Bob Woodward steps in for the Kill

by **robertdreed** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 5:33 pm

"I'm surprised you buy that "Woodward is a liberal" mantra" I don't. But I think that he maintains that reputation. Just like the Washington Post still has the reputation of being a "liberal" newspaper with most Americans. ( Woodward's just about to take the stage at the National Book Awards, televised on C-SPAN 2, by the way. ) Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 9/30/06 3:34 pm

by **robertdreed** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 6:09 pm

"So, any CIA employee at the time who didn't know their own agency's signature and loyalties would have been grossly naive, or a very low level functionary/file clerk." Actually, it's more like you have a chip in your head- metaphorically speaking, don't get me wrong- telling you that such an idea is Commie propaganda, and anyway, they must have deserved it, the people in charge know what they're doing, and that there are other things to think about. Is that "complicity"? That's arguable. But if is is, it isn't much more so than a similar mindset, held by someone who isn't in the CIA. If you don't know the nuts and bolts of what went down, or what a pack of neofascists the Pinochet crowd were- something hardly made explicit in the initial news accounts of the coup- it's relatively easy to simply shrug it off. Double-minded, to be sure. But by no means necessarily personally neofascist. Max Weber. Bureaucracy and compartmentalization. It isn't your department. I'm just stating the facts, here. As well as making note of why I've never considered a lifetime career within a large corporate structure, or the Federal government. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 9/30/06 4:15 pm

by **Dreams End** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 6:19 pm

There's no debate about the Chile thing. FOIA documents released a long time ago. CIA takes "orders" from Presidents but the very compartmentalization you speak of allows plenty to go on outside of Presidential awareness... The Directors come and go, but the main engine stays. It's sort of like piloting a huge aircraft carrier. You CAN steer into a new direction, but it's not easy and it takes an awfully long time. Meanwhile, they have ways of fixing civilian government if it tries to steer to far off course or change course too quickly. they can fix elections...they've done it all over the world. They can assassinate. They can foment coups. Now, can I PROVE that there is an independent culture to the CIA linked to the military industrial corporate complex which can and does act on its own power even against Presidential orders? No. It's simply a working hypothesis. But the hypothesis is supported by the prominence of CIA related individuals in the current drive to undermine Bush. Washington Post, Bernstein...even Musharraf. At the very least you surely get that CIA can easily drive policy by putting out bogus intel. Tell the President that person A is leading terrorist group B and you get your order to eliminate with extreme prejudice. Except, of course, no president ever actually issues those orders directly. Nevertheless, assassinations do go on. But you could be right. The appearance of a factional fight could all be a stage play and in that sense "ordered" by the President...i.e. part of a larger plan of misdirection. Keep eyes on Iran while other things happen in...oh, I don't know...Georgia perhaps. Or Ukraine. Or Taiwan. I don't really know. What I do know is that CIA officers have openly been leading a political movement to unseat Bush. What I do know is that a "former" NSA official is openly calling for a military coup. Repeatedly. No repercussions for any of this. What I do know is that McGovern is knowingly working with a group that embraces Shining Path. McGovern boasts of how much info he has access to. Took me about 5 minutes to find that. (I knew it anyway but to find the documentation.) Why isn't it political suicide for McGovern to work with a group which supports known "terrorists"? In fact, why isn't it LITERAL suicide? Anyway, just keep all this in the back of your head, rdr. In case your idea of the CIA as a bunch of well meaning patriots ends up not being enough to explain events as they happen.

