Do you put the word "the" in front of "God"?: A brief history of domestic crimes committed by the CIA

I remember a senator once asked me. When we talk about "CIA" why we never use the word "the" in front of it. And I asked him, do you put the word "the" in front of "God"?

Those are the chilling last words of Robert De Niro’s CIA epic, The Good Shepherd. Some may dismiss the following line as dramatic context, just merely adding to the climax of the film, but if one looks at the history of the Central Intelligence Agency and the illegal domestic acts committed by it, the message of this quote proves to be disturbingly accurate. Through the following examples it is clear that the CIA is more concerned with power, and it’s domination over the American people, rather than protection of the country. But it’s the ignorance of the American public that allows operations like the following to continue. If the public were educated on the history of the covert actions taken by his/her country, we could hold it accountable for its crimes.

The list of domestic CIA crimes is both long and controversial. For the purpose of this paper, I chose only to focus on the most unbelievable and atrocious of offences. Also, keep in mind that I’m writing only about the operations that have come to light, one can only guess what crimes this alphabet agency continues to hide from the United States public. It’s also necessary to realize that it is illegal for the CIA to be running any sort of domestic operation, which falls under the purview of the FBI.

A good place to start would be with OPERATION HTLINGUAL. Originally named SRPOINTER, HTLINGUAL was a domestic mail opening program that lasted from 1952-1972, and was started under the rule of Allen Dulles as DCI(Director of Central Intelligence). CIA operatives would open mail destined for China and the Soviet Union. But before you try to defend this course of action, thinking that the CIA was just trying to catch Soviet spies, the mail of Martin Luther King, Jr. was also open under the guise of this program.

Another early program of the CIA would be OPERATION ARTICHOKE. Started in 1951, OPERATION ARTICHOKE was a project that involved the CIA, FBI, Air Force, Navy, and the Army. The overall objective of this project can be clearly seen in a memo which stated: Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation? It wouldn’t be long until OPERATION ARTICHOKE would evolve into the infamous PROJECT MKULTRA experiments.

Maybe one of the most disturbing operations covered in this paper, PROJECT MKULTRA was also started in the early 1950’s and was a human experimentation project. The overall objective of MKULTRA was both mind control and the extraction of information from the human brain. The CIA would experiment on unknowing American citizens by drugging them with LSD in attempting to hypnotize them. One of the most infamous cases was the death of Dr. Frank Olson, who was a scientist working for TSS(Technical Staff Services). The CIA invited Dr. Olson, and other scientist from TSS for a simple conference. The CIA served the unknowing participants drinks laced with seventy micrograms of LSD. Thirty minutes into the conference the TSS doctors were made aware that their drinks were spiked with the psychedelic drug, and their behavior was being monitored. Most of the agents reported little effect on their unwilling participants, except for Dr. Frank Olson. Dr. Olson apparently had a “bad trip” and suffered from extreme paranoia and had a nervous breakdown. The CIA sent him to New York to see a psychiatrist, who said that Olson should be placed into a mental institution. On the last night of his stay, Dr. Olson purposely threw himself out of the tenth story floor of his hotel room window, dying on impact. The circumstances of Dr. Olson’s death were not fully revealed to his family, and it would take two decades before Olson’s family received a full apology from President Ford(Melton 5-7). The atrocities didn’t stop there. MKULTRA became almost like an organic phenomenon, giving birth to other sub projects such as OPERATION MIDNIGHT CLIMAX, where prostitutes on the CIA payroll would seduce men, and bring them back to “safe” houses installed with two way mirrors. The prostitutes would drug the men with LSD before engaging in intercourse, and the agents behind the mirrors would study the effects. Unfortunately, we know little more of MKULTRA, most of the documents that pertain to this program were destroyed by DCI Richard Helms upon being fired by President Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal.

Another operation that was started in the early 50’s was OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD, where the CIA had influence in both domestic and foreign media. Not knowing how far the CIA had penetrated the news media, many people doubted the existence of MOCKINGBIRD at all. It wasn’t until the Church Committee in 1976, who came to the conclusion:

“The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.”(Church Committee 375)

Along with this statement came proof that the CIA has tapped the phones of prominate news anchors and paid an unknown number of television employees to act as informants.

