excerpts from the book
CIA Diary
Inside the Company
by Philip Agee
Penguin Books, 1975
p37
... what the Agency [CIA] does is ordered by the President
and the NSC [National Security Council]. The Agency neither makes
decisions on policy nor acts on its own account. It is an instrument
of the President.
... the question of Congressional monitoring of intelligence
activities and of the Agency in particular. The problem resides
in the National Security Act of 1947 and also in its amendment,
the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949. These laws charged
the DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] with protecting the
'sources and methods' of the US intelligence effort and also exempted
the DCI and the Bureau of the Budget from reporting to Congress
on the organization, function, personnel and expenditures of the
CIA - whose budget is hidden in the budgets of other executive
agencies. The DCI, in fact, can secretly spend whatever portion
of the CIA budget he determines necessary, with no other accounting
than his own signature. Such expenditures, free from review by
Congress or the General Accounting Office or, in theory, by anyone
outside the executive-branch, are called 'unvouchered funds'.
By passage of these laws Congress has sealed itself off from
CIA activities, although four small sub-committees are informed
periodically on important matters by the DCI. These are the Senate
and House sub-committees of the Armed Services and Appropriations
Committees, and the speeches of their principal spokesman, Senator
Richard Russell, are required reading for the JOT'S.
There have been several times when ClA autonomy was threatened.
The Hoover Commission Task Force on Intelligence Activities headed
by General Mark Clark recommended in 1955 that a Congressional
Watchdog Committee be established to oversee the CIA much as the
Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy watches over the
AEC. The Clark Committee, in fact, did not believe the sub-committees
of the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees were able
to exercise effectively the Congressional monitoring function.
However, the problem was corrected, according to the Agency position,
when President Eisenhower, early in 1956, established his own
appointative committee to oversee the Agency. This is the President's
Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities, whose
chairman is James R. Killian, President of Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. It can provide the kind of 'private citizen' monitoring
of the Agency that Congress didn't want. Moreover ... the more
Congress gets into the act the greater the danger of accidental
revelation of secrets by indiscreet politicians. Established relationships
with intelligence services of other countries, like Great Britain,
might be complicated. The Congress was quite right at the beginning
in giving up control - so much for them, their job is to appropriate
the money.
p49
In addition to discovering ordinary state secrets, the CS is responsible
for obtaining the most complete and accurate information possible
on the global manifestations of Soviet imperialism, that is, on
local communist parties and related political groups. The exceptions
to the world-wide operating charter of the CS is the agreement
among the US, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand
whereby each has formally promised to abstain from secret operations
of any kind within the territory of the others except with prior
approval of the host government. The governments of all other
nations, their internal political groups and their scientific,
military and economic secrets are fair game.
p53
The most important liaison operation of the CIA is with MI-6,
whose cryptonym is SMOTH. It has been almost ten years since Burgess
and Maclean disappeared, and SMOTH has apparently tightened its
loose, 'old boy', clubby security practices. The inner club also
includes the services of Canada, Australia and New Zealand although
the CIA receives relatively little from these. Liaison with the
Dutch is considered excellent because they facilitate support
operations against targets of mutual interest, as do the Italians
who tap telephones and intercept correspondence for the CIA station
in Rome. The West German services are considered to be thoroughly
penetrated by the Soviets while liaison with the French has become
difficult and sensitive since the return of de Gaulle.
p69
Psychological and paramilitary, known as PP or KUCAGE, operations
differ from those of PI or CI because they are action rather than
collection activities. Collection operations should be invisible
so that the target will be unaware of them. Action operations,
on the other hand, always produce a visible effect. This, however,
should never be attributable to the CIA or to the US government,
but rather to some other person or organization. These operations,
which received their Congressional charter in the National Security
Act of 1947 under 'additional services of common concern', are
in some ways more sensitive than collection operations.
They are usually approved by the PP staff of the DDP, but
when very large amounts of money are required or especially sensitive
methods are used approval may be required of the OCB (Undersecretary
level), the NSC or the President himself.
PP operations are, of course, risky because they nearly always
mean intervention in the affairs of another country with whom
the US enjoys normal diplomatic relations. If their true sponsorship
were found out the diplomatic consequences could be serious. This
is in contrast to collection operations, for if these are discovered
foreign politicians are often prepared to turn a blind eye - they
are a traditional part of every nation's intelligence activity.
Thus the cardinal rule in planning all PP operations is 'plausible
denial', only possible if care has been taken in the first place
to ensure that someone other than the US government can be made
to take the blame.
PP programmes are to be found in almost every CIA station
and emphasis on the kinds of PP operations will depend very much
on local conditions. Psychological warfare includes propaganda
(also known simply as 'media'), work in youth and student organizations,
work in labour organizations (trade unions, etc.), work in professional
and cultural groups and in political parties. Paramilitary operations
include infiltration into denied areas, sabotage, economic warfare,
personal harassment, air and maritime support, weaponry, training
and support for small armies.
Media Operations
The CTA'S role in the US propaganda programme is determined
by the official division of propaganda into three general categories:
white, grey and black. White propaganda is that which is openly
acknowledged as coming from the US government, e.g. from the US
Information Agency (USIA); grey propaganda is ostensibly attributed
to people or organizations who do not acknowledge the US government
as the source of their material and who produce the material as
if it were their own, black propaganda is unattributed material,
or it is attributed to a non-existent source, or it is false material
attributed to a real source. The CTA is the only US government
agency authorized to engage in black propaganda operations, but
it shares the responsibility for grey propaganda with other agencies
such as USTA. However, according to the 'Grey Law' of the National
Security Council contained in one of the NSCID'S, other agencies
must obtain prior CIA approval before engaging in grey propaganda.