by **robertdreed** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 10:54 pm

"CIA takes "orders" from Presidents but the very compartmentalization you speak of allows plenty to go on outside of Presidential awareness..." No, for the most part it's quite the opposite. The compartmentalization allows the President to do a lot of things outside of the awareness of the bureaucrats of the CIA. Who are in the general case simply GS employees, not members of a super-elite with licenses to kill. "The Directors come and go, but the main engine stays. It's sort of like piloting a huge aircraft carrier. You CAN steer into a new direction, but it's not easy and it takes an awfully long time." You have it backwards again, DE, for a number of reasons: The CIA is over 60 years old. That's 2 generations of leadership turnover- more like 3, for the rank and file. To argue that there have been no changes in the agency since 1947 is akin to saying there haven't been any changes in the USA, or the world, since 1947. It's been quite a while since the post-WW2 Yalies-with-a-God-Complex mentality has set the tone for the Agency. Although it's quite conceivable that that's exactly what the Bush Administration has been attempting to re-assert. The Cold War is over. The CIA has had to deal with an institutional identity crisis ever since. Its original pretext is gone. For a variety of reasons, covert operations is anything but the exclusive purview of the CIA. A single agency devoted exclusively to covert operations could easily run rogue, turn insubordinate, or be corrupted outside of the chain of command. If there's to be corruption in covert operations and among covert operatives, ultimately it has to serve the goals of the political hierarchy by whom they are empowered! Top-down control is imperative. That's the entire point of Rumsfeld wanting a parallel network like "P2OG." It's the point of having an "intelligence czar" reporting only to the president, with the capability of coordinating compartmentalized operations "nested" among disparate agencies, for the ultimate in plausible deniability, flexibility, and recruitment and placement of loyal operatives in key positions. They need to be able to do end runs around the rank and file patriots who account for the majority of personnel staffing things- at least until they can recruit a quorum of their own indoctrinated minions. And they need to spy on such people, to see who could be getting wise. (In which case, the usual solution is the infusion of massive amounts of disinformation. No need to "terminate" such people, it's easier to simply baffle and confuse them...feed them a cover story to explain away anything about which they have have become suspicious. It's a sophisticated enterprise, covert ops...it's typically imperative to have a ready explanation for the guys in the office down the hall.) The main focus of rank and file CIA people isn't covert operations, it's the gathering and collation of intelligence. CIA Analysis Division hasn't been cooking intelligence in order to lure this president into war- all the accounts of which I'm aware are claiming that it's been the other way around. People like Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and George W. Bush have been demanding that their preconceptions be confirmed. This has led to a lot of people resigning their posts throughout the government- including the CIA. Such mass resignations would have been unthinkable during the Cold War, because the overarching issue of being locked in mortal struggle against the Soviets trumped all misgivings about using tactics like assassination and military coups in the Cold War mind-set- not merely among CIA agents, but in the minds of most Americans. In retrospect, the validity of that supposed threat from the Soviet Union comprises fertile ground for historical debate. But my point about that era is two-fold: 1) it was a hypothesis about which the members of the Cold War CIA had no doubts; and 2) In the post-Cold War era, it has become much more possible for Americans, including CIA agents, to entertain doubts about the legitimacy of covertly asserting American power by any means necessary, and consequently a lot more difficult to maintain a consensus justifying the old dirty tricks department. And, in my opinion, that's partially what the Muslim Peril hype promulgated by the Bush adminstration is about- attempting to supply the CIA with a sweeping new raison d'etre, in order to bring back the old self-convinced "ends-justify-the means" mindset that has been so conspicuously lacking as a point of more or less consensus agreement in American society since around 1989. Except that it appears that a lot of CIA agents haven't been able to bring themselves to buy into the Muslim Peril as a threat on the order of an ICBM-equipped nuclear superpower. The Global Soviet Peril was arguable, but at least plausible. Notwithstanding the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the Global Muslim Peril is merely laughable. The foreign policy pursued by the Bush administration is roughly as ungrounded in reality as if the Woodrow Wilson administration had invaded Venezuela as part of some supposed Hemispheric War on Latin American Terrorism, in response to the depredations of Pancho Villa. And that is what account for the mass resignations and dissent in the ranks of the "permanent government", including the disaffection among many in the CIA rank and file, in my opinion. Alternatively, there's your hypothesis, DE- that the dissent and mass resignations by CIA people are actually a misdirection, a 5th Column following marching orders and ulterior agendas instead of individual conscience, merely the foreshadowing of an impending coup d'etat led by- someone, the "real leaders" of the CIA, whoever they are, you're unable to say- against the Bush administration. And, if I follow the line of reasoning from some of your previous posts, the "CIA plotters" currently angling to overthrow Bush will disguise themselves as Constitutional reformers who will in actuality be even more right-wing than the Bush administration, and they will forthwith begin in earnest a campaign of reaction against "pro-Israel neocons", which will begin as a political purge of "Zionist influence" and build in short order to a tidal wave of anti-Semitism, leading to yet another Endlosung in CIA-constructed concentration camps... Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 9/30/06 10:15 pm

