Gordon Thomas is the author of the book, Secrets and Lies. In it details a terrifying account of the “Nazi witch doctors”, it is not, as the name suggests, anything to do with the National Socialist German Workers Party, but has everything to do with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). For indeed that is what the book is about. In various chapters, it follows the debauched practices of Dr Ewen Cameron, who was quite different from a witch doctor. His name is now synonymous with the Mk-Ultra program: brainwashing unsuspecting victims by an array of Kafkaesque methods. These included electro-shocks, sexual abuse, verbal abuse and playing voices back to the unsuspecting patients for hours on end in an attempt to brainwash them. Many of these victims ended up dead or in mental institutions.
Of
course, these witch doctors were medical men, Cameron was a Scottish psychiatrist,
but it was not the Ewan Cameron’s who were responsible for the perpetuation of
biological warfare, many of which were used in several adventures in Southeast
Asia. Cameron, for his part, literally destroyed people, as Christine Hahn, the
investigative journalist writes:
Madeleine was rolled into the
operating room on a gurney and prepared for surgery, her head shaven. A local
anaesthetic was applied to a portion of her scalp. The surgeon cut away a flap
of skin and drilled a hole through her skull. Wielding a spatula-type
instrument, he made several sweeping incisions through her brain, slicing all
the way to the back of her skull. While the surgeon worked, psychiatrist Ewen
Cameron stood over the young woman, plying her with questions until he was
assured the surgeon had achieved the desired result. When Madeline stared
vacuously and could only grunt in response, the “surgery” ended. Madeleine
lived the rest of her life an automaton in the confines of an insane asylum.
Madeleine Smith, a 28-year-old
Canadian newscaster, was just one casualty of the ghoulish experiments
conducted in the 1950s and early 1960s under Ewen Cameron at McGill
University’s Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal.
The experiments were part of the
infamous “MK ULTRA” program conducted under the aegis of the U.S. intelligence
agencies in the 1950s and 1960s, exposed in media and in hearings before the
U.S. Congress in the 1970s. Cameron brutalized and maimed patients with drugs,
shocks and lobotomies as he sought a means to “depattern” and program the human
mind. Canadian survivors still able to seek reparation eventually obtained a
$750,000 shared settlement from the U.S. government in 1988.
Nevertheless,
the CIA, as we know, play a different role entirely. William Blum wrote an important book in the
1990s called Killing Hope. The work
itself, methodically well researched, details the often subversive and
clandestine “work” the CIA have been involved in. From their links with the
Nazis, most notoriously with Klaus Barbie and Reinhold Galen, and others, their
crimes, according to the book and to history, these horrors carry on up until
the Clinton administration when the book was written. The way in which the organisation operates
ought to concern us all. For they act with total impunity and with a vast
degree of psychopathy; this is not so furtive.
There have been countless assassinations and assassination attempts
against eminent figures. It is not only
murder and torture they use either; they use other methods, and appear to be
schizophrenic to a very large degree.
In
the 1940s alone, William Blum reports, citing vast amounts of documented
evidence and facts, the CIA subverted elections in various countries in Western
Europe after the second world war when the organisation were created. Just to
take one example from these countries which highlight the level of depravity
and criminality the CIA’s involvement in international terrorism. Communists in Italy, during this time, were
the favourites to win the election; celebrities like Frank Sinatra would send
propaganda messages on the radio to Italy, warning them of the communist
menace. To prevent this from happening the CIA first launched a propaganda
war. This was bad enough. Then it escalated to a terrorist mission.
From
that period onwards the CIA would use terror, torture, murder, propaganda, the
subversion of elections abroad. In 1953
Mossadegh in Iran was overthrown; in 1954, Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala was
deposed; Karim Qasim of Iraq in 1961; the attempted overthrow of Castro. In El Salvador, Chile, Brazil, Chile,
Australia, Albania, Afghanistan, Panama, Peru, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam,
Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Russia, Haiti, are just
some of the countries which saw terror, subversion and propaganda on a global
scale with full participation from the CIA.
All
secret intelligence agencies are racist fanatics, and act with sociopathic
behaviours. The CIA are not alone in
acts of extreme violence and terror on a mass scale. The secret Israeli intelligence agency, the
Mossad, are notorious for murdering and torturing people they do not like very
much, and the M16, the external British intelligence are just as ferocious in
their fanaticism. However, I or anyone
else can speak about their list of crimes forever and a day but a key question
is why do these fundamentalist organisations exist in the first place?
