurdish' radio station - costing US $33 million - which would broadcast psychological warfare propaganda which would be anti-communist, anti-Kurdish nationalist in nature, and in keeping with "the USA and Turkey's ideology."16<br><br>The CIA's role in covert action operations.<br><br>The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), moreover, began to covertly fund and train fascist paramilitary right wing gangs and virulently anti-Kurdish organisations in Turkey - including the Organisation to Fight Communism and the National Action Party (NAP/MHP) - along the 'successful' lines of the Bicchierai 'anti-communist' paramilitary gang in Italy. As Christopher Simpson has ascertained, "the role of this (Bicchierai) band" - which was financed by the CIA using 'black currency' which "came from captured German Nazi assets, including money and gold that the Nazis had looted from the Jews"17 - "was beatings of left wing candidates and activists, breaking up political meetings and intimidating voters. Bicchierai's troops became the forerunners of a number of other similar paramilitary gangs funded by the CIA in Germany, Greece, Turkey and several other countries over the next decade"18 which were used to destabilise wider democratic initiatives which were perceived to be inimical to US interests.<br><br>The ex-Director of the CIA, William Colby, has further conceded, when pressured, that "there is a possible CIA backing of (such) anti-Communist organisations to stop Turkey falling into the hands of communism."19 Clearance to actively proceed with covert 'psychological' warfare of this nature was provided at the highest level. Through National Security Council (NSC) Directive 4-A in 1947, the CIA was "secretively authorised ... to conduct these officially non-existent programmes and to administer them."20 As Simpson clarifies, "the NSC action removed the US Congress and public from any debate over whether to undertake psychological warfare abroad. The NSC ordered that the operations themselves be designed to be 'deniable,' meaning 'planned and executed (so) that any US government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorised persons and that if uncovered, the US government can positively disclaim any responsibility.'"21<br><br>National Security Council Directive 10/2 (NSC 10/2), which replaced NSC-4A in 1947, similarly authorised the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) - "the covert action arm of the CIA"22 - to carry out "any covert activities related to propaganda; preventative direct action including sabotage ... (and) assistance ... (in) support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."23 As Frank Wisner, the head of OPC (dubbed the United States' Psychological Warfare Organisation by the NSC)24 has since conceded, these operations were "conducted in a covert or clandestine manner to the end that official US interest or responsibility" in these terrorist 'anti-Communist' actions could be "plausibly disclaimed by this government."25 The OPC's psychological warfare objectives, according to Wisner, included:<br><br>"1. Political warfare including ... support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.<br>2. Psychological warfare including 'black' and 'grey' propaganda.26<br>3. Economic Warfare.<br>4. Guerrilla and partisan-type warfare.<br>5. Sabotage and counter-sabotage.<br>6. Other covert operations."27<br><br>It is important at this juncture to also clarify just what 'psychological warfare', as termed above, actually meant. To Christopher Simpson, who has analysed much declassified material related to the above issues:<br>"the primary object of US psychological operations during this period was to frustrate the ambitions of radical movements in resource rich developing countries seeking solutions to the problems of poverty, dependency and the entrenched corruption ... At heart, modern (US) psychological warfare has been a tool for managing empire, not for settling conflicts in any fundamental sense. It has operated largely as a means to ensure that indigenous democratic initiatives in the Third World and Europe do not go 'too far' from the standpoint of US security agencies ... The problem with (US) psychological warfare is ... its consistent role as an instrument for maintaining grossly abusive social structures ...<br><br>"Several points should be underlined. First, psychological warfare in the US conception has consistently made use of a wide range of violence, including guerrilla warfare, assassination, sabotage and more fundamentally, the maintenance of manifestly brutal regimes in client states abroad. Second, it has also involved a variety of propaganda or media work, ranging from overt (white) newscasting to covert (black) propaganda ... "<br><br>Re-examination of (the US) record, even as it applies to Turkey, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Philippines, Indonesia and Panama, inescapably leads Simpson in short order to an heretical conclusion: <br><br>"The role of the United States in world affairs during our lifetimes has often been rapacious, destructive, tolerant of genocide and willing to sacrifice countless people."28 <br>In the case of Turkey, there are clear indications that the US government directly facilitated the Turkish government's genocidal programme against the Kurds through its endorsement of the CENTO pact, its provision of military equipment and its training of state backed 'anti-Kurdish' psychological warfare death squads, intelligence gathering organisations and 'commando' groups.29<br><br>Marcus Raskin, an NSC staffer, has conceded that these psychological warfare "activities around the world ... were criminal by other nations' standards as well as criminal by our own."30 To George Mc Govern, US senator between 1963-81: <br>"We were involved in assassinations, assassination attempts. We were operating paramilitary operations with mercenary forces hired in other people's countries with no knowledge on the part of our own Congress, our press or the American people. All of these things are alien to a system of constitutional democracy."31<br><br>Recently declassified 'Psychological Warfare' methods