by **greencrow0** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 1:16 pm

<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/1/85511/2707">www.dailykos.com/storyonl...85511/2707</a> Perhaps so he can survive the flood.... and remain as bathwater after the baby's gone? gc

by **Dreams End** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 1:34 pm

Actually, rdr, I don't want to make disagreements where there aren't any. Most of the time what you are saying is right. Usually, the CIA simply follows orders from the Executive. However, there is a larger issue of the culture and nature of power at the highest levels and who is allowed into those levels. But that's a different argument. However, I think it is also clear that my aircraft carrier analogy is true. It's not as simplistic as I guess it sounded when I posted. I don't look at the CIA as a secret "cabal." In fact, "secret team" analysis really bothers me for a variety of reasons as it still suggests everything would be perfectly fine if the government hadn't been secretly controlled by a few bad guys. But just as with corporate life, with interlocking boards, etc, the line between corporate and state gets mighty mighty thin at the top, especially when it comes to military related issues. As I've said, sometimes the decisions which will impact the world the most will be more likely made on a golf course than in a conference room. I was looking through Blum's "Killing Hope", likely one of the books you think doesn't "cut it"...but anyway, the very first page I opened to at random talked about the CIA overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran. It points out that, even though there was a lot of rhetoric about Soviet Influence with Mossadegh, so that even those who disagreed with the coup at least agreed with the reasoning behind it, there really was not much Soviet influence in Iran. So why, then, the coup? Well, Mossadegh led the Iranian parliament to a vote to nationalize the oil industry. At the time it was under control of the Anglo-American Oil Company. They were not pleased. But British arguments to foment a coup were not accepted by Truman. However, Eisenhower agreed, but only when they switched the argument to concerns about Communism. Was Eisenhower really believing this line or was he simply wanting to keep it clear that the interventions were for "moral" and strategic reasons and not just to serve the oil companies? I don't know. What I do know is that Kermit Roosevelt left CIA and took a job with Gulf Oil not long after and then formed a consulting company which worked on behalf of clients such as the country of Iran as well as Northrup and also had connections with the Saudis. So that's one example of this sort of symbiosis. Meanwhile, another member of the oil consortium that was ousted by Mossadegh's movement was Standard Oil, a client of the lawfirm that had both Dulles Brothers as members. The Rockefellers, says Jack Anderson, had helped arrange the Iran coup and the Shah repaid them with heavy deposits in Chase Manhattan bank as well as granting some Iranian housing developments to a Rockefeller company. This is how I assume it all works. There's an elite agenda...in this example, simply protecting access to oil. If the President doesn't go along, the first line of defense would be to sway him via phony intelligence (during the Cold War, it was usually Soviet related), but there are other ways. One doesn't say no to the Rockefeller's easily, for example. And with the Dulles brothers they had some pretty direct access. PR campaigns could also be launched to bring a reluctant President around...or economic hanky panky. I'm pretty sure the Rockefellers have lots of ways to get their agenda taken very seriously. So no, I guess I'm not saying there's a secret group running the world via CIA, but the above example is pretty much how most policy gets made in the US..inside or outside CIA. CIA just has a lot more dirty tricks at its disposal. I also think that via Dulles and Project Paperclip as well as the almost open fascist sympathies of some of our finer corporations who liked Hitler till they were told to knock it off, there is a Nazi subculture still at work. Dave Emory would have it as an in tact extension of the third Reich moved underground. I can't imagine it has stayed that cohesive after 50 plus years, but via the move of the economic empire of the Reich outside the country via the efforts of Martin Bormann and via the importation of Nazi spy guys into our intel establishment, there's an argument to be made that this strain of thought is alive and well. Finally, I'd