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Gold9472
06-23-2007, 09:50 PM
It's Official - Conspiracy Theories about CIA Are True

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/06/23/135845.php

Written by Mike Green
Published June 23, 2007

The Washington Post has published an article announcing that the CIA plans to declassify decades of “dirty laundry” being referred to as “the family jewels.”

This announcement comes on the heels of numerous books, articles, and blogs that for many years have pointed to nefarious dealings by our government both inside and outside the country. Such conspiracies — conducted at the highest echelon of American leadership — have served to undermine the trust of the American people and endanger our republic from within.

Well, it’s official. With the public admission by the CIA, conspiracy theories about its corruption and the tyranny of the executive branch have finally been proven to be true. It is time for those who have long lambasted the scrutinizers of our government to quietly reflect on how wrong they were in placing complete trust in a lying leadership and to consider how much cover they provided for the “official” stories promoted by the government. Apparently, it is quite possible to carry out elaborate and enormous schemes utilizing thousands of personnel and still keep it secret. The CIA and other secret powers within our government have apparently been doing it for decades!

Vindication
“Conspiracy theorists” can now rejoice and mourn at the same time. The news finally disclosed by the CIA isn’t anything to smile about. Such a declarative statement to the American people ought to conjure the question, “What can we do about it?” The answer, unfortunately, is nothing.

Despite the revelation that the CIA has been involved in “a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s,” the debate will inevitably shift to the necessity of such illegal, immoral and unconscionable activities. There’s little doubt that the many thousands of loyalists to the CIA and other secret elements within the executive branch believed that keeping secrets from the American public was the pinnacle of their patriotic duty. And there is little doubt that today there is much more information has yet to be revealed.

Unconscionable Acts
Overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953, considering an overthrow of the government of Italy during the same time frame, plotting the assassinations of various leaders in countries around the globe (remember Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez’ complaints, both past and present?), are all part and parcel of the machinations of an American tyrannical power that has no accountability. It does what it wants and operates how it pleases, despite the laws of man or God.

The likelihood is that the revelation by the CIA will take on a conciliatory tone — appealing to those who believe that America is superior to all other nations — and whatever actions that were used in the past aren’t being used today, but were necessary during a time of imminent danger to the American people.

Power Grab
The reality is that the CIA was born in the aftermath of WWII, and has expanded in scope and authority ever since. It has never been accountable to any authority outside of the executive branch, and has continuously taken the fall for the failure of leaders to recall anything when questioned about clandestine activities. Nevertheless, it has absorbed all criticism simply due to the fact that it cannot be de-funded, disbanded, controlled, or held accountable by the people of this republic. In short, it is its own power, conducting business in secret, establishing its own missions and goals, and operating under its own guidelines.

At the same time, we have Americans touting the value of freedom they unknowingly lost long ago. The freedom to complain to deaf ears isn’t of much value. The freedom to live under powers that cannot be controlled is nice as long as you aren’t the target of those powers. Unfortunately, the American people cannot even claim that.

Clandestine Company
Secret decisions and activities have been conducted in this country upon unwitting subjects since the secret elements within our government were empowered to exist. The Federal Reserve, which isn’t a government entity at all, controls the banking industry. Few Americans understand its history and how it works. Presidential orders and declarations of States of Emergency have served to empower entities within the executive branch to operate outside of legal mandates and in secrecy under the cover of “national security.”

Consider just a few of the known conspiracies by our government: The CDC conducted tests on unwitting black subjects for decades until such experiments were exposed in the '70s. The Pioneer Project was a pet of FDR, which used pilots in the Air Force in a eugenics experiment. Wars in Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, and elsewhere were all products of secret decisions and actions taken by unaccountable powers operating under the guise of national security within the executive branch of the American government.

Expanded Power, Limited Liberty
Today, the executive branch has expanded yet again. The CIA being just one of those 16 powers that operate outside the view of the legislative and judicial branches and have no accountability to the American people or the media. The newly installed Department of Homeland Security — spawned from the events of 9/11 — is being used to conduct the next phase of operations by the executive branch, publicly known as the National Continuity Government. The “plan” for this new phase of clandestine operation within the country is due on the president’s desk in August. The declaration of such intent is on the website of the White House, thoroughly ignored by much of the national media.

Bed Partners
The most mournful of all epiphanies is the understanding of how intertwined the government is with media. The interrelationship goes further than who is sleeping with whom or who is married to whom. The national media, both in front of and behind the lens and the pen, is neck-deep in quicksand with the government. Consider that the leader of the executive branch is the President, and he, above all, would be in a position of knowledge about the information now being disclosed by the CIA. And consider the fact that under Bill Clinton the White House spokesman was George Stephanopoulos. Then consider the fact that ABC news, for many years, has featured the same spokesman as its anchor for a political program featuring its best celebrity journalists.

On the flip side of the coin, revered journalist Tony Snow jumps from FOX News into the arms of George W. Bush and becomes his patsy, singing the songs written by the White House in the same choir to which Stephanopoulos once belonged. The conflict of interest doesn’t stop with just these two examples.

9/11: The Role of U.S. Government
Such duplicity provides the backdrop behind the media that completely ignored the glaring contradictions proffered by the government in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Considering that the “war on terror” has become the rallying cry of the government since 2001, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (again) were conducted based upon 9/11 fears, the USA Patriot Act, the Dept. of Homeland Security and the various kidnappings, secret prisons, indefinite unlawful detainments, torture, and murders conducted by secret elements within our government all find their rationale rooted in 9/11. All this has required investigation by the national media and independent appointees by Congress.

