{"id":127194,"date":"2019-02-04T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=127194"},"modified":"2019-02-02T10:27:35","modified_gmt":"2019-02-02T10:27:35","slug":"the-cia-then-and-now-old-wine-in-new-bottles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/02\/the-cia-then-and-now-old-wine-in-new-bottles\/","title":{"rendered":"The CIA Then and Now: Old Wine in New Bottles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnd as the flames climbed high into the night
\nTo light the sacrificial rite
\nI saw Satan laughing with delight
\nThe day the music died\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2013 Don McLean, \u201cAmerican Pie\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Nazis had a name for their propaganda and mind-control operations: weltanschauungskrieg<\/em> \u2013 \u201cworld view warfare.\u201d\u00a0 As good students, they had learned many tricks of the trade from their American teachers, including Sigmund Freud\u2019s nephew, Edward Bernays, who had honed his propagandistic skills for the United States during World War I and had subsequently started the public relations industry in New York City, an industry whose raison d\u2019\u0207tre from the start was to serve the interests of the elites in manipulating the public mind.<\/p>\n

In 1941, U.S. Intelligence translated weltanschauungskrieg<\/em> as \u201cpsychological warfare,\u201d a phrase that fails to grasp the full dimensions of the growing power and penetration of U.S. propaganda, then and now.\u00a0 Of course, the American propaganda apparatus was just then getting started on an enterprise that has become the epitome of successful world view warfare programs, a colossal beast whose tentacles have spread to every corner of the globe and whose fabrications have nestled deep within the psyches of many hundreds of millions of Americans and people around the world.\u00a0 And true to form in this circle game of friends helping friends, this propaganda program was ably assisted after WW II by all the Nazis secreted into the U.S. (\u201cOperation Paperclip\u201d) by Allen Dulles and his henchmen in the OSS and then the CIA to make sure the U.S. had operatives to carry on the Nazi legacy (see David Talbot\u2019s The Devil\u2019s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, The CIA, and The Rise of America\u2019s Secret Government<\/em>, an extraordinary book that will make your skin crawl with disgust).<\/p>\n

This went along quite smoothly until some people started to question the Warren Commission\u2019s JFK assassination story. \u00a0The CIA then went on the offensive in 1967 and put out the word to all its people in the agency and throughout the media and academia to use the phrase \u201cconspiracy theory\u201d to ridicule these skeptics, which they have done up until the present day. This secret document \u2013 CIA Dispatch 1035-960<\/a> \u2013 was a propaganda success for many decades, marginalizing those researchers and writers who were uncovering the truth about not just President Kennedy\u2019s murder by the national security state, but those of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy.\u00a0 Today, the tide is turning on this score, as recently more and more Americans are fed up with the lies and are demanding that the truth be told.\u00a0 Even the Washington Post<\/a> is noting this, and it is a wave of opposition that will only grow.<\/p>\n

The CIA Exposed \u2013 Partially<\/strong><\/p>\n

But back in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, some covert propaganda programs run by the CIA were \u201cexposed.\u201d\u00a0 First, the Agency\u2019s sponsorship of the Congress of Cultural Freedom, through which it used magazines, prominent writers, academics, et al. to spread propaganda during the Cold War, was uncovered.\u00a0 This was an era when Americans read serious literary books, writers and intellectuals had a certain cachet, and popular culture had not yet stupefied Americans. The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites.\u00a0 Frances Stonor Saunders comprehensively covers this in her 1999 book, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA And The World Of Arts And Letters<\/em>, and Joel Whitney followed this up in 2016 with Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World\u2019s Best Writers, <\/em>with particular emphasis on the complicity of the CIA and the famous literary journal The Paris Review.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then in 1975 the Church Committee hearings resulted in the exposure of abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc.\u00a0 In 1977 Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire \u2013 <\/em>\u201cThe CIA and the Media\u201d \u2013 naming names of journalists and publications (The<\/em> New York Times, CBS<\/em>, etc.) that worked with and for the CIA in propagandizing the American people and the rest of the world.\u00a0 (Conveniently, this article can be read on the CIA\u2019s website since presumably the agency has come clean, or, if you are the suspicious type, or maybe a conspiracy theorist, it is covering its deeper tracks with a \u201climited hangout,\u201d defined by former CIA agent Victor Marchetti, who went rogue, as “spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting\u2014sometimes even volunteering\u2014some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Confess and Move On<\/strong><\/p>\n

