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The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence Pt. 2 · Conspiracy! The Show

0:10
Speaker 1: Wait, true insurance de troth, I'm a check the audults.
0:17
Speaker 2: Ad Hey, everybody, welcome to Conspiracy the Show.
0:35
Speaker 3: I'm your host, Adam Todd Brown. I don't have a
0:39
Speaker 3: co host this week. I am going at alone. Why
0:42
Speaker 3: because we are finally digging in to part two of
0:46
Speaker 3: the book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Just
0:50
Speaker 3: to refresh your memory, this was the first book the
0:52
Speaker 3: US government ever tried to censor on national security grounds.
0:57
Speaker 3: It's a forgotten moment in American history, do in large
1:02
Speaker 3: part to the fact that the events and lawsuits around
1:05
Speaker 3: this book happened around the same time the government was
1:09
Speaker 3: trying to hang a New York Times reporter in the
1:12
Speaker 3: town square for reporting on the Pentagon Papers. Those were
1:16
Speaker 3: a series of documents that made it really clear that
1:19
Speaker 3: the American government was lying to the people about the
1:22
Speaker 3: country's dealings in Vietnam. One of the big differences between
1:26
Speaker 3: this book and the Pentagon Papers is that the Pentagon
1:30
Speaker 3: Papers just revealed that the government lied to us a
1:33
Speaker 3: bunch in the past. The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence,
1:37
Speaker 3: on the other hand, was about things that the government
1:39
Speaker 3: was doing in the present, at least at the back
1:42
Speaker 3: then present. You get it and here's the thing. Evil
1:45
Speaker 3: as it may be, the US government isn't the least
1:49
Speaker 3: transparent in the world. It's just that they usually take
1:52
Speaker 3: a long long time to tell us stuff like how
1:55
Speaker 3: all those Roswell UFO files are just now coming out,
1:59
Speaker 3: for example, And even then we only get the absolute
2:02
Speaker 3: minimum amount of information they can give us while staying
2:05
Speaker 3: within the boundaries of the law. And because of that
2:08
Speaker 3: sheen of transparency, when you dive into older source material
2:12
Speaker 3: like this book, you'll sometimes find things that are presented
2:16
Speaker 3: as shocking revelations that these days are just common knowledge
2:20
Speaker 3: and accepted as things the government does. Case in point.
2:24
Speaker 3: Part two of this book kicks off with a section
2:27
Speaker 3: about special operations. Did you know the CIA sometimes deals
2:32
Speaker 3: with their problems by way of covert military action? Yeah,
2:36
Speaker 3: of course you know that. We have known that for
2:39
Speaker 3: decades now, but information didn't flow as freely in the
2:42
Speaker 3: early seventies, so back then this was news to everyone
2:46
Speaker 3: who read this book. The first few pages of this
2:49
Speaker 3: chapter spend a lot of words explaining some fundamental things
2:53
Speaker 3: about the CIA that anyone who is interested in the
2:57
Speaker 3: agency at all already knows by now. Example, there are
3:01
Speaker 3: two types of CIA agents the ones who do spy
3:04
Speaker 3: shit and the ones who do murder shit, and you
3:06
Speaker 3: can tell what side of the fence. Victor Marchetti, the
3:09
Speaker 3: author of this book, fell on from his descriptions of
3:12
Speaker 3: each side. The clandestine spy guys are quote engaging in
3:17
Speaker 3: a gentleman's game end quote. The war guys, meanwhile, are
3:22
Speaker 3: described as both gangsters and animals in the span of
3:26
Speaker 3: one paragraph. But it's not all common knowledge. In this chapter,
3:30
Speaker 3: at one point, it talks about how the CIA back
3:33
Speaker 3: in the nineteen fifties realized that keeping full time military
3:37
Speaker 3: types on staff wasn't cost effective because they were useless
3:41
Speaker 3: when there wasn't war stuff to do. So instead of
3:45
Speaker 3: hiring full time mercenaries, they would just recruit from the Navy,
3:49
Speaker 3: Seals and other especially advanced military units and get them
3:53
Speaker 3: on loan. Those soldiers would serve their duty with the
3:56
Speaker 3: CIA and then go back to their regular military life.