used by the US Army and CIA advisers during the early Cold War years again confirm that the army's operational definition of the 'psychological warfare' it was actively engaged in - be it in Turkey, Italy, Greece or Iran - clearly did include terrorist acts of "warfare" that "employs all moral and physical means, other than orthodox military operations ... Psychological Warfare," as recommended and practised, must "employ any weapon to influence the mind of the enemy. The weapons are psychological only in the effect they produce and not because of the nature of the weapons themselves. In this light, overt (white), covert (black) and grey propaganda; subversion; sabotage; special operations; guerrilla warfare; espionage; political, cultural, economic and racial pressures are all effective weapons. They are effective because they produce dissension, distrust, fear and hopelessness in the minds of the enemy."32 Psychological warfare 'special operations' were defined in the above context to additionally include "miscellaneous operations such as assassination (and) target capture."33<br><br>According to Philip Agee, a former senior CIA secret operations officer, CIA stations regularly used "offensive weapons of psychological and paramilitary operations" which involved surveillance measures and "include(d) the placing of anti-Communist propaganda in the public media, the frame-up of ... officials for police arrest, the publishing of false propaganda attributed to the revolutionary group in such a way that it will be difficult to deny and damaging as well, the organising of goon squads to beat up and intimidate ... (people) ... using ... harassment devices to break up meetings, and the calling on liaison services to take desired repressive action."34 <br><br>"Within the US governmental bureaucracy itself," notes Peter Dale Scott, "intelligence agencies and special warfare elements have recurringly exploited," trained and even protected "drug traffickers and their corrupt political allies" to facilitate these types of "anti-Communist and anti-subversive operations."35<br><br>As Adams has concluded in 'Secret Armies', the US military and "the CIA ... under the single OPC umbrella ... managed to embrace every aspect of covert warfare from espionage to psychological operations and subversion."36 Widespread and chilling actions and atrocities against Kurdish communities and 'radical' human rights and 'leftist' activists in Turkey/North West Kurdistan were clearly committed as a consequence of these 'anti-communist' inspired US-CIA-NATO linked 'psychological warfare' training and operational programmes.37 To Jeffrey Bale, writing in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology and Lobster, the CIA was "instrumental in establishing the contra-guerrilla" death squads in Turkey.38 By 1969, moreover, Turkish "commandos, who had been trained by American specialists in counter-insurgency," were despatched into Kurdish regions "under the pretext of a general 'arms search'" to terrorise the population.39 These commando actions "rapidly became associated with arbitrary brutality and torture that had marked the suppression of Kurdistan four decades earlier."40<br><br>According to the journal Devrim, one commando report which focused upon its anti-Kurdish psychological warfare operations, ran along the following lines: <br>"Since the end of January, special military units have undertaken a land war in the (Kurdish) regions of Diyarbakir, Mardin, Siirt and Hakkari under the guise of hunting bandits. Every village is surrounded at a certain hour, its inhabitants rounded up. Troops assemble men and women separately, and demand the men to surrender their weapons. They beat those who deny possessing any or make other villagers jump on them. They strip men and women naked and violate the latter. Many have died in these operations, some have committed suicide. Naked men and women have cold water thrown over them, and they are whipped. Sometimes women are forced to tie a rope around the penis of their husband and then to lead him around the village. Women are likewise made to parade naked around the village. Troops demand villagers to provide women for their pleasure and the entire village is beaten if the request is met with refusal."41<br><br>These actions, which have mirrored those of other US inspired and trained commando groups in El Salvador, East Timor, Indonesia, Guatemala, South Vietnam and Nicaragua, followed a "general pattern ... A village is surrounded by armoured cars and helicopters move ahead; all the villagers are rounded up without any explanation, then herded into specially prepared camps. They are then called upon to surrender their weapons. Should a peasant declare that he has none, he is severely beaten and humiliated. The Turkish troops force both men and women to strip; often they rape the women. 'Suspects' are hanged by their feet from a gallows. Sometimes strings are attached to the genitals of naked men whom the women are then forced to lead through the streets in this manner. Many die under torture."42<br><br>Kendal confirms that these targeting actions continued throughout the 1970's:<br><br>"During the more or less fascist period which followed the military coup on March 12th, 1971, the commandos' activities were considerably extended and became a real 'Kurd-hunt'. The troops raked through the Kurdish provinces one by one: several thousand peasants were pursued, arrested and tortured ... in counter-insurgency centres which had been set up by Turkish officers trained by the US in Panama ... (When) Demirel (who went on to become president of Turkey) returned to power ... commando operations started up with renewed intensity in Kurdistan. In the towns, the state police and the fascist militias assassinated sixty people from March 31st, 1975 to April 10th, 1976 ... Even under the 'democratic parliamentary regime' of the late seventies, the commandos were still at work in Kurdistan. There were more than 10,000 of them patrolling the frontier province of Hakkari from October to December 1975."43<br><br>Despite being aware of such atrocities, US-NATO funding, active training and protection of