In 1961 the CIA decided to overthrow a government in the heart of Africa: in the Congo. 200 years before, the Congo had been at the centre of the slave trade. Millions of Africans had been forcibly taken down the river and shipped to America where their forced labour fuelled America’s rise to economic power. Now, the country had been given independence by its old colonial rulers, the Belgiums. But it was completely unprepared and had collapsed into violence. The CIA were frightened that the new prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was about to turn for help to the Soviet Union … and they helped install a dictator in his place: he was called Colonel Mobutu whose brutal regime the Americans would support for the next 30 years. ibid.
They [US] called it enhanced interrogation, and they did it by waterboarding Zubaydah 83 times, by repeated smashing him against the wall, and locking him naked in a freezing box for weeks at a time. The CIA videotaped the interrogations but later destroyed the tapes. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head VI Are We a Pigeon? Or Are We Dancer? *****
The CIA ruthlessly misled the American people about UFOs in order to hide their surveillance programmes against the Soviet Union. Nick Cook, Are UFOs Real? 2/2
I also belonged to an organisation that was a little tough to get out of. Maybe you’ve heard of it. The CIA. Lilyhammer VIII: Trolls starring Steven van Zandt & Trond Fausa Aurvag & Marian Saastad Ottesen & Steinar Sagen & Anne Krigsvoll et al, Frank to assistant, BBC 2012
After the War he [Klaus Barbie] was hired by the Americans as an anti-Communist agent. So he became an agent in the service of American Secret Service. And he was working for the CIA afterwards. Uki Goni, author The Real Odessa
CIA: hundreds of covert operations around the world including more than eighty during Truman’s second term. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States IV: The Cold War 1945-50, Sky Atlantic 2013
The CIA had now come into its own and in the next year organised the overthrow of Guatemala’s popular leader Jacobo Arbenz. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States V: The 50s: Eisenhower, The Bomb & the Third World
Operation Mongoose: a terror campaign overseen by his brother Robert. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States VI: JFK: To the Brink
Under Kennedy’s three-year watch the CIA launched 163 major covert operations worldwide. ibid.
Alfred McCoy: The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States X: Bush & Obama: Age of Terror
Revelations that the Central Intelligence Agency launched a world-wide assassination program, and then concealed its existence from the US Congress and the American people for eight years, carries an implication that death squads may have been employed against political opponents. Tom Burghardt, Dissident Voice 20th July 2009, ‘Was Dr David Kelly a Target of Dick Cheney’s ‘Executive Assassination Ring’?’
Under previous president George W Bush the CIA and the military had been given free rein to wage a secret war against the terrorists using abduction, secret interrogation black sites, and torture. Peter Taylor, The Secret War on Terror I, BBC 2011
To keep the CIA apolitical Bush would have to renounce a spot on the 1976 ticket. George H W Bush II, PBS 2008
Bush became the first CIA director to be dismissed by an incoming president. ibid.
