Tim Weiner on the dark history of the CIA, including the recent revelation of CIA suicide agents.
(Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion)
The CIA has released its official secrets of magic (stage magic, that is, don’t get any ideas) in a just-published book. Now THAT sounds like an excellent holiday present for quite a few people I know. From Wired:
At the height of the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency paid $3,000 to renowned magician John Mulholland to write a manual on misdirection, concealment, and stagecraft. All known copies of the document ?
After 20 years, the CIA has finally released Iran-Contra documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. Better late than never, I suppose. See docs and analysis here.
It?
When you read something like this—of course you suspect and even expect the CIA and governmental intelligence agencies to lie, it’s A GREAT AMERICAN TRADITION—it really hits home that the fucked up state of the world didn’t arrive overnight. Is the mess we’re in now all George Bush’s fault? The blame can go back a lot further than Bush, truly, but you have to ask yourself what this country would be like today without the bank-breaking—and pointless—military build-up of the Reagan administration. Would the national debt be where it is today if not for the fact that the CIA systematically LIED about the Soviet threat? Would we, f’rinstance, already have national health care like every other major democracy????
They deliberately and consistently lied to the nation, as if it was for our own good? What infuriating nonsense!
A recently declassified study on Soviet intentions during the Cold War identifies significant failures in U.S. intelligence analysis on Soviet military intentions and demonstrates the constant exaggeration of the Soviet threat.
The study, which was released last week by George Washington University?
One night at 3 AM, while contemplating other, possible career options, I found myself on the CIA’s website and noticed they now have a section “just for kids.”
Welcome. We?