ask you to look not just at the motivations of CIA...that is, I think you see their activities as nasty, but necessary to oppose an alleged Soviet threat (or, one could even argue the threat wasn't as bad, but they believed it was more severe). However, look at who the CIA installed in power in so many of these coups. Take Guatemala or, particularly Chile, but also have a look at Greece, for example. Almost always, it is rightwing, sometimes overt fascists who receive CIA support. Why do you suppose that is? Why not install genuine democracies (if you pardon the oxymoron of "installing democracies")? Simple answer: men like Pinochet represent the true agenda of the CIA...they are the true face of what CIA and all the various streams of power I've mentioned would like to see installed throughout the world. We know this, because these are, in fact, exactly the kind of regimes they DO install. By their fruits you shall know them. In addition, we know that in Latin America that's where whatever was left of the Reich ended up, primarily. So the direct Nazi connections are actually there. Also wanted to clarify one thing I wrote rather sloppily (okay, I've written MOST of this rather sloppily...I've been rushed for the last couple weeks). I wasn't saying that in the case of Iraq this time it was CIA providing phony intel. CIA for this instance are all saying they provided good intel and it got twisted. And I assume this happens. Ralph McGehee says this is what happened in Vietnam. But the Mossadegh example shows how bogus rationale's can be foisted on the President or congress to carry out an agenda that has other, hidden motivations, so that at least there is some plausible deniability. I don't even know if this factional infighting is real or pretend. It sure looks like Bush was allowed, encouraged to go bust up Iraq and the plan all along was to drop him. That's what I've been saying. But it could all be good cop bad cop, too. Or it could represent genuine factions, which is kinda what it looks like. I don't really know for sure. But why would McGovern decide to work with Avakian and not a more mainstream group like United for Peace and Justice? THAT, and many questions like it, are why I'm concerned that this isn't just about fed up CIA guys doing their best to reform the system and get rid of a power mad president. It could simply be that they are trying to control the opposition and keep it channeled via limiting the agenda to Israel and the neocons while protecting the larger elite power structure...that's been a balancing act that has gone on since the Revolutionary War (oppose England but not the homegrown elites). Or it could be that there is a further agenda of nurturing and encouraging this rightwing strain within the opposition. IN fact, I'm pretty sure that's the case. If you look at the way CIA has operated in other countries...you'll see they fund opposition on the left and right...even creating opposition movements out of whole cloth...just to keep the opposition under control. BUT...BUT...BUT...when you look at the end result...when you look at who ends up in power, you see a pattern. The leader is almost always rightwing or even overtly fascist. That's the pattern. So the question I'm left with is this...wait a second. We already HAVE a rightwing, fairly fascistic power structure in place. Why is CIA opposing it this time? What do they want this time? Have the Bushistas really gone "off the reservation" needing to be reigned in? Or was it part of a larger plan to "swoop into the rescue", providing enough relief and gratitude on the part of liberals and moderates that no one will notice that most of the attacks on civil rights and the Constitution will be left untouched? Or is it even part of a larger plan of destabilization to induce a crisis allowing for military takeover? (One of the triggers of a coup attempt, said Madsen, though it didn't happen, was electoral malfeasance in '04. What if it happens in '06? Massive fraud that becomes known to the public. The government is in stalemate...what option will there be but military takeover till new elections can be declared. And I'm afraid that usually doesn't work out too well as by the time you have new elections, any potentially effective opposition movement has been dismantled.) I have no idea. But I have to admit, rdr, that most of my writing recently has been directed at people who used to think that the CIA were not to be trusted, so I haven't spent as much time making that case. It's the fact that people I feel should know better are embracing these people....that's what worries me.

