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A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

435 points by randomname2 10y ago

rubyfan 10y ago
Non-paywalled: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-Nelson-Mandela-arrested-Unrepentant-agent-confirms-tipped-South-African-security-forces-meaning-leader-jailed-27-years.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-...
- corin_ 10y ago
  Personally I'd rather not know the rest of the story than give the Daily Mail any advert impressions. http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2016/05/15/Bombshell-CIA-spy-admits-to-role-in-Mandelas-arrest http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2016/05/15/Bombshell-CIA-sp... is the only other link I could find, don't know if DM has more info but given it's sourcing The Times I wouldn't be surprised if DM is too.
- merlin_g 10y ago
  Why is everything behind a damn paywall these days?
  - hmate9 10y ago
    Because of adblock
    - mcbrown 10y ago
      Because of malware delivered through unblocked ad networks. (FTFY)
      - green_lunch 10y ago
        Regardless of your reasons, the end result will be more paywalls or entire articles that are actually ads (this is what yahoo does now).
  - chippy 10y ago
    It's newspapers and the decline in print.
    - branchless 10y ago
      Newspaper death throes.
  - otterley 10y ago
    Because well-written content and thorough investigation has to be paid for somehow. If it's worth reading, it's worth paying for IMHO. (I assume you do not work for free, either.)
hugh4 10y ago
Not really an "admission", he was guilty of the crime for which he was charged.
- corin_ 10y ago
  You can be found guilty of a crime yet never admit to it, you can also admit to anything regardles of whether it's a crime or not.
- nxzero 10y ago
  Given the systematic abuses by the state authority in South Africa, at the time of Mandela's arrest, against the social and civil rights of a certain group of citizens due to ethnic prejudices, believe a some context is worth considering in deciding who was right and wrong.
  - viiaezumu 10y ago
    The "abuses" by the Apartheid government was actually negligible compared to the violence South Africa has experienced since the unbanning of the ANC. http://issafrica.org/uploads/CQ7Thomson.pdf http://issafrica.org/uploads/CQ7Thomson.pdf
    - nxzero 10y ago
      Reviewed the document, though see no evidence to support your claim. What exactly is your point and the evidence supporting in and why do you feel the sources and methods used to collect it are valid?
      - viiaezumu 10y ago
        People point to a few abuses and then say the Apartheid government was so terrible. But it did a decent job of providing safety and security, which is a basic human right. The ANC undermined the police service when they were unbanned When they took office, they ran the police service into the ground. They do not protect the rights of minorities.
cm3 10y ago
The CIA is the reason for most of the unstable regions and it's hard to understand how after messing with other places and making it worse for everybody but weapons manufacturers, they're still doing the same thing over and over. Previously it was the fight against Communism, now Islam, I wonder what it will be in 2020. Middle-east, Asia, South America, all are right to be very angry with the CIA, but turn it into a "Burn America" rethoric, which doesn't help their argument. CIA's policy is probably controlled by someone else, and that's where changes need to be made because I like to think they don't come up with the stuff on their own.
- nxzero 10y ago
  Often wondered what the world would be like if there was an intelligence group that only did good.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    What would be the purpose of that agency?
    - cm3 10y ago
      Well, they could start by actually operating on the intel they have, rather than letting people bomb buildings because they have a long-term goal they don't want to be disturbed by revealing a bomb plot.
      - dexterdog 10y ago
        But sometimes stopping one plot will kill an operation that can stop many others later. Somebody has to weigh that and that somebody always looks bad.
        rhizome 10y ago
        You have to account for the converse: conducting an operation can start many others.
vidoc 10y ago
Oh my God! This can't be true can it? I dont want to wake up tomorrow and learn that the Iraq war adventure was not based on wrong CIA intelligence, but a manufactured one, and 100% of the US political establishment knew it (in addition to basically the rest of the world).
- mpweiher 10y ago
  Not sure if trolling... ?? Just for the record: of course large parts of it were manufactured. Some of it was manufactured by a so-called "source", but that source was so in-/non-credible that you wouldn't buy a used hammer from him, never mind a used car. And it was well known that this source was completely non-credible. In addition, various other bits were combined in ways that the appearance of a threat was manufactured out of pieces of information that both weren't threatening in themselves and also did not constitute a real threat when combined appropriately (the infamous 45 minute claim is among these). For more, see the various UK inquiries regarding "intelligence failures" leading up to the Iraq war. The difference between that and manufacturing the whole thing from scratch is at best marginal.
  - spriggan3 10y ago
    > Just for the record: of course large parts of it were manufactured. Some of it was manufactured by a so-called "source", but that source was so in-/non-credible that you wouldn't buy a used hammer from him Yet Powell built his case, before the UN with Curveball's informations. Curveball who ultimately admitted he was a taxi driver and not a scientist. Some might say "the US has been misled", I don't believe one second, the Bush government was looking for any excuse, even fake to invade Irak. I pity the families of all the soldiers who died there, they died for nothing. And the locals who were massacred,during and after the war,the US is directly responsible for their death.
    - JanezStupar 10y ago
      AFAIK Powell himself has been sceptical and deceived. That is why he eventually resigned after he realized he had been played.
franky303 10y ago
Paywalled. Next.
- SoonDead 10y ago
  Get my upvote.
nxzero 10y ago
Here's another source: http://m.democracynow.org/stories/14271 http://m.democracynow.org/stories/14271
tempodox 10y ago
> ...the world’s most dangerous communist... How fads change. Had it happened today, they would have called him a terrorist. Sadly, it's not really news that the U.S. only pay lip service to Democracy. After all, the dictator of our choice can guarantee our economic and military interests much better than any democratic regime.
- Havoc 10y ago
  >they would have called him a terrorist. Actually the ANC (or at least a splinter group) did bomb civilian locations in a terror campaign so yes it was considered a terrorist organisation. Now they're considered the liberators/bringers of democracy. Hows that for a pivot hn?
  - qznc 10y ago
    If terrorists win they are not called terrorists anymore. Compare the Boston Tea Party which started the war of independence.
    - dhd415 10y ago