3:59
Speaker 3: The CIA time counted toward their military time. It's like
4:03
Speaker 3: a vacation, but instead of lounging on a beach with
4:06
Speaker 3: a drink in your hand, you're pulling up to a
4:08
Speaker 3: beach in a military boat so you can topple a
4:11
Speaker 3: lawfully elected socialist leader. And that's actually not that interesting
4:14
Speaker 3: of a detail. I only bring it up because that
4:17
Speaker 3: process of getting military fighters on loan is for some
4:21
Speaker 3: reason called sheep dipping. One legitimately interesting set of details
4:26
Speaker 3: in this chapter involves the type of weapons the CIA
4:30
Speaker 3: was being trained on in the years before this book
4:32
Speaker 3: came out. The account comes from a former CIA agent
4:36
Speaker 3: who gave an interview to Rampart's magazine. Use code Conspiracy
4:40
Speaker 3: at checkout to save more than eleven percent on your
4:42
Speaker 3: annual subscription. Some of the stuff he talks about is
4:45
Speaker 3: kind of run of the mill by today's standards. Bullets
4:48
Speaker 3: that explode on impact, machine guns with silencers, homemade explosives,
4:53
Speaker 3: things are the like. But then he brings up the
4:55
Speaker 3: mini cannon. Here's a quote. It was constructed of a
4:58
Speaker 3: concave piece of sar steel fitted into the top of
5:01
Speaker 3: a number ten can filled with a plastic explosive. When
5:05
Speaker 3: the device was detonated, the tremendous heat of friction of
5:09
Speaker 3: the steel turning inside out made the steel piece a
5:12
Speaker 3: white hot projectile. There was a number of uses for
5:15
Speaker 3: the mini cannon, one of which was demonstrated to us
5:18
Speaker 3: using an old Army school bus. The mini cannon was
5:21
Speaker 3: fastened to the gasoline tank in such a fashion that
5:24
Speaker 3: the incendiary projectile would rupture the tank and flame, flaming
5:30
Speaker 3: gasoline the length of the bus interior, incinerating anyone inside.
5:35
Speaker 3: End quote an yikes for the record, The guy giving
5:38
Speaker 3: this account was driven to retire after seeing this demonstration.
5:42
Speaker 3: He got into the CIA thinking he was doing so
5:45
Speaker 3: to help spread democracy and good and then realized his
5:49
Speaker 3: job was more of a burn innocent civilians alive sometimes
5:53
Speaker 3: kind of gig. It was probably because of public accounts
5:56
Speaker 3: like this, among other things, Watergate being one of them.
6:00
Speaker 3: In the seventies there was this big push to reform
6:04
Speaker 3: the CIA, and if you ask history, that did actually happen.
6:08
Speaker 3: But I kind of take issue with that. I feel
6:10
Speaker 3: like the notion that the CIA has ever been reformed
6:13
Speaker 3: in any significant or beneficial way is incorrect. Yes, there
6:18
Speaker 3: were lots of revelations in the seventies. There was the
6:20
Speaker 3: Church Committee, which we'll talk about near the end of
6:23
Speaker 3: this episode. But eventually the reform we got was an
6:27
Speaker 3: agreement that the CIA wouldn't conduct mass surveillance on American
6:32
Speaker 3: citizens or operate on American soil, and for one thing,
6:36
Speaker 3: if you believe the suggestion that Jonestown was a CIA
6:39
Speaker 3: operation is true, then they'd already moved on from the
6:42
Speaker 3: hospital phase of that project and relocated to foreign lands
6:47
Speaker 3: to carry out the mass experiment phase by the time
6:50
Speaker 3: any of that reform started. And even if you don't
6:52
Speaker 3: believe that, we know for sure that the CIA was
6:55
Speaker 3: training mercenaries in Latin America by the early seventies. So
6:59
Speaker 3: aside from the MK ultra stuff, the CIA seemed to
7:02
Speaker 3: be almost completely focused on doing business in countries that
7:06
Speaker 3: weren't the United States, So thinking that banning them from
7:10
Speaker 3: operating on American soil was a punishment is kind of silly.