The vehicles for grey and black propaganda may be unaware
of their CIA or US government sponsorship. This is partly so that
it can be more effective and partly to keep down the number of
people who know what is going on and thus to reduce the danger
of exposing true sponsorship. Thus editorialists, politicians,
businessmen and others may produce propaganda, even for money,
without necessarily knowing who their masters in the case are.
Some among them obviously will and so, in agency terminology,
there is a distinction between 'witting' and 'unwitting' agents.
In propaganda operations, as in all other PP activities, standard
agency security procedure forbids payment for services rendered
to be made by a CIA officer working under official cover (one
posing as an official of the Department of State, for instance).
This is in order to maintain 'plausible denial' and to minimize
the danger of embarrassment to the local embassy if anything is
discovered by the local government. However, payment is made by
CTA officers under non-official cover, e.g. posing as businessmen,
students or as retired people; such officers are said to be working
under non-official cover.
Officers working under non-official cover may also handle
most of the contacts with the recruited agents in order to keep
the officer under official cover as protected as possible. Equally,
meetings between the two kinds of officer will be as secret as
may be. The object of all this is to protect the embassy and sometimes
to make the propaganda agents believe that they are being paid
by private businesses.
Headquarters' propaganda experts have visited us in ISOLATION
and have displayed the mass of paper they issue as material for
the guidance of propaganda throughout the world. Some of it is
concerned only with local issues, the rest often has world-wide
application. The result of the talks was to persuade most of us
that propaganda is not for us - there is simply too much paperwork.
But despite that, the most interesting part of propaganda was
obviously the business of orchestrating the treatment of events
of importance among several countries. Thus problems of communist
influence in one country can be made to appear of international
concern in others under the rubric of 'a threat to one is a threat
to all'. For example, the CIA station in Caracas can cable information
on a secret communist plot in Venezuela to the Bogota station
which can 'surface' through a local propaganda agent with attribution
to an unidentified Venezuelan government official. The information
can then be picked up from the Colombian press and relayed to
CTA stations in Quito, Lima, La Paz, Santiago and, perhaps, Brazil.
A few days later editorials begin to appear in the newspapers
of these places and pressure mounts on the Venezuelan government
to take repressive action against its communists.
There are obviously hosts of other uses to which propaganda,
both black and grey, can be put, using books, magazines, radio,
television, wall-painting, handbills, decals, religious sermons
and political speeches as well as the daily press. In countries
where handbills or wall-painting are important media, stations
are expected to maintain clandestine printing and distribution
facilities as well as teams of agents who paint slogans on walls.
Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty are the best known grey
propaganda operations conducted by the CIA against the Soviet
bloc.
Youth and Student Operations
At the close of World War II, the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union began a major propaganda and agitation programme through
the formation of the International Union of Students (IUS) and
the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), both of which
brought together national affiliates within their respective fields
in as many countries as possible. These organizations promoted
CPSU objectives and policy under the guise of unified campaigns
(anti-colonialism, anti-nuclear weapons, propeace groups, etc.),
in which they enlisted the support of their local affiliates in
capitalist countries as well as within the communist bloc. During
the late 1940s the US government, using the Agency for its purpose,
began to brand these fronts as stooges of the CPSU with the object
of discouraging non-communist participation. In addition to this
the Agency engaged in operations in many places designed to stop
local groups affiliating with the international bodies. By recruiting
leaders of the local groups and by infiltrating agents, the Agency
tried to gain control of as many of them as possible, so that
even if such a group had already affiliated itself to either the
IUS or the WFDY, it could be persuaded or compelled to withdraw.
The Agency also began to form alternative youth and student
organizations at local and international level. The two international
bodies constructed to rival those sponsored by the Soviet Union
were the Coordinating Secretariat of National Unions of Students(COSEC)
with headquarters in Leyden, and the World Assembly of Youth (WAY)
situated in Brussels. Headquarters' planning, guidance and operational
functions in the CTA youth and student operations are centralized
in the International Organizations Division of the DDP.
Both COSEC and WAY, like the TUS and WFDY, promote travel,
cultural activities and welfare, but both also work as propaganda
agencies for the CTA - particularly in underdeveloped countries.
They also have consultative status as non-governmental institutions
with United Nations agencies such as UNESCO and they participate
in the UN special agencies' programmes.
One very important function of the CTA youth and student operations
is the spotting, assessing and recruiting of student and youth
leaders as long-term agents, both in the PI and PP fields. The
organizations sponsored or affected by the Agency are obvious
recruiting grounds for these and, indeed, for other CTA operations.
It is particularly the case in the underdeveloped world that both
COSEC and WAY programmes lead to the recruitment of young agents
who can be relied on to continue CTA policies and remain under
CTA control long after they have moved up their political or professional
ladders.
Apart from working through COSEC and WAY the Agency is also
able to mount specific operations through Catholic national and
international student and youth bodies (Pax Romana and the International
Catholic Youth Federation) and through the Christian Democrat
and non-communist socialist organizations as well. In some countries,
particularly those in which there are groups with strong communist
or radical leaderships, the Catholic or Christian Democratic student
and youth organization are the main forces guided by the Agency.
Agents controlled through youth and student operations by
a station in any given country, including those in the US National
Students Association (NSA) international programme run by headquarters,
can also be used to influence decisions at the international level,
while agents at the international level can be used for promoting
other agents or policies within a national affiliate. Control,
then, is like an alternating current between the national and
international levels.
Largely as a result of Agency operations, the WFDY headquarters
was expelled from France in 1951, moving to Budapest. The TUS
headquarters, on the other hand, was never allowed to move to
the free world after its founding at Prague in 1946. Moreover,
the WFDY and TUS have been clearly identified with the communist
bloc, and their efforts to conduct conferences and seminars outside
the bloc have been attacked and weakened by WAY and COSEC. The
WFDY, for example, has been able to hold only one World Youth
Festival outside the bloc, in Vienna in 1959, and then it was
effectively disrupted by CIA-controlled youth and student organizations.