      The Boston Tea Party was most certainly not terrorism. No one was hurt or killed, either combatants or civilians. It cheapens the word to use it for any act of defiance against a government.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  > After all, the dictator of our choice can guarantee our economic and military interests much better than any democratic regime. Yup, as soon as oil is involved pretty much anything is considered acceptable. Gaddafi, Iran, Iraq, the whole bunch of Arabian emirates... all countries where US (and British) influence either actively promoted dictators to power or let radical powers rise to power. Funny enough, Saudi Arabia got all its riches from Western money, and a shitload of that money ended up at ISIS, al-Quaeda, Boko Haram - Western money used to fight the Western system.
- rfrey 10y ago
ertyui 10y ago
Linkbait title. If the testimony is true then at best its a tip off about a then wanted man's location, nothing to do woth cia behind a conviction or anything else.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  As if Mandela was going to go free by Apartheid regime. When you know the outcome, you don't get to wash your hands of the guilt.
raverbashing 10y ago
Well, sending him to jail helped make him an important figure. True, there's no way of knowing how it have gone otherwise Not to be demonized but not to be idolized as well
- rangibaby 10y ago
  There's a high chance he would have had an "accident" like Steve Biko.
- Strom 10y ago
  I'm curious, how did it help? I've always been under the impression that he succeeded despite the 27+ year prison time.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - phire 10y ago
    Being in prison isolated him from the less moral things the ANC did during the '70s and '80s, while still being seen as a figurehead.
gfgjmfgjmgh 10y ago
The CIA was also behind the assassination of Homi Bhabha (father of Indian atomic energy program) and Lala Bahadur Sastry (Prime Minister of India).
- newjersey 10y ago
  > Later, Gregory Douglas, a journalist who interviewed former CIA operative, Robert Crowley, over a period of 4 years, recorded their telephonic conversations and published its transcribe in a book titled, "Conversations with the Crow". In the book, Crowley claimed that CIA was responsible for eliminating Dr. Homi Bhabha, Indian nuclear scientist whose plane crashed into Alps, when he was going to attend a conference in Vienna and Lal Bahadur Shastri, who died at Tashkent summit in 1966. Crowley said that USA was wary of India's rigid stand on nuclear policy and then PM Lal Bahadur Shastri, who wanted to go ahead with nuclear tests. He also said that agency was more worried about collective domination of Indo-Russian over the region, for which a strong deterrent was required. If that's true and if it was planned, there's probably a memo justifying it somewhere and we will declassify it in the future.
  - HillRat 10y ago
    "Gregory Douglas" has written a number of conspiracy-theory books that encompass Holocaust revisionism and JFK assassination theories; he is widely believed to be the nom de plume of Peter Stahl, who is also believed to have forged wartime Nazi documents and disseminated them to historians. It's all a bit of a rabbit hole, but the upshot is that there's very little reason to believe anything he writes.
- PlzSnow 10y ago
  Conspiracy theory nonsense. Welcome to Hacker News.
Tharkun 10y ago
You know how we're still hunting down and jailing formers nazis and concentration camp guards? Why aren't we doing the same to these CIA agents and decision makers?
- sbarre 10y ago
  Because the United States of America didn't lose any wars, and winners make policy.
  - galuggus 10y ago
    How about Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan?
    - rangibaby 10y ago
      They lost in that they didn't achieve what they set out to do, but there was no instrument of surrender signed in SF bay, Nuremberg-style kangaroo court, USA partitioned into friendly states, etc.
    - hasenj 10y ago
      How did they "lose" Iraq? They successfully invaded the country, changed the regime, changed the military, the police, the government .. everything. Then they left. Iraq is in utter chaos, the US is doing just fine. How exactly did the US "lose" in Iraq?
      - awinder 10y ago
        Because the stated goal of that war was for the instilled government to survive and for democracy to transform the region. Not for the country to become destabilized with former military operatives to go into Syria and form the next great political catastrophe. That definitely wasn't a "win" long term.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
equalsnil 10y ago
Would South Africa be a better place if it had become a Russian-influenced Communist country? If Mandela was a secret operative for the communists in South Africa, as the local communist party claimed when he died, and as this former CIA operative has claimed, then he had to have known he was playing a tricky game. Ending apartheid, creating a communist paradise, pick one. [Edit] I know I'm being downvoted, but I also doubt anyone commenting here lives in a communist country, or has ever spent much time in one.
- Havoc 10y ago
  >If Mandela was a secret operative for the communists in South Africa Pretty much all of the ANC has/had strong communist links since thats who sheltered those that went into exile. So I wouldn't say "secret operative"...
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    If you were an ANC strategist at the time (cold war), who would you have aligned yourself with for financial & military support? Remember, you are a "3rd world" movement, European colonialism is still in full swing (though wavering), you are probably the wrong color and civil rights aren't a thing yet -Jim Crow laws are still being enforced in the US, and the apartheid government you are fighting have been aligned with the Allied powers (the west) since WW II. Edit: corrected 'Allied' powers: had named them Axis by mistake
    - Havoc 10y ago
      >who would you have aligned yourself with for financial & military support? There wasn't really much of a choice. The west was sorta unofficially aligned with the Apartheid gov, so by default that puts revolutionaries on the soviet side. Idealogical the soviets were also a better fit.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      Same thing all over the place. Castro went on a PR tour of the US trying to gather support and was snubbed long before he went to talk to the Soviets. Few years later his party finally called itself Socialist. Another few years and they finally called themselves Communist. Ho Chi Mihn was a Comintern member, but the Viet Minh was a broader alliance that included nationalists and others as well alongside the communist party until it was clear that they would not be able to rely on the west for support. Ho even bean the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence with an explicit reference to the US Declaration of Independence [1], which he admired greatly. And so on... US governments kept throwing pro-democracy movements under the bus one after the other for large parts of the cold war in ways that made it trivially easy for the Soviet Union to buy themselves friends. [1] http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1945vietnam.html http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1945vietnam.html
thomasahle 10y ago
I think it's interesting how the CIA's goal seems to be more or less "maintaining the status quo" in the global power struggle. This is obviously a useful thing to have, but if it gets too strong, how can we ever have the positive revolutions that have given us things like democracy?