7:14
Speaker 3: They didn't want to operate on American soil anyway, and
7:17
Speaker 3: you can see more proof of that in a document
7:19
Speaker 3: all link to in the show notes. It was written
7:22
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty and it details the CIA's long term
7:26
Speaker 3: plans for that decade and beyond. For one thing, they
7:29
Speaker 3: definitely had no plans of downsizing now that the American
7:33
Speaker 3: people were mad at them. Not only did they want
7:36
Speaker 3: to expand they especially wanted to expand the exact kind
7:40
Speaker 3: of special operations. This chapter of the CIA and the
7:44
Speaker 3: Cult of intelligence talks about so much so that they
7:47
Speaker 3: even wanted to go back to having paramilitary units on
7:50
Speaker 3: standby again instead of sheep dipping troops on loan from
7:54
Speaker 3: the military. This document also highlighted the need to come
7:57
Speaker 3: up with money for those operations outside of the usual
8:01
Speaker 3: just ask Congress for it avenues. And this was published
8:04
Speaker 3: very shortly after for the first time in history, a
8:08
Speaker 3: CIA director decided to seek the second highest office in
8:11
Speaker 3: all the land, vice President of the United States. That
8:15
Speaker 3: CIA director was George H. W. Bush Hey remember that time.
8:19
Speaker 3: Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the fortieth President of the
8:22
Speaker 3: United States on January twentieth, nineteen eighty one, and approximately
8:26
Speaker 3: eight weeks later, someone tried to kill him in weirdo
8:29
Speaker 3: CIA mind control fashion. I'm sure none of that had
8:32
Speaker 3: anything to do with how vehemently Reagan went along with
8:37
Speaker 3: the suggestions in this CIA sales pitch for the majority
8:41
Speaker 3: of his presidency. For starters, we absolutely wrecked shop in
8:44
Speaker 3: Central America, putting down leftist regimes that dared to give
8:49
Speaker 3: their people food for cheap in our half of the hemisphere.
8:52
Speaker 3: In other words, just as this same nineteen eighty CIA
8:56
Speaker 3: document mentions the fight against communism shifted its folks from
9:00
Speaker 3: Russia to a more broad selection of smaller countries, and
9:04
Speaker 3: the book touches on why that might have been. We'll
9:06
Speaker 3: get into it later. As for the part about finding
9:09
Speaker 3: money for these operations, we know that also came to
9:12
Speaker 3: pass in the eighties, as seen in the Iran Contra
9:15
Speaker 3: scandal and more recently the FX original series Snowfall. Both
9:20
Speaker 3: of those schemes involved selling stuff and funneling money to
9:24
Speaker 3: the people behind our various early eighties interventions in Central America,
9:28
Speaker 3: eventually leading to all sorts of modern day problems that
9:32
Speaker 3: keep our domestic law enforcement and intelligence agencies employed. Nice
9:36
Speaker 3: What I'm getting at is that the special operations stuff
9:39
Speaker 3: mentioned in this book never stopped, which probably goes a
9:43
Speaker 3: long way toward explaining why the government doesn't really bother
9:46
Speaker 3: with censorship attempts of this sort anymore. Like sure, the
9:50
Speaker 3: Pentagon papers embarrassing people, there might have been a resignation
9:53
Speaker 3: or two over it, But so what about any of that?
