8 Cases That Prove The FBI & CIA
Were Out Of Control Long Before Russiagate
Conservatives
tend to have two bad habits. First,
they’re prone to viewing the past through a nostalgic lens. Second, they tend
to instinctively give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt.
These tendencies help explain
why conservatives for decades have been able to overlook the many
abuses—constitutional, legal, and moral—of US intelligence agencies.
Unlike some more seasoned media, conservatives
have appeared genuinely shocked by revelations of the Trump-Russia saga: abuse of FISA warrants, classified leaks from
top FBI brass,corruption,
campaign moles, and an apparent plot to remove an
elected president through undemocratic (and likely extra-constitutional) means.
These revelations are
unique in that they have become highly public and involve a sitting president.However,
an examination of the history of US intelligence agencies reveals government
bureaucrats were out of control long before the 2016 presidential election.
1. That Time the CIA Considered Bombing Miami and Blaming It on
Castro
It’s no secret that the US
government sought to assassinate Fidel Castro for
years. Less well known, however, was that part of their regime-change
plot included a plan
to blow up Miami and sinking a boat-full of innocent Cubans.
The plan, which was revealed in
2017 when the National Archives declassified 2,800 documents from the JFK era,
was a collaborative effort
that included the CIA, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and
other federal agencies that sought to brainstorm strategies to topple Castro
and sow unrest within Cuba. One of those plans included Operation Northwoods,
submitted to the CIA by General Lyman Lemnitzer on behalf of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. It summarized nine “pretexts” the CIA and US government could employ
to justify military intervention in Cuba. One of the official CIA documents
shows officials musing about staging a terror campaign (“real or simulated”)
and blaming it on Cuban refugees.
“We could develop a Cuban
Communist terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even
in Washington,” the Operation Mongoose document says.
“The terror campaign could be pointed at
Cubans refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of
Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated.) We could foster attempts on
lives of Cuban refugees in the United States… Exploding a few plastic bombs in
carefully chosen spots.”
Ultimately, the broader Mongoose
effort failed to
remove Castro from power or effectively establish an infiltration within Cuba,
though the CIA did engage in several sabotage operations. Mongoose was
suspended and ultimately discontinued amid the Cuban Missile Crisis.
2. In 2014 the CIA Was Caught Red-Handed Spying on the
Senate Intelligence Committee
In the summer of 2014, the CIA’s
inspector general concluded that the CIA had “improperly” spied on US Senate
staffers who were researching the agency’s black history of torture. As
the New York
Times reported:
An internal investigation by the C.I.A. has
found that its officers penetrated a computer network used by the Senate
Intelligence Committee in preparing its damning report on the C.I.A.’s
detention and interrogation program.
And that’s not the worst
part. The Times goes
on to note that CIA officers didn’t just read the emails of the Senate
investigators. They also sent “a criminal referral to the Justice Department
based on false information.”
John Brennan, CIA director from
2013-2017, insisted during Senate hearings these were “very limited
inappropriate actions” and that “the actions of the CIA were reasonable.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon)
disagreed.
“That’s not what the Inspector General
[concluded],” Wyden said. “When you’re talking about spying on a committee
responsible for overseeing your agency, in my view that undermines the very
checks and balances that protect our democracy, and it’s unacceptable in a free
society. And your compatriots in all your sister agencies agree with that.”
Brennan, who publicly lied about
the episode, was not punished and even retained his security clearance until
Aug. 15, 2018.
3. The FBI’s “Suicide Letter” to MLK and His Wife
Before he had a day named in his
honor and a monument on the National Mall, the government viewed Martin Luther
King Jr. very much as a threat. In fact, his message of peace, love, equality,
and civil disobedience had the FBI so scared that agents actually sent King and
his wife a package containing a strange letter and tape recording. It contained
details of the civil rights activist’s sexual indiscretions and encouraged him
to kill himself.
In 1961, the FBI learned that
Stanley Levison, a known “Red,” had become a close advisor to King. The
following year, Bobby Kennedy approved wiretaps on Levison’s home and office,
surveillance that would eventually expand. It turns out that J. Edgar Hoover
stumbled on to MLK’s busy sex life while investigating King.