- HoopleHead 10y ago
  The United States economy would collapse, without a constant supply of "enemies" to keep the military industrial complex ticking over. If anyone thinks that a defeat of "militant Islam" would bring peace to the world, they're sadly deluded. The next "enemy" will already be being funded, armed and encouraged to flex its muscles, ready to be smacked down again, in the next great crusade to bring "freedom and democracy" to some unfortunate part of the world. We've just not been told who it is yet!
- _nedR 10y ago
  Not really. They have repeatedly sought overthrow of numerous governments in the past (including democratic, communist and dictatorial). Not really maintaining the status quo.
  - thomasahle 10y ago
    Mostly relative young governments though, no? Governments that were trying something too radical, or were positioned too far from the established way of doing things.
    - _nedR 10y ago
      Yeah. You are right. When i think about it, Even in case of old governments, the cia was motivated by maintaining some status quo which the government was trying to change.
bunkydoo 10y ago
I wonder what would happen if we just told everyone at the CIA to go on a 1 year vacation. We might have world peace
dijit 10y ago
Given the serious effort CIA puts into destabilising regions (Lets not forget the large amounts of sources who said people were being ferried and paid to go to Kiev when the Ukrainian uprising was occuring) it would not surprise me very much if they were also behind the Britain "exit" from Europe, since that would cause an economic collapse of the EU and would remove a super-power from play. I feel like a conspiracy theorist when saying it out loud, but given the history... I mean it's economic suicide for britain to leave the EU, yet someone is plastering it all over the media and it's not the politicians. :\
- snatchthebants 10y ago
  I agree with the brexit thing, also look at the eurovision result Ukraine highest number of points followed by Russia it's like rig-off by different agencies to send a message.
- krisdol 10y ago
  It's the workers who have been shafted by declining standards of living, stagnant wages, rising prices, false promises about the benefits of free trade agreements, and increased immigrant labor -- coupled with an increasingly bureaucratic EU organization that pushes more political change than economic/trade change. The citizens of Britain signed up for the EU when they saw it as a trade agreement that would benefit them down the line, instead they are giving up more sovereignty to EU's bureaucracy in exchange for benefits that disproportionately flow up to the elite. And it's not economic suicide. In the short term it will most likely hurt but in the long term, Britain will survive and the EU will need to bend to accommodate Britain's consumers, even if the UK is not a member state. It is one of, if not the, biggest importers of EU goods and it's the EU, not Britain, who cannot survive without accommodating the other. Also I don't see why the US would benefit in any way from a collapsed EU or UK. Trade and travel becomes harder when they are not a single unit.
  - dijit 10y ago
    the EU being overly bureaucratic is due to age, the UK system has the same issues. our sovereignty is not important as long as we have the choice to leave in future, but the benefits awarded the middle/working/lower classes is unquestionable and we may not be awarded such luxury under a malevolent or overly 'for the rich' party. Rights are only rights until they aren't. Workers rights in the UK are the best they've ever been, and better than those in the US, which is where our model seems to steer towards without EU guidance. Quality of living (I'm guessing housing?) is bad in spite of the EU rules, not because of it. We are awarded many luxuries and exceptions by the EU because of our status as one of the "core" members, if we renegotiate we don't have that. In addition trade agreements are not going to be in our favour unless with have something to barter with. most of our industries are service/management layer, we're the middle people to a lot of things and without being a pivotal hub we may lose this and the foundation of British economy will be rocked, we need to produce something that the world cannot live without before making such threats. Additional: Without the EU being a unified block we do not have the clout to stand up to US bullying. edited to remove condescension and provide only my points
mrslave 10y ago
In the interest of some context: Mandela was a communist and a terrorist. While a "political prisoner" he was offered freedom as soon as he would publicly renounce violent protest (i.e. terrorism) and he persistently refused to do so. His second wife, Winnie, enjoyed the necklacing opponents. So nice people all round.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- HoopleHead 10y ago
  I'm presuming you're an American, seeing as you seem to equate being a Communist with being a terrorist. Communism, as a political ideal, is a perfectly acceptable proposition. The fact that many oppressive regimes have declared themselves to be Communist states should not detract from that —any more than the equally evil actions of states which claim to be Democratic, should tarnish the ideals underpinning Democracy.
  - jdimov9 10y ago
    In what twisted mind is communism an acceptable proposition???
    - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      There isn't anything intrinsically wrong with communism as an ideal. All of its implementations, however, have been seriously lacking, and perhaps it is unviable in practice; this does not mean the concept is unacceptable in theory.
      - jdimov9 10y ago
        You are clearly incompetent about the subject. The "ideal" of communism and the practice of communism are not two different things. Communism is practiced precisely the way it is theoretically intended to work. Communism is a cleptocratic system of ruling and exploiting the manual labour and natural resources of any given territory inhabited by unambitious masses that largely lack individualism. The core of the system relies on individualism and personal achievement being punished and forcefully suppressed, while the masses are continuously promised vague ideals of equality and justice (much like with any other system of government - nothing innovative here. ) There is nothing acceptable about communism - not in theory, not in practice, not in ideals - nothig.
fiatmoney 10y ago
Mandela & his organization were responsible for a terrorist (in the classical sense - using unfocused attacks on civilian populations as a bargaining chip and method of instilling fear) insurgency that killed thousands of people in incredibly brutal ways. The ascendancy of that government has resulted in South Africa turning from a reasonably prosperous & stable country into one of the most dangerous countries on earth, especially for the white minority, who is ~ one election away from genocide at any given moment. Props on Mandela for being gracious in victory & not immediately going Full Zimbabwe, but it is insane to suggest that he was some sort of sainted figure that there was no reason to even fight.
mark_l_watson 10y ago
