The CIA trained an army of exiles in Guatemala for an invasion of Cuba. Fidel Castro, PBS 2013
1898 President McKinley orders US troops to invade Cuba; 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt orders the invasion of Honduras; 1912 President Taft orders the invasion of Nicaragua; 1914-1918 President Wilson invades Haiti, Cuba and Panama; 1924-26 President Coolidge invades Nicaragua and Honduras; 1954 Eisenhower approves the overthrow of the elected government of Guatemala; 1961 Kennedy approves the CIA invasion of Cuba; 1965 Johnson invades the Dominican Republic; 1973 Nixon approves the overthrow of the elected government of Chile; 1981 President Reagan approves the CIA secret war against Nicaragua; 1983 President Reagan orders the invasion of Granada. John Pilger, Nicaragua – A Nation’s Right to Survive, 1983
Q) What right have you – when I mean you, I mean the CIA, the United States government, or any foreign power – what right do you have to do what you do in other countries?
A) National Security Interests ... That’s just tough ... We’ll intervene whenever we decide it’s in our national security interests to intervene. And if you don’t like it, lump it. Get used to it, world. We’re not going to put up with nonsense [democracy], and if our interests are threatened, we’re going to do it. Major John Hunt, CIA Chief of Operations South Americas
So they said a decision has been made at the highest levels of our government to rid Guatemala of the Arbenz regime, and we would like you to participate in it. What we wanted to do was have a terror campaign. To terrify Arbenz particularly, terrify his troops much as the German Stuka bombers terrified the population of Holland ... We sewed confusion ... a little harmless bombing. John Hunt former CIA agent
All of us in the CIA know all about the concentration camps in America and their purpose. We know that their purpose is to terminate ‘resisters of the New World Order’ under martial law. Michael Maholey, CIA Naval Intelligence
What we wanted to do was have a terror campaign. Howard Hunt, leader of CIA plot to oust Arbenz and later conspirator in Watergate break-in
1954: US overthrows democratically elected President Arbenz of Guatemala. 200,000 civilians killed. Michael Moore, Bowling for Columbine, 2002
When Arbenz became President in Guatemala, the country was very much under the control of the United Fruit Company and big international corporations. And Arbenz ran on this ticket that says we want to give the land back to the people, and when he was in power he began to implement policies that would do just that, give land rights back to the people. The United Fruit company didn’t like that very much, so they hired a public relations firm and launched a huge campaign in the United States to convince people ... that Arbenz was a Soviet puppet, and if we allowed him to stay in power, the Soviets would have a foothold in this hemisphere ... Out of this public relations campaign came a commitment on the part of the CIA and the Military to take this man out. And in fact we did. We sent in planes. We sent in soldiers. We sent in jackals. We sent everything in to take him out, and did take him out. And as soon as he was removed from office, the new guy that took over after him basically reinstated everything to the big international corporations, including the United Fruit. John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, economist for Chas T Main Inc
Doctor Mohammad Mosaddegh, Prime Minister of Iran from 1951–1953: he was elected in Iran. He was considered to be the best hope for democracy in the Middle-East and around the world; he was Time magazine’s man of the year. But one of the things that he ran on and began to implement was the idea that foreign oil companies needed to pay more to the Iranian people a lot more for their oil, for the oil they were taking out of the ground. The Iranian people should benefit from their own oil. A strange policy. We didn’t like that of course. But we were afraid of sending in the troops, instead we sent in one CIA agent, Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s relative. He went in with a few million dollars and was every effective and efficient. He managed to get Mosaddegh overthrown and he brought in the Shah of Iran to replace him, and he who was more sympathetic to oil. John Perkins
Project Paperclip was a United States government-sanctioned CIA Operation for the importation of Nazi and fascist scientists into the United States. Mark Philips, CIA former operative
Using Nazi criminals is how the CIA got started. And these were as bad guys as you could ever find. Elizabeth Holtzman, Congresswoman
The CIA created, armed and financed the Contras. My father backed them with everything he had. It was my father’s war, and almost everyone in Nicaragua has lost somebody as a result of it. I couldn’t go down there, being his daughter, and expect not to feel those people's wrath. Patti Davis
There are good reasons why the CIA and drugs are so closely linked. Clandestine terror requires hidden funds, and the criminal elements to who the intelligence agencies naturally turn expect a quid pro quo. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
There is evidence of CIA involvement in a virtual coup that overturned the Whitlam Labour government in Australia in 1975, when it was feared that Whitlam might interfere with Washington’s military and intelligence bases in Australia. ibid.
