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Philip Agee: The USA and International Terrorism (2001)
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Nordic News Network
http://www.nnn.se/abf/abf/append5a.htm
[Also distributed on October 20, 2001 from an abbreviated and edited
version published by Counterpunch. See: http://tinyurl.com/2g7daj
The Discussion (Q&A) section following Agee's speech offers many of his
observations about Latin America, especially Cuba. -NY Transfer]
Agee in Sweden: The USA and International Terrorism
Introduction by Nordic News Network
On 24 September 2001, just thirteen days after terrorist attacks
against symbols of U.S. economic and military might in New York and
Wa****ngton, Philip Agee visited Stockholm to speak on the history and
methods of the CIA, and its long involvement in international
terrorism.
Agee is one of the most interesting and im****tant figures in modern
U.S. history. No one has done more to shed light on the darker side of
U.S. foreign policy, based on the knowledge and insights he gained as
an agent of the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency.
His disclosures have been im****tant in their own right, but his example
may be even more im****tant. He was the first to leave the CIA and
reveal its secrets to the world-- confirming much of what had long been
suspected. Since then, many former employees of the CIA and other
government agencies have provided valuable service to the public by
following his example.
That example is the product of a remarkable personal journey. He grew
up in very comfortable cir***stances in Florida, and was a devout
Catholic who for a time seriously considered becoming a priest. My
entire background and education were conservative, he has written.
That meant conformity and acceptance of authority. Nothing could have
been more natural than to go into the CIA to fight the holy war against
Communism. This was in the 1950s, long before the world knew they
were into political assassinations, torture and overthrowing
governments.
Between 1960 and 1968 he worked as a CIA agent in various countries of
Latin America. During those years, I changed, he writes. I wondered
why we were so afraid of governments that put priorities on helping
peasants and other poor people. Those doubts led to his resignation
from the CIA in 1968, and he eventually decided to write a book about
his experiences and the conclusions he had drawn from them. It was
entitled Inside the Company: CIA Diary, and it caused an international
sensation when it was published in 1975.
I tried to show how our operations help to sustain favourable
operating conditions for U.S.-based multi-national cor****ations, Agee
has explained. These conditions, together with political hegemony,
were our real goals. . . . Free elections really meant freedom for us
to intervene with secret funds for our candidates. Free trade unions
meant freedom to establish our unions. Freedom of the press meant
freedom for us to pay journalists to publish our material as if it were
their own. When an elected government threatened U.S. economic and
political interests, it had to go. Social and economic justice were
fine concepts for public relations, but only for that.
Naturally, the CIA and the Nixon government then in power-- and Henry
Kissinger, in particular-- did everything they could to discourage
Agee. Among other things, he was expelled from five NATO countries
under pressure from the United States. When that failed, they mounted
an intensive propaganda campaign to discredit him, via their contacts
at Newsweek, the BBC, CBS 60 Minutes and other respected news
sources. In fact, the campaign against Philip provides an excellent
illustration of how the CIA infiltrates and manipulates news media.
But none of that seemed to have much effect. Agee went on to write
several other books and a long series of articles in such publications
as Covert Action Quarterly, of which he is a co-founder. At present, he
is helping Cuba-- a frequent target of CIA propaganda and
destabilization efforts-- to further develop its crucial tourist
industry by means of his on-line agency, CubaLinda.com.
Philip Agees visit to Sweden coincided with proposals to reinstate CIA
practices which his disclosures had helped to outlaw 25 years ago,
including the assassination of foreign nationals and close co-operation
with persons known to have committed serious violations against human
rights. Those and related matters provided the backdrop for his talk in
Stockholm.]
***
The Plot Calling the Kettle Black:
The U.S.A. and International Terrorism
Address by Philip Agee
ABF House, Stockholm
24 September 2001
Thank you all for coming. I would also like to thank Gran Eriksson,
the director of ABF, for inviting me to participate in this series on
U.S. influence on Swedish news media. It is a very broad topic, and I
am sure you understand that, since I do not live here and do not speak
or read Swedish, it is not possible for me to analyse Swedish media and
point out areas of possible U.S. influence.
But I am familiar with the practices of the past, which I believe have
never ended, and I would like to begin by citing a well-known
observation of A. J. Liebling, a U.S. journalist and media critic who
was active during the early 1900s: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed
only to those who own one, he said.
In a sense, this has always been true. News media in general, except
for state-funded organizations, are part of the private sector. I know
that, here in Sweden as in Britain, you have state television and state
radio. But generally speaking, and certainly in the United States, the
press has always been in the private sector.
The power of the word
The United States-- that is, the political class of the United States--
has known about the power of the word for a very, very long time. A
personal experience may serve to illustrate how powerful the written
word can be.
For legal reasons, I stayed away from the United States for about
seventeen years-- from the time I started work on my first book, in the
early 1970s, until my autobiography was ready for publication in 1987.
The publisher of the latter was very eager for me to return to the
States for the promotion of the book, but my lawyers all warned me not
to take a chance. They suspected that there could be secret criminal
indictment, as there could have been all those years, and argued that
the risk was not worth it.
My wife and I decided that we would take that risk. We went back, and
they didnt touch me. I did the promotion of the book, and that began
ten years of frequent travel to the U.S. for lectures at universities
and speeches at political rallies, civic centres, churches, even out in
the street. Altogether, and must have spoken at more than 500 events in
the United States.
One of my trips, around 1989 or 1990, was to the University of
California at Santa Cruz. When the organizers told me that the event
was scheduled to take place at a civic centre with room for about 3000
people, my reaction was: Oh, my god! We are going to look like were
all alone in there. We will never attract more than a couple of hundred
people. But they said, Dont worry. Youll see. Sure enough, on the
night of the meeting the arena was packed. During the discussion period
after my talk, which was about the war in Central America still going
on at the time, a man stood up way in the back. He was a very large
person, with a lot of long hair, a bushy beard, and a plaid lumberjack
****rt. He paused for a moment, and then said my name in an enormous,
booming voice: Philip Agee! He said, Philip Agee, I want to thank
you for saving my life!