Not too far off topic:the book "The Devils Chessboard", the history of Allen Dulles and the CIA is informative. The author was at Harper's Magazine for decades, and this book is full of personal accounts and information gleaned from historical records. The book is an eye opener. I was particularly shocked by how Dulles suppressed information of the holocost as it was happening, preventing obvious steps like bombing the railway lines leading to the death camps. Dulles was so fixated by the communists that any actions were to him justified. Edit: Dulles was also fixated by protecting the interests of his law firm's Wall Street clients and he viewed the Nazi apparatus, minus Hitler, as a potential resource, something to be protected and largely left in place after the war.
sehugg 10y ago
NYT reported this in 1990, we just didn't have confirmation and the name of the agent: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/world/cia-tie-reported-in-mandela-arrest.html http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/world/cia-tie-reported-in-... And it's still unclear whether anyone else was involved in the decision to tip off the police.
ebbv 10y ago
The title of this link is misleading. A former CIA spy (is that even confirmed?) claimed it. That's incredibly different from the CIA actually admitting it. Which is not to say I really doubt his claims (assuming it can be verified he was a CIA operative who was in South Africa at that time.)
JHof 10y ago
Here's a very similar article from 1990 - http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/world/cia-tie-reported-in-mandela-arrest.html http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/world/cia-tie-reported-in-...
Pica_soO 10y ago
Agency's like the CIA are just symptoms, the obvious to late, to little effort done after problems seem unsolvable by politicians. And they often are. If you have a population that basically votes with there feet for a war every second generation. If you have a social system that depends on constant corruption, to get everyone through the day. If you have resources that allow those in power to get by without any responsibility to there country's. If you got armed groups, which provide to second sons of a second sons a future in guerilla warfare - what is a group of man in a office building to do about that? The answer is nothing. They cant turn stone to bread. They cant reason with the unreasonable. They can try to gamble who gets to sit on the iron throne. The sad fact is- the CIA- on a larger scale, has no power over the population, which going in murderous cycles, stomps there own future into the ground. They make a excellent blame-pinata though.
ccvannorman 10y ago
""The agent firmly believed Mandela was in the pocket of Communist Russia and was planning to incite the Indian population in the Natal region, where he was based, to rise up."" Given ubiquitous surveillance and increasing state power, how long before average citizens start getting locked up because a single cowboy at an agency "firmly believes" they are a threat?
- notahacker 10y ago
  Never mind "ubiquitous surveillance", this has always happened. And given that Mandela was a member of a banned organization that was wanted by his own government for attempting to start armed rebellion using weapons (acquired from from sympathtic communist-aligned powers), it wasn't exactly as if the whim of a single agent was the main factor behind his detention (or the CIA's ultimately unfounded belief in what might happen if he succeeded)
DonHopkins 10y ago
struct NelsonMandela *nelson_mandela = (struct NelsonMandela *)malloc( sizeof(struct NelsonMandela)); free(nelson_mandella);
c2the3rd 10y ago
I would like to thank all the people who had a comment on this article, but did not post it. Truly, you improve the community with your silence. I'm aware of my own hypocrisy on this point, but logical consistency would prevent this sentiment from ever being expressed. As it is, perhaps 5% of these comments know anything about what they are talking about. One of the biggest intellectual failings of the sort that frequents this place is mistaking being smart with being informed.
- beeboop 10y ago
  I comment when knowingly being uninformed because the resulting discussion is what helps me understand the topic better. The result of this, looking back on my comment history, is that I can come across as a bit of an asshole who's often wrong. That is why anonymity is important to me online, because my posting here is not really indicative of my real world behavior. It's a safe place to challenge ideas and opinions, and I feel like I've grown and learned a lot from it. This is my long way of saying, maybe other people have different purposes for posting than you.
  - brudgers 10y ago
    Commenting to learn is orthogonal to doing so in a way that "can come across as a bit of an asshole". The first tends to make Hacker News better. The second more than negates any benefit.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - vehementi 10y ago
    Have you considered the harm you cause by posting with confidence when you are secretly aware of your own ignorance? The behavior of the average human is to take confident-sounding things as truth, even if they consciously try not to. You might be coming off as an asshole due to the harm you're causing like this, and could reframe your posts as asking for more info and not just saying random things to get a response.
zo1 10y ago
It's kind of odd that the DailyMail and RussiaToday (RT) have more "info" than the linked article that's paywalled. Not necessarily a bigger "scoop" of the story, but they provided more info about the parties, backstory, pictures included. Honestly, I tried looking for a decent article after encountering the paywall, but most were just "rehashed" quotes and links to the TheTimes article, with absolutely nothing of substance added. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-Nelson-Mandela-arrested-Unrepentant-agent-confirms-tipped-South-African-security-forces-meaning-leader-jailed-27-years.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-... https://www.rt.com/usa/343096-cia-nelson-mandela-arrest/ https://www.rt.com/usa/343096-cia-nelson-mandela-arrest/ Anyone have a decent article on this with more info and backstory?
brudgers 10y ago
A non-paywalled report of the news: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-Nelson-Mandela-arrested-Unrepentant-agent-confirms-tipped-South-African-security-forces-meaning-leader-jailed-27-years.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-...
irunbackwards 10y ago
Of course we did. We've been behind almost every coup of any truly democratic (we Americans like to call this communism) society in the last century.
proksoup 10y ago
The new title "an individual admitted something not the organization" is definitely more accurate, but represents an unsettling (to me) blame shift. I suppose the original title incorrectly placed responsibility on the organization and not the individual.
Lerumo 10y ago
Find it funny that they label Mandela a communist while the apartheid government owned all important sectors of the economy eg telkom (telecommunications), eskom (electricity), amscor n denel (weapons), sabc (radio and tv broadcasting), spoornet (rails and ports) acsa (airports) just to list a few. Apartheid was basically socialism for white people and brutal facism africans.
known 10y ago
"If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the USA. They don't care." --Nelson Mandela http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/nelson-mandela-iraq-israel_b_4396638.html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/nelson-mandela-i...