Another domestic operation was OPERATION CHAOS, which was started in 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson, but was later expanded and used in full force by President Richard M. Nixon. The purpose of OPERATION CHAOS was to determine if communists were funding and organizing student anti-war protest movements. Agents went as far as to plant people in anti-war protest groups, and tap student’s phones. Students were not only the victims of illegal covert surveillance, as the Black Panther Party and the Women Strike for Peace were also in the crosshairs of the CIA.

In 1962, another gut wrenching operation that was conjured by both the CIA and the Pentagon was OPERATION NORTHWOODS. OPERATION NORTHWOODS was a false-flag program that would have allowed the CIA to fabricate terrorist attacks(which would include hijackings and bombings) in major U.S. cities, resulting in the deaths of innocent Americans. The terror attacks would be blamed on Cuban operatives, thus allowing the United States to invade Cuba and topple the communist government of Fidel Castro, without any retaliation from the Soviets. Thankfully, the plan was turned down by President John F. Kennedy, and was never officially operational.

OPERATION NORTHWOODS was just one of the several plans concocted by the U.S. government to kill Fidel Castro. Hundreds of attempts would later be planned and carried out by every presidential administration since John F. Kennedy. One of the most intriguing plots would include an unlikely ally, the American Mafia. Before Castro and his rebels toppled the U.S. friendly government of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, the American Mafia owned most of the casinos and racetracks in Havana. “President” Batista was not only friendly to the U.S. government, but to organized crime as well. The Mafia delivered him a “piece of the action” off the top of the millions they were making off of their brothels and gambling rackets in Havana, so much so that Havana would soon be called “the Latin Las Vegas”. But the party stopped in the early hours of January 1st, 1959, when Castro and his communist rebels overthrew the Batista regime, and took control of the country. Soon after his ascension into power, Castro closed all of the casinos and racetracks and chased all the elements of the American Mafia out of his country. He even placed Tampa Mafia Boss Santo Trifficante, Jr. under house arrested in one of his casinos for several months. So it would be no great surprise that the Mafia wanted Castro dead even more than the American government. The CIA formed an alliance with Sam Giancana (Mafia boss of Chicago), Santo Trifficante, Jr.,(Mafia boss of Tampa) and Carlos Marcello.(Mafia boss of New Orleans) A friendship was forged among this alliance. CIA field agent William Harvey developed a lifelong friendship with Chicago mobster Johnny Roselli.(Russo 386) There were a dozen Mafia/CIA plots, but obviously none of them were successful.

It is this strong friendship between Harvey and Roselli where some conspiracy theorist believe that the Mafia, along with rouge CIA agents, like Harvey, and bitter Cuban exiles all banded together to assassinate President Kennedy. There has been a dramatic flow of evidence in recent years suggesting Mafia involvement in the Kennedy assassination, including a declassified paper from an FBI informant that was sharing a cell with Mafia boss Carlos Marcello in the late eighties, who was imprisoned from the notorious BRILAB sting. When the informant asked Marcello about Kennedy, Marcello responded with : “Yea, I had the son of a bitch killed. I’m glad I did. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it myself.”(Waldron 773) The informant would later claim Marcello approached him after he calmed down after his tirade and threatened his life if he ever repeated what Marcello had told him. But what about evidence linking the CIA? Well thanks to the JFK Act of 1992, which allowed for that FBI document about Marcello to be declassified, all government documents relevant to the JFK assassination must be declassified by 2017. The CIA has claimed publicly that it has no intention of declassifying the documents it possesses on the JFK assassination. Even though they are trying to find some sort of legal recourse, the CIA has publicly defied an act of Congress.