Large-scale CIA interference in Italian politics has been public knowledge since the congressional Pike Report was issued in 1976, citing a subsidy of over $65 million to approved political parties and affiliates from 1948 through the early 1970s. In 1976, the Aldo Moro government fell in Italy after revelations that the CIA had spent $6 million to support anti-Communist candidates. Ibid
In July 1990, President Cossiga of Italy called for an investigation of charges aired over state television that the CIA had paid Licio Gelli to foment terrorist activities in Italy in the late 1960s and 1970s. Gelli was Grandmaster of the secret Propaganda Due (P2) Masonic lodge and had long been suspected of a leading role in terrorism and other criminal activities. In those years, according to a 1984 report of the Italian Parliament, P2 and other neo-fascist groups, working closely with elements of the Italian military and secret services, were preparing a virtual coup to impose an ultra-right regime and to block the rising forces of the left. ibid.
The CIA operations to control the Italian elections, authorized by the National Security Council in December 1947, were the first major clandestine operation of the newly formed Agency. As noted earlier, CIA operations to subvert Italian democracy continued into the 1970s on a substantial scale. ibid.
The CIA began to support right-wing parties – that didn’t work. The supported an insurrection in 1957/58 – that was put down. The US then turned to a classic technique for overthrowing civilian government – one that’s used over and over again – namely, cut off any aid or assistance or support to the government but maintain, even increase, military aid. Noam Chomsky, lecture on East Timor, MOMA 16th November 1992
1965 and then Suharto took over and then came this huge bloodbath … The biggest bloodbath since the holocaust. ibid.
National security and crack cocaine in the same sentence – does not that sound strange to you? Kill the Messenger 2014 starring Jeremy Renner & Rosemarie DeWitt & Ray Liotta & Tim Blake Nelson & Barry Pepper & Oliver Platt & Michael Sheen & Paz Vega & Michael Kenneth Williams & Mary Elizabeth Winstead Andy Garcia & Josh Close et al, director Michael Cuesta, investigator
It was the CIA ... We were asked to support a free and democratic Nicaragua – the Contras, the rebels ... raising money here in the US ... They knew who we were – why else would they come to us? ibid. court witness
In 1998 the CIA released a 400-page report that acknowledged the Agency associated with members of the Contra movement who engaged in drug trafficking. Consumed with the President Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal, the national media largely ignored the report. Gary Webb was never able to earn a living as a journalist again. In 2004, seven years to the day he resigned from the San Jose Mercury News, Webb was found dead in his apartment, shot twice in the head. His death was ruled a suicide. ibid. captions
Haven’t you heard? The CIA fell from the Berlin Wall and all the President’s men can’t put him back together again. Dying of the Light 2015 starring Nicolas Cage & Anton Yelchin & Irene Jacob & Victor Webster, director Paul Shrader
Weapons of mass destruction was a fantasy. We had accounted for the production equipment, we had accounted for the spare parts, we had accounted for the missiles, and yet when I briefed the CIA they rejected it. Scott Ritter, ex UN weapons inspector
How the CIA’s black operations compromised the office of President and subverted the authority of Congress and the American judicial system. The Mena Connection, Youtube 2012
Activities set at a remote airport in western Arkansas while Clinton was Arkansas’s commander in chief … Clinton once again demonstrated his trademark talent … He Lied! ibid.
‘The local prosecutor did conduct an investigation …’ cf. Letter from Polk County Deputy Prosecutor Charles Black to Governor Bill Clinton requesting state assistance to fund the Mena investigation. ibid. Bill
The Arkansas Committee gathered thousands of signatures and went directly to Clinton demanding he lead the investigation … Continued lies, deceit and cover-up. ibid.
Gunrunning, mysterious CIA flights, Contra military training, guerrilla pilot training, clandestine air drops, tons of illegal drugs, millions of dollars in dirty money: covert activity in some third-world banana republic, right? Wrong. Arkansas: America’s own Banana Republic. ibid.
Drug smuggler, undercover agent for the FBI, DEA, US Customs & the Central Intelligence Agency: Barry Seal who was ruthlessly assassinated in Baton Rogue Louisiana in February 1986 plays a pivotal role. ibid.
A small backward state Arkansas became the epicentre of a CIA black operation … we will expose the ongoing cover-up. ibid.
[Theresa] Dickie was able to film Fred Hampton junior and Joseph Evans, Seal’s trusted mechanics, both of whom were assets of the CIA & DEA. ibid.