435 points by randomname2 10y ago

Non-paywalled: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-Nelson-Mandela-arrested-Unrepentant-agent-confirms-tipped-South-African-security-forces-meaning-leader-jailed-27-years.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-...

corin_ 10y ago
Personally I'd rather not know the rest of the story than give the Daily Mail any advert impressions. http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2016/05/15/Bombshell-CIA-spy-admits-to-role-in-Mandelas-arrest http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2016/05/15/Bombshell-CIA-sp... is the only other link I could find, don't know if DM has more info but given it's sourcing The Times I wouldn't be surprised if DM is too.
merlin_g 10y ago
Why is everything behind a damn paywall these days?
- hmate9 10y ago
  Because of adblock
  - mcbrown 10y ago
    Because of malware delivered through unblocked ad networks. (FTFY)
    - green_lunch 10y ago
      Regardless of your reasons, the end result will be more paywalls or entire articles that are actually ads (this is what yahoo does now).
- chippy 10y ago
  It's newspapers and the decline in print.
  - branchless 10y ago
    Newspaper death throes.
- otterley 10y ago
  Because well-written content and thorough investigation has to be paid for somehow. If it's worth reading, it's worth paying for IMHO. (I assume you do not work for free, either.)

hugh4 10y ago

Not really an "admission", he was guilty of the crime for which he was charged.

corin_ 10y ago
You can be found guilty of a crime yet never admit to it, you can also admit to anything regardles of whether it's a crime or not.
nxzero 10y ago
Given the systematic abuses by the state authority in South Africa, at the time of Mandela's arrest, against the social and civil rights of a certain group of citizens due to ethnic prejudices, believe a some context is worth considering in deciding who was right and wrong.
- viiaezumu 10y ago
  The "abuses" by the Apartheid government was actually negligible compared to the violence South Africa has experienced since the unbanning of the ANC. http://issafrica.org/uploads/CQ7Thomson.pdf http://issafrica.org/uploads/CQ7Thomson.pdf
  - nxzero 10y ago
    Reviewed the document, though see no evidence to support your claim. What exactly is your point and the evidence supporting in and why do you feel the sources and methods used to collect it are valid?
    - viiaezumu 10y ago
      People point to a few abuses and then say the Apartheid government was so terrible. But it did a decent job of providing safety and security, which is a basic human right. The ANC undermined the police service when they were unbanned When they took office, they ran the police service into the ground. They do not protect the rights of minorities.

cm3 10y ago

The CIA is the reason for most of the unstable regions and it's hard to understand how after messing with other places and making it worse for everybody but weapons manufacturers, they're still doing the same thing over and over. Previously it was the fight against Communism, now Islam, I wonder what it will be in 2020. Middle-east, Asia, South America, all are right to be very angry with the CIA, but turn it into a "Burn America" rethoric, which doesn't help their argument. CIA's policy is probably controlled by someone else, and that's where changes need to be made because I like to think they don't come up with the stuff on their own.

nxzero 10y ago
Often wondered what the world would be like if there was an intelligence group that only did good.
- rhizome 10y ago
  What would be the purpose of that agency?
  - cm3 10y ago
    Well, they could start by actually operating on the intel they have, rather than letting people bomb buildings because they have a long-term goal they don't want to be disturbed by revealing a bomb plot.
    - dexterdog 10y ago
      But sometimes stopping one plot will kill an operation that can stop many others later. Somebody has to weigh that and that somebody always looks bad.
      - rhizome 10y ago
        You have to account for the converse: conducting an operation can start many others.

vidoc 10y ago

Oh my God! This can't be true can it? I dont want to wake up tomorrow and learn that the Iraq war adventure was not based on wrong CIA intelligence, but a manufactured one, and 100% of the US political establishment knew it (in addition to basically the rest of the world).

mpweiher 10y ago
Not sure if trolling... ?? Just for the record: of course large parts of it were manufactured. Some of it was manufactured by a so-called "source", but that source was so in-/non-credible that you wouldn't buy a used hammer from him, never mind a used car. And it was well known that this source was completely non-credible. In addition, various other bits were combined in ways that the appearance of a threat was manufactured out of pieces of information that both weren't threatening in themselves and also did not constitute a real threat when combined appropriately (the infamous 45 minute claim is among these). For more, see the various UK inquiries regarding "intelligence failures" leading up to the Iraq war. The difference between that and manufacturing the whole thing from scratch is at best marginal.
- spriggan3 10y ago
  > Just for the record: of course large parts of it were manufactured. Some of it was manufactured by a so-called "source", but that source was so in-/non-credible that you wouldn't buy a used hammer from him Yet Powell built his case, before the UN with Curveball's informations. Curveball who ultimately admitted he was a taxi driver and not a scientist. Some might say "the US has been misled", I don't believe one second, the Bush government was looking for any excuse, even fake to invade Irak. I pity the families of all the soldiers who died there, they died for nothing. And the locals who were massacred,during and after the war,the US is directly responsible for their death.
  - JanezStupar 10y ago
    AFAIK Powell himself has been sceptical and deceived. That is why he eventually resigned after he realized he had been played.

franky303 10y ago

Paywalled. Next.

SoonDead 10y ago
Get my upvote.

nxzero 10y ago

Here's another source: http://m.democracynow.org/stories/14271 http://m.democracynow.org/stories/14271

tempodox 10y ago

> ...the world’s most dangerous communist... How fads change. Had it happened today, they would have called him a terrorist. Sadly, it's not really news that the U.S. only pay lip service to Democracy. After all, the dictator of our choice can guarantee our economic and military interests much better than any democratic regime.