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Speaker 3: Those are pretty minor ramifications for a scandal that involved
9:59
Speaker 3: us finding out the government propaganda to the country into
10:03
Speaker 3: a war that costs tens of thousands of lives. As
10:06
Speaker 3: for this book, the CIA didn't have to change anything
10:09
Speaker 3: after this book was published. They just carried on as usual,
10:12
Speaker 3: moving in the same direction they'd been planning to move
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Speaker 3: the entire time. So what's the point of spending resources
10:19
Speaker 3: on censorship litigation? I bet money that it's become even
10:22
Speaker 3: less important as society has moved toward labeling anything that
10:28
Speaker 3: someone claims the government did that the government doesn't admit
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Speaker 3: to as a conspiracy theory. Well done, America. Hey, let's
10:36
Speaker 3: talk about Chapter five of The CIA and the Cult
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Speaker 3: of Intelligence. This chapter is all about proprietary organizations. I
10:43
Speaker 3: feel like the American public has real pretend none of
10:46
Speaker 3: this is happening kind of relationship with the CIA. And
10:50
Speaker 3: that's especially true when it comes to things like proprietary organizations.
10:54
Speaker 3: That's just a fancy way to say fronts. These are
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Speaker 3: businesses or organizations that are funded by and operate mostly
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Speaker 3: for the benefit of the CIA, even if they don't
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Speaker 3: say so publicly. It might not say CIA Air on
11:07
Speaker 3: the side of the plane, but rest assured, if some
11:10
Speaker 3: cocaine needs a fly into or from Latin America, that's
11:13
Speaker 3: the plane it's going to be on. We like to
11:15
Speaker 3: make jokes these days about how the various forms of
11:18
Speaker 3: digital intrusion that we've allowed into our private lives might
11:22
Speaker 3: secretly be government funded efforts. But most of the time
11:25
Speaker 3: that's just true. Take Google Earth, for example. It's not
11:28
Speaker 3: like there's just some distant possibility that the CIA was
11:32
Speaker 3: involved in developing a program that takes aerial view photos
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Speaker 3: of the entire world all the time. No, it's just
11:39
Speaker 3: that the CIA developed that program. What we know as
11:43
Speaker 3: Google Earth now started life as Keyhole Incorporated, a CIA
11:49
Speaker 3: funded satellite mapping company that was acquired by Google in
11:53
Speaker 3: two thousand and five. Google acquired Keyhole Inc. From n
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Speaker 3: q TEL, which is quite literally the investment can appital
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Speaker 3: wing of the CIA. Again, that's not just a suggestion
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Speaker 3: or hyperbole. Here's the opening paragraph of in qtel's about page,
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Speaker 3: which you can easily find for yourself at IQT dot org.
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Speaker 3: Here goes. Qtel was founded in nineteen ninety nine as
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Speaker 3: the global technological evolution is underway. The Internet is widely available,
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Speaker 3: mobile applications are launching, and the digital revolution has arrived.
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Speaker 3: The CIA and government agencies, once innovation leaders recognized they
12:31
Speaker 3: were missing out on the cutting edge innovative and impactful
12:35
Speaker 3: technologies coming out of Silicon Valley and beyond, combining the
12:39
Speaker 3: security savvy of government with the can do curiosity of
12:43
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley. In q tel is born and that's where
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Speaker 3: your damn Google Earth's are coming from. But don't worry.
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Speaker 3: The queue in the name is just a James Bond reference,
12:53
Speaker 3: not a cabal of global elite sex traffickers reference. If
12:57
Speaker 3: you do make your way over to IQT dot org,
13:00
Speaker 3: take a look at their portfolio section, because it is
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Speaker 3: nine solid pages of CIA adjacent companies with CIA adjacent
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Speaker 3: names that all do CIA adjacent things. If you don't
13:13
Speaker 3: have time to check it out for yourself, here are
13:15
Speaker 3: some highlights. Falconry an analytics company, Preshian an AI and
13:21
Speaker 3: machine learning company. Tortuga Logic. That's an infrastructure company, and
13:25
Speaker 3: I know Tortuga means turtle, but it also shares way
13:28
Speaker 3: too many letters with the word torture for me to
13:30
Speaker 3: be comfortable with the CIA using it. Next one Morpheus Space.