But no such investigation was ever made or called for by our mainstream media. Furthermore, the so-called Congress failed as well to conduct its own inquiry and public probe into the executive branch’s numerous contradictions and outright lies regarding 9/11. In the end, both Congress and the national media were relieved to set the onus upon four widows from New Jersey who relentlessly pursued the White House, convincing it into reluctantly convening what was purported to be an “independent” investigation by the 9/11 Commission. The fact that this commission was headed by appointees of the White House and that the executive branch leaders refused to testify in public or under oath (and only to the appointees) apparently raised no eyebrows either in Congress or mainstream media. It seems obvious that the 9/11 Commission was no more “independent” than Tony Snow and George Stephanopoulos have integrity as journalists.

Failed Media
It is no wonder the media refuses to do its job in regard to the single most important event to occur in our lifetime. It is complicit. It was the media that immediately reported Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11, regurgitating spoon-fed unsubstantiated propaganda from secret elements within the government. Within 33 minutes of the hits on the twin towers, TV news was blaring it was Osama. The next day we read Osama’s name in the headlines both above and below the fold on the front pages of newspapers across the country.

Today, millions question the government’s version of what happened that day. And despite the fact that the media has no evidence of plane wreckage or bodies recovered in a Pennsylvania field, where a presumed crash took place, it has failed in any follow-up. Despite the fact that the president has made contradictory statements in public regarding what he knew and when he knew it, the press has given him a pass. Despite the fact that the government claims the plane that hit the Pentagon disintegrated after plowing through several layers of reinforced concrete without losing wings or tail (creating a missile-sized hole in each layer), the media has not investigated.

The media was nowhere to be found when the evidence concerning three towers falling into their own footprints was being carted off. And the media ignored streams of molten steel in the basement even though it was there for several weeks. These anomalies and many more make up part of the foundation of distrust of this administration and the government in general. Yet, the mainstream national media, with its constitutional mandate, has also failed the public.

National Dilemma
Since the CIA is coming forward to admit past lies and clandestine activities, the American people perhaps will now take a whole new look at our government. Perhaps now we will no longer cast aspersions upon those who pull back the curtain of deceit and reveal the truth behind a plethora of propaganda. Perhaps we will, as a nation, realize that Congress is also complicit and has failed to act on behalf of the American people.

Perhaps all of this is possible.

But realistically, the CIA’s contriteness will be viewed as past actions that could not, and would not occur today. The same power that reveals it could not be trusted in the past, will be thoroughly trusted today. The positions will have new names and there will be new rhetoric to assuage the conscience of America. And life will go on as it did in the past — with ever-evolving expanding secret powers in the executive branch, the duplicity and complicity of Congress and the media, while Americans boast about living in a land of freedom.

PhilosophyGenius
06-24-2007, 01:19 AM
Why would they release this?

Gold9472
06-24-2007, 05:55 AM
Why would they release this?

To make it seem like the CIA doesn't do this kind of thing anymore. To "earn" the people's trust.

Gold9472
06-24-2007, 06:13 AM
Read the Documents

Document 1 (http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_wh1.pdf): Colby Briefs President Ford on the Family Jewels
Memorandum of Conversation, 3 January 1975
Source: Gerald R. Ford President Library

Ten days after the appearance of Hersh's New York Times story, DCI William Colby tells President Ford how his predecessor James Schlesinger (then serving as Secretary of Defense) ordered CIA staffers to compile the "skeletons" in the Agency's closet, such as surveillance of student radicals, illegal wiretaps, assassination plots, and the three year confinement of a Soviet defector, Yuri Nosenko.

Document 2 (http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_wilderotter.pdf): Summary of the Family Jewels
Memorandum for the File, "CIA Matters," by James A. Wilderotter, Associate Deputy Attorney General, 3 January 1975
Source: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

On New Years' eve, 1974, DCI Colby met with Justice Department officials, including Deputy Attorney General Lawrence H. Silberman, to give them a full briefing of the "skeletons."

Document 3 (http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_wh2.pdf): Kissinger's Reaction
Memorandum of Conversation between President Ford and Secretary of State/National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, 4 January 1975
Source: Gerald R. Ford President Library

An apoplectic Kissinger argues that the unspilling of CIA secrets is "worse than the days of McCarthyism" when the Wisconsin Senator went after the State Department. Kissinger had met with former DCI Richard Helms who told him that "these stories are just the tip of the iceberg," citing as one example Robert F. Kennedy's role in assassination planning. Ford wondered whether to fire Colby, but Kissinger advised him to wait until after the investigations were complete when he could "put in someone of towering integrity." The "Blue Ribbon" announcement refers to the creation of a commission chaired by then-vice president Nelson A. Rockefeller.

Document 4 (http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_wh3.pdf): Investigations Continue
Memorandum of Conversation between Kissinger, Schlesinger, Colby et al., "Investigations of Allegations of CIA Domestic Activities," 20 February 1975
Source: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

Cabinet and sub-cabinet level officials led by Kissinger discuss ways and means to protect information sought by ongoing Senate (Church Committee) and House (Pike Committee) investigations of intelligence community abuses during the first decades of the Cold War. Worried about the foreign governments that have cooperated with U.S. intelligence agencies, Kissinger wants to "demonstrate to foreign countries that we aren't too dangerous to cooperate with because of leaks."

Gold9472
06-24-2007, 06:14 AM
Here's a summary.

http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_wilderotter.pdf

P.O. Butthead
06-24-2007, 10:32 AM
I get a blank page when clicking the links.

Gold9472
06-24-2007, 11:30 AM
You need Adobe Acrobat.

PhilosophyGenius
06-24-2007, 06:47 PM
To make it seem like the CIA doesn't do this kind of thing anymore. To "earn" the people's trust.

Good point. I was watching a news program (forgot which) and talked about how the CIA feels like it "has it's hands tied" with Congressional oversight and lawyers and what not.