Havoc 10y ago
>they would have called him a terrorist. Actually the ANC (or at least a splinter group) did bomb civilian locations in a terror campaign so yes it was considered a terrorist organisation. Now they're considered the liberators/bringers of democracy. Hows that for a pivot hn?
- qznc 10y ago
  If terrorists win they are not called terrorists anymore. Compare the Boston Tea Party which started the war of independence.
  - dhd415 10y ago
    The Boston Tea Party was most certainly not terrorism. No one was hurt or killed, either combatants or civilians. It cheapens the word to use it for any act of defiance against a government.
mschuster91 10y ago
> After all, the dictator of our choice can guarantee our economic and military interests much better than any democratic regime. Yup, as soon as oil is involved pretty much anything is considered acceptable. Gaddafi, Iran, Iraq, the whole bunch of Arabian emirates... all countries where US (and British) influence either actively promoted dictators to power or let radical powers rise to power. Funny enough, Saudi Arabia got all its riches from Western money, and a shitload of that money ended up at ISIS, al-Quaeda, Boko Haram - Western money used to fight the Western system.
rfrey 10y ago

ertyui 10y ago

Linkbait title. If the testimony is true then at best its a tip off about a then wanted man's location, nothing to do woth cia behind a conviction or anything else.

jonathankoren 10y ago
As if Mandela was going to go free by Apartheid regime. When you know the outcome, you don't get to wash your hands of the guilt.

raverbashing 10y ago

Well, sending him to jail helped make him an important figure. True, there's no way of knowing how it have gone otherwise Not to be demonized but not to be idolized as well

rangibaby 10y ago
There's a high chance he would have had an "accident" like Steve Biko.
Strom 10y ago
I'm curious, how did it help? I've always been under the impression that he succeeded despite the 27+ year prison time.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- phire 10y ago
  Being in prison isolated him from the less moral things the ANC did during the '70s and '80s, while still being seen as a figurehead.

gfgjmfgjmgh 10y ago

The CIA was also behind the assassination of Homi Bhabha (father of Indian atomic energy program) and Lala Bahadur Sastry (Prime Minister of India).

newjersey 10y ago
> Later, Gregory Douglas, a journalist who interviewed former CIA operative, Robert Crowley, over a period of 4 years, recorded their telephonic conversations and published its transcribe in a book titled, "Conversations with the Crow". In the book, Crowley claimed that CIA was responsible for eliminating Dr. Homi Bhabha, Indian nuclear scientist whose plane crashed into Alps, when he was going to attend a conference in Vienna and Lal Bahadur Shastri, who died at Tashkent summit in 1966. Crowley said that USA was wary of India's rigid stand on nuclear policy and then PM Lal Bahadur Shastri, who wanted to go ahead with nuclear tests. He also said that agency was more worried about collective domination of Indo-Russian over the region, for which a strong deterrent was required. If that's true and if it was planned, there's probably a memo justifying it somewhere and we will declassify it in the future.
- HillRat 10y ago
  "Gregory Douglas" has written a number of conspiracy-theory books that encompass Holocaust revisionism and JFK assassination theories; he is widely believed to be the nom de plume of Peter Stahl, who is also believed to have forged wartime Nazi documents and disseminated them to historians. It's all a bit of a rabbit hole, but the upshot is that there's very little reason to believe anything he writes.
PlzSnow 10y ago
Conspiracy theory nonsense. Welcome to Hacker News.

Tharkun 10y ago

You know how we're still hunting down and jailing formers nazis and concentration camp guards? Why aren't we doing the same to these CIA agents and decision makers?

sbarre 10y ago
Because the United States of America didn't lose any wars, and winners make policy.
- galuggus 10y ago
  How about Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan?
  - rangibaby 10y ago
    They lost in that they didn't achieve what they set out to do, but there was no instrument of surrender signed in SF bay, Nuremberg-style kangaroo court, USA partitioned into friendly states, etc.
  - hasenj 10y ago
    How did they "lose" Iraq? They successfully invaded the country, changed the regime, changed the military, the police, the government .. everything. Then they left. Iraq is in utter chaos, the US is doing just fine. How exactly did the US "lose" in Iraq?
    - awinder 10y ago
      Because the stated goal of that war was for the instilled government to survive and for democracy to transform the region. Not for the country to become destabilized with former military operatives to go into Syria and form the next great political catastrophe. That definitely wasn't a "win" long term.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]

equalsnil 10y ago

Would South Africa be a better place if it had become a Russian-influenced Communist country? If Mandela was a secret operative for the communists in South Africa, as the local communist party claimed when he died, and as this former CIA operative has claimed, then he had to have known he was playing a tricky game. Ending apartheid, creating a communist paradise, pick one. [Edit] I know I'm being downvoted, but I also doubt anyone commenting here lives in a communist country, or has ever spent much time in one.

Havoc 10y ago
>If Mandela was a secret operative for the communists in South Africa Pretty much all of the ANC has/had strong communist links since thats who sheltered those that went into exile. So I wouldn't say "secret operative"...
- sangnoir 10y ago
  If you were an ANC strategist at the time (cold war), who would you have aligned yourself with for financial & military support? Remember, you are a "3rd world" movement, European colonialism is still in full swing (though wavering), you are probably the wrong color and civil rights aren't a thing yet -Jim Crow laws are still being enforced in the US, and the apartheid government you are fighting have been aligned with the Allied powers (the west) since WW II. Edit: corrected 'Allied' powers: had named them Axis by mistake
  - Havoc 10y ago
    >who would you have aligned yourself with for financial & military support? There wasn't really much of a choice. The west was sorta unofficially aligned with the Apartheid gov, so by default that puts revolutionaries on the soviet side. Idealogical the soviets were also a better fit.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Same thing all over the place. Castro went on a PR tour of the US trying to gather support and was snubbed long before he went to talk to the Soviets. Few years later his party finally called itself Socialist. Another few years and they finally called themselves Communist. Ho Chi Mihn was a Comintern member, but the Viet Minh was a broader alliance that included nationalists and others as well alongside the communist party until it was clear that they would not be able to rely on the west for support. Ho even bean the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence with an explicit reference to the US Declaration of Independence [1], which he admired greatly. And so on... US governments kept throwing pro-democracy movements under the bus one after the other for large parts of the cold war in ways that made it trivially easy for the Soviet Union to buy themselves friends. [1] http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1945vietnam.html http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1945vietnam.html

thomasahle 10y ago

I think it's interesting how the CIA's goal seems to be more or less "maintaining the status quo" in the global power struggle. This is obviously a useful thing to have, but if it gets too strong, how can we ever have the positive revolutions that have given us things like democracy?