By the late 1970s, it seemed as if the CIA had been caught in flagrante delicto<\/em> and disgraced, had confessed its sins, done penance, and resolved to go and sin no more.\u00a0 Seeming, however, is the nature of the CIA\u2019s game.\u00a0 Organized criminals learn to adapt to the changing times, and that is exactly what the intelligence operatives did.\u00a0 Since the major revelations of the late sixties and seventies \u2013 MKUltra, engineered coups all around the world, assassinations of foreign leaders, spying on Americans, etc. \u2013 no major program of propaganda has been exposed in the mainstream media.\u00a0 Revealing books about certain CIA programs have been written \u2013 e.g. Douglas Valentine\u2019s important The Phoenix Program <\/em>being one \u2013 and dissenting writers, journalists, researchers, and whistleblowers (Robert Parry, Gary Webb, Julian Assange, James W. Douglass, David Ray Griffin, Edward Snowden, et al.) have connected the U.S. intelligence services to dirty deeds and specific actions, such as the American engineered coup d\u2019\u00e9tat in Ukraine in 2013-14, electronic spying, and the attacks of September 11, 2001. \u00a0But the propaganda has for the most part continued unabated at a powerful and esoteric cultural level, while illegal and criminal actions are carried out throughout the world in the most blatant manner imaginable, as if to say fuck you openly while insidiously infecting the general population through the mass electronic screen culture that has relegated intellectual and literary culture to a tiny minority.<\/p>\n

Planning Ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let me explain what I think has been happening.<\/p>\n

Organizations like the CIA are obviously fallible and have made many mistakes and failed to anticipate world events.\u00a0 But they are also very powerful, having great financial backing, \u00a0and do the bidding of their masters in banking, Wall St., finance, etc.\u00a0 They are the action arm of these financial elites, and are, as Douglass Valentine has written, organized criminals.\u00a0 They have their own military, are joined to all the armed forces, and are deeply involved in the drug trade. They control the politicians. They operate their own propaganda network in conjunction with the private mercenaries they hire for their operations. \u00a0The corporate mass media take their orders, orders that need not be direct, but sometimes are, because these media are structured to do the bidding of the same elites that formed the CIA and own the media.\u00a0 And while their ostensible raison d\u2019\u0207tre is to provide intelligence to the nation\u2019s civilian leaders, this is essentially a cover story for their real work that is propaganda, killing, and conducting coups d\u2019\u00e9tats at home and abroad.<\/p>\n

Because they have deep pockets, they can afford to buy all sorts of people, people who pimp for the elites. Some of these people do work that is usually done by honest academics and independent intellectuals, a dying breed, once called free-floating intellectuals. These pimps analyze political, economic, technological, and cultural trends.\u00a0 They come from different fields: history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, political science, cultural studies, linguistics, etc. They populate the think tanks and universities.\u00a0 They are often intelligent but live in bad faith, knowing they are working for those who are doing the devil\u2019s work. But they collect their pay and go their way straight to the bank, the devil\u2019s bank.\u00a0 They often belong to the Council of Foreign Relations or the Heritage Foundation. They are esteemed and esteem themselves.\u00a0 But they are pimps<\/em>.<\/p>\n

El Diablo <\/strong><\/p>\n

Ah, the devil!\u00a0 He\u2019s their man. A man of many names, but always an impostor. \u00a0These pimps know his story and how he works his magic, and this is what their paymasters want from them: ways to use the old bastard\u2019s bag of tricks to conjure confusion, and sow fear and paranoia.\u00a0 And to do this slow and easy in ways no one will recognize until it is too late.<\/p>\n

For like culture, propaganda relies on myths, symbols, and stories.\u00a0 Some prefer to say narratives.\u00a0 But nothing is more powerful.\u00a0 Controlling the stories is the key to powerful propaganda. The pimps can spin many a tale.<\/p>\n

Tell people endless tales of the good guys and the bad, of how the bad are out to get you and the good to save you. Think of the use of symbols in the telling of these stories.\u00a0 They are crucial.\u00a0 The word symbol comes from a Greek word to throw together.\u00a0 Symbols that represent the in-group or the \u201cgood guys\u201d are used to create social solidarity within the in-group.\u00a0 Stories are told to accompany the symbols; stories, narratives, or myths tell of how the good guys are fighting to hold the group together and the bad guys are trying to rip the community apart.\u00a0 The symbolic and its opposite \u2013 the diabolic (to throw apart) \u2013 the angels against the devils \u2013 el diablo.\u00a0 Very simple, very old.\u00a0 The aliens are out to get us.\u00a0 And el diablo is always the ultimate other, the man in red, the reds, the commies, the Russians, the others, immigrants, the blacks who want to move next door, Muslims, gays\u00a0 – take your pick.\u00a0 Satanic rituals.\u00a0 Black magic.\u00a0 Witchcraft.<\/p>\n

