Americans Trust ‘Our’ Intelligence Agencies. Should We?

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org

The record is clear that ‘our’ (that is, the ruling Establishment’s) intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, have lied to the public many times, and actually lie routinely — but these lies are always revealed only decades later, by historians, when it’s decades too late, because the damage was already done, decades before. Think, for example, of just two now-famous cases, Iran 1953, and Chile 1973, in both of which instances the U.S. Government ended a democracy abroad, and established a brutal dictatorship there (the Shah in Iran, and Pinochet in Chile) — but what good can a historian do, when the Government and its ‘news’-media were persistently lying, and they had fooled the U.S. public, at the time — which is all that really counted (and ever will count)? Can a historian undo the damage that the Government and its propaganda-agencies had perpetrated, by means of their lies, and coups, and invasions? Never. But this Government, and its propaganda-agents, claim to defend democracies, not to end them. Can it actually be a democracy, if it’s doing such things, and doing it time after time?

Something’s deeply wrong here. Government by deceit, cannot be a democracy. And, yet, the public still don’t get the message, that we don’t live in a democracy, even after it has (though only by implication) been delivered to us in history-books. By then, it’s no longer in the news, and so only few people really care about it. The message of history is thus not learned. The public still accepts the ongoing lies — the new lies, in the new ‘news’, to justify the new atrocities. One reason why, is that America’s historians fail their obligations: America’s historians have an obligation to the American public to state clearly that the U.S. is now a dictatorship. This is the current reality. But the myth, that this country is a democracy, continues to be spread, even by historians, who should, by now, know better.

During the period after the Soviet Union, and its communism, and its Warsaw Pact military alliance, all ended in 1991, the historical record of the U.S. and its allies (all now after the Cold War has supposedly been over) has become even worse than it was during the Cold War, and is even more clearly evil, because the ideological excuse that had formerly existed (and which was only the excuse, in most cases, such as in the cases of Iran, and of Chile) is gone. Though the ideological excuse is gone, the bad behavior has become even worse. Today’s U.S. regime is, to be frank, bloodthirsty.

Iraq in 2003 was a particularly blatant demonstration of today’s U.S.-Government’s psychopathy regarding foreign affairs. So: let’s consider this unusually clear example (hopefully, to learn a lesson from it — which still hasn’t yet been learnt):

Bill Clinton’s CIA chief George Tenet told President George W. Bush, on 21 December 2002, that convincing the American people that Saddam Hussein had WMD, weapons of mass destruction, was “a slam-dunk.” His job wasn’t to find the truth, but to authenticate the ‘evidence’ to back up the President, and Tenet did just that. The American people went for it, even though no WMD actually remained in Iraq, because the U.N. inspectors in 1998 had destroyed all of them, and because there was no indication (other than hired and coerced testimony, and especially fabrications from CIA-partnered anti-Saddam Iraqis such as Ahmed Chalabi) that there had been restored in Iraq any WMD program. A crucial date was 7 September 2002, when George W. Bush and Tony Blair both said that a new report had just been issued by the IAEA saying that Saddam Hussein was only six months away from having a nuclear weapon. The IAEA promptly denied that it had issued any such “new report” at all, and the ‘news’ media simply ignored the denial, which the IAEA then repeated weeks later, and it again was ignored; so, the false impression, that such an IAEA report had been issued, remained in the publics’ minds, and they favored invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein before there would be, as Condoleezza Rice warned the next day following Bush-Blair, on September 8th, a “mushroom cloud”. It was all just lies — lies that were believed by the public, at the time, and even believed by many for a long time after we invaded.

Some of these lies were derived from torturing detainees — torturing them to say what the U.S. and British regimes wanted them to say.

On 25 April 2007, Tenet told CBS “60 Minutes” that

“We don’t torture people. Okay?” Tenet says.

“Come on, George,” Pelley says.

“We don’t torture people,” Tenet maintains.

“Khalid Sheikh Mohammad?” Pelley asks.

“We don’t torture people,” Tenet says.

“Water boarding?” Pelley asks.

“We do not – I don’t talk about techniques,” Tenet replies.

“It’s torture,” Pelley says.

“And we don’t torture people.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has now appointed to lead the CIA the very same woman, Gina Haspel, who had operated, under Tenet, under Bush, the CIA “black site” in Thailand, where Abu Zubaydeh was waterboarded 83 times and otherwise tortured so that he lost his left eye. The reason why he was being tortured was in order to extract from him testimony that Saddam Hussein had been involved in 9/11, but Zubaydeh didn’t even know anything about any such matter, and tried desperately to say what he thought his torturers wanted him to say, so as to stop these tortures, but he didn’t know that they were intending to torture him until he would implicate Saddam Hussein in causing the 9/11 attacks. And so the torturing just went on and on. The CIA’s Haspel finally gave up, after deciding that he’d die if they continued any further. The problem then became to hide him from the public. So, Zubaydeh subsequently has been held incommunicado at Guantanamo since 2001, so that he can’t communicate with anyone in the outside world, and thus the crimes of George Bush and his employee George Tenet and his employee Gina Haspel, can’t be prosecuted. And, now, Trump appoints her to Tenet’s old spot, as the CIA Director. So: Bush had hired her, then protected her. Obama then protected instead of prosecuted her. And, finally, Trump now promotes her, to be the CIA’s new chief. She has demonstrated herself to be a reliable liar for whomever is her boss. Trump therefore can trust her to vouch for whatever he wants her to ‘prove’, to whatever American suckers still remain, as being suckers.