HoopleHead 10y ago
The United States economy would collapse, without a constant supply of "enemies" to keep the military industrial complex ticking over. If anyone thinks that a defeat of "militant Islam" would bring peace to the world, they're sadly deluded. The next "enemy" will already be being funded, armed and encouraged to flex its muscles, ready to be smacked down again, in the next great crusade to bring "freedom and democracy" to some unfortunate part of the world. We've just not been told who it is yet!
_nedR 10y ago
Not really. They have repeatedly sought overthrow of numerous governments in the past (including democratic, communist and dictatorial). Not really maintaining the status quo.
- thomasahle 10y ago
  Mostly relative young governments though, no? Governments that were trying something too radical, or were positioned too far from the established way of doing things.
  - _nedR 10y ago
    Yeah. You are right. When i think about it, Even in case of old governments, the cia was motivated by maintaining some status quo which the government was trying to change.

bunkydoo 10y ago

I wonder what would happen if we just told everyone at the CIA to go on a 1 year vacation. We might have world peace

dijit 10y ago

Given the serious effort CIA puts into destabilising regions (Lets not forget the large amounts of sources who said people were being ferried and paid to go to Kiev when the Ukrainian uprising was occuring) it would not surprise me very much if they were also behind the Britain "exit" from Europe, since that would cause an economic collapse of the EU and would remove a super-power from play. I feel like a conspiracy theorist when saying it out loud, but given the history... I mean it's economic suicide for britain to leave the EU, yet someone is plastering it all over the media and it's not the politicians. :\

snatchthebants 10y ago
I agree with the brexit thing, also look at the eurovision result Ukraine highest number of points followed by Russia it's like rig-off by different agencies to send a message.
krisdol 10y ago
It's the workers who have been shafted by declining standards of living, stagnant wages, rising prices, false promises about the benefits of free trade agreements, and increased immigrant labor -- coupled with an increasingly bureaucratic EU organization that pushes more political change than economic/trade change. The citizens of Britain signed up for the EU when they saw it as a trade agreement that would benefit them down the line, instead they are giving up more sovereignty to EU's bureaucracy in exchange for benefits that disproportionately flow up to the elite. And it's not economic suicide. In the short term it will most likely hurt but in the long term, Britain will survive and the EU will need to bend to accommodate Britain's consumers, even if the UK is not a member state. It is one of, if not the, biggest importers of EU goods and it's the EU, not Britain, who cannot survive without accommodating the other. Also I don't see why the US would benefit in any way from a collapsed EU or UK. Trade and travel becomes harder when they are not a single unit.
- dijit 10y ago
  the EU being overly bureaucratic is due to age, the UK system has the same issues. our sovereignty is not important as long as we have the choice to leave in future, but the benefits awarded the middle/working/lower classes is unquestionable and we may not be awarded such luxury under a malevolent or overly 'for the rich' party. Rights are only rights until they aren't. Workers rights in the UK are the best they've ever been, and better than those in the US, which is where our model seems to steer towards without EU guidance. Quality of living (I'm guessing housing?) is bad in spite of the EU rules, not because of it. We are awarded many luxuries and exceptions by the EU because of our status as one of the "core" members, if we renegotiate we don't have that. In addition trade agreements are not going to be in our favour unless with have something to barter with. most of our industries are service/management layer, we're the middle people to a lot of things and without being a pivotal hub we may lose this and the foundation of British economy will be rocked, we need to produce something that the world cannot live without before making such threats. Additional: Without the EU being a unified block we do not have the clout to stand up to US bullying. edited to remove condescension and provide only my points

mrslave 10y ago

In the interest of some context: Mandela was a communist and a terrorist. While a "political prisoner" he was offered freedom as soon as he would publicly renounce violent protest (i.e. terrorism) and he persistently refused to do so. His second wife, Winnie, enjoyed the necklacing opponents. So nice people all round.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
HoopleHead 10y ago
I'm presuming you're an American, seeing as you seem to equate being a Communist with being a terrorist. Communism, as a political ideal, is a perfectly acceptable proposition. The fact that many oppressive regimes have declared themselves to be Communist states should not detract from that —any more than the equally evil actions of states which claim to be Democratic, should tarnish the ideals underpinning Democracy.
- jdimov9 10y ago
  In what twisted mind is communism an acceptable proposition???
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    There isn't anything intrinsically wrong with communism as an ideal. All of its implementations, however, have been seriously lacking, and perhaps it is unviable in practice; this does not mean the concept is unacceptable in theory.
    - jdimov9 10y ago
      You are clearly incompetent about the subject. The "ideal" of communism and the practice of communism are not two different things. Communism is practiced precisely the way it is theoretically intended to work. Communism is a cleptocratic system of ruling and exploiting the manual labour and natural resources of any given territory inhabited by unambitious masses that largely lack individualism. The core of the system relies on individualism and personal achievement being punished and forcefully suppressed, while the masses are continuously promised vague ideals of equality and justice (much like with any other system of government - nothing innovative here. ) There is nothing acceptable about communism - not in theory, not in practice, not in ideals - nothig.

fiatmoney 10y ago

Mandela & his organization were responsible for a terrorist (in the classical sense - using unfocused attacks on civilian populations as a bargaining chip and method of instilling fear) insurgency that killed thousands of people in incredibly brutal ways. The ascendancy of that government has resulted in South Africa turning from a reasonably prosperous & stable country into one of the most dangerous countries on earth, especially for the white minority, who is ~ one election away from genocide at any given moment. Props on Mandela for being gracious in victory & not immediately going Full Zimbabwe, but it is insane to suggest that he was some sort of sainted figure that there was no reason to even fight.