With that, the place became as quiet as you could imagine. You could
have heard the proverbial pin drop. He went on to tell the story of how
he was seriously wounded in Vietnam, and had to spend several years in
a veterans hospital in the United States. While in hospital, he became
despondent: He thought there was no hope, and decided to commit
suicide. But then someone gave him a copy of my first book.
He said: When I read that book, it changed my life. He said that he
decided then not to end his life, but to spend the rest of it helping
Vietnam War veterans who had problems like his own. From that point in
the mid-1970s until the time of this meeting some fifteen years later,
he had made a career of social work among Vietnam War veterans
suffering from mental problems because of the things that they had done
and seen in Vietnam.
This is merely one personal story, but it indicates the strength of the
written word. Possibly, one life was saved-- possibly.
Covert action
The CIA, as you probably know, was founded in the years following World
War II-- supposedly, to prevent another Pearl Harbor, the Japanese
surprise attack which brought the United States into that war. In that
sense, the events of September 11th represent a terrible failure on the
part of the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence establishment.
There are at least twelve or thirteen different intelligence agencies
in the United States, and they are spending on the order of thirty
billion dollars per year-- the CIA being simply the foremost among
them. Of course, the CIA was not only established to collect
information and to anticipate attacks. From the beginning of the CIAs
existence, it was also used to intervene secretly in the internal
affairs of other countries. Virtually no country on earth was exempt.
This secret intervention-- as opposed to the collection of
information-- was called covert action, and it was used in a variety of
ways to influence the institutions of other countries. Interventions in
elections were very frequent. Every CIA station, that is the undercover
CIA office inside a U.S. embassy, included agents who were involved in
covert action. In addition to intervention to ensure the election of
favoured candidates and the defeat of disfavoured candidates, the CIA
also infiltrated the institutions of power in countries all over the
world. I am sure that Sweden is no exception, and was not an exception
during all the years of the Cold War.
There was electoral intervention, propaganda via the media, and also
the penetration and manipulation of womens organizations, religious
organizations, youth and student organizations, the trade-union
movement-- very im****tant-- but also the military and security services
and, of course, political parties. All of these institutions were free
game for penetration and manipulation by the CIA.
In short, the CIA influenced the civic life of countries all around the
world. It did this due to a lack of faith in democracy in other
countries. There was a desire for control. The secret U.S. policy was
to not leave things to chance, that is to the will of the people in
whatever country it might be. They had to be tutored, they had to be
guided in such a way that they would be safe for U.S. control.
Control was the key word. None of this was done for altruistic or
idealistic reasons.
Three key factors
Where the media are concerned, there are three im****tant factors
involved: sources, selection and the slant. With regard to sources, it
is my understanding that Swedish news media have very few of their own
people working abroad. That means that they are dependent on what they
get from other sources, for example the Associated Press, Reuters, BBC
or CNN. Those huge organizations which have people all over the world
are, of course, selling their products here.
So you receive those products here, and an editor takes uses them in
any way he chooses. What seems to be happening with globalization is
that the treatment of news is becoming more and more homogeneous.
Sweden, of course, is a unique society with a unique history, culture
and language. You would surely have a unique way of viewing and
interpreting world events-- a vision of the world that is Swedish, in
contrast to that of the U.S., Germany or any other nationality.
But how do you maintain this cultural identity with regard to
international news, if the media here are dependent on foreign sources?
These sources are, of course, becoming fewer and fewer, as the process
of monopolization continues. Consider the mergers that have occurred
just during the past ten years or so-- for example, Time merging with
Warner, then taking over CNN and now merging with AOL. Or General
Electric, another giant cor****ation, taking control of NBC. This is a
process that has been going on for a long time, resulting in fewer and
fewer independent sources.
Selection may be the most im****tant factor of the three, because what
is most im****tant in the news is what is left out. It is a form of
censor****p. There is a lot of news out there; but editors determine
what is news and what is not. Whatever is overlooked, not re****ted,
says a lot about the media.
Invisible background
This has been very well illustrated during the past two weeks. I
imagine that we have all seen the same re****ts over and over again, on
what happened in New York and Wa****ngton, along with the demonization
of Osama bin Ladin. There has been some re****ting, but not very much,
about the fact that bin Ladin is a product of the United States. He is
a creature of the CIA, having gone to work for the it in Afghanistan.
It was the largest operation ever carried out by the CIA, and its
purpose was to bleed the Soviet Union.
Bin Ladin was one of thousands who volunteered to fight with the
mujihadin against the Soviets. As I recall, there were seven different
groups. All seven were basically fundamentalist Islamic forces, who
felt that the Soviet invasion defiled an Islamic country. Bin Ladin was
among those who did not stop fighting after the Soviets were expelled.
In fact, he started laying plans for the future while the war against
the Soviet Union was still going on. He was able to develop a
world-wide network which today is operating in sixty countries or more.
Very little of this background on bin Ladin as a creation of the United
States has been brought to public attention during the past two weeks.
Most of what we have seen and heard is related to the solution, which
is war. How much have we read or heard about those voices calling for
alternative solutions to the problem of international terrorism? How
much re****ting have we seen on analyses of what has driven these people
to such desperation that they carried out those attacks on September
11th?
I have not seen very much of that. This may be due to the fact that I
am living in Cuba at present. But I do read the New York Times on the
Internet every morning, for example, and have access to quite a lot of
other news. When it comes to alternative solutions to the problem, such
as a re-examination of U.S. policy in the Middle East, particularly
with respect to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I dont think I have
seen anything. The only thing we get is Bush saying this is war, we
are at war, this is the first war of the 21st century, this is a
question of good versus evil, whoever is not with us is against us,
and so on.
That is pretty much the attitude we had in the CIA during the 1950s.