by **robertdreed** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 12:25 am

I think Killing Hope is a good book. Maybe Blum should next turn his attention to the activities of the Soviet Union and Maoist China during the same time period, as a way of illustrating the fact that American actions during the Cold War weren't undertaken in a power vacuum. DE, you're still primarily bringing up decades-old examples from the Cold War era. You still make it sound as if the American-assisted military coups of that era were primarily CIA directives rather than actions done at the behest of the president in power at the time and his advisers. "look at who the CIA installed in power in so many of these coups. Take Guatemala or, particularly Chile, but also have a look at Greece, for example. Almost always, it is rightwing, sometimes overt fascists who receive CIA support. Why do you suppose that is? Why not install genuine democracies (if you pardon the oxymoron of "installing democracies")?" The typical response from someone involved in American conduct of foreign policy during the Cold War would be that the reason the USA nearly always allied with the far right when they wanted to overthrow a government that they viewed as unacceptable or hostile was because they required people who meant business, who were as implacable as the Communists. The axiom in those days was that once a nation came under Communist control, the leaders would control it so tightly that all future hope of political pluralism would be lost- so it was better to support a right-wing regime, which could over time be influenced to loosen its grip and at some poiont be persuaded to grant its people an increasing share of political liberty. Right or wrong, that was what American policymakers thought, pretty much right on up to the president- until Jimmy Carter's tenure. Carter was the first president ever to speak about something that every previous Cold War era president knew but never brought up- that many of the regimes supported by the USA were brutal violators of human rights. But Carter's single term was widely viewed as a foreign policy disaster by Cold Warriors- Iran turned anti-American, Nicaragua turned Marxist as the result of a revolutionary overthrow of a long-time US ally, a left-wing government came to power from a coup d'etat in Grenada, etc.- a chain of events which allowed his Republican adversaries to label him as incompetent to counter the Soviet Union, and a charge which helped lead to Carter's defeat at the hands of an arch-Cold Warrior, Ronald Reagan. "Simple answer: men like Pinochet represent the true agenda of the CIA...they are the true face of what CIA and all the various streams of power I've mentioned would like to see installed throughout the world. We know this, because these are, in fact, exactly the kind of regimes they DO install. By their fruits you shall know them." If it were indeed that simple, then why aren't all of these right-wing regimes still in power today, supported by the CIA against any challenges to their power? The Greek junta (1967-1975) fell from power in 1975, and civilian democratic rule was restored. The Brazilian junta (1964-1985)returned to an electoral democracy and civilian leadership in 1985, during Ronald Reagan's presidency. It presently has a duly elected center-left government. The Argentine junta (1976-1983) got into a war with the Conservative Thatcher regime in Britain and got its ass summarily kicked, which led to its downfall and the restoration of civilian rule in 1983. Argentina presently has a duly elected center-left government. Bolivia's junta (1971-1983) gave way to civilian rule in 1983. The country presently has an elected civilian populist-left wing government. The Uruguayan military junta (1973-1984) rescinded martial law and ceded power to a civilian government in 1984. Paraguay (1954-1989), the longest-lived dictatorship in the world, held multiparty elections in 1989. The Chilean junta (1973-1989) has stepped down and ceded power to a multi-party civilian democracy. The president of Chile today is a female socialist, Michelle Bachelet, of the Socialist Party. If "the CIA" really does have a preference for government by fascist military rule, then how do you explain that history? I realize that it isn't as simple as saying that post-Cold War Latin America has entered a new millenium of freedom and prosperity, end of story. The debate over neoliberalism and privatization, and continued focus on to what extent all of those countries are actually governed by wealthy private interests serving private ends, needs to continue. But compare the track record of the nations of Soviet bloc Eastern Europe during the Cold War: Romania, 1-party rule from 1947 to 1989. Bulgaria, 1-party rule from 1946 to 1989. Hungary, 1-party rule from 1948 to the mid-1980s, with the exception of a brief period of anti-Soviet revolt in 1956, suppressed with the aid of the military of a foreign nation, the USSR. Czechoslovakia, 1-party rule from 1948 to 1989, with the exception of the famous "Prague Spring" under the leadership of Alexander Dubcek in 1968, suppressed by the military of a foreign nation, the USSR. Poland, 1-party rule from 1948 to 1989. The German Democratic Republic, 1-party rule from 1949 to 1989. It appears plain from perusing the historical record that the American Cold War era maxim- that any nation coming under political control by Communists would henceforth permanently lose any hope of political pluralism or an open society- was by no means simply a propaganda fiction. I don't think that excuses everything that the CIA and American foreign policy makers did during that era, but it at least provides some historical context and perspective for their actions. I don't want to get into the list of human rights abuses and civil liberties suppression associated with each of those nations during that time period. I could link, cut, and paste some other general summaries, but I'm taking up enough space with this post already. And it's an easy search for anyone using the obvious terms. Well, okay- I'll excerpt one reference, about one Soviet bloc country from that era: "...Romania was proclaimed a republic, and remained under direct military and economic control of the USSR until the late 1950s. During this period, Romania's scarce resources left after WWII were drained by the "SovRom" agreements: mixed Soviet-Romanian companies established in the aftermath of World War II to mask the looting of Romania by the Soviet Union, in addition to excessive war reparations paid to the USSR. A large number of people were arbitrarily imprisoned for political, economical or unknown reasons: detainees in prisons or camps, deported, persons under house arrest, administrative detainees, psychiatric internees for political reasons. Estimations vary, from 60,000 [2], 80,000 [3], up to two millions.[4] There were hundreds of thousands of abuses, deaths and incidents of torture against a large range of people, from political opponents to ordinary citizens, bringing gloom over Romania. [5] According to some estimations, 200,000 people lost their lives as victims of the communist regime in Romania between 1948 and 1964..." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania</a> I'm actually much more interested in the recent history and possible future direction of the CIA in the post-Cold War world, it being the case that their original mission and ostensible primary reason for existence vanished around 17 years ago. But if you want to keep talking about the Cold War, I'm fine with that, too. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 10/1/06 10:37 pm