mark_l_watson 10y ago

Not too far off topic:the book "The Devils Chessboard", the history of Allen Dulles and the CIA is informative. The author was at Harper's Magazine for decades, and this book is full of personal accounts and information gleaned from historical records. The book is an eye opener. I was particularly shocked by how Dulles suppressed information of the holocost as it was happening, preventing obvious steps like bombing the railway lines leading to the death camps. Dulles was so fixated by the communists that any actions were to him justified. Edit: Dulles was also fixated by protecting the interests of his law firm's Wall Street clients and he viewed the Nazi apparatus, minus Hitler, as a potential resource, something to be protected and largely left in place after the war.

sehugg 10y ago

NYT reported this in 1990, we just didn't have confirmation and the name of the agent: http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/world/cia-tie-reported-in-mandela-arrest.html http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/world/cia-tie-reported-in-... And it's still unclear whether anyone else was involved in the decision to tip off the police.

ebbv 10y ago

The title of this link is misleading. A former CIA spy (is that even confirmed?) claimed it. That's incredibly different from the CIA actually admitting it. Which is not to say I really doubt his claims (assuming it can be verified he was a CIA operative who was in South Africa at that time.)

JHof 10y ago

Here's a very similar article from 1990 - http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/world/cia-tie-reported-in-mandela-arrest.html http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/world/cia-tie-reported-in-...

Pica_soO 10y ago

Agency's like the CIA are just symptoms, the obvious to late, to little effort done after problems seem unsolvable by politicians. And they often are. If you have a population that basically votes with there feet for a war every second generation. If you have a social system that depends on constant corruption, to get everyone through the day. If you have resources that allow those in power to get by without any responsibility to there country's. If you got armed groups, which provide to second sons of a second sons a future in guerilla warfare - what is a group of man in a office building to do about that? The answer is nothing. They cant turn stone to bread. They cant reason with the unreasonable. They can try to gamble who gets to sit on the iron throne. The sad fact is- the CIA- on a larger scale, has no power over the population, which going in murderous cycles, stomps there own future into the ground. They make a excellent blame-pinata though.

ccvannorman 10y ago

""The agent firmly believed Mandela was in the pocket of Communist Russia and was planning to incite the Indian population in the Natal region, where he was based, to rise up."" Given ubiquitous surveillance and increasing state power, how long before average citizens start getting locked up because a single cowboy at an agency "firmly believes" they are a threat?

notahacker 10y ago
Never mind "ubiquitous surveillance", this has always happened. And given that Mandela was a member of a banned organization that was wanted by his own government for attempting to start armed rebellion using weapons (acquired from from sympathtic communist-aligned powers), it wasn't exactly as if the whim of a single agent was the main factor behind his detention (or the CIA's ultimately unfounded belief in what might happen if he succeeded)

DonHopkins 10y ago

struct NelsonMandela *nelson_mandela = (struct NelsonMandela *)malloc( sizeof(struct NelsonMandela)); free(nelson_mandella);

c2the3rd 10y ago

I would like to thank all the people who had a comment on this article, but did not post it. Truly, you improve the community with your silence. I'm aware of my own hypocrisy on this point, but logical consistency would prevent this sentiment from ever being expressed. As it is, perhaps 5% of these comments know anything about what they are talking about. One of the biggest intellectual failings of the sort that frequents this place is mistaking being smart with being informed.

beeboop 10y ago
I comment when knowingly being uninformed because the resulting discussion is what helps me understand the topic better. The result of this, looking back on my comment history, is that I can come across as a bit of an asshole who's often wrong. That is why anonymity is important to me online, because my posting here is not really indicative of my real world behavior. It's a safe place to challenge ideas and opinions, and I feel like I've grown and learned a lot from it. This is my long way of saying, maybe other people have different purposes for posting than you.
- brudgers 10y ago
  Commenting to learn is orthogonal to doing so in a way that "can come across as a bit of an asshole". The first tends to make Hacker News better. The second more than negates any benefit.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- vehementi 10y ago
  Have you considered the harm you cause by posting with confidence when you are secretly aware of your own ignorance? The behavior of the average human is to take confident-sounding things as truth, even if they consciously try not to. You might be coming off as an asshole due to the harm you're causing like this, and could reframe your posts as asking for more info and not just saying random things to get a response.

zo1 10y ago

It's kind of odd that the DailyMail and RussiaToday (RT) have more "info" than the linked article that's paywalled. Not necessarily a bigger "scoop" of the story, but they provided more info about the parties, backstory, pictures included. Honestly, I tried looking for a decent article after encountering the paywall, but most were just "rehashed" quotes and links to the TheTimes article, with absolutely nothing of substance added. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-Nelson-Mandela-arrested-Unrepentant-agent-confirms-tipped-South-African-security-forces-meaning-leader-jailed-27-years.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-... https://www.rt.com/usa/343096-cia-nelson-mandela-arrest/ https://www.rt.com/usa/343096-cia-nelson-mandela-arrest/ Anyone have a decent article on this with more info and backstory?

brudgers 10y ago

A non-paywalled report of the news: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-Nelson-Mandela-arrested-Unrepentant-agent-confirms-tipped-South-African-security-forces-meaning-leader-jailed-27-years.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3591000/How-CIA-got-...

irunbackwards 10y ago

Of course we did. We've been behind almost every coup of any truly democratic (we Americans like to call this communism) society in the last century.

proksoup 10y ago

The new title "an individual admitted something not the organization" is definitely more accurate, but represents an unsettling (to me) blame shift. I suppose the original title incorrectly placed responsibility on the organization and not the individual.

Lerumo 10y ago

Find it funny that they label Mandela a communist while the apartheid government owned all important sectors of the economy eg telkom (telecommunications), eskom (electricity), amscor n denel (weapons), sabc (radio and tv broadcasting), spoornet (rails and ports) acsa (airports) just to list a few. Apartheid was basically socialism for white people and brutal facism africans.

known 10y ago

"If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the USA. They don't care." --Nelson Mandela http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/nelson-mandela-iraq-israel_b_4396638.html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/nelson-mandela-i...