When we analysed the operational climate and all the political forces
in any given country, we had our friends and we had our enemies. There
was no one in between. The friends were centre and right-wing social
democrats, conservatives, liberals, in some cases all the way over to
neo-fascists. The enemies were left-wing social democrats, socialists,
communists, all the way to those advocating armed struggle.
This is the way we saw the world. It was a strictly dualistic view of
the political climate in any given country where we were operating. It
was very much like what we are hearing today from Wa****ngton.
The uses of journalists
The third im****tant factor affecting the news is, of course, the slant
or bias. It reflects the moral, social and political values of the
person doing the writing, or at least the editor. This is where the CIA
played a very fundamental role in years past, and I cannot imagine that
it suddenly stopped when the Cold War came to an end.
In fact, like many others, I believe that the Cold War never really
ended. It did so along the east-west axis. But the Cold War always had
a north-south dimension-- the war against forces of liberation in Third
World countries. That never ended, and it continues today.
I also believe that the CIAs media operations have continued. They
involve the recruitment and payment of editors and re****ters who take
the CIAs material and publish it as if it were their own. Taken all
together-- the sources and selection of material, and the point of view
or slant-- the result is essentially what is known as propaganda, but
which p***** for unbiased news.
Journalists are also very im****tant to the CIA for non-journalistic
activities. They serve as very convenient agents of access for the
Agency. Particularly since they come from a country with a neutral
tradition, Swedes in general have always been of great interest to the
CIA. This is because they do not carry a lot of political baggage, as
do people from most other countries. I am aware of the ongoing debate
here concerning just how neutral Sweden has or has not been. But in the
rest of the world, the neutrality of Sweden has created a special
attraction for U.S. intelligence agencies, because Swedes have readier
access to certain target individuals than, say, an American or a German
would.
The fact is that journalists are used for non-journalistic purposes--
as collection agents for intelligence, and for making contacts, because
a journalist can approach practically anyone and ask for an interview
or develop some type of relation****p. Of the hundreds of journalists
who have come to me over the years, I have no idea how many have been
sent by the CIA. I get some idea when I read what they write. But I
learned to be cautious, early on.
Education in injustice
The covert action operations to which I referred earlier were carried
out all over the world, and certainly in Latin America where I was
posted. I spent three years in Ecuador, then three more in Uruguay. In
both cases, my cover was as a political attach(c) in the U.S. embassy.
I then returned to Wa****ngton, pretty disillusioned with the work. I
was a product of the U.S. education system of the 1950s, which provided
me with a very good liberal education, but no political education at
all. I was simply brought up to believe that whatever the government
did was good, and that it was doing these good things in the name of us
all.
It was not until I got down to Latin America that I began to get a
political education. Whatever my ideas when I went down there, I saw
things around me every day that influenced me. I saw the terrible
economic and social conditions, and the injustices that could not be
ignored.
The two most fundamental, interrelated problems were the grossly
unequal distribution of land and the unequal distribution of wealth. In
the early years of the Kennedy administration-- I had gone down to
Latin American toward the end of the Eisenhower period-- there was much
talk about land reform as a way of dealing with those problems.
But with the success of the Cuban revolution, and its success in
surviving U.S. attempts at invasion and other hostilities, land reform
in the rest of Latin America was put aside. Stability was the order
of the day. The view in Wa****ngton was that, if reform programmes were
pushed, it could lead to instability and create openings for liberation
forces all over Latin America that were inspired by the Cuban
revolution.
So, the aim of our programmes was to sup****t the status quo, to sup****t
the oligarchies of Latin America. These are the power structures that
date back centuries, based on owner****p of the land, of the financial
resources, of the ex****t-im****t system, and excluding the vast majority
of the population. With all of our programmes, we were sup****ting these
traditional power structures. What first caused me to turn against
these people were the corruption and the greed that they exhibited in
all areas of society. My ideas and attitudes began to change, and
eventually I decided to resign from the CIA.
It is widely believed that, once you have joined the CIA, it is likely
being in the mafia, that you can never leave. But that is actually not
the case. The CIA does not want people working within the organization
who are not happy and do not want to be there. They are security risks,
for one thing. So, people are coming and going all the time in that
large organization of some 18,000 employees.
Maddening diary
I decided to start a new career in teaching, and enrolled as a Ph.D.
student in a programme of Latin American studies at the National
Autonomous University of Mexico. In the course of those studies-- of
the Spanish Conquest, the colonial period, and all the horrors that
have occurred over the centuries in Latin America-- I gradually came to
the conclusion that what my CIA colleagues and I had been doing during
the 1950s and 60s was nothing more than a continuation of nearly five
hundred years of exploitation and political repression.
It was then that an idea entered my mind which had previously been
unthinkable-- to write a book that would show how all this works. The
research required me to spend a year in Paris, and then another year in
London where the British Librarys newspaper archive proved to be
invaluable. There, I was able to read all the news re****ts relating to
the places that I had worked in Latin America, in many cases dating
back to the 19th century.
When the book finally came out-- the title was Inside the Company: CIA
Diary-- it was reviewed in the CIAs classified in-house journal,
Studies in Intelligence. I managed to get a copy of the review, which
speculated that I had kept copies of all the stuff I had worked on
while I was in the CIA, because they could not believe that I was able
to reconstruct all those thousands and thousands of details from
memory. It drove them absolutely crazy. But, in fact, most of the
maddening details were gleaned from the newspaper archive of the
British Museum.
The book had a tremendous effect on the Agencys effectiveness, its
ability to continue its standard operations. The most gratifying result
was that many Latin Americas told me how im****tant the book was for
defending themselves and their organizations from destruction by the
CIA. In the broadest sense, the purpose of the Agencys various
activities was to prop up those forces that were considered to be
friendly to U.S. interests, while penetrating, dividing, weakening and
destroying those forces that were regarded as unfriendly to U.S.
interests-- the forces of the political left that I mentioned earlier.