This isn’t new, but maybe it’s just worse. Think JFK assassination. Think RFK assassination. Think MLK assassination. And, even think about the CIA’s Gladio operation, which since the very start of the CIA, has been setting up atrocities designed to deceive their publics, so as to blame, first, the USSR’s Government, and then, now, Russia’s Government. (And, also, Iran’s Government, and Iraq’s Government, and Syria’s Government, and Libya’s Government, and Ukraine’s Government — any Government that’s friendly toward Russia — all for the purpose of “regime-change,” so as to pump up the sales of corporations such as Lockheed Martin and BAE, and to extend the properties of oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil. Lying to the public, in order to back up what the President wants, is what the American ‘intelligence’ community is designed to do. And, things aren’t much better in UK. (But Seymour Hersh reported that, at least one time, they were somewhat better.)

Is this type of government really in service to the public, anywhere? It is in service to the allied aristocracies — those of U.S. & Israel & Sauds & British & etc. — who own those weapons-making firms. The military tail wags this ‘democratic’ dog. For example, on March 21st, the New York Times documented how intermediaries between the U.S. and Saudi regimes secretly became enriched by lobbying which succeeded in getting Rex Tillerson and H.R. McMaster replaced by Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, whom the Sauds (the world’s largest foreign buyers of U.S.-made weaponry) preferred. But even there, the Sauds were’t referred to as America’s enemies, but as “close American allies.” They’re allies of America’s aristocracy, but enemies of the American people.

Globally, there is a competition between aristocracies, and they are contending gangs. That’s no different than was the case leading up to WW I. But WW III will end it all — and end us — unless the public wises up, and fast, and recognizes whom our real enemies are (which are mainly internal, not external). Without cooperation from the news-media (owned by those aristocracies), to expose (instead of spread) the frauds, WW III — the end of everything — is in the cards. It’s in the cards, right now. And, this time, it’s not a mistake. It won’t need any wild assassin to spark the conflagration. Instead, it’s the plan. It has actually been building ever since 24 February 1990. And this has been even more confirmed now.

So, should we trust ‘our’ intelligence agencies to tell us how they’re carrying out the plan? Are we idiots? Or is it just that the ‘news’ media are an arm of the CIA? In fact, “America’s Top Scientists Confirm: U.S. Goal Now Is to Conquer Russia”, but did you read about that in the New York Times, or Washington Post, or UK’s Guardian, or at all?

On March 27th, Ghassan Kadi, at The Saker’s blog, wrote:

When Westerners watch TV news, they hear lies. When they go to their ballot boxes, they hear false promises. When they are told that their sons and daughters are sent to fight a war in a distant country in order to protect the homeland, they are hearing fabricated stories of lies and deception.

Their politicians lie, and their media dance to the tunes of the lies of their politicians.

Who can deny any of that, without publicly becoming recognized as being a fool?

Patriotism is to the public, not to the rulers. Any rulers who expect it to be to them, instead of to the public, are simply tyrants — they are traitors, who happen to rule the public. Do we live in a dictatorship, or in a democracy? If it’s a dictatorship (such as the best available evidence shows that America is), then this, which we are now experiencing, is simply par for the course. But will we continue to accept it? Or, will we, finally, learn from history? (And, if so, then will we do it fast enough, under the prevailing circumstances?) The time to decide, and to act, could be short.

Have we had enough now, of that lying? Because, accepting just a little bit more of it, could mean the end of everything. If it’s not going to be the end of the liars, it will probably soon be the end of everything. Because this is the path that we now are on.

Even the former conservative, David Stockman, is alarmed that the U.S. regime is going insane, with its war-fever. This is not a government that represents the American public, but it does represent the people who control corporations such as Lockheed Martin. Recently, I headlined “How the Military Controls America”, and explained the root cause behind this potentially world-ending problem. Everything is unfortunately coming together in the worst possible way. It has happened before, but never during the nuclear era — this is far worse even than during the Cuban Missile Crisis, because, at that time, both superpower leaders were intelligently self-interested, and each also had authentic interest in the general welfare. That’s not true today — certainly not on the American side. But the problem isn’t only Donald Trump. Maybe he will culminate it, but he represents America’s aristocracy. That’s the source of the problem, and he is determined to be their leader. He has assembled their dream-team, which, prior to his becoming President, no one had had the nerve to place so fully in charge.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.