Another instance where the CIA has been involved with the Presidency is the infamous Watergate scandal, which drove President Nixon from the White House. It is important to note that Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and James McCord were both ex-CIA agents. Most of the Cubans also caught were veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion, who have worked with Hunt in the past. It’s difficult to identify a starting point for the CIA’s involvement in Watergate, because when one is talking about the abuses of power committed by the Nixon administration, Watergate is just the tip of the iceberg. More than a year before Watergate, E. Howard Hunt and fellow burglar and ex-FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy were organizing a break in at Daniel Ellsberg’s physiatrist office to dig up dirt to discredit Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon’s top secret study on America’s involvement in Vietnam. Hunt and Liddy needed fake ID’s, disguises, and tools to break into the office with, all which were supplied by Hunt’s contacts at the CIA. The CIA would also come to the aid of Hunt and Liddy later in a more sinister matter. Columnist Jack Anderson was writing damaging articles about President Nixon and his brother Donald. Liddy and Hunt decided to assassinate Anderson. The two went over various ways to make the columnist’s death look like an accident. A fatal car accident, and a mugging that turned into a shooting were all plots conjured by the two men. Eventually they decided on poising Anderson. Another one of Hunt’s CIA contacts met him and Liddy and gave them a cocktail of deadly poisons. The plan was to let Anderson unknowingly play “aspirin roulette”. One of the two would break into Anderson’s house and drop a poison pill into Anderson’s aspirin or medicine bottle. The two men got cold feet and decided to call off the “aspirin roulette” plot because there was no way they could make sure that Anderson’s wife wouldn’t take the poison pill meant for her husband. The two would eventually drop the idea of assassinating Anderson all together.(Emery 97-98)

When the Watergate scandal finally was exposed, and the blame was climbing higher and higher up the ranks of the White House, Nixon sent his fiercely loyal Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, to talk to DCI Richard Helms and see if he convince the FBI not to pursue the matter of Watergate any further. Helms was hesitant at first, until Haldeman told Helms that the President thought that further investigation of the Watergate break in would open up the whole “bay of pigs” thing for the CIA. This statement enraged the usually calm CIA director, who went on to yell: “THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BAY OF PIGS, I HAVE NO CONCERN ABOUT THE BAY OF PIGS!” The stunned Haldeman would say again to Helms that this is what the President wanted to relay to him. Helms immediately agreed to Nixon’s ploy, and he would contact the FBI. In his book, The Ends of Power, Haldeman would claim that he believed that “the bay of pigs” eluted to the Kennedy assassination, and for fear of exposure, Helms agreed to stall the FBI in their investigation of Watergate.(Emery 192) But some historians see it differently. In his book, Legacy of Secrecy, Lamar Waldron believes that the Watergate break in was fumbled on purpose, to eject Nixon from the White House. Hunt, McCord, and most of the Cubans were all ex-CIA, and some believe that the exposure of Watergate was all a carefully crafted plan devised by Helms to stage a coup d'état against Richard Nixon.(Waldron 724)

Whether it was a CIA conspiracy within a conspiracy or not, the exposure of Watergate had damaging effects on the CIA. Right after the Watergate Committee was done, the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities was formed, which was organized to investigate the crimes of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, such as the FBI, since their complicity in Watergate proved that they were capable of illegal action. When disturbing information started to be uncovered when the investigation of the CIA started, the Church Committee was formed to just investigate the crimes of the CIA. This is when all of the following operations(with the exception of OPERATION NORTHWOODS), discussed in this paper came to light. When CIA involvement in the JFK assassination was deemed a possibility, the House Select Committee on Assassinations was formed. This is when the systematic elimination of witness started. Harvey’s mobster friend, Johnny Roselli, was called before the HSCA, and he testified that he knew the truth behind Kennedy’s assassination. But before he could be called back to testify, Roselli went missing, and a year later his bullet riddled, burned, and dismembered body was found floating in a drum off the coast of Florida. His boss, Sam Giancana, suffered a similar fate. Giancana was shot in the back of the head in the basement of his own home. Teamster’s boss Jimmy Hoffa also went missing before he was even called to testify. It seems that someone didn’t want these underworld figures talking to the HSCA. While Trifficante and Marcello survived their testimony, one can only guess if it was either the CIA, Marcello/Trifficante, or a combination of both who were involved in this chain of convenient deaths.