Thus, for Latin American revolutionaries to come to me and say how much
they appreciated the book, with all its details on how the CIA works to
subvert institutions in other countries, was extremely gratifying.
Suitable enemy
Since the events of two weeks ago, there has been much comment and
speculation about the new era we may now be entering. Looking back,
there was a long Cold War that had already begun during World War II.
An im****tant turning point occurred in 1950, when it was decided to
start an arms race that would serve the dual purpose of forcing the
Soviet Union into bankruptcy while stimulating the U.S. economy. Since
the Soviet Union was still recovering from the devastation of World War
II, it would never be able to catch up; but it would be compelled to
make the effort, nevertheless. Meanwhile, military spending in the U.S.
would keep going up and up, which in turn would stimulate the U.S.
economy through a sort of military Keynesianism. This continued
through the Reagan administration of the 1980s.
But in the decade since the end of the Cold War until September 11th,
the U.S. security establishment-- the political class, the CIA, the
people who fought the Cold War-- had no real enemy to focus on. True,
they had Saddam Hussein for awhile, and they might have had a minor
enemy here, another one there. But there was no real world-wide threat
similar to that of the Cold War. Well, now it seems that they have one
again.
What this means is that the United States is going to be in this for
quite some time. I have feeling that it is going to go on for ten or
fifteen years, because they are not going to wipe out international
terrorism or something like bin Ladins group overnight. During this
period, they are going to be doing the same things they did in the Cold
War. We can already here it in such expression as, Whoever is not with
us is against us. They are going to be trying to use every bit of
power they have to bring countries in line behind the United States.
It also means im****tant changes within the United States, because the
war on terrorism will serve as the justification for restraints on
civil liberties. They are building a huge crisis in the United States.
They are building the psychological climate for broad-based acceptance
of an ongoing war, for which there will be no quick resolution. There
will be no great battles, either.
Little room for alternatives
During this period, there will be very little room for alternative
views and alternative solutions in U.S. news media. What are the
alternatives? Well, one is obviously to address the question of why
these people are doing these things: What are the roots of
international terrorism? How does U.S. foreign policy create this type
of reaction? How does U.S. sup****t of everything that Israel does,
including the oppression of the Palestinian people, influence
fundamentalist Islamic groups?
In other words, a feasible alternative would be a reconsideration of
U.S. foreign policy, to see if it would not be possible to create a
more just situation in the Middle East. But the United States is stuck.
It is stuck with an authoritarian regime in Egypt, which is one of the
really shaky countries at the moment. Algeria has gone through a
horrible period, and the fundamentalist movement there has not died
away at all. In Pakistan the government could fall; fundamentalists
there could take over, and they would then have nuclear weapons in
their hands. So, a lot of things can happen in the months and years
ahead.
Unfortunately, I suspect that there will be greater self-censor****p by
U.S. media in order to line up behind the government, however its
policy of war may turn out. There is already talk of a personal
identification system of some kind for the entire country, together
with large-scale surveillance of the population-- especially
immigrants, and Muslim immigrants in particular. There will be some
opposition to this; but historically, the courts have usually gone
along with the government, even though they are theoretically supposed
to be the guarantors of civil liberties. For example, the courts went
along with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
So, it will be possible to restrict, and even infringe upon, civil
liberties and human rights in the U.S.
It is early days to draw any conclusions about how all this is going to
develop, since it is still in the planning stage. But in my opinion, if
they carry out this military solution-- with an attack or a series of
attacks, or the establishment of military bases in Islamic countries--
they will be doing exactly what bin Ladin wants them to do. It would
turn more and more people to fundamentalism and to his organization.
They could kill him tomorrow, but the organization that he has
established will live on, and it will be nearly impossible to penetrate.
My reading of the situation is that there have been a few defectors
from bin Ladins organization who have provided valuable information.
But the U.S. has not been able to have anyone working in these
clandestine groups around the world and re****ting from the inside. It
has had to make do with whatever it can learn from a few defectors.
Certainly, the CIA and the other components of the U.S. intelligence
apparatus will be using all available technical means to locate and
attack these groups, wherever they may be. They should certainly know
where all the training bases are located, since they were established
by the CIA, itself. But that will not be nearly enough.
I will conclude by noting that my experience here today has been very
favourable, as I have had the good fortune to make a statement on
Swedish public radio and public television, which I certainly could not
have done in the United States. No one would have listened to anybody
saying, Dont go to war. Rethink the policy. Go to the roots of why
all this is happening. These are alternative views which should be
given access to the media, and I certainly hope that, at least here,
you will continue to give access to people who think differently than
the militarists of the United States.
I thank you all very much for coming here tonight, and for your
attention.
***
Discussion/ Q&A
http://www.nnn.se/abf/append5b.htm
Q: I regard this period as the most dangerous in the world since the
Cuban missile crisis. I wonder if you share that *****sment. I would
also like to ask your opinion of Professor Robert Wrights op-ed piece
in todays New York Times, which argues that the United States will
have to surrender some of its sovereignty if it expects to get anywhere
with its war on terrorism. That means, for example, that it will have
to submit to something like the international war crimes tribunal,
which it has been willing to impose on others but not on itself.
Philip Agee: The comparison with the Cuban missile crisis had not
occurred to me, but I do not feel that the present situation is the
same as in October, 1962. The main difference is that, this time, there
is no open confrontation with nuclear weapons-- although there is a
danger that fundamentalists might get their hands on such weapons. That
risk is especially high in Pakistan, as I noted earlier.
But the most serious danger right now has to do with the measures
that the Bush administration may take. The first thing I thought of was
that they might use tactical nuclear weapons. Of course, that would not
do very much good, and would produce nuclear fallout in large parts of
Central Asia.
So, it is indeed a very dangerous period, and perhaps the
greatest threat is to civil liberties in the United States.