The TUS has never held a congress in the free world. More important
still, both WAY and COSEC have developed overwhelming leads in
affiliate members outside the communist bloc.
p79
Political-Action Operations
Communist expansion brought forth still another type of PP
operation: political action. Operations designed to promote the
adoption by a foreign government of a particular policy vis-a-vis
communism are termed political-action operations. While the context
of these operations is the assessment of the danger of communist
or other leftist influence in a given country, the operations
undertaken to suppress the danger arc pegged to specific circumstances.
These operations often involve promotion through funding and guidance
of the careers of foreign politicians through whom desired government
policy and action can be obtained. Conversely, these operations
often include actions designed to neutralize the politicians who
promote undesirable local government policy regarding communism.
Although political-action operations after World War II began
with electoral funding of anti-communist political parties in
France and Italy in the late 1940s, they are now prevalent in
the underdeveloped countries where economic and social conditions
create a favourable climate for communist advance. The obvious
human elements in political-action operations are political parties,
politicians and military leaders, although agents in other PP
operations including labour, student and youth, and media are
often brought to bear on specific political-action targets.
In order to obtain political intelligence as well as to develop
relationships with potential political-action agents, most stations
have continuing programmes for cultivating local politicians from
opposition as well as from government parties. Making acquaintances
in local politics is not usually difficult because CTA officers
under diplomatic cover in embassies have natural access to their
targets through cocktail parties, receptions, clubs and other
mechanisms that bring them together with people of interest. Regular
State Department Foreign Service Officers and Ambassadors as well
may also facilitate the expansion of station political contacts
through arranging introductions. When a local political contact
is assessed favourably for station goals, security clearance and
operational approval is obtained from headquarters, and the station
officer m contact with the target begins to provide financial
support for political campaigns or for the promotion of the target's
political group or party. Hopefully, almost surely, the target
will use some of the money for personal expenses thereby developing
a dependency on the station as a source of income. Eventually,
if all goes well, the local politician will report confidential
information on his own party and on his government, if he has
a government post, and he will respond to reasonable station direction
regarding the communist question.
A station's liaison operations with local security services
are also a valuable source of political-action assets. Because
of frequent political instability in underdeveloped countries,
the politicians in charge of the civilian and military security
forces are in key positions for action as well as for information,
and they are often drawn into an operational relationship with
the station when they enter office merely by allowing ongoing
liaison operations to continue. They are subjected to constant
assessment by the station for use in political action and when
deemed appropriate they may be called upon for specific tasks.
Financial support is also available for furthering their political
careers and for a continuing relationship once they leave the
ministry.
As final arbiters of political conflicts in so many countries,
military leaders are major targets for recruitment. They are contacted
by station officers in a variety of ways, sometimes simply through
straightforward introduction by US military attaches or the personnel
of US Military Assistance Missions. Sometimes the liaison developed
between the Agency and local intelligence services can be used
for making these contacts. Again CTA officers can make contact
with those military officers of other countries who come to the
US for training. As in the case of politicians, most Agency stations
have a continual programme for the development of local military
leaders, both for the collection of intelligence and for possible
use in political action.
The political actions actually undertaken by the Agency are
almost as varied as politics itself. High on the list of priorities
is the framing of Soviet officials in diplomatic or commercial
missions in order to provoke their expulsion. Politicians working
for the Agency are expected to take an active part in working
for expulsion of 'undesirables'. Similarly, where the Soviet Union
tries to extend its diplomatic or commercial activities, our politicians
are expected to use their influence to oppose such moves. They
are also expected to take a hard line against their own nationals
engaged in left-wing or communist activities. In the last of these
instances success means the proscription of the parties, the arrest
or exile of their leaders, the closure of their offices, publications
and bookstores, the prohibition of their demonstrators, etc. Such
large-scale programmes call for action both by anticommunist movements
and by national governments - where possible the Agency likes
to use the same political action agents for both purposes.
But it is not just a matter of financing and guiding local
politicians. In situations regarded as dangerous to the US, the
Agency will conduct national election operations though the medium
of an entire political party. It will finance candidates who are
both 'witting' and 'unwitting'. Such multi-million-dollar operations
may begin a year or more before an election is due and will include
massive propaganda and public-relations campaigns, the building
of numerous front organizations and funding mechanisms (often
resident US businessmen), regular polls of voters, the formation
of 'goon-squads' to intimidate the opposition, and the staging
of provocations and the circulation of rumours designed to discredit
undesirable candidates. Funds are also available for buying votes
and vote counters as well.
If a situation can be more effectively retrieved for US interests
by unconstitutional methods or by coup d'etat, that too may be
attempted. Although the Agency usually plays the anti-communist
card in order to foster a coup, gold bars and sacks of currency
are often equally effective. In some cases a timely bombing by
a station agent, followed by mass demonstrations and finally by
intervention by military leaders in the name of the restoration
of order and national unity, is a useful course. Agency political
operations were largely responsible for coups after this pattern
in Iran in 1953 and in the Sudan in 1958.
Paramilitary Operations
At times the political situation in a given country cannot
be retrieved fast or effectively enough through other types of
PP operations such as political action. In these cases the Agency
engages in operations on a higher level of conflict which may
include military operations - although these should not be seen
as US sponsored. These unconventional warfare operations are called
paramilitary operations. The Agency has the charter from the National
Security Council for US government unconventional warfare although
the military services also sustain a paramilitary capability in
case of general war. These operations seem to hold a special fascination,
calling to mind OSS heroism, resistance, guerrilla warfare, secret
parachute jumps behind the lines. Camp Peary is a major Agency
training base for paramilitary operations.
The need for getting agents into denied areas like certain
parts of the Soviet Union, China and other communist countries,
is satisfied in part by illegal infiltration by land, sea or air.
