Family jewels are paste but reveal clues of empire
By Saul Landau
“The CIA will declassify… long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses — the so-called "family jewels" documenting …overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s,” reported CIA Director Michael V. Hayden. (Washington Post, June 22, 2007)
When the “jewels” appeared on June 25, I discovered they were paste. Indeed, almost all of the declassified documents had already been published, but the public could again lick a slimy tip of a repulsive iceberg of murder and destruction. Oddly enough, the sample of CIA activities for two decades allows one to understand the contradictory nature of a world empire that relies on military force to subdue and subjugate, trying to operate under the rules of a national republic.
By Saul Landau Read spanish version
“The CIA will declassify… long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses — the so-called "family jewels" documenting …overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s,” reported CIA Director Michael V. Hayden. (Washington Post, June 22, 2007)
When the “jewels” appeared on June 25, I discovered they were paste. Indeed, almost all of the declassified documents had already been published, but the public could again lick a slimy tip of a repulsive iceberg of murder and destruction. Oddly enough, the sample of CIA activities for two decades allows one to understand the contradictory nature of a world empire that relies on military force to subdue and subjugate, trying to operate under the rules of a national republic. For examples, a series of Presidents authorized the assassination of leaders of other countries, some democratically elected, sanctioned the overthrow of “disobedient” governments and engaged in massive conspiracies to direct political events in directions deemed favorable to US interests — business and government. Presidents from Truman through George W. Bush knew that authorizing murder is illegal, conspiracy to overthrow governments — “regime change” — violates the Neutrality Acts, torture, eavesdropping on citizens, and opening peoples’ mail violate the U.S. Constitution.
From previous CIA, FBI and NSA declassifications of documents, we discovered that such events occurred routinely from 1948 until today. The grade school axiom has become laughable. “We are a government of law, not of men.”
Men — and women — made the law; others systematically violated it. Ironically, those who made laws knew from the outset of CIA dirty tricks and either pretended ignorance or wrung their hands.
The documents offer the shock of recognition — we already suffered the shock of surprise when reporters revealed decades ago what documents now validate. Bobby Kennedy, while attorney general under his brother, 1961-1963, conspired with the CIA, the Mafia and Howard Hughes’ representative to assassinate Fidel Castro. Kennedy and the CIA wanted revenge from the Bay of Pigs defeat, Mafia bosses like Santos Trafficante, and Salvatore "Momo" Giancana hoped to assassinate Castro to get their casinos and hotels returned. Hughes probably hoped to offer services in exchange for not being prosecuted for tax evasion.
Giancana was on the U.S. attorney general's ten most-wanted fugitives list at the very moment that Attorney General Robert Kennedy collaborated with them.
In late 1960, Mafia capos smuggled into Cuba — hidden in a woman’s cold cream jar — “some type of potent pill that could be placed in Castro's food or drink.”
In 1974, Castro told me it was “a pernicious poison that would metabolize in my blood so an autopsy would not reveal its presence.” He smiled. “I had an inclination in those days for chocolate milkshakes. The best ones were served at the Habana Libre [hotel]. So, I would show up there frequently. The poison pill was passed to the man who made the milkshakes and he hid the tablet in the freezer next to the ice cream containers. Luckily for me, on the fateful night, the poison tablet froze against the side of the freezer and he didn’t want to become conspicuous trying to pry it loose. My bodyguards were watching him. He was caught soon after and confessed. Our laboratories analyzed the pill. Very sophisticated! That was the closest the CIA came to getting me. Apparently, after the news of my death, the CIA planned to launch the Bay of Pigs invasion.”
With such shenanigans, the Kennedy’s brought state-sponsored violence to new depths. Under Truman and Eisenhower, the CIA had tampered with European elections, killed “enemies” and done coups in Iran and Guatemala. But to overthrow the Cuban Revolution, the CIA built its largest station (JMWAVE) in Miami in 1960-1961 to recruit and train anti-Castro exiles to commit murder and sabotage against Cubans and Cuba. The CIA conspired with the Guatemalan and Nicaraguan governments to launch the invasion of Cuba with its surrogate force in April 1961. The CIA trained the troops in Guatemala and sent them forth from Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, where Dictator Somoza offered a reward for the man who would bring him one of Fidel Castro’s pubic hairs — some claim Somoza said beard first. What a sense of humor!