As for the second part of the question, I do not believe that the
U.S. will have to surrender any of its sovereignty in order to get the
backing of other countries around the world. It might have to give up
some information. You may have noticed that Colin Powell, the Secretary
of State, keeps saying, Weve got the proof, and we may share it with
certain governments. But the U.S. government is not prepared to share
it with its own people, who will have to pay the bill and put their
lives on the line in order to fight this phantom figure. It is almost
insulting.
The argument, of course, is that making the information public
would endanger their sources and compromise their methods. That is the
oldest line in the book. They will always say that, and they probably
do not have adequate information. They have some indicators or
cir***stantial evidence, perhaps. But it is probably not strong enough
to justify a full-scale war, the first war of the 21st century.
In any event, the U.S. is the sole superpower, and it is able to
count on the British following in lock-step. Together, they will try to
get the NATO countries and others to follow. They already have the
Security Council resolution. So, I think they are going to go about
this in a very systematic fa****on, and I suspect that they are going to
have to establish bases in Muslim countries such as Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan and in Afghanistan, itself.
Q: It is my understanding that there is a secret budget of 30-50 billion
dollars controlled by the CIA, the DIA and especially the NSA for
terror activities around the world. I believe there are also training
centres for torture and terrorism, including the use of
remote-controlled bombs, in the states of Texas, Georgia and Florida.
The CIA is re****ted to have financed the Albanian rebels in the Balkan
region, and similar groups throughout Central Europe, and to have
financed the Brigada Rosa in Italy which is responsible for a terror
bombing in 1978 that was blamed on the Communists. The U.S. has bases
in Latin America and trains professional terrorists that are sent all
over the world. What can you tell us about all this?
Agee: Well, to reaffirm what I said earlier, the United States has been
involved in state terrorism from the 1940s on, and it still is. There
is an old expression in English about the pot calling the kettle
black-- in other words, one person accuses another of doing exactly
what he is doing, himself. When the U.S. starts denouncing terrorism
around the world, while at the same time is the strongest and
longest-running terrorist power in the world, it makes you wonder what
language really means.
The U.S. has always felt that it has the right to intervene and
promote terrorism in other countries. This has been fully do***ented by
my friend, Bill Blum, a former State Department official whose books
present a litany of CIA interventions around the world since the 1940s.
If you only read the part on what they did in East Germany during the
1950s and 60s, you will see that they organized a full-scale terrorist
campaign to create chaos and undermine the government there.
[Editor's note: See William S. Blum, Killing Hope and Rogue
State, both published by Common Courage Press, Maine, U.S.A. The former
is available in Swedish under the title of CIA & USA:s verkliga
utrikespolitik; published by Epsilon Press, Gteborg. See also William
Blums web site at http://www.killinghope.org
.]
But they did this all over. I was myself involved in some of
these activities. I worked, for example, with the police in Latin
American countries, and they were often involved in torture. I remember
one Sunday morning in the office of the chief of police during a state
of siege in Montevideo. My boss, the CIA chief of station in Uruguay
was present, along with the local army colonel in charge of anti-riot
forces.
We began to hear a low moaning coming through the walls and, at
first, I thought it was a street vendor outside. But then it became
clear that it was someone being tortured in another part of the
building. As this horrible sound became louder and louder, the police
chief told the colonel to turn up a radio in order to drown out the
groans and screams.
There is no end to such examples, and Latin America was one of
the places where the worst offences occurred. But it was not just Latin
America. Remember Greece under the military junta, which was urged by
the CIA to prevent the election of Georgios Papandreou. That began
seven years of severe political repression by this fascist regime.
So it does not have to be in a Third World region like Latin
America. It can happen right in Western Europe, and even in a NATO
country. Italy, which you mentioned, was targeted from the very start.
The first im****tant CIA intervention in elections occurred in Italy
following World War II. The CIA was established in September of 1947,
and the Italian elections were coming up in March of the following year.
President Truman directed the CIA to prevent the Communist Party
from gaining a majority in the parliament. Since the Communists had
been the strongest of the resistance forces and had produced many
heroes, they emerged from the war with tremendous prestige and had a
good chance to do well in the 1948 election. So the CIA set up all
kinds of operations to sup****t the Christian Democrats. It also
developed a very close liaison with Pope Pius XII and with the Catholic
Church, in general-- and with the mafia, by the way, which had helped
U.S. forces during the war. As a result, the Christian Democrats won
the election in March, 1948.
The United States government in general, and the CIA in
particular, have been conducting these kinds of interventions all
along. In Brazil, for example, a government elected in the early 1960s
underwent a period of instability. This led to the resignation of the
president and the accession of the vice-president, as called for by the
Brazilian constitution. The new president was Joao Goulart, a large
landowner. But he was also a populist who proposed a major land reform.
If there was any place in the world that needed land reform, it was
Brazil, and it still is. In addition, Goulart adopted an independent
foreign policy, and even made a trip to China.
So the CIA organized his overthrow by the Brazilian military in
March, 1964. That ushered in twenty years of a fascist regime in
Brazil. What happened? The same thing as everywhere else: the
institutionalization of torture, death squads, disappearances, and
eventually a backlash.
What later happened in Chile, after Salvador Allend(c) became
president, was almost a carbon copy of what happened in Brazil. In
Chile, the CIA carried out a programme of destabilization for nearly
three years in order to turn the people against the government.
So the short answer to your question is that terrorism fomented
by the U.S. government started in the mid-1940s, and has continued
through the present day. It is not only the CIA, but also the U.S.
military committing outright terrorist acts such as the bombing of
Libya some years ago.
Q: Do you have any idea how big the peace movement is in the United
States. Also, what will happen to the U.S. Muslims, if they are called
upon to go and fight other Muslims in Asia? Will there be civil war in
the United States? What will happen?
Agee: To be honest, it is too early to tell. There have been some
peaceful voices, and you can be sure that some Americans are going to
organize against this war. But even though there was a large movement
against the Persian Gulf War, it was split. As in other places, it is
difficult to develop total unity in such opposition movements, and that
tends to weaken them.