“Hoover found out very little about any
Communist subterfuge,” wrote Yale historian Beverly
Gage in the New York Times in 2014, “but he did begin to learn about King’s
extramarital sex life….”
The FBI apparently had no
scruples about using the information to try to bring King down. James Comey,
Gage writes, used to keep a copy of the King wiretap request on his desk “as a
reminder of the bureau’s capacity to do wrong.”
4. The CIA Forced Prisoners to Participate in Mind Control
Experiments in the 1950s
If you’ve never heard of Project
MKUltra, you might find it hard to believe. Also known as “the CIA Mind Control
Program,” the effort was launched by the agency in 1953. The program used drug
experiments on humans, oftentimes on prisoners who were tested against their
will or in exchange for early release. The experiments were undertaken so CIA
agents could better understand how to extract information from enemies during
interrogations. Here is a description from the History Channel:
MK-Ultra’s “mind control” experiments
generally centered around behavior modification via electro-shock therapy,
hypnosis, polygraphs, radiation, and a variety of drugs, toxins, and chemicals.
These experiments relied on a range of test subjects: some who freely
volunteered, some who volunteered under coercion, and some who had absolutely
no idea they were involved in a sweeping defense research program. From
mentally-impaired boys at a state school, to American soldiers, to “sexual
psychopaths” at a state hospital, MK-Ultra’s programs often preyed on the most
vulnerable members of society. The CIA considered prisoners especially good
subjects, as they were willing to give consent in exchange for extra recreation
time or commuted sentences.
Whitey Bulger, a former organized crime
boss, wrote of his experience as an inmate test subject in MK-Ultra. “Eight
convicts in a panic and paranoid state,” Bulger said of the 1957 tests at the
Atlanta penitentiary where he was serving time. “Total loss of appetite.
Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling
violent. We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood
coming out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a
camera change into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane.”
How was any of this legal? Well,
it wasn’t, which is why the CIA understood it had to be concealed from the
American public at all costs.
“Precautions must be taken not only to
protect operations from exposure to enemy forces but also to conceal these
activities from the American public in general,” wrote a CIA auditor.
“The knowledge that the agency is engaging
in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in
political and diplomatic circles.”
5. The FBI’s Systemic Forensic Fraud in Crime Labs
In the early 1990s, Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, an
attorney and chemist who worked at the FBI as a Supervisory Special Agent,
noticed troubling practices in the in the bureau’s Investigation Laboratory.
There were “alterations of
reports, alterations of evidence, folks testifying outside their areas of
expertise in courts of law,” said Whitehurst.
“[Really] what was going on was human rights violations. We have a right to
fair trials in this country… And that’s not what was going on at the FBI lab.”
In 1994, he blew the whistle on
the “systemic forensic fraud” he witnessed. Nothing happened. So he took his
case to the Department of Justice. The FBI didn’t like that. Whitehurst was
eventually chased out of the Bureau, but not before winning a $1.16 million
settlement.
Unfortunately, however, the
wheels of justice turn slowly at the Bureau.
“It wasn’t until ten years later
that Whitehurst was finally vindicated,” notes the National Whistleblower Legal
Defense and Education Fund note, “when a scathing 500+ page study of the lab by
the Justice Department Inspector General, Michael Bromwich, concluded major
reforms were required in the lab.”
But by then, an untold number of
people had been convicted with the help of tainted evidence—evidence the
DOJ knew was
tainted.
In 2012 the Washington Post published an extensive review of
the FBI and DOJ failures to properly review the cases impacted by the FBI lab
scandal, based on Whitehurst’s research.
As a result, the DOJ agreed to conduct yet
another review of hair cases in collaboration with the Innocence Project and
the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).
· 3,000 cases were
identified by the government that had used microscopic hair analysis from FBI
examiners.
· 500 have been reviewed as
of March 2015.
· 268 included
pro-prosecution testimony from FBI examiners.
· 257 (96 percent) contained
erroneous statements from “FBI experts”.