The agents, usually natives of the denied area, are given proper
clothing, documentation and cover stories and, if infiltrating
by land, may be required to pass secretly through heavily guarded
borders. Training in border crossing is given in a restricted
area of Camp Peary where a mile or so of simulated communist borders
is operated with fences, watch-towers, dogs, alarms and patrols.
Maritime infiltration involves the use of a mother ship, usually
a freighter operated by an Agency cover shipping company which
approaches to within a few miles of the shore landing-site. An
intermediate craft, often a souped-up outboard, leaves the mother
ship and approaches to perhaps a mile off the shore where a rubber
boat with a small silent outboard is inflated to carry the infiltration
team to the beach. The rubber boat and auxiliary equipment is
buried near the beach for use later in escape while the intermediate
craft returns to the mother ship. Infiltration by air requires
black overflights for which the Agency has unmarked long- and
short-range aircraft including the versatile Helio Courier that
can be used in infil-exfil operations with landings as well as
parachute drops. Restricted areas of Camp Peary along the York
River are used for maritime training and other parts of the base
serve as landing-sites and drop zones.
Once safely infiltrated to a denied area, a lone agent or
a team may be required to perform a variety of jobs. Frequently
an infiltration team's mission is the caching of weapons, communications
equipment or sabotage materials for later retrieval by a different
team which will use them. Or, an infiltration team may perform
sabotage through the placing of incendiary devices or explosives
at a target-site timed to go off days, weeks or even months later.
Sabotage weapons include oil and gasoline contaminates for stopping
vehicles, contaminates for jamming printing-presses, limpets for
sinking ships, explosive and incendiary compounds that can be
moulded and painted to look like bread, lamps, dolls or stones.
The sabotage instructors, or 'burn and blow boys', have staged
impressive demonstrations of their capabilities, some of which
are ingeniously designed so as to leave little trace of a cause.
Aside from sabotage, an infiltration team may be assigned targets
to photograph or the loading or unloading of dead drops (concealed
places for hiding film, documents or small containers). Escape
may be by the same route as entry or by an entirely different
method.
The Economic Warfare Section of the PP staff is a sub-section
under Paramilitary Operations because its mission includes the
sabotage of key economic activities in a target country and the
denial of critical imports, e.g. petroleum. Contamination of an
export agricultural product or associated material (such as sacks
destined for the export of Cuban sugar), or fouling the bearings
of tractors, trucks or buses destined for a target country may
be undertaken if other efforts to impede undesired trade fail.
As Economic Warfare is undertaken in order to aggravate economic
conditions in a target country, these operations include in addition
to sabotage, the use of propaganda, labour, youth, student and
other mass organizations under CIA control to restrict trade by
a friendly country of items needed in the target economy US companies
can also be called upon to restrict supply of selected products
voluntarily, but local station political-action assets are usually
more effective for this purpose.
Also coordinated in the paramilitary section of the PP staff
is the effort to maintain Agency supplies of weapons used in support
of irregular military forces. Although the Air and Maritime Support
section of the staff supervises standing Agency operations to
supply insurgents (Air America and Civil Air Transport in the
Far East, for example) additional resources such as aircraft can
be obtained from the Defense Department. These operations included
the Guatemalan invasion in 1954 (aptly given the cryptonyrn LCSUCCESS);
Tibetan resistance against the Chinese in 1958-9 and the rebellion
against the Sukarno government in Indonesia in 1957-8; current
training and support of irregular forces in South Vietnam and
Laos; and increasing sabotage and paramilitary operations against
the Castro government in Cuba. Leaflet drops as part of the propaganda
aspect of paramilitary operations are also arranged through the
Air and Maritime Support section.
Closely related to paramilitary operations are the disruptive
activities known as militant action. Through organization and
support of 'goon squads' sometimes composed of off-duty policemen,
for example, or the militant sections of friendly political parties,
stations attempt to intimidate communists and other extreme leftists
by breaking up their meetings and demonstrations. The Technical
Services staff of the DDP makes a variety of weapons and devices
for these purposes. Horrible smelling liquids in small glass vials
can be hurled into meeting halls. A fine clear powder can be sprinkled
in a meeting-place becoming invisible after settling but having
the effect of tear-gas when stirred up by the later movement of
people. An incendiary powder can be moulded around prepared tablets
and when ignited the combination produces ample quantities of
smoke that attacks the eyes and respiratory system much more strongly
than ordinary tear-gas. A tasteless substance can be introduced
to food that causes exaggerated body colour. And a few small drops
of a clear liquid stimulates the target to relaxed, uninhibited
talk. Invisible itching powder can be placed on steering wheels
or toilet seats, and a slight smear of invisible ointment causes
a serious burn to skin on contact. Chemically processed tobacco
can be added to cigarettes and cigars to produce respiratory ailments.
Our training in PP operations includes constant emphasis on
the desirability of obtaining reportable intelligence information
from agents engaged in what are essentially action (as opposed
to collection) operations. A well-run action operation, in fact,
can produce intelligence of extremely good quality whether the
agents are student, labour or political leaders. Justification
for continuing PP operations in Project Renewals includes references
to the operation's value in strictly collection activities as
well as effectiveness in achieving action goals. No action agent,
therefore, can be allowed to neglect the intelligence by-product
of his operation, although the action agent may have to be eased
into the intelligence reporting function because of the collaborative
nature of his early relationship with the Agency. Nevertheless
with a little skill even leaders of some rank can be manipulated
into collecting information by letting them know indirectly that
financial support for them is based partly on satisfaction of
intelligence reporting requirements.
The funding of psychological and paramilitary projects is
a complex business. Project Outlines are prepared either in the
station or at headquarters, depending on which of these is proposing
or running the operation. Included in this, apart from those elements
already mentioned for F! projects, will be a statement on the
need for coordination with other US government agencies such as
the State Department or the Department of Defense. Where appropriate
further reports are attached giving greater detail on finances,
personnel, training, supply and cover mechanisms.