But there will surely develop a peace alternative to this war,
and it is not a war that will be over in a matter of days or weeks.
There is not going to be a set battle between military forces, for
example. This means that there will be plenty of time for a peace
movement to grow and become stronger. And when U.S. citizens start
coming home in body bags, as from Vietnam or Somalia, the peace
movement will be strengthened.
But there is no way to predict how strong it will be. Eventually,
the issue will be taken up in Congress where one of the most positive
figures right now is Congresswoman Barbara Lee from Oakland,
California. She is the only one who refused to sign the resolution
empowering Bush to go to war, and she has received all kinds of hate
mail since then. But the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive movement
of some 6000 lawyers which was founded in the 1930s, has taken out a
full-page advertisement in a San Francisco newspaper to sup****t her.
This is only the beginning, and we will just have to keep an eye on
developments. I will certainly be doing that from Havana. I might
mention, by the way, that the current political campaign in Cuba is
called The Battle of Ideas. This is a response to U.S. initiatives,
including laws known as the Toricelli and Helms-Burton acts, which
openly call for the subversion and destruction of the Cuban revolution.
The Cubans understand very well how the United States intends to
do this, which is one of the reasons there is no freedom of the press
as we know it. Cuba will not tolerate the kinds of subversive media
operations that have been targeted at other Latin America countries
through the years. In the same way, the Cubans are doing everything in
their power to protect their own institutions. The Battle of Ideas is
a programme for confronting U.S. efforts to destroy the revolution.
For those of you who have never been to Cuba or may have limited
knowledge of the situation there, I will note that it has been highly
successful in many ways. When you compare the Cuban experience over the
past forty years with the rest of Latin America-- and that is the only
appropriate context-- you will find that it is the only country in the
region that has made any consistent progress.
Everyone should be aware of its outstanding achievements in the
field of health care; people come from all over the world for organ
transplants and other medical treatments. This has led, in turn, to the
development of world-class pharmaceuticals and biochemical industries.
They have, for example, developed the first vaccines for common forms
of meningitis and hepatitis.
Cuba has an educational system and a literacy rate which are
second to none in Latin America. Every child can go through school, all
the way through university or technical school, without the parents
ever having to pay a cent.
Cubans are also well-known as phenomenal athletes. I believe it
was the British newspaper, The Guardian, which analysed the results of
the Sydney Olympic Games-- controlling for national and personal
income, population size of the country, etc., in order to create a
level playing field between large and small countries-- and found
that Cuba had won the Olympics when such factors were taken into
account.
But there seems to be no end to the United States official
hostility toward Cuba-- although the recent bombings seem to have
opened an op****tunity for a reduction of hostilities. On September
11th, Fidel Castro denounced the bombings in the strongest possible
terms and expressed total Cuban solidarity with the people of the
United States.
In any case, Cubans are very aware of the power of propaganda,
and they have their own campaign to counteract what is coming into
their country from the U.S.
Q: Is it fair to say that the word communism is the most valuable
trademark in the world, when it is used as a psychological trademark to
scare the living daylights out of people?
Agee: It is certainly a powerful word and, along with other powerful
words such as democracy and freedom, has been very badly misused. To
cite one example. I read all of the dispatches filed by Anita Snow, the
Associated Press correspondent in Havana, who cannot mention the Cuban
government without attaching the adjective, communist. Apparently,
that has got to be included in every article she writes, although I
dont know if she puts it in or an editor does. But its function is
obviously to remind readers that this is a dirty regime. By contrast,
when journalists write about the United States, they do not refer to
the capitalist regime in Wa****ngton.
It is a label, and the effect is almost comical at times. They
have pinned all sorts of labels on me over the years. They tried to
make me out as a KGB agent, as a Cuban agent, an alcoholic, a
womanizer-- think of something negative, and the have tried to stick it
to me.
They started with a fairy tale after I had finished writing my
first book in mid-1974. On the fourth of July-- and you know what that
day means for Americans-- the New York Times published a front-page
article about this former CIA officer somewhere in Latin America who
was drunk and despondent, and had been telling everything he knew to
the KGB. But I had not even been in Latin America at the time, and
certainly not spoken with the KGB; I had been struggling with my book.
It was something they made up in order to get the first blow in.
The first blow is always the most im****tant-- because a person can
issue a denial, but what people will remember is the accusation. I was
identified as the wayward agent, of course.
Q: If we are going to conduct a global war on terrorism, we must first
agree on what it is. If we take, for example, the actions of the CIA
and especially Henry Kissinger in sup****ting Pinochets military regime
in Chile, should that not also be considered as terrorism? Is it
possible that the crusade against terrorism might rebound against the
United States and, if so, how could that be made to happen?
Agee: Well, the information is out there, for anyone who cares to
acquire it. The only question is whether there is a will to emphasize
the history of U.S. sponsor****p of terrorism, including the Kissinger
period, and to make it public. This is what I was referring to when I
spoke of selection-- that is, what is news and what is not news. Since
the attacks on September 11th, I do not believe there has been any
serious effort by the U.S. mainstream press to review the history of
U.S. involvement in and sup****t of terrorism. The news is monopolized by
those who want to go to war.
For that reason, I do not think it will be very easy to avoid
this war on terrorism. The U.S. media are so powerful, and they fill
our minds every day with what they think we should know and how we
should interpret it. They are working hand-in-hand with the government,
and they share the same values. This is what makes it possible form
them to earn a lot of money by selling advertising. After all, these
institutions are privately-owned institutions whose capital is supposed
to yield a return for stockholders. They have to keep this constantly
in mind, like any other cor****ation, and so they go along with the
government.
Q: It is a great consolation to hear your words at a time like this,
when our thoughts are being manipulated. Could you give us some advice
regarding a cure or some sort of medicine that will help us Swedes to
resist that manipulation?