by **chiggerbit** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 12:34 am

lose any hope of political pluralism So, what is your position, rdr, when the current pResident appoints CIA people in this day and age who protected his CIA/President father back during Iran/contra? Are we talking about American-style political pluralism in the same breath as we speak of Somoza? Or hey, how about Noriega? General Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte? Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=chiggerbit@rigorousintuition>chiggerbit</A> at: 10/1/06 10:43 pm

by **robertdreed** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 12:51 am

I think you're going to have to go back and review the full context of my debate with Dream's End, chiggerbit. We've been discussing DE's theory that George W. Bush may actually be no more than a dispensable patsy, compared to the hidden corporate powers who secretly direct the CIA. My position is that the nation that we most have to worry about going fascist is the United States of America. Not as the result of some impending coup d'etat at the behest of the institution referred to as "CIA", either. Due to the actions of the Bush administration, their lackeys in Congress, and possibly holding the balance of power in the Supreme Court, as well. And my personal opinion is that if there's rampant discontent with George W. Bush in the rank and file of the CIA, it's primarily from intelligent people fed up with his administration's attempts to concoct a pack of lies in order to indoctrinate everyone in the Agency to sign off on returning to the Cold War-era "anything goes" mentality- not because some ultra-powerful 5th column in the agency thinks that he's rocking the boat too much for their liking. I think that anyone who thinks that the most powerful political dynasty in the USA is possibly in iminent danger of being overthrown by some even more elite rival political faction who covertly controls the CIA has owls in their attic, on that topic. By the way- who is the head of the CIA these days, anyway? Didn't Bush's big appointment, Porter Goss, take, um, "early retirement", a few months back? I never thought we got the full story on that one. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 10/1/06 11:01 pm

by **chiggerbit** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 1:03 am

I think that Goss' big secret story was that he was one lazy sob, hated the hours and effort required, wasn't used to it. Say, what's up with Luis Posada Carriles nowadays? Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=chiggerbit@rigorousintuition>chiggerbit</A> at: 10/1/06 11:08 pm