racist and fascist, genocidal, anti-Kurdish psychological warfare teams and militias continued. One such militia was "the CIA/drug-linked terror gang known as the Grey Wolves," the "paramilitary arm" of the National Action Party (NAP/MHP).44 According to Berch Berberoglu, "attacks by the CIA trained and equipped death squads of the fascist NAP intensified during 1979."45 A report by the Turkish Internal Ministry acknowledges that these NAP death squads were ideologically "akin to Hitler's Nazi organisation."46 NAP supporters, for instance, were clearly encouraged in a 1977 party leaflet to act in the following fashion: "Those who destroyed (the Ottoman Empire) were Greek-Armenian-Jewish converts, Kurds, Circassians, Bosnians and Albanians. As a Turk, how much longer will you tolerate these dirty minorities? Throw out the Circassian, that he may go to Causasia, throw out the Armenian, throw out and kill the Kurd, purge from your midst the enemy of all Turkdom."47 <br><br>As Kendal has clarified, "the NAP is violently and militantly anti-Kurdish ... The liquidation of the Kurds is thus an integral part of their agenda."48<br>Investigative research by Celik has uncovered the following details: "The intelligence services of (NATO ally) Germany and other European countries ... protected the NAP/MHP,"49 despite being fully aware of the ideological slant and character of the organisation. "This protection continues to this day. The CIA openly protected the NAP/MHP in Germany ... One of the 'protectors' was the CIA man Ruzi Nazar," who had previously "collaborated with German Nazi occupation forces in the Second World War ... NAP/MHP militants were used in hundreds of murders, became very professional, and were used by the CIA in international terrorism."50<br><br>According to Counterspy,51 the CIA - as part of its ongoing psychological warfare training strategy in Turkey - also "assisted Milli Istihbarat Teskilati (MIT)," the notorious Turkish national intelligence agency, "in 1960-69 in drafting plans for mass arrests of opposition figures similar to the pattern followed in Thailand, Indonesia and Greece. In a single night, generals ordered 4,000 professors, students, teachers and retired officers (to be) arrested. They tortured (many) ... The coup" in Turkey in 1971 "was also carried out by counter-guerrilla, the CIA, the Turkish military and Turkish military intelligence (MIT)."52 From its station in Athens, Greece, the CIA Technical Services Division (TSD) support group provided particular psychological warfare operational expertise to its staff operating in Turkey. "TSD assistance," Roubatis and Wynn conclude, "included electronic monitoring devices, various gadgets for surveillance, special weapons for clandestine operations, drugs for use in such operations, forged documents and other similar material ... The TSD activities involved aggressive operations."53<br><br>The CIA's role in assisting MIT in targeting actions against the 'Kurdish' and other 'internal communist' threats was publicly exposed in 1977 when Sabahattin Savasman, the deputy director of MIT, acknowledged that "the CIA has a delegation of at least 20 people who co-operate in the MIT with the CIA and who occupy high positions inside the MIT. They supply information, contacts and they participate in operations ... All technical equipment is supplied by the CIA. A lot of personnel was trained by the Americans in courses abroad, the buildings were constructed by the CIA, the instructors were supplied by the CIA ... The employees have been working for years as CIA agents for the benefit of the American secret service."54 He further stated that "MIT personnel have been accepting payments and taking part in operations with the CIA for years."55<br><br>Zurcher confirms that MIT's operations against 'internal threats' during this period were clearly and publicly known to be of a brutal nature: "Widespread reports of torture" of Kurds and other 'communist activists' "in so-called 'laboratories', torture chambers of the MIT," exist.56 Aldrich Ames, a former CIA officer who was stationed in Turkey, has also acknowledged that "the Turkish intelligence service (MIT) was cash-strapped, so we gave it half a million dollars worth of wiretap equipment and taught its people how to use it"57 against its 'internal threats'. MIT's own leader, General Ziya Selisik, confirmed in 1962 that its internal "communist" threats even included "all Kurds who were studying."58 It should also be noted at this point that Sait Elci, who was the leader of the underground 'Kurdistan Democratic Party - Turkey' (KDP-T) during the late 1960's, had - just before his assassination by Dr. Sait 'Siwan' Kirmizitoprak - accused the latter of acting as a Kurdish double-agent for the CIA. Elci was convinced that Dr. Sait 'Siwan' Kirmizitoprak was working to fulfil the agendas of a joint CIA-MIT operation.59<br><br>Jeffrey Bale further confirms that "there are numerous connections between the CIA and (the fascist) MHP (NAP), both in Turkey and Europe. It seems clear that the CIA and US military intelligence" - via these 'collaborative' psychological warfare operations with the virulently anti-Kurdish MHP - "made use of civilian 'idealists' (fascist hard-liners) by recruiting them into the contra-guerrilla (death squad) organisations, and former Turkoman SS man Ruzi Nazar has been identified by several investigators as the liaison between CIA personnel, including Henze (a CIA Turkey Station Chief) himself and the MHP Leadership in West Germany."60<br>It is also worth noting at this point that the successive CIA directors who were involved in initiating and overseeing these disquieting psychological warfare operations were well suited to their additional tasks of 'covering up' these actions from the public gaze. According to Loftus and Aarons, for example, CIA Director Allen Dulles'61 "State Department files show that he was the man (previously) assigned to cover up the Armenian massacre (genocide) ... Simpson's research62 (also) fully documents the equally repugnant cover-up engineered by Dulles and his sources during the Jewish Holocaust of World War II."63<br>(snip) <p></p><i></i>