Even funnier, the CIA offered $150,000 to Mafia hit men to whack Castro, one of countless CIA plots against foreign leaders that the newly public documents reveal.
The CIA also targeted Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba and Dominican Republic dictator, Rafael Trujillo. He continued to demand bribes — what disobedience! To the empire’s wishes, not to written law!
The CIA ignored legislation abroad and at home. In the 1960s and 70s, the CIA spied on anti-Vietnam War citizens and journalists, and dosed unsuspecting subjects with experimental drugs. Some died as a result.
The CIA took the blame for circumventing the law. The media adored making The Agency culpable. But Presidents authorized these covert acts: murders, coups, drug testing on civilians, eavesdropping and mail opening, tampering with the press and related black arts.
In 1983, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, I received six of my personal letters — sent and received — the CIA had opened. They came from or were sent to friends and mailed from the USSR or Cuba. Jane Fonda and thousands of others suffered similar privacy invasions. The CIA broke into properties of former employees and wiretapped journalists — acts done on U.S. soil and forbidden by law. No one was prosecuted.
During the Vietnam War, the CIA invented the Phoenix Program, wrote Seyour Hersh, a “code name for a counter-insurgency program that the U.S. adopted during the Vietnam War, in which Special Forces teams were sent out to capture or assassinate Vietnamese believed to be working with or sympathetic to the Vietcong.”
“The operation got out of control,” Hersh continued. “According to official South Vietnamese statistics, Phoenix claimed nearly forty-one thousand victims between 1968 and 1972; the U.S. counted more than twenty thousand in the same time span. Some of those assassinated had nothing to do with the war against America but were targeted because of private grievances.
William E. Colby, the C.I.A. officer who took charge of the Phoenix Program in 1968 (he eventually became C.I.A. director), later acknowledged to Congress that “a lot of things were done that should not have been done.” (The New Yorker, Dec 15 2003)
Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged another such operation when he referred to the 1970-3 destabilization of Chile as “not a part of American history that we're proud of.” (Interview, Black Entertainment Television's “Youth Town Hall,” February 20, 2003)
Powell referred to material revealed by the 1975 Frank Church (D-ID) Committee hearings (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities), at which CIA Director Richard Helms told how President Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger gave him money and “the Marshall’s baton” to “destabilize” the Allende government. This included an October 1970 assassination attempt of Army Chief General Rene Schneider carried out by a CIA-paid group, as well as bribes offered to members of Chile’s congress and its officer class. The CIA also paid workers in key sectors to call strikes to “make the economy scream.” President Jimmy Carter appointed Admiral Stansfield Turner to clean up the rogue’s gallery in the CIA and to bring it into conformity with the law. It didn’t work.
His successor, Ronald Reagan, appointed William Casey to head The Agency. Casey abandoned all concern for law and circumvented congressional resolutions to support the Contras of Nicaragua. The CIA mined Nicaraguan harbors, distributed an assassination manual, and finally illegally sold missiles to (Iran-Contra scandal) to get money for the Contras.
Presidents used the Cold War context as their excuse for criminality. The media and the public accepted this pretext. Inured through countless Hollywood films, TV shows and pulp fiction, they accepted “unpleasant reality” as necessary to fight communism.
Then the Cold War ended as did the excuse to continue CIA dirty activities. Scandals emerged about top security officials — like Robert Phillip Hanssen and Aldrich Ames — selling “top security secrets” to the USSR, whose leaders obviously made little use of them for Soviet survival.
After 9/11, however, Bush replaced the war on communism with a never-ending war on terrorism and took previous criminal activities to levels few could have foreseen. Ten years ago few Americans would have conceived a President authorizing massive wiretapping, profiling of Muslim-Americans, a Patriot Act of dubious constitutionality, the destruction of Iraq, the establishment of secret torture prisons or a scandalous holding jail in Guantanamo where habeas corpus has ceased to exist.
After moral outrage has abated, perhaps a sage will ask: “How, in the 21st Century, could an informal empire operate inside the formal framework of a republic — except by violating the very essence of what every citizen learns as republican values, the real family jewels of a republic?”
Saul Landau’s new book is A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD. His films are on DVD from roundworldproductions@gmail.com