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Speaker 3: What do they do people? It just says space. Everything
13:39
Speaker 3: else on this list is machine learning or analytics or
13:43
Speaker 3: autonomous systems, but for Morphius Space it just says space.
13:47
Speaker 3: How about you meet them? There if you have more questions, Nerdlinger.
13:51
Speaker 3: Then there's deep gram, which is AI and machine learning
13:54
Speaker 3: that sounds like Instagram for deep fakes, and I'm assuming
13:57
Speaker 3: that is exactly what it is until someone per otherwise.
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Speaker 3: Cockroach Labs trust them for all your IT platform needs.
14:05
Speaker 3: There's also Flirty, which, as the name implies, is an
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Speaker 3: autonomous systems company that will definitely never morph into a
14:13
Speaker 3: CIA controlled dating app. There's Anaconda Analytics, presented without further comment,
14:18
Speaker 3: and finally, black Bag Technologies, possibly the least subtle name
14:23
Speaker 3: you could give to a CIA owned company. There's also
14:27
Speaker 3: one more interesting name on the list of CIA owned
14:30
Speaker 3: tech companies, and that is Pallanteer Analytics. That's a name
14:34
Speaker 3: that's come up a lot on this podcast and a
14:36
Speaker 3: few others on the network, mostly in relation to the
14:39
Speaker 3: lapd Yes I know it's a Lord of the Rings
14:41
Speaker 3: reference cool it nerds. It's also a massive database of
14:45
Speaker 3: information that compiles all sorts of data from various surveillance
14:51
Speaker 3: streams and makes it searchable for law enforcement purposes. It's
14:55
Speaker 3: mainstream knowledge, to the point that if you watch the
14:57
Speaker 3: massively underrated heist film Denifi Eves, you'll hear Gerard Butler's
15:02
Speaker 3: dirty cop character make reference to running a palanteer search
15:06
Speaker 3: for fifty cent or whoever the hell he was after
15:09
Speaker 3: in that movie. So, in summary, when it comes to
15:11
Speaker 3: proprietary organizations, the CIA funded what is arguably the largest
15:16
Speaker 3: database of pictures of the Earth and the database most
15:20
Speaker 3: trusted by law enforcement to track down criminals at the
15:23
Speaker 3: local level. This isn't a secret, and it doesn't take
15:26
Speaker 3: an Internet search professional to find this information. But it
15:30
Speaker 3: feels like we still treat news like this as if
15:32
Speaker 3: it's just a theory or a suggestion, like, Haha, careful
15:36
Speaker 3: on that phone. Government might be spying on you, but
15:39
Speaker 3: there's no MTE about it. The government is just spying
15:43
Speaker 3: on you. So back to the book, The CIA and
15:46
Speaker 3: the Cult of Intelligence. Obviously, the CIA front companies it
15:50
Speaker 3: references are far less tech savvy than what they're dabbling
15:54
Speaker 3: in these days, but interesting nonetheless. For one thing, they're
15:57
Speaker 3: referred to in the book as the Delaware Corporations. These
16:01
Speaker 3: are again companies or organizations that by all public appearances
16:06
Speaker 3: operate independently, but behind closed doors, they're funded and controlled
16:10
Speaker 3: by the CIA. The majority of them, at least at
16:13
Speaker 3: the time, probably still were set up in Delaware because
16:16
Speaker 3: that state has notoriously lenient regulations when it comes to corporations.
16:22
Speaker 3: Two of the earliest CIA fronts, both set up in
16:24
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties, were Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty,
16:29
Speaker 3: which are both obviously car dealerships. Wait, no radio stations.