by **Dreams End** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 1:04 am

Well, no, we won't play dueling human rights abuses. But the one example I gave details on was primarily about the way the private sector and government, particularly CIA, interacted. I.e. Rockefeller wants oil so different maneuvers are undertaken to get the CIA to overthrow Mossadegh...the USSR was just a pretense, as it so often was... I was using that example to show how I think it works now. This osmotic relationship between corporate and government sectors. I'm sorry my examples are old but I don't have access to current CIA files. But I did concede that usually CIA and the Executive are operating under shared assumptions and values and that CIA then works for the Executive. I just also think that the way government works in general and particularly in terms of covert action...most of the decisions and policies are crafted in "extra-legislative" ways and the President is poked, prodded, blackmailed or lied to as needed if he is reluctant to go along. But I do find your contention that the best hope to "save countries from communist totalitarianism" was to sponsor horrific rightwing coups....well not convincing. Maybe they didn't all last, but I don't find any evidence that Pinochet, for example, was backed with the understanding that in a couple of decades he'd lose his grip on power. He was backed to get rid of Allende. Period. As long as the US had access to the markets, who cares who's in power. I don't find compelling as evidence that they WANTED democracy to ultimately flourish the fact that reforms did come. And often, the reform movements are themselves tightly controlled. In different historical phases, overt fascism has been bad PR. Mexico's power handoff from PRI to PAN is an example. US can deal with that...but not with a PRD president. Ultimately, we aren't going to agree as you are operating from a Cold War perspective. Even when you don't always excuse behavior just because "The Russians did it too", you still buy into the idea that the Cold War rationale offered by the US was the real reason actions were taken. I simply don't accept that rationale at face value and know too many counterexamples where it's rather clear that big corporations wanting to keep their copper and bananas safe from nationalization were the true motivation. Finally, back to the idea that the CIA always acts at Presidential bidding, I'd also add that I'm pretty sure John F. Kennedy didn't order his own assassination, but I guess that would start a whole other debate.

by **km artlu** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 1:26 am

Pulling back from the complexities which have emerged in this thread for a moment, "State of Denial"s NY Times review boggles the mind: "...Bush emerges as a passive, impatient, sophomoric and intellectually incurious leader...in stark contrast to the laudatory one Mr. Woodward drew in 'Bush at War', his 2002 book, which depicted the president...as a judicious, resolute leader." This was extracted from within the first paragraph of the review. Hello?? Can the techniques of social engineering possibly be any more apparent? Perhaps the Ministry of Truth is short-staffed this week.

by **chiggerbit** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 1:26 am

Well, no, we won't play dueling human rights abuses. You might not, DE, but I will. What's old is new, and what's new is old. Just thinking of a list I have somewhere, such as Donald Gregg, Richard Armitage, Negroponte as three examples.

by **robertdreed** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 1:31 am

"Are we talking about American-style political pluralism in the same breath as we speak of Somoza? Or hey, how about Noriega? General Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte?" No, the point I was attempting to make- apparently with less than total success- was that perhaps the legacy of American style pluralism would better be discussed in the context of the year 2006, featuring the elections in Nicaragua, where a man named Daniel Ortega is apparently the front-runner. Not a Somoza in sight. As for Panama, the president there is Martin Torrijos Herara, who was elected in 2004. As for Noriega, he was deposed by a US invasion in 1989, although I'm unclear on whether you think that was a bad thing or not. Unlike many deposed national leaders, Noriega wasn't killed in the aftermath. He was extradited, tried, convicted, and imprisoned in Miami Correctional Insitution, and he'll be eligible for parole in 2007. As I noted previously, Augusto Pinochet isn't running things any more in Chile, either. The name of the current president of Chile was in a previous post of mine. If you read it, you apparently overlooked it, along with, evidently, all of my points.

by **chiggerbit** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 1:34 am

Otto reich and Roger Noriega, Henry Kissinger? Oh, THAT"S RIGHT, they weren't CIA, were they?

Bob Woodward steps in for the Kill

Woodward

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Hmmmm Why is Powell saying he was fired NOW?

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Re: Woodward

Re: Woodward

Re: Woodward

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