At least 35 of these cases
involved convicted criminals who received the death penalty, according to the
National Whistleblower Legal Defense and Education Fund.
6. Operation Midnight Climax: Drugging Unsuspecting Johns and
Filming their Interactions with Prostitutes
In the 1950s and early 1960s,
the CIA admitted to operating a “bawdy house” in a San Francisco apartment
where “unsuspecting citizens were lured… for the CIA’s drug experiments,”
according to a local news story report documented by
the agency.
“Private
citizens were taken to the bordello by $100 prostitutes and drugged without
their knowledge, usually with LSD,” the San Francisco
Examiner reported in 1977 after the CIA admitted to the operation. Agents
sat behind a two-way mirror and filmed the interactions between the drugged men
and prostitutes.
Then-CIA director Stansfield
Turner suggested the operation was intended to understand how drugs could
potentially be used against the American people, though he called the
experiments “abhorrent” and acknowledged it was “inexplicable” that the CIA
would do this without the subjects’ consent. He insisted the agency had ceased
the experiments 12 years prior. In a 1977 Senate testimony, CIA agents said the
purpose of the experiments was to “learn about thought control and sexual
behavior,” the Examiner noted.
7. The FBI Has Routinely Staged Acts of Terrorism
In the wake of 9/11, the FBI
has, on numerous occasions, targeted unstable and mentally ill individuals,
sending informants to bait them into committing terror attacks. Before these
individuals can actually carry out the attack, however, the Bureau intervenes,
presenting the foiled plot to the public as a successfully thwarted attack.
[T]he FBI subjected 19-year-old
Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to months of encouragement,
support and money and convinced him to detonate a bomb at a crowded
Christmas event in Portland, Oregon, only to arrest him at the last moment and
then issue a Press Release boasting of its success. In late 2009, the FBI persuaded and
enabled Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, to place a
fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper and separately convinced Farooque Ahmed, a
34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, to bomb the Washington
Metro.
8. The CIA’s Media Manipulation Campaigns
From the agency’s earliest days,
it has attempted to control the flow of information to the public. In his
book Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA,
former New York
Times journalist Tim Weiner documented how
much influence the agency’s first civilian director, Allen Dulles, had among
major media companies:
Dulles kept in close touch with the men who
ran The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the nation’s
leading weekly magazines. He could pick up the phone and edit a breaking story,
make sure an irritating foreign correspondent was yanked from the field, or
hire the services of men such as Time’s Berlin bureau chief and Newsweek’s man in Tokyo.
Weiner noted, “It was second
nature for Dulles to plant stories in the press. American newsrooms were
dominated by veterans of the government’s wartime propaganda branch, the Office
of War Information.” During his time at the agency, Dulles “built a
public-relations and propaganda machine that came to include more than fifty
news organizations, a dozen publishing houses, and personal pledges of support
from men such as Axel Springer, West Germany’s most powerful press baron.”
In 1977, Carl Bernstein further
exposed the CIA’s efforts to influence news organization in an article for Rolling Stone in
which he revealed that “more than 400 American journalists…in the past
twenty?five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central
Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.”
The Lesson
Amid the media and political
establishment’s ongoing, frenzied coverage of Russia-gate, Americans are eager
to pin guilt on the president have shown a willingness to trust the CIA and FBI
without question despite numerous past and present reasons to be skeptical of
their conclusions. Considering
the CIA’s long history of intervening in other countries’ elections and
governments, it is particularly ironic that their claims of Russia’s meddling
in the US’ democracy are taken at face value.
Nor is the corruption and deceit
limited to the FBI and CIA. Former Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper lied to
lawmakers and the public in 2013 when he claimed NSA did not collect any type
of data on “millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.” He was caught
red-handed months later when whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the extent
of the agency’s mass surveillance operations.
The survival of liberty
depends on skepticism of government power—and make no mistake, that includes
President Trump. But in light of these federal agencies’ chronic tendency
to engage in behavior wholly inconsistent with American values, the same distrust must be applied to
the institutions that claim to shed light on abuses by unpopular leaders.
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