16:34
Speaker 3: Those are radio stations, and if you can believe it,
16:37
Speaker 3: the CIA used them both to drop the hottest propaganda
16:41
Speaker 3: on the streets whenever the situation called for it. The
16:45
Speaker 3: board of both companies were filled with prominent American business types,
16:49
Speaker 3: but it was the agency who had their people in
16:52
Speaker 3: all of the management and programming positions. A similar company
16:56
Speaker 3: was used during the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The CIA
16:58
Speaker 3: set up a radio station on a desolate island in
17:01
Speaker 3: the Caribbean called Swan Island, and they gave that radio
17:05
Speaker 3: station the creative name Radio Swan. According to all public records,
17:10
Speaker 3: it was an independently owned station that just happened to
17:13
Speaker 3: be hardcore dedicated to parroting CIA talking points. Except when
17:19
Speaker 3: the Bea Pigs invasion began, they stopped with a propaganda
17:23
Speaker 3: and just started straight up broadcasting orders to the troops,
17:26
Speaker 3: so that cover was blown. But also that was way
17:29
Speaker 3: way way down near the bottom on the list of
17:32
Speaker 3: concerns with the Beya pigs invasion. The CIA doesn't just
17:36
Speaker 3: deal in radio stations and tricking us into locking ourselves
17:40
Speaker 3: into a digital prison of our own making.
17:42
Speaker 1: Though.
17:42
Speaker 3: They also own a bunch of airlines, or at least
17:45
Speaker 3: they did back when this book was published. They probably
17:47
Speaker 3: owned fleets of UFOs by now. But yeah, dominating the
17:50
Speaker 3: globe in the name of fighting the Kamis requires a
17:54
Speaker 3: significant amount of air travel, so much so that it's
17:57
Speaker 3: just easier to own a whole bunch of commercial airline
18:00
Speaker 3: companies as opposed to risk going through a travel agency
18:04
Speaker 3: just to find out it's owned by Kerrie Russell and
18:07
Speaker 3: the guy from the Americans. God I miss that show. Anyway,
18:10
Speaker 3: the CIA owned a bunch of airlines, and that sets
18:13
Speaker 3: up one of the most interesting deletions in this book. Remember,
18:17
Speaker 3: the Feds got to read this first, and some of
18:19
Speaker 3: the things they wanted cut did indeed get cut. Here's
18:21
Speaker 3: a sentence about the CIA owned airlines. Agency proprietaries include
18:26
Speaker 3: Air America, Air Asia, Civil Air Transport, Inner Mountain Aviation,
18:32
Speaker 3: Southern Air Aviation deleted, and several other air charter companies
18:37
Speaker 3: around the world, which one was so sensitive that the
18:40
Speaker 3: public couldn't know about it. I want to know. It
18:43
Speaker 3: would be funny if it was like Spirit Airlines or something,
18:47
Speaker 3: and they were just too ashamed to admit they own
18:49
Speaker 3: that one. But it's obviously not that Spirit Airlines didn't
18:52
Speaker 3: exist when this book was written, and Spirit Airlines secretly rules.
18:56
Speaker 3: You're just a bad traveler if you think otherwise. Whatever
18:58
Speaker 3: the case, the CIA airline holdings at the time amounted
19:02
Speaker 3: to one of, if not the largest fleets of commercial
19:06
Speaker 3: aircraft owned by one person or group. But again, I'm
19:10
Speaker 3: sure they've abandoned commercial airliners for UFOs or jumping through
19:14
Speaker 3: wormholes or something like that. The next section of the book,
19:18
Speaker 3: chapter six, is dedicated to propaganda and disinformation, which is
19:23
Speaker 3: crazy because only Russia does that, right, of course not.