I’m going to be so much better a president for having been at the CIA that you’re not going to believe it. George H W Bush
Saddam has a great deal to thank the CIA for. For bringing about power, for keeping the balance of power, for helping him personally, for providing him with financial aid during the war with Iran, for protecting him against internal coup d’etat. It’s a continuing relationship from the very early 1960s until now, and it’s a love-hate relationship. Said Aburish, author Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge
What they leave out are several other things. One is that Saddam Hussein was CIA. He was put in by the CIA. And CIA backed Saddam’s right-wing of the Ba’ath Party, and the Ba’ath Party went and murdered every democrat, every progressive, every communist that was in Iraq. And then went and murdered the left wing of their own party. So they killed, tortured these people. They did all that. It’s true what they say about him that he did do these terrible things. What they leave out is that when he was doing them he was Washington’s poster boy. And they couldn’t have more praise for him. But then he turned round and did something else. And that was he nationalised the oil reserves. Michael Parenti
In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were essentially people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I returned to the US: I complained to the State Department here, to the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and to the Inspector General’s office. I was met with silence. What I was protesting was in reality an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then Soviets. Michael Springman, US Consulate Jeddah Saudi Arabia, under George H W Bush’s watch
Throughout the ’80s [bin Laden] was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage Jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda, literally The Database, was originally the computer file of the thousands of Mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Robin Cook, British politician
And it is one such [Nazi] advisory panel that gave birth to the National Security Council. The NSC then combined with the Council on Foreign Relations and spawned its muscle, the CIA ... Working closely with its counterpart, MOSAD, the CIA has managed to undermine nations from within, by using false flag operations, propaganda and terrorism. And please understand that these organisations were created on the recommendation of top level Nazis, and it was founded and operated on Nazi principles. The CIA has since become the number one trafficker of drugs and human cargo in the world. The CIA are not the good guys; they are anything but. They are a criminal cabal disguised as an Intelligence agency that is based on Nazi principles, has unlimited resources, both financially and militarily, and they are answerable to no-one. The CIA and MOSAD virtually operate as the one organisation. Either they or their agents are responsible for virtually all terrorist bombings the world has seen in the last sixty years. Their prime mandate is to undermine world security and pave the way for a global government controlled by a global monetary system. The Big Picture – FINAL
When 9/11 happened – cui bono – who benefited? Afghanistan? Iraq? Did any Arab country? No. But the Bush Administration was given an open cheque-book with which to take control of the Afghani poppy-fields, the Iraqi oil-fields and the oil-rich and gas-rich Caspian Basin. And all protest over the two invasions was squashed before it started ... A large portion of al Qaeda funding comes from the Pakistani ISI and it still does. And yet the ISI is an openly admitted and funded wing of the CIA. The CIA created hundreds of thousands of extremists and trained them in radical Islamic thinking, and kept a database [al Qaeda] on them all. All these extremists still receive funding from the CIA channelled to them by the ISI. They don’t even realise they are really funded by them. ibid.
Al Qaeda was created by the CIA during the 1980s for the purpose of fighting off an attempted Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The CIA funded al Qaeda and supplied them with the weapons and intelligence they needed to ward off the Russian threat. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in the late 1980s, the CIA continued to fund al Qaeda, and many of its operative were used as CIA assets. These operatives were used as double-agents for use in anti-terrorism drills within the USA, and for covert military operations. 9/11 Coincidences
Clearly the CIA is engaging in systematic assassinations of individuals. There is no review of what they do, and of course there is no accountability. So it is a zone in which law has been effectively excluded. Professor Philip Alston, former UN Special Rapporteur
John McLaughlin oversaw the CIA analysts. Later he ran the entire CIA. Manhunt, caption, HBO 2013
In 1995 the CIA created the bin Laden unit. Its codename was Alec Station. ibid.
Iran 1953: The CIA mounted its first covert operation to overthrow a foreign government. The target was the prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh. He held power legitimately through his country’s parliamentary process. And he was popular. Bill Moyers, The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis
With targeting aid provided by the CIA, 100,000 Iranians were killed by Iraqi chemical weapons during the war. Empire of Oil: The Hidden History of 9/11
Unknown to JFK the CIA was continuing to work with Trafficante, Roselli and Sam Giancana in a secret plot to kill Fidel Castro. Lamar Waldron
The CIA was in the State and so was the Mafia. Norman Mailer
There were all sorts of wings, enclaves and cells in the CIA as well as the bureaucratic overlay. Norman Mailer
At the same time that Hunt moved from working inside Harriman’s office to go to the CIA where he’s supervised at the Bay of Pigs invasion, at the same time that Richard Bissell moved from working inside Harriman’s office to go to work for the CIA where he became the director of planning for the Bay of Pigs operation, at the very same time the oldest son of Harriman’s closest associate [George H W Bush] went to work in the exact same outdoor office where Hunt and Bissell were now operating, Hoover’s memo names Bush as a CIA supervisor of the Bay of Pigs invaders, ...