Operational progress reports are required each trimester in
the case of routine operations, but such reports may be more frequent
in special cases. Intelligence received as a result of PP operations
is processed in the same way as that which comes from PI operations.
Funding action operations, especially those involving labour,
student, youth or other organizations is a perpetual problem.
Under certain circumstances it can be done through foundations
of one sort or another which have been created as fronts for the
Agency, but before this, or any other, method can be employed
there first has to be a decision about the level at which the
funds should be passed. If money is to be put into an international
organization like WAY, for example, then it might be possible
to do this through an American organization affiliated to it.
The money can then be disguised as a donation from that organization.
In other circumstances it might be possible to supply the money
through a 'cutout', that is, through a person who can claim that
the money is either a donation on his own account or from his
business. If this system is used the money is sometimes paid by
the 'cutout' to a US organization affiliated to the international
group for whom the money is finally intended.
If it is paid direct then it is usual for the secretary-general
or the finance committee chairman of the organization in question
to be a 'witting' agent. The decision about the method to be used
is subject to several considerations. First the matter of security
and cover is considered; second comes the question of which method
would best ensure that the recipient or recipients will then do
what they have been paid for. Thus funds become a very effective
method of guiding an action agent. When cover foundations or companies
are used for funding they may be chartered in the US or in countries
such as Lichtenstein, the Bahamas and Panama, where commercial
secrecy is protected and governmental controls are minimal.
p503
The question is not whether, but when, to resign. I wonder
what the reaction would be if I wrote out a resignation telling
them what I really think. Something like this:
Dear Mr Helms,
I respectfully submit my resignation from the Central Intelligence
Agency for the following reasons:
I joined the Agency because I thought I would be protecting
the security of my country by fighting against communism and Soviet
expansion while at the same time helping other countries to preserve
their freedom. Six years in Latin America have taught me that
the injustices forced by small ruling minorities on the mass of
the people cannot be eased sufficiently by reform movements such
as the Alliance for Progress. The ruling class will never willingly
give up its special privileges and comforts. This is class warfare
and is the reason why communism appeals to the masses in the first
place. We call this the 'free world'; but the only freedom under
these circumstances is the rich people's freedom to exploit the
poor.
Economic growth in Latin America might broaden the benefits
in some countries but in most places the structural contradictions
and population growth preclude meaningful increased income for
most of the people. Worse still, the value of private investment
and loans and everything else sent by the US into Latin America
is far exceeded year after year by what is taken out - profits,
interest, royalties, loan repayments - all sent back to the US.
The income left over in Latin America is sucked up by the ruling
minority who are determined to live by our standards of wealth.
Agency operations cannot be separated from these conditions.
Our training and support for police and military forces, particularly
the intelligence services, combined with other US support through
military assistance missions and Public Safety programmes, give
the ruling minorities ever stronger tools to keep themselves in
power and to retain their disproportionate share of the national
income. Our operations to penetrate and suppress the extreme left
also serve to strengthen the ruling minorities by eliminating
the main danger to their power.
American business and government are bound up with the ruling
minorities in Latin America - with the rural and industrial property
holders. Our interests and their interests - stability, return
on investment - are the same. Meanwhile the masses of the people
keep on suffering because they lack even minimal educational facilities,
healthcare, housing, and diet. They could have these benefits
of national income were not so unevenly distributed.
To me what is important is to see that what little there is
to go around goes around fairly. A communist hospital can cure
just like a capitalist hospital and of communism is the likely
alternative to what I've seen in Latin America, then it's up to
the Latin Americans to decide. Our only alternatives are to continue
supporting injustice or to withdraw and let the cards fall by
themselves.
And the Soviets? Does KGB terror come packaged of necessity
with socialism and communism? Perhaps so, perhaps not, but for
most of the people in Latin America the situation couldn't be
much worse - they've got more pressing matters than the opportunity
to read dissident writers. For them it's a question of day-by-day
survival.
No, I can't answer the dilemma of Soviet expansion, their
pledge to 'bury' us, and socialism in Latin America. Uruguay,
however, is proof enough that conventional reform does not work,
and to me it is clear that the only real solutions are those advocated
by the communists and others of the extreme left. The trouble
is that they're on the Soviet side, or the Chinese side or the
Cuban side - all our enemies.
I could go on with this letter but it's no use. The only real
alternative to injustice in Latin America is socialism and no
matter which shade of red a revolutionary wears, he's allied with
forces that want to destroy the United States. What I have to
do is to look out for myself first and put questions of principle
to rest. I'll finish the resume and find another job before saying
what I really think.
p558
One has to take the realistic view in order to fulfill responsibilities
you have to compromise with the system knowing full well that
the system doesn't work for everybody. This means everybody has
to get what he can within decency's limits - which can be stretched
when needed to assure a little more security. What I have to do
now is get mine, inside the system, and forget I ever worked for
the CIA. No, there's no use trying to change the system. What
happened at the Plaza of the Three Cultures is happening all over
the world to peopIe trying to change the system. Life is too short
r and has too many delights that might be missed. At thirty-three
I've got half a lifetime to enjoy them.
p561
... Secret CIA operations constitute the usually unseen efforts
to shore up unjust, unpopular, minority governments, always with
the hope that overt military intervention (as in Vietnam and the
Dominican Republic) will not be necessary. The more successful
CIA operations are, the more remote overt intervention becomes
- and the more remote become reforms. Latin America in the 1960s
is all the proof one needs.
A book on the CIA could also illustrate how the interests
of the privileged minorities in poor countries lead back to, and
are identified with, the interests of the rich and powerful who
control the US. Counter-insurgency doctrine tries to blur these
international class lines by appeals to nationalism and patriotism
and by falsely relating movements against the capitalist minorities
to Soviet expansionism. But what counter-insurgency really comes
down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America,
their property and their privileges. US national security, as
preached by US leaders, is the security of the capitalist class
in the US, not the security of the rest of the people - certainly
not the security of the poor except by way of reinforcing poverty.