Methods of Propaganda<\/strong><\/p>\n

Infecting minds with such symbols and stories must be done directly and indirectly, as well as short-term and long-term.\u00a0 Long term propaganda is like a slowly leaking water pipe that you are vaguely aware of but that rots the metal from within until the pipe can no longer resist the pressure.\u00a0 Drip drop, drip drop, drip drop \u2013 and the inattentive recipients of the propaganda gradually lose their mettle to resist and don\u2019t know it, and then when an event bursts into the news \u2013 e.g. the attacks of September 11, 2001 or Russia-gate \u2013 they have been so softened that their assent is automatically given.\u00a0 They know without hesitation who the devil is and that he must be fought.<\/p>\n

The purpose of the long-term propaganda is to create certain predispositions and weaknesses that can be exploited when needed.\u00a0 Certain events can be the triggers to induce the victims to react to suggestions.\u00a0 When the time is ripe, all that is needed is a slight suggestion, like a touch on the shoulder, and the hypnotized one acts in a trance.\u00a0 The gun goes off, and the entranced one can\u2019t remember why (see: Sirhan Sirhan).\u00a0 This is the goal of mass hypnotization through long-term propaganda: confusion, memory loss, and automatic reaction to suggestion.<\/p>\n

Intelligence Pimps and Liquid Screen Culture<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the CIA\u2019s dirty tricks were made public in the 1970s, it is not hard to imagine that the intellectual pimps who do their long-range thinking were asked to go back to the drawing board and paint a picture of the coming decades and how business as usual could be conducted without further embarrassment.\u00a0 By that time it had become clear that intellectual or high culture was being swallowed by mass culture and the future belonged to electronic screen culture and images, not words.\u00a0 What has come to be called \u201cpostmodernity\u201d ensued, or what the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman calls \u201cliquid modernity\u201d and Guy Debord \u201cthe society of the spectacle.\u201d \u00a0Such developments, rooted in what Frederic Jameson has termed \u201cthe cultural logic of late capitalism,\u201d have resulted in the fragmentation of social and personal life into pointillistic moving pictures whose dots form incoherent images that sow mass confusion and do not cohere.\u00a0 From the mid-1970s until today, this generalized disorientation with its flowing and eternal present of appearing and dissolving images has resulted in what is surely a transformed world, and with it, transformed worldviews.\u00a0 The foundations have collapsed. Meaning and coherence have become difficult to discern.\u00a0 Stable personality has been disassociated, memory downloaded, attention lost, the psyche materialized, sexual identity confused, the electronic mind-body interface established, and the electronic and pharmaceutical drugging of the population accomplished.\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n

Did not the intelligence agencies foresee all this?\u00a0 Did not they see it and plan accordingly?\u00a0 Did they not notice that about the time their old dirty deeds were being exposed, a movie burst onto the screen that introduced a theme familiar to them and their Nazi friends?\u00a0 I mean the 1973 hit, The Exorcist,<\/em> wherein Satan struts his stuff, four years after Mick Jagger strut his across the stage at Altamont, singing \u201cSympathy for the Devil,\u201d while shortly after a killing took place down in front of him and the 1960s were laid to rest.\u00a0 But during the 1970s The Exorcist<\/em> and its theme of the devil\u2019s hold on people came to life and was \u00a0taken up with a religious fervor by the entertainment industry and promoted by Oprah Winfrey, Geraldo Rivera, and other media luminaries, who went about promoting el diablo\u2019s hold on so many helpless victims.\u00a0 Occult, magic, and satanic themes became pop staples and would remain so up until the present day.\u00a0 I would suggest that readers put aside their reservations at what may seem sensational and watch this video<\/a>.\u00a0 Then ask yourself: what is going on here?<\/p>\n

