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My father was in the CIA (one of the earliest). He was an idealist who joined out of patriotism, and couldn't reconcile himself with what they were becoming. He
by ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
My father was in the CIA (one of the earliest). He was an idealist who joined out of patriotism, and couldn't reconcile himself with what they were becoming. He ended up resigning. I really feel that it broke him.
- MSFT_Edging 1y agoThe early CIA were basically monsters in men's clothing. Just one dark, twisted scheme after another with no humanity in sight.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI think the very earliest had decent folks. I believe it was more like the second-gen CIA (1950s and 60s). He joined in '52 (after graduating Harvard with an LLB, and working for a short time at a law firm), and resigned in '67. [EDITED TO ADD] I updated to the proper dates, and linked his eulogy. https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm
- thomassmith65 1y agoYour dad was probably representative of many people at intelligence agencies. There's no amount of apparent evil that bureaucracy isn't sufficient to explain.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoWell, he was a field agent. His job was to run assets in-country (Valerie Plame had a similar role). He worked in West Africa, where Russian proxies were trying to foster communist insurgencies. He was a very, very decent person; maybe too decent. The straw that broke the camel's back, was the Shah of Iran.
- thomassmith65 1y agoThere are a couple Miles Copeland books on my reading list. They might be of interest to you. He was a big CIA guy (and also father of famous drummer Stewart Copeland) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Copeland_Jr https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Copeland_Jr.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI suspect my father was not a fan.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- thomassmith65 1y agoThat's understandable. I just read a Miles Copeland interview from 1986 in which he complains about the CIA apparently assassinating fewer foreign leaders and being too truthful to congress.
- MSFT_Edging 1y agoThe OSS leading into the early CIA is exactly who I was talking about. They lead stay-behind operations in the recently liberated Italy(Operation Gladio) that funded Italian Mafia activities to act as strike breakers, assassinate union leaders. They funded right-wing terrorist militias, ran false-flag operations, and started their early psychological warfare programs. Your father resigned a couple years after the conclusion of the Indonesian Coup in which the CIA installed a right-wing military dictatorship, replacing a democratically elected government, that rounded up and murdered 1 Million communists while imprisoning a few million more for years. This event created a blueprint called the Jakarta Method which was used across the globe.
- pimeys 1y agoThe movie The Act of Killing is about this time in Indonesia. Really a tough watch, but I recommend that movie for everybody... once.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoAlso, I think The Year of Living Dangerously.