Agee: I would urge you to go back and review the 1960s and 1970s, when
this country was leading the world in opposition to the Vietnam War and
the slaughter that was taking place there. I realize times have changed,
but a lot of lessons can be learned by recalling how that movement
developed here. I am sure that many of the principles of the past can
be reapplied, because they will be valuable and relevant forever.
Perhaps they can be applied now to oppose the use of violence to create
more violence, which is vicious cycle that is now likely to occur. As I
noted earlier, there will be time to develop such a movement, because
this violence is going to continue for quite some time.
Thats one thing. The other thing is to try to keep the news
media open to alternative points of view, and not submit to merely
repeating the line of the U.S. government.
Q: Regarding Cuba, for some time now there has been circulating on the
Internet a declassified do***ent of the U.S. National Security Agency
about planned operations in 1963 to justify the invasion of Cuba. I
believe that President Kennedy objected to it, but military leaders
wanted to attack U.S. ****ps and blame it on Cuba in order to justify an
invasion. That do***ent was a valuable reminder during these past two
weeks, but now it appears to have disappeared from the Internet. I
would like to hear your comment on this.
[NY Transfer News Editor's Note: This question refers to Operation
Northwoods. See "Sept 11, 2001 - Another Operation Northwoods?"
NY Transfer, Sept 17, 2001 at http://tinyurl.com/ysltkx
Full URL is
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070903/067953.html
]
Agee: Yes, there were plans to carry out certain acts of terrorism that
would be attributed to the Cubans. These plots came out of the
Pentagon, but were rejected by the Kennedy administration. A good
source for this kind of material is the National Security Archive,
which is now affiliated with George Wa****ngton University. They have
done marvellous work. I believe they were the ones who obtained all the
do***ents on Chile that have recently been released. Among other
things, those do***ents show how the U.S. pinned the label of
communist on the Allend(c) government-- although it was in fact a
socialist government-- and how they have continued to do so ever since.
Q: How im****tant is it that the current presidents father is a former
CIA director and that many of his old cronies are now advising the son,
who is not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed?
Agee: There have been many analyses and much speculation about who is
really running things in Wa****ngton. There are those who say that it is
Vice-president Cheney, others say that it is George Bush Sr. who is
making the decisions behind the scenes. Actually, W has been putting
on a pretty good show since the attacks in New York and Wa****ngton. At
this point, however, I really cant answer your question.
But I can tell you that the elder Bush was a bit obsessed with me
when he became CIA Director one month after the assassination of the
Agencys chief of station in Athens. That happened around Christmas,
1975, and my first book had come out in January of that year; so the
CIA tried to pin the blame on me. It was true that I had disclosed the
names of CIA agents working in various other countries. People were
aghast to learn, for example, that there were 65 CIA agents working out
of the U.S. embassy in London, or 60 in Paris, Rome or Bonn.
But I had never met the station chief who was murdered in Athens,
and I never mentioned him in any of my writings. It was a pure myth
that I was responsible. Nevertheless, George Bush Sr. was convinced
that I was and, when Barbara Bush published her autobiography in 1995,
she repeated the myth by relating how her husband had told a black-tie
crowd of 800 people at the Wa****ngton Hilton that I was responsible. So
I sued her, and I won. She had to correct that part of her book, write
me a letter of apology, and acknowledge the error.
Q: Do you suspect that the CIA or any other intelligence agency of the
United States had anything to do with the murder of Olof Palme?
Agee: I havent the slightest idea, but I really doubt it. Olof Palme
gave the U.S. a lot of trouble-- no doubt about that. He had many
admirers in the United States, and many detractors, as he had here. But
I do not think that the U.S. would go to the extreme of assassinating a
Western European leader, even one as independent as Olof Palme. But,
again, I really dont know. I prefer to concentrate on the things that
I know about, and leave the speculation to others.
Q: Some years ago, a Swedish radio programme referred to one of your
books in which it was stated that the CIA controlled some 400
newspapers and media companies around the world. Is that true?
Agee: I suspect the book you are referring to is Dirty Work: The CIA in
Western Europe. It was an anthology, and we had quite a bit on the
media in that book. I do not recall the actual number, but it was
substantial. In the United States, there was a time when every major
news organization was co-operating with the CIA. The official in charge
of media operations during the 1950s, used to refer to his mighty
Wurlitzer. A Wurlitzer is a huge juke box, you know, and he gave his
programme that name because it involved the orchestration of propaganda
all around the world.
For example, we would put out a story in one country of Latin
America, and then get CIA stations in ten or fifteen other countries to
do the same. This gave the appearance of a news item that was making
the rounds of the media on its own merits, when in actual fact it was
being fed through secret CIA channels. Local agents would take the
story to journalists who could be relied upon to get it published. We
made a huge amount of news that way, by orchestrating propaganda.
But I think the word control is too strong in this context. The
CIA did not really need to control newspapers. It only had to place
whatever it wanted to place, and that cold be done through the control
of one person. If it had the rights editor on the payroll, they would
make sure that things got published. So in most cases, it was a
question of individuals, not entire organizations.
But there were organizations founded by the CIA to produce news
analyses and feature articles which would then be circulated in
different parts of the world. One of the largest propaganda operations
during the early years was the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was
founded in Berlin during the 1950s. Its political line was right-wing
social democratic, and its headquarters were in Paris. Several
publications were set up through this Congress, including the magazines
Encounter in England; there were others in Germany, India and in
France. It was a huge propaganda operation.
But in most cases, it is not necessary to control entire
institutions in order to use them to get a message out. The key word is
penetration, which means recruiting or placing someone inside the
organization who will do your work for you.
Q: Do you feel that the events of 11 September are likely to increase
sup****t for the missile-defence system or to weaken it, now that it has
been demonstrated that such a ****eld in outer space is not able to
protect the U.S. population from attack? Also, do you believe that the
U.S. will try to draw out its so-called war on terrorism so that it
will have an excuse to establish a presence in Afghanistan, as it has
done with its large military base in Kosovo?
