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The early CIA were basically monsters in men's clothing. Just one dark, twisted scheme after another with no humanity in sight.
by MSFT_Edging 1y ago
The 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.