These
groups are, so we are told, intelligence gathering agencies; they are nothing
of the sort. It is only these and not
the national police or even the government that are able to use the rather feeble
excuse of “national security interests” in assaulting and arresting people, as
well as tarnishing their life for a rabidly sustained period. “Suspected terrorists” can be locked up for
months, even years at a time on “suspicion” in pseudo-democratic states, in
more totalitarian ones, they do not even need suspicions, and they just lock
people up when they choose to do so. Yet
their work remains so secret that any “leaks” of the activity would end up in
years of imprisonment for that individual.
In
so-called democratic societies, people would generally expect these
organisations to have some transparency, and we would expect to know how they
operate and conduct their practices. The
answer is we do not know a single thing about them. People in all societies appear to be quite
content of this fact. Why is this? It is simply because people are happy to have
their liberties and freedoms liquidated for all perpetuity in the hope a quiet
and wholesome existence.
“We
do not behave like this”, says one nation, “neither do we”, says another, “and
we don’t either”, says yet another. The
truth of the matter is they all behave in this fashion. It is quite natural for people to defend
their own countrymen, and to believe, quite naively, that their secret
intelligence services are better than others. Worse, they often defend their clandestine activities because
they are “patriots” and “nationalists”, roughly translated as: “must never
criticise my country no matter how many people it kills, tortures and
imprisons”. This is logical enough for people who know nothing concerning the
workings of these agencies.
Ian
McEwan, the novelist, is vacuous enough to write about the secret intelligence
services, so it would seem, to sell more copies of these books he writes. Therefore, there is entertainment for less
serious people, and it may surprise some that Mr. McEwan was not even paid off
by the government or by the secret service branch themselves. Nevertheless, he is not the only one. There are others. In these books then, these people go on
exciting missions and are national heroes because they are saving their country
from crazed lunatics, and we should all be thankful for being saved from
international terrorists whose aim is to drop 22,000 nuclear warheads on every
house in every village, town and city.
We ought to be thankful because we have been saved from a nuclear
holocaust. This, surprisingly enough, is
what some people believe.
Ian
Fleming’s James Bond books, which fall under the heading of subculture, we may
even be meaner and call them propaganda fairy tales. The main premise with
these stories then is about a secret intelligence officer going abroad, to hunt
down enemies, (usually Russians), to stop them from running the world with
their evil ideology, or perhaps worse than that, they are intent on destroying
the world so they must be stopped, and, of course, nobody else can stop this
evil but 007. Only can he save the
world, and we must play along with this frivolous nonsense.
Therefore,
we must worship these, as we are often told we must. Never mind the murderous campaigns; worship
them we must. Imagine if some writers
started writing about how benevolent and benign Jack the Ripper was, and that
he essentially was a good man, despite ripping a number of women to shreds, or
perhaps they would write adventure books about other notorious figures in
history. They could, if they wished, write about child-murderers,
serial-rapists, and psychopathic and demented torturers. Would people be so willing to read about the jolly
adventures of these people? Of course
not.
The
reason is refulgently clear, and has already been elucidated. If people were more realistic about these
malevolent organisations they will say and repeat to themselves that they do
not really care because “it does not
affect me”. People even say: “people who
have done no wrong need not worry too much”.
If only life was as simple as that.
Mark
Curtis, the social historian and fierce critic of British foreign policy is the
author of a number of books. His most
important being Secret Affairs. In it, he describes the British intelligence
agencies and their collusion with radical Islam. The book is an in depth, comprehensive study
but it would be useful to discuss events from the 1980s.
In
this decade, the M16 were infiltrating Islamic terrorist groups throughout the
Middle East, and this is not as furtive as one may imagine. Out of these links emerged the Mujahedeen,
the terrorist group, their brutality even surpasses the Taliban. It was not just the Mujahedeen either; others
involved the Taliban themselves, al-Qaeda and their former leader, Osama bin
Laden. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar an abominable
person was one such person they were fond of.
This man’s strong moral principles included throwing acid in the faces
of Muslim women who do not wear the niqab; he also was responsible for the
deaths of thousands of people.