Agee: In the short term, the events of 11 September raised doubts about
the missile-defence system, because they showed that protecting the U.S.
from terrorism has little or nothing to do with missiles. But in the
long term, that system and other types of military programmes will
probably benefit-- partly due to the commercial spin-offs that military
spending has yielded in the past, such as the transistor and the
computer chip.
As for the strategic significance of Afghanistan, the key factor
is the petroleum of the Caspian region. From what I have read, the
proven reserves there are on the order of those in Saudi Arabia. Of
course, U.S. policymakers will not be saying this: They will be talking
about the crusade against terrorism. But they no doubt see a need for a
military presence in Central Asia, in the countries where this oil is
going to be extracted and ****pped. So there may very well be a
permanent military presence, as in Saudi Arabia, in order to ensure
U.S. access to and trans****t of those petroleum resources. Down the
line, we can expect to see the issue of petroleum becoming intertwined
with the crusade against terrorism.
Q: Is it possible for the CIA to infiltrate U.N. agencies? I ask this
because of allegations that Israels Mossad and the CIA have used
UNESCO to gather intelligence in Iraq. The former U.S. inspector in
Iraq, Scott Ritter, has said this, for example. It has also been
alleged that Saddam Hussein had connections with the CIA during his
exile in Egypt, and that the 1963 fascist coup in Iraq was initiated by
the CIA. Do you know anything about this?
Agee: I have no inside knowledge of possible CIA infiltration of the
U.N. weapons-monitoring programme in Iraq. I would assume that it did
take place, however, because the programme was essentially controlled
by the United States. I should think that it would be a perfect
op****tunity-- too obvious to ignore. So, I would assume that they made
an effort to penetrate the programme for monitoring and destroying
weapons.
Regarding a possible link between the CIA and Saddam Hussein in
Egypt, I have no idea. But I can tell you that the CIA played a very
im****tant role in the provocation of the Iran-Iraq war. It encouraged
the Shah of Iran to demand half of the waters in the Shatt al Arab
that had always been recognized as part of Iraq. At the same time, they
began fomenting rebellion among the Kurds of northern Iraq. All of this
eventually led to that horrible war, and the CIAs fingerprints are all
over the initial stages.
Q: The past few weeks have caused me to realize that I am a child of the
United States. I have visited there, of course, and I know that there
are homeless people and stuff like that. But I go to the movies where
the U.S. flag is always flying and U.S. citizens always save the world.
I drink their soft drinks, I eat their food, and the fact is that I
kind of enjoy it. That is my problem right now. I would like to ask
you: How im****tant is the ex****t of U.S. culture for the CIA?
Agee: The CIA has published more than one thousand books in order to
spread the views of certain authors, which can certainly be regarded as
a cultural operation. In some cases, the authors were hired by the CIA
to write these books.
In general, however, the spread of U.S. popular culture is a
commercial phenomenon that benefits from having a lot of power. I
cannot remember any CIA activities that were designed to spread U.S.
culture around the world. I dont think it has needed to.* Even Cuba
gets the U.S. version of break-dancing, of rock n roll, and so on, and
there is an enormous interest in U.S. popular culture. Cuban young
people always know the latest songs and all the entertainment stars.
By the way, those of you have never visited Cuba, I would urge
you to do so. If you want to know what is waiting for you, go to the
web site of CubaLinda.com. It is the result of what I have been doing
for the past four years, having decided around 1997 to continue some
thirty years of solidarity work by presenting Cuban realities to the
world, and to bring the world to Cuba in order to see those realities
at first hand. It is an attempt to counteract forty years of
propaganda, manipulation and lies that have been disseminated primarily
by the United States.
[NNN Editors note: This response is based on Philip Agees knoweldge
and experience of the CIA. There are, however, other institutions which
do strive to expand U.S. cultural influence abroad. Among them are those
agencies of international commerce and foreign relations which
constantly work against broadcast content rules and other trade
barriers which various countries have devised to protect their own
cultural products and traditions.]
Also, there is at least one government agency whose specific
purpose is to spread and promote U.S. culture abroad. It is the U.S.
Information Agency, whose background and operating methods have been
outlined by former employee, Nancy Snow, in Propaganda, Inc.: Selling
Americas Culture to the World (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998).
In the foreword to that work, Herbert L. Schiller notes that:
The commercial flood of U.S. cultural products which engulfed the
world during the past fifty years-- movies, TV programs, recordings,
publications, student exchanges, theme parks, data bases, etc.-- was by
far the most im****tant means for transmitting ideology, anti-communism
and American socio-economic institutions.
Q: The other day, I saw a re****t on Fox News with a lot of U.S. flags
waving, a lot of music, a lot of emotions. I did not want to be
affected by that, but I was. It caused me to wonder: What is the way
out of this? I do not see the U.S. backing off from Africa, from the
Middle East or from Latin America. Is the solution for us to become
more aware, or for the EU to offer an alternative to U.S. policy? And a
final question: Is there a CIA agent among us this evening?
Agee: A lot of people have asked me how to keep the CIA from
infiltrating an organization. I always tell them that you cant. The
CIA, the FBI and all of these agencies have people who are prepared to
join any open organization. But what you can do is to ensure that
everyone does a lot of work for the cause, whatever it may be-- enough
work so that infiltrators will be more valuable to the cause than to
the CIA or the FBI with the information they provide.
The best thing you can do as an individual is to take an active
part in the organizations that do or will exist to find a peaceful
solution to the problem of international terrorism-- and such
organizations will emerge, or already exist. But get involved, because
every individual counts. To all those who may think that nothing they
can do can have any significance, I say: Youre wrong. There is
strength in numbers.
I believe that this is what will happen in the United States and
in a country like Sweden. People will get concerned, they will get
involved, they will see the futility in creating yet another cycle of
violence which offers no real solution to international terrorism. As I
mentioned earlier, the more frequent and forceful the attempts to solve
the problem with military attacks, the stronger bin Ladin will become.
That is precisely the reaction he wants to provoke.
*
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