It is from the class interests in the US that our counter-insurgency
programmes flow, together with that most fundamental of American
foreign policy principles: that any government, no matter how
bad, is better than a communist one - than a government of workers,
peasants and ordinary people. Our government's support for corruption
and injustice in Latin America flows directly from the determination
of the rich and powerful in the US, the capitalists, to retain
and expand these riches and power...
... The killings at Kent State and Jackson State show clearly
enough that sooner or later our counter-insurgency methods would
be applied at home.
p564
The key to adopting increasingly radical views has been my
fuller comprehension of the class divisions of capitalist society
based on property or the lack of it. The divisions were always
there, of course, for me to see, but until recently I simply failed
to grasp their meaning and consequences: adversary relationships,
exploitation, labour as a market-place commodity, etc. But by
getting behind the liberal concept of society, that concept that
attempts to paint out the irreconcilable class conflicts, I think
I have grasped an understanding of why liberal reform programmes
in Latin America have failed. At the same time I have seen more
clearly the identity of interests of the classes in Latin America
(and other underdeveloped areas) with the corresponding classes
in the US (and other developed areas).
The result of this class conception, of seeing that class
identity comes before nationality, leads to rejection of liberal
reform as the continuous renovating process leading step by step
to the better society. Reform may indeed represent improvement,
but it is fundamentally a manoeuvre by the ruling class in capitalist
society, the capitalists, to allow exploitation to continue, to
give a little in order to avoid losing everything. The Alliance
for Progress was just this kind of fraud - although it was heralded
as a Marshall Plan for Latin America that would permit, indeed
encourage, a Latin American New Deal to sweep through the region
behind the leadership of liberals like Betancourt, Haya de la
Torre, Kubichek and Munoz Marin.
But the Alliance for Progress failed as a social reform programme,
and it failed also to stimulate sufficient per capita economic
growth, partly because of high population growth and partly because
of slow growth in the value of the region's exports. These two
factors, combined with rising consumption by upper and middle
classes, provided less for the investments on which growth must
be founded.
Result? The division in Latin American society widened between
the modern core, dependent largely on the external sector, and
the marginalized majority. By 1969 over half the people in the
labour market were unemployed or underemployed. Where progress
occurred in education, health care and housing it accrued mostly
to the core societies in cities. Flight to cities by rural unemployed
continued with the cities unable to absorb them productively.
The vicious circle of small internal markets and lack of internal
growth momentum also continued.
Particularly in countries like Brazil, where economies have
grown rapidly, wealth and income have tended to even greater concentration.
Latest figures of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America
(ECLA) show that the poorest 20 per cent of the Latin American
population now receive only 3-1 per cent of total income and that
the entire lower 50 per cent receives only 13.4 per cent of total
income. The upper 5 per cent income bracket, on the other hand,
receives 33.4 per cent of total income. The contrast between the
high 5 per cent and the lower 50 per cent of the population according
to ECLA rests on the dominance of the entrepreneurial class -
the capitalists - in the upper 5 per cent whose extraordinary
income results largely from distribution of profits which could
be reinvested instead of being consumed. In Mexico, for example,
60 per cent of the income of the top 5 per cent is dividends,
in El Salvador 80 per cent, in Argentina 85 per cent. Most important,
income of the high 5 per cent is growing more rapidly than the
middle- and lower-income levels - thus aggravating income imbalance
still more. The assumption, therefore, that economic growth under
the Alliance for Progress would result in higher standards of
living for the poorer half of the population is now demonstrated
to have been false.
Land-reform programmes have also failed. During the 1960s
virtually every country in Latin America began some programme
to reform restrictive, precarious and uneconomical tenure systems
- long accepted as the most serious structural cause of imbalance
in wealth and income. But with the exceptions of Cuba, Peru and
Chile the impulse has been lost and little progress made where
the bulk of the potential income-producing resources lies. Concentration
continues: the upper 1.8 per cent of the rural income scale holds
more than 50 per cent of the farmland while the small landholders
who number 25 per cent of the farm population hold only 2.4 per
cent of farmland.
During these past ten years, while Latin American countries
failed to establish more equitable distribution of land, wealth
and income, considerable success could be claimed in counterinsurgency
- including propaganda to attract people away from the Cuban solution
as well as repression. As part of the counterinsurgency campaign,
the Alliance for Progress in the short run did indeed raise many
hopes and capture many imaginations in favour of the peaceful
reform solutions that would not fundamentally jeopardize the dominance
of the ruling capitalist minorities and their system. Since the
1960s however, as the psychological appeal of peaceful reform
diminished in the face of failure, compensatory measures have
been increasingly needed: repression and special programmes, as
in the field of organized labour, to divide the victims and neutralize
their leaders. These measures constitute the four most important
counter-insurgency programmes through which the US government
strengthens the ruling minorities in Latin America: CIA operations,
military assistance and training missions, AID Public Safety programmes
to help police, and trade-union operations through ORIT,: the
International Trade Secretariats and the AlFED -all largely controlled
by the CIA. Taken together these are the crutches given by the
capitalist rulers of the US to their counterparts in Latin America
in order to obtain reciprocal support against threats to American
capitalism. Never mind all those marginals - what's good for capitalists
in Latin America is good for capitalists in the USA.
A liberal reform programme like the Alliance for Progress
is a safety-valve for capitalist injustice and exploitation -
as the frontier served for release and escape from oppression
in American cities during the last century. Such a programme is
only what the ruling-class will allow by way of redistribution
during a time of danger to the system as a whole - something that
runs against the current and the inherent drive to concentrate
wealth and political power in ever fewer hands. Once the sense
of urgency and danger fades, so also the pressure on the safety-valve
declines and the natural forces for accumulation recuperate, soon
wiping out the relative gains that the exploited obtained through
reform. Reforms are temporary palliatives that can never eliminate
the exploitative relationship on which capitalism is based.