The CIA as Prophetic<\/strong><\/p>\n

But maybe a better question than did the CIA foresee these developments, would be to ask if it has been involved in the occult and satanic world itself, before and after the social developments of \u201cliquid modernity.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0The answer is yes.\u00a0 Indeed, all the characteristics of the social and cultural developments I mentioned previously in reference to postmodernity have been a major part of its work before<\/u> this new world emerged: \u201cthe disassociation of stable personalities, memory erasure and the implanting of false memories, materializing the psyche, confusing sexual identity, establishing the electronic mind-body interface, and electronic, hallucinogenic (the CIA introduced and spread LSD in the 1960s), and pharmaceutical drugging,\u201d to name but a few.\u00a0 In anticipating these developments the CIA was at the very least predictive.\u00a0 Disinformation, acts of terrorism, \u00a0coup d\u2019\u00e9tats, assassinations flow out of a marriage to the Nazis made in hell \u2013 Talbot\u2019s \u201cdevil\u2019s chessboard\u201d \u2013 but they are linked to much more.\u00a0 Peter Levenda, in Sinister Forces: A Grimoire<\/em> of American Political Witchcraft<\/em>, a trilogy on sinister forces in American history, puts it this way:<\/p>\n

The CIA, satanic cults, and UFOs, the mythology of the late twentieth century is surprisingly coherent even though the masks change from case to case, from victim to alleged\u00a0 victim.\u00a0 The CIA, of course, does exist; their mind control programs from BLUEBIRD to ARTICHOKE to MK-ULTRA are a matter of public record.\u00a0 Their history of political assassinations and the overthrow of various foreign governments is also a matter of record.\u00a0 Satanic cults \u2013 or perhaps we should qualify that and say \u2018occult secret societies\u2019 \u2013 also exist and are a matter of public record; their attempts to contact alien forces by means of ceremonial magic and arcane ritual (including the use of some of the same drugs and other techniques as the CIA used in its mind control programs) are also well-known and documented.\u00a0 Some of these practitioners were \u2013 and are \u2013 well-known men and women who have not denied their involvement (such as rocket scientist Jack Parsons in the 1950s and Army Colonel and intelligence officer Michael Aquino in the 1990s).\u00a0 The CIA also aggressively researched American cults and secret societies in an effort to discover the source of paranormal abilities and ancient mind control mechanisms. And while the jury is still out on the question of UFOs, there is no doubt that government agencies have attempted to track, to analyze them, and to explain them away.\u00a0 Again this is a matter of public record, including FBI and CIA documents in addition to military records.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Skeptical readers may find this strange to consider.\u00a0 That would be a mistake.\u00a0 The web of connections is there for anyone who cares to look.\u00a0 For more than fifty years occult themes and rituals have been part of world view warfare.\u00a0 Drugs, shamanism, black magic, and the occult \u2013 staples of the CIA then and now.\u00a0 It is well known that Hollywood, television, and the media in general have been working closely with the intelligence agencies for a long time. Especially since 2001, films and television programs have glorified the CIA, our \u201cgood\u201d spies, and the military. The mystification of reality has found its best friend in the electronic and internet revolution as strange and \u201csubversive\u201d beliefs are dangled like candy for little children.\u00a0 Good and evil move through the public consciousness like passing sun and shadows.\u00a0 Weird conspiracy theories \u201cpop up\u201d to titillate and obsess, and to drive out the serious findings of dedicated and disciplined writers and researchers who have discovered the truth about real government conspiracies.\u00a0 Sowing confusion is the name of this deadly game, and if you find yourself confused, you are in good company.<\/p>\n

But many are catching on and realizing that what seems strange but innocent is part of a much larger effort to hypnotize the public to agree to their own destruction through the ingestion of what can only be called black magic.<\/p>\n

The eloquent writer and brave American, Jim Garrison, the former District Attorney of New Orleans and the only person to bring a trial in the assassination of President Kennedy, put it this way in On The Trail of The Assassins<\/em>, the story of his quest to solve the murder of JFK.<\/p>\n

I knew by now that when a group of individuals gravitated toward one another for no apparent reason, or a group of individuals inexplicitly headed in the same directions as if drawn by a magnetic field, or coincidence piled upon coincidence too many times, as often as not the shadowy outlines of a covert intelligence operation were somehow becoming visible.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rub Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness, the right way and the CIA emerges into the light.\u00a0 You can see its shadowy outline with your eyes wide shut.\u00a0 As it says on CIA headquarters: \u201cYou shall know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.\u201d<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a> and teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is <\/em>http:\/\/edwardcurtin.com\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the CIA\u2019s dirty tricks were made public in the 1970s, it is not hard to imagine that the intellectual pimps who do their long-range thinking were asked to go back to the drawing board and paint a picture of the coming decades and how business as usual could be conducted without further embarrassment. By that time it had become clear that intellectual or high culture was being swallowed by mass culture and the future belonged to electronic screen culture and images, not words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":108249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}