By the time the committees were done with their investigations, Jimmy Carter was President. Carter‘s “reform movement”, along the winding down the of the Vietnam War, and the exposed abuses of the intelligence agencies of the United States, caused the CIA and its operations to be minimized dramatically. Several agents were fired, including the legendary Edward Wilson, who after being fired from the Agency became a terrorist and arms dealer. Wilson was later caught by the U.S. for selling arms to Libya, but of course his old employer stepped in and got the case against Wilson dropped. Even though Carter committed his share of atrocities, the CIA really was almost neutered, until the election of Ronald Reagan.

When Reagan became President in 1980, his Vice President was George H.W. Bush, who also just happened to be an ex-CIA Director. Under the Reagan Presidency, the CIA and its covert operations were restored.(Marshall 85-89 ) Reagan was determined to send aid to the Contras who were fighting the communist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Eventually Congress limited the amount of support that the United States could send to the Contras, and then later outlawed it in the Boland Amendment. That didn’t stop Reagan, the head of his NSC(National Security Council), Lt. Col. Oliver North, would broker a deal to sell arms to Iran, and use the proceeds to fund the Contras. Along with helping out the Contras, this is when the CIA had an opportunity to start up a domestic drug trade, to help fund its black operations. The CIA employed known drug smuggler Barry Seal(from Baton Rouge, who also served in the same unit as Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie), to allegedly transport drugs and arms to and from Mena, Arkansas.

Things would go without a hitch in Mena until “The Train Deaths” would occur. In the early morning of August 23rd 1987, teenagers Kevin Ives and Don Henry went out hunting. Their bodies were later found lined up perfectly on a train track, and were both decapitated by an oncoming train. A medical examiner would later conclude that the two boys were beaten to death, and that their decapitation was not the cause of death. The two boys were exactly in the same spot where several people complained of low flying planes dropping off strange packages. Were these two boys in the wrong place at the wrong time? Did they see a CIA sponsored drug drop? Many didn’t think so, but when a local sheriff decided to stick his nose around the private airstrip in Mena, where all of this strange activity was reputedly going on, he was soon afterward poisoned with anthrax. While complicity in the train death’s could never be proved, the Iran/Contra plot was soon uncovered when a U.S. airliner crashed in Nicaragua. The Tower Commission was formed to investigate, and since most of the information linking the President to the conspiracy was shredded by Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hill, North was acquitted and Reagan escaped with committing high treason. Neither the Tower Commission or the exposed CIA domestic drug running operation captured the attention of the United States public like Watergate did, and both the domestic and foreign crimes committed by the Reagan administration and the CIA went ignored by both the public and the media.

The CIA was created just to serve as an intelligence service, it had no business conducting both the domestic and even the foreign operations that it has carried out since its creation in the early fifties. The soul design of the CIA was to collect intelligence in a post WWII era, but it soon evolved into a creature that would topple governments, assassinate foreign leaders, and commit horrifying crimes against the very same people it swore to protect.

But how can we solve this problem? How can we control a government agency that has apparently run amuck? The answer is simple. Education. Unfortunately, the average American is more interested in watching pregnant teens on television, rather than to learn the history of his/her country. But the American citizen is not the only one to blame, very little of the CIA is taught at any level of education. If some history of the CIA could be taught in schools, than the public can be aware that operations like these were going on. There are several websites that have collections of declassified CIA documents, if they could somehow be advertised more to that public, than the public could keep track of declassified documents. So, if you educate the people, then the people could force Congress, who the CIA answers to, to hold the CIA accountable to it’s past crimes, and to the charter established for the CIA.

But, some people stand by these crimes. Some people think all of these operations were for the greater good. That all of the blood shed by the CIA was in purpose to its ultimate goal, to protect the United States. One could argue that all of these actions were all done to defend the United States during the Cold War. The same people would probably argue that these men should not be punished, but be seen as patriots for breaking the law.

Whether you agree with the legitimacy of the secret operations of the CIA or not, the federal government claims that the crimes stated above, and crimes like them, are no longer being committed by any government agency. But with new revelations coming to light each day about instances of the government lying to its people, I think it’s time we stop taking what the government is telling us at face value. And who is to blame for this? It is us, the public, who sits here and does nothing. Us, the public, who blindly follows our country into war without questioning the validity of it. A current war which message seems to be is that yesterday’s friend is tomorrow’s enemy. When the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, we seem to be a country that is blind.