Increasingly, as the oppressed in capitalist society comprehend
the myth of liberal reform, their ruling minorities have no choice
but to increase repression in order to avert socialist revolution.
Eliminate CIA stations, US military missions, AID Public Safety
missions and the 'free' trade-union programmes and those minorities
would disappear, faster perhaps, than they themselves would imagine.
p570
The functioning of the external sectors of Latin American
economies (excepting Venezuela as a special case) during these
ten years demonstrates how these economies have supported the
US standard of living to the detriment of the Latin American people:
Americans, in other words, can thank Latin American workers for
having contributed to our ease and comfort. It is the external
sector that counts because exports and foreign aid determine how
much machinery and technology can be imported for economic growth,
and during the past ten years the external sectors of Latin American
economies failed to generate adequate growth.
From 1961 to 1970 Latin America paid out to other regions,
mostly to the US, a little over 20 billion dollars, practically
all m financial services (royalties, interest and repatriated
profits to foreign capital). About 30 per cent of this potential
deficit was offset by export surpluses, while the remaining 70
per cent was paid through new indebtedness, new private foreign
investment and other capital movements. The new indebtedness,
representing as it does new costs for financial services, raised
still higher the proportion of export earnings required for repatriation
of royalties, interest and profits to foreigners, mostly US, thus
decreasing amounts available for investment.
During these ten years private foreign capital provided new
investment of only 5~5 billion dollars while taking out 20 billion
dollars. The lion's share went to US investors whose investment,
which averaged about 12 billion dollars in value, returned about
13 billion dollars to the US. Without the loans and grants from
the US under the Alliance for Progress, Latin America would have
had to devote about 10 per cent more of its export earnings to
the services account so that 'fair return' on investment could
be satisfied. Otherwise a moratorium or some other extreme measure
would have been necessary - hardly conducive to new credit and
investment.
The Alliance for Progress has been, in effect, a subsidy programme
for US exporters and private investors - in many cases the same
firms. For Latin America this has meant a deficit in the external
sector of about 6 billion dollars that limited the importation
of equipment and technology needed for faster economic growth
- the deficit compensated by new indebtedness. For the United
States this has meant a return to private investors of about five
dollars for every dollar sent from the US to Latin America during
the period, plus a favourable trade balance, plus billions of
dollars in loans that are earning interest and will some day be
repaid. In other words Latin America through the Alliance for
Progress has contributed to the economic development of the United
States and has gone into debt to do it. No wonder we prop up these
governments and put down the revolutionaries.
In contrast to the myth of the Alliance for Progress, which
ensures that the gap between the US and Latin American economies
will grow, the interesting alternative does not assume that economic
growth is the determinant for integration of the marginalized
majority. Based on a distinction between economic growth and social
development, the revolutionary solution begins with integration.
The Cuban position paper for this year's sessions of ECLA, entitled
Latin America and the Second United Nations Decade for Development,
views social integration through structural changes in institutions
- revolutionary change rather than reform - as the condition for
development. Economic growth alone, with benefits concentrated
in the modern core minority, cannot be considered as national
development because the whole society doesn't participate. Institutional
change, social integration and economic growth is the revolutionary
order of priorities rather than economic growth, reform and eventual
extension of benefits to the marginals - little by little so as
not to affect the wealthy.
The institutional changes: first, the land tenure system must
be altered to break the injustices and low productivity resulting
from the latifundia-minifundia problem. Second, the foreign economic
enterprises must be nationalized so that the product of labour
is used for national development instead of being channelled to
shareholders in a highly-developed, capital-exporting country.
Third, the most important national economic activities must come
under state control and be subjected to overall development planning
with new criteria for marketing, expansion and general operations.
Fourth, personal income must be redistributed in order to give
purchasing power to the previously marginalized. Fifth, a real
working union between government and people must be nurtured so
that the sacrifices ahead can be endured and national unity strengthened.
During this early period of institutional change, attained
with few exceptions, in the Cuban view, through armed struggle,
the basic problems of priorities emerge: immediate development
of social overhead projects in health and education v. expansion
of consumption of the formerly marginalized v. investment in infrastructure.
The redistribution of income, new costs of social projects, and
increased internal consumption leave even less productive capacity
for re-investment than before. High demand causes inflationary
pressures and black markets, while rationing is necessary to assure
equity in distribution.
The only source of relief to offset the investment deficit,
according to the Cubans, is foreign aid. Aggravating the development
problem is the exodus of managers and professionals who join the
overthrown landed gentry and upper middle classes in seeking to
avoid participation in national development by fleeing to 'free'
countries. Another drain on investment is the obvious need to
maintain oversized military forces to defeat domestic and foreign
counter-revolutionary forces.
The romantic stage of the revolution ends, then, as the realities
of the long struggle for national development take root. Internally
the revolution calls for ever-greater productivity, particularly
in exports, so that dependence on external financing can be kept
as low as possible. Nevertheless, years will pass before economic
growth will reach the point of decreasing reliance on foreign
aid. Sacrifice and greater effort are the order of the day, and
neither can possibly result if the producers - the workers, peasants
and others - fail to identify in the closest union with the revolutionary
government. Mistakes will be made, as every Cuban is quick to
admit, but there can be no doubt that national development here
is well underway and accelerating.
