Tag Archives: CIA

The Shocking War on Democracy

Posted on by Wade Lee Hudson

Anti-NSA rally in Washington DC

On November 28, the Guardian posted an alarming report titled “The War on Democracy” by Nafeez Ahmed concerning “how corporations and spy agencies use ‘security’ to defend profiteering and crush activism.”

When it comes to governmental repression against efforts to reform the status quo, I am not easily shocked. After all, I lived through Cointelpro, bogus conspiracy trials against demonstrators opposed to the Vietnam War, and Richard Nixon’s Huston Plan (modified but still substantially implemented). And I knew about the violent attacks on labor unions prior to the New Deal.

But Ahmed’s article, drawing on a report by the Center for Corporate Policy (CCP) in Washington DC titled Spooky Business: Corporate Espionage against Nonprofit Organizations, shocked me profoundly.

The CCP steering committee includes Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh from the Institute for Policy Studies, Ilyse Hogue from MoveOn, and Robert Weissman, editor of the Multinational Monitor.

Ahmed reports that Spooky Business relies on “a wide range of public record evidence, including lawsuits and journalistic investigations.” And he concludes, “It paints a disturbing picture of a global corporate espionage program that is out of control, with possibly as much as one in four activists being private spies.”

According to the report:

A diverse array of nonprofits have been targeted by espionage, including environmental, anti-war, public interest, consumer, food safety, pesticide reform, nursing home reform, gun control, social justice, animal rights and arms control groups.… Many of the world’s largest corporations and their trade associations … have been linked to espionage or planned espionage against nonprofit organizations, activists and whistleblowers.

These efforts were not limited to intelligence gathering. Rather, they often involved active attempts to undermine the work of advocacy organizations.

Even worse, the FBI and the CIA assist these efforts. A September 2010 report from the Office of the Inspector General in the US Justice Department concluded that:

… the factual basis of opening some of the investigations of individuals affiliated with the groups was factually weak… In some cases, we also found that the FBI extended the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis…. In some cases, the FBI classified some of its investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘Acts of Terrorism’ classification.

The FBI’s involvement has been formalized through “InfraGard’,” a partnership between private industry, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security.

In addition, active-duty CIA agents sell their expertise to these private security operations. With this moonlighting assistance, corporations are now able to “replicate in miniature the services of a private CIA,” according to the report.

While recently researching the Kennedy assassination, I was worried that I was going off the deep end. But as I commented in “JFK and the CIA”:

Revelations about how the Surveillance State has recently taken unwarranted political actions against Occupy and certain Muslims heightens the need for a more transparent, accountable CIA. Their strange secrecy around the Kennedy assassination is another cause for concern. Even if Oswald was the sole shooter, we need to know more about the CIA’s relationship with Oswald.

Ahmed’s article about the Spooky Business report reinforces my concern. “Just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

JFK and the CIA

Posted on by Wade Lee Hudson

CIA

On November 30, JFKFacts.org, edited by Jefferson Morley, who is suing the CIA for the release of documents related to the Kennedy assassination, published a link to a long argument for the lone assassin theory in “Against Conspiracy.” Presumably Morley did so because he considers it a responsible case for that point of view. The article he referenced is “JFK Conspiracy Theories at 50: How the Skeptics Got It Wrong and Why It Matters,” by David Reitzes.

I read it and felt that he was convincing. Then I read a November 21 essay in the New Yorker, “A Word in Favor of J.F.K. Conspiracy Theories,” by John Cassidy, and I was persuaded that there are still important unanswered questions. Cassidy argues:

…I’m willing to swallow my skepticism and accept the official story: Oswald was the lone shooter. But why did he do it, and was he maybe put up to it?…. There is also the unresolved question of how the C.I.A. may have been connected to Oswald, or, at least, how closely it was tracking his movements…. The suspicion lingers that the Agency, for whatever reason, was monitoring Oswald more keenly than it has let on….

But here’s another question that has always refused to vacate my mind when I’ve been about to close the casebook. If Oswald acted alone, without any outside influence, how and why did Jack Ruby pump a .38 slug into his gut two days later in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters?… On the face of it, doesn’t it sound more likely that Ruby, a rakish gambler and strip-joint proprietor with longstanding ties to the criminal underworld, shot Oswald to keep him silent?…

It’s hard to see Ruby as the self-sacrificing or altruistic type…. If any outsider could slip through the security lines and get to the accused shooter, it was Ruby, and it’s hardly outlandish to assume that some of his shadier associates knew this.

On the morning of November 24, he somehow managed to be present, and armed with his pistol, at the very moment when Oswald was being walked to a car for transfer to a jailhouse. Mere coincidence?…

So, were both Oswald and Ruby acting alone, for reasons of their own? It’s perfectly possible. But the conspiracy theorists aren’t being completely off the wall in suggesting that this might not be the entire story…. The horrific and endlessly fascinating forty-eight hours that brought together Kennedy, Oswald, and Ruby bequeathed too many puzzling details, weird coincidences, and shady characters for the doubters to stay silent.

Revelations about how the Surveillance State has recently taken unwarranted political actions against Occupy and certain Muslims heightens the need for a more transparent, accountable CIA. Their strange secrecy around the Kennedy assassination is another cause for concern. Even if Oswald was the sole shooter, we need to know more about the CIA’s relationship with Oswald.