One
need not carry on documenting detailing a list of dreadful things these secret
intelligence groups get up to. If one
requires more details on their activities, books have been written detailing
candid and honest accounts of clandestine and subversive activities within
these organisations. However, these
secret agencies, are not, so we are told, doing anything unlawful, because they
are saving us from a nuclear holocaust. There are all sorts of terrorists in the world: those who work for the
government and those who work against it.
It should be clear which group these fanatics belong to.
The
groups that are labelled terrorists by everyone including neo-liberal
marketeers worked alongside the M15 and M16. There is no doubting these are terrorist groups, but working alongside
them, donating funds, hold private meetings, does not necessarily make them
terrorists at all. However, consider
what state law is in almost every country on the planet. For an individual or a group of individuals
donating money to a known terrorist organisation, discounting the government of
course, the consequences for these individuals or groups involved is quite
severe. Nevertheless, for intelligence
services, different rules apply. That is
rather convenient.
If
members of the public even considered carrying out these sorts of activities,
and were caught, would, without question, spend the rest of their lives in
prison. Perhaps one day the activities
of these groups will be revealed. The
mass media give snippets of course, and even that, at times, elicits stern
criticism. We are often told these are
“bad apples”, or “isolated cases”. The
government and media operate under this framework. This is to give the idea
these groups, largely, act with the utmost integrity, they are moral, ethical
and insanely benevolent.
Alan
Rusbridger, who, at the time was the editor if the Guardian newspaper,
published a series of leaks concerning these intelligence agencies, not on
their clandestine operations in terror operations but surveilling their own
citizens, violating European and international law in the process; this ought
to have been commended. Instead, there
were calls for him to be prosecuted by politicians, academics and so on. Rusbridger was even asked by an MP at a
select committee whether he loved his country.
The Guardian newspaper itself took up the story towards the end of 2013:
Committee
chair, Keith Vaz: Some of the criticisms against you and the Guardian have been
very, very personal. You and I were both born outside this country, but I love
this country. Do you love this country?
Alan
Rusbridger: We live in a democracy and most of the people working on this story
are British people who have families in this country, who love this country.
I'm slightly surprised to be asked the question but, yes, we are patriots and
one of the things we are patriotic about is the nature of democracy, the nature
of a free press and the fact that one can, in this country, discuss and report
these things.
Vaz: So the
reason why you've done this has not been to damage the country, it is to help
the country understand what is going on as far as surveillance is concerned?
Rusbridger:
I think there are countries, and they're not generally democracies, where the
press are not free to write about these things, and where the security services
do tell editors what to write, and where politicians do censor newspapers.
That's not the country that we live in, in Britain, that's not the country that
America is and it's one of the things I love about this country – is that we
have that freedom to write, and report, and to think and we have some privacy,
and those are the concerns which need to be balanced against national security,
which no one is underestimating, and I can speak for the entire Guardian staff
who live in this country that they want to be secure too.
Vaz: Thank
you so much, that's very clear.
In
the same article, they quote another passage with Rusbridger as the chief
villain once again:
Conservative
MP Michael Ellis: Mr Rusbridger, you authorised files stolen by [National
Security Agency contractor Edward] Snowden which contained the names of
intelligence staff to be communicated elsewhere. Yes or no?
Rusbridger:
Well I think I've already dealt with that.
Ellis: Well
if you could just answer the question.
Rusbridger:
I think it's been known for six months that these documents contained names and
that I shared them with the New York Times.
Ellis: Do
you accept that that is a criminal offence under section 58A of the Terrorism
Act, 2000?
Rusbridger:
You may be a lawyer, Mr Ellis, I'm not.
Ellis: Now
58,000 documents were sent or communicated by you – as editor-in-chief of the
Guardian you caused them to be communicated, and they contained a wealth of
information. It was effectively an IT-sharing platform between the United
States and the United Kingdom intelligence services wasn't it?
Rusbridger:
I'll leave you to express those words.
Those
who believe there will be some sort of “social revolution”, appear to me, to be
rather naive. Only this churlish dream
would reveal the true extent of these intelligence agencies but the likelihood
of that happening is slim. They will
carry on waging their war of aggression against people of different varieties,
perhaps one day democracy will be enacted and these agencies will be
transparent. For now that idea sounds very Chekhovian.
10-16th April 2014
Thank You for writing this.
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