In Cuba the people have education, health care and adequate
diet, while long strides are being made in housing. When one considers
that over half the population of Latin America, over 150 million
people, are still deprived of participation in these minimal benefits
of modern culture and technology, it becomes clear that the only
country that has really attained the social goals of the | Alliance
for Progress is Cuba.
p584
Only a few more months and ten years will have passed since
that 31 March when the cables arrived in the Montevideo station
reporting Goulart's overthrow. Such joy and relief! Such a regime
we created. Not just through the CIA organization and training
of the military regime's intelligence services; not just through
the military assistance programmes - good for 165 million dollars
in grants, credit sales and surplus equipment since 1964 plus
special training in the US for thousands; not just through the
AID police assistance programme worth over 8 million dollars and
training for more than 100,000 Brazilian policemen; not just the
rest of the US economic assistance programme - worth over 300
million dollars in 1972 alone and over 4 billion dollars in the
last twenty-five years. Not just the multi-lateral economic assistance
programmes where US influence is strong - worth over 2 5 billion
dollars since 1946 and over 700 million dollars in 1972. Most
important, every one of the hundreds of millions of private US
dollars invested in Brazil is a dollar in support of fascism.
All this to support a regime in which the destitute, marginalized
half of the population - some fifty million people - are getting
still poorer while the small ruling elite and their military puppets
get an ever larger share. All this to support a regime under which
the income of the high 5 per cent of the income scale now gets
almost 40 per cent of total income, while half the population
has to struggle for survival on 15 per cent of total income. All
this to create a facade of 'economic miracle' where per capita
income is still only about 450 dollars per year - still behind
Nicaragua, Peru and nine other Latin American countries - and
where even the UN Economic Commission for Latin America reports
that the 'economic miracle' has been of no benefit to the vast
majority of the population. All this for a regime that has to
clamour for export markets because creation of an internal market
would imply reforms such as redistribution of income and a slackening
of repression - possibly even a weakening of the dictatorship.
A11 this to support a regime denounced the world over for the
barbaric torture and inhuman treatment inflicted as a matter of
routine on its thousands of political prisoners - including priests,
nuns and many non-Marxists - many of whom fail to survive the
brutality or are murdered outright. Repression in Brazil even
includes cases of the torture of children, before their parents'
eyes, in order to force the parents to give information. This
is what the CIA, police assistance, military training and economic
aid programmes have brought to the Brazilian people. And the Brazilian
regime is spreading it around: Bolivia in 1971, Uruguay in February
of this year and now Chile.
p595
The gap between rich and poor grows in developed countries
as well as in poor countries and between the developed and underdeveloped
countries. A considerable proportion of the developed world's
prosperity rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the
poor countries' primary products and on exporting high-cost capital
and finished goods to those countries. Continuation of this |
kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative gap between
developed and underdeveloped countries - it means keeping poor
people poor. Within the underdeveloped countries the ~t distorted,
irrational growth dependent on the demands and vagaries of foreign
markets precludes national integration, with increasing marginalization
of the masses. Even the increasing nationalism of countries like
Peru, Venezuela and Mexico only yield ambiguous programmes for
liberating dependent economies while allowing privileged minorities
to persist.
Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that
. the prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged
minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty.
This understanding is bringing even greater determination to take
revolutionary action and to renew the revolutionary movements
where, as in Chile, reverses have occurred. Increasingly, the
underprivileged and oppressed minorities in developed countries,
particularly the US, perceive the identity of their own struggle
with that of the marginalized masses in poor countries.
The US government's defeat in Vietnam and in Cuba, inspires
exploited peoples everywhere-to take action for their liberation.
Not the CIA, police training, military assistance, 'democratic'
trade unions, not even outright military intervention can forever
postpone the revolutionary structural changes that mean the end
of capitalist imperialism and the building of socialist society.
Perhaps this is the reason why policymakers in the US and their
puppets in Latin America are unable to launch reform programmes.
They realize that reform might lead even faster to revolutionary
awareness and action and their only alternative is escalating
repression and increasing injustice. Their time, however, is running
out.
p596
... In the CIA we justified our penetration, disruption and
sabotage of the left in Latin America - around the world for that
matter - because we felt morality changed on crossing national
frontiers. Little would we have considered applying these methods
inside our own country. Now, however, we see that the FBI was
employing these methods against the left in the US in a planned,
coordinated programme to disrupt, sabotage and repress the political
organizations to the left of Democratic and Republican liberals.
The murders at Kent and Jackson State, domestic activities of
US military intelligence, and now the President's own intelligence
plan and 'plumbers' unit - ample demonstration that CIA methods
were really brought home. Prior restraints on using these methods
against the 'respectable' opposition were bound to crumble. In
the early 1960s when the CIA moved to its new headquarters in
Virginia, Watergate methods obtained final institutional status.
How fitting that over the rubble of the CIA's old temporary
buildings back in Washington, the new building that rose was called
'Watergate'.
When the Watergate trials end and the whole episode begins
to fade, there will be a movement for national renewal, for reform
of electoral practices, and perhaps even for reform of the FBI
and the CIA. But the return to our cozy self-righteous traditions
should lure no one into believing that the problem has been removed.
Reforms attack symptoms rather than the disease, and no other
proof is needed than the Vietnam War and Watergate to demonstrate
that the disease is our economic system and its motivational patterns.
Reforms of the FBI and the CIA, even removal of the President
from office, cannot remove the problem. American capitalism, based
as it is on exploitation of the poor, with its fundamental motivation
in personal greed, simply cannot survive without force - without
a secret police force. The argument is with capitalism and it
is capitalism that must be opposed, with its CIA, FBI and other
security agencies understood as logical, necessary manifestations
of a ruling class's determination to retain power and privilege.
Now, more than ever, indifference to injustice at home and
abroad is impossible. Now, more clearly than ever, the extremes
of poverty and wealth demonstrate the irreconcilable class conflicts
that only socialist revolution can resolve. Now, more than ever,
each of us is forced to make a conscious choice whether to support
the system of minority comfort and privilege with all its security
apparatus and repression, or whether to struggle for real equality
of opportunity and fair distribution of benefits for all of society,
in the domestic as well as the international order. It's harder
now not to realize that there are two sides, harder not to understand
each, and harder not to recognize that like it or not we contribute
day in and day out either to the one side or to the other.
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