19:26
Speaker 3: We're great at it too, we always have been. One
19:29
Speaker 3: thing that comes up right away in this section is
19:31
Speaker 3: that we aren't just good at it, sometimes we're too
19:34
Speaker 3: good at it. The example they use is the Foreign
19:37
Speaker 3: Broadcast Information Service, which was a CIA owned outfit and
19:42
Speaker 3: their main role was to monitor news reports from various
19:46
Speaker 3: world intelligence hotspots and compile those stories into a handy,
19:51
Speaker 3: you know, compilation, and then they would disseminate that to
19:55
Speaker 3: various government and academic institutions that might need it. Nothing
19:59
Speaker 3: shady about that. I could use a service like that myself,
20:02
Speaker 3: but they didn't just do that. The fbis would also
20:05
Speaker 3: monitor the various fake radio stations and transmitters that the
20:11
Speaker 3: CIA erected all around the world to gauge what kind
20:14
Speaker 3: of reach the fake nonsense they were broadcasting through those
20:18
Speaker 3: radios was getting. And do you see where this is going?
20:21
Speaker 3: What would often end up happening is the fake CIA
20:25
Speaker 3: created news stories that they were monitoring would sometimes get
20:29
Speaker 3: mixed in with the legitimate news stories that they were
20:33
Speaker 3: distributing to the government and colleges and universities. In other words,
20:38
Speaker 3: their fake news was getting presented to the world at
20:40
Speaker 3: large as real news. And do you know what the
20:43
Speaker 3: CIA did to fix this? Not a goddamn thing. If
20:46
Speaker 3: legitimate academics and government officials are pushing those fake news stories,
20:51
Speaker 3: it just makes those stories seem less fake and thus
20:53
Speaker 3: more effective. Everyone wins, except for most of us. A
20:58
Speaker 3: lot of what comes up in this section of the
20:59
Speaker 3: book is redacted in dramatic fashion. Example, this passage. Meanwhile,
21:04
Speaker 3: the agency's operatives turned to outright disinformation in their effort
21:08
Speaker 3: to exploit China's internal difficulties. For example, Comma twelve lines deleted.
21:14
Speaker 3: We'll never know. And then there's this passage the Red
21:17
Speaker 3: Guards turn their fury on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
21:20
Speaker 3: demanding that Chinese diplomats too be cleansed of Western ways
21:24
Speaker 3: and rededicated to Mao's principles of communism twenty two lines deleted.
21:29
Speaker 3: And then here's one more. A propaganda operation might not
21:33
Speaker 3: be anything more devious than broadcasting straight news reports or
21:36
Speaker 3: rock music to the countries of Eastern Europe. Others are
21:39
Speaker 3: far more devious. Eleven lines deleted. So we can't be
21:43
Speaker 3: sure what exact form of devious was outlined in that
21:46
Speaker 3: deleted passage, but here's one from later in the book.
21:49
Speaker 3: At one point, the CIA was secretly funding a New
21:52
Speaker 3: York based communist newspaper called The Daily Worker. Don't take
21:57
Speaker 3: that as a reflection of the staff at the Daydaily Worker.
22:00
Speaker 3: None of them knew about this because the support came
22:04
Speaker 3: strictly in the form of thousands of prepaid subscriptions to
22:08
Speaker 3: The Daily Worker, all paid for by the CIA. Why
22:12
Speaker 3: because they felt The Daily Worker having a large subscriber
22:15
Speaker 3: base would make Americans take the threat of communism more seriously.
22:19
Speaker 3: I know what you're gonna ask. Doesn't that sort of
22:21
Speaker 3: imply that the threat of communism wasn't all that serious
22:24
Speaker 3: at the time? Good question, comrade. How about you take
22:27
Speaker 3: it up with the CIA? Oh And just as an
22:30
Speaker 3: aside in this section of the book, they also referenced
22:33
Speaker 3: Nazi Germany's use of quote the big lie end quote
22:38
Speaker 3: as one of the major advances in propaganda and misinformation.
22:41
Speaker 3: And let me tell you here in the phrase the
22:43
Speaker 3: big lie tossed around in that way isn't at all
22:47
Speaker 3: alarming in a twenty twenty two context. Anyway. The book
22:52
Speaker 3: also touches on the three different kinds of disinformation, white, gray,
22:56
Speaker 3: and black. White disinformation or white propage has to be
23:01
Speaker 3: the rarest of all, because apparently that just means the
23:04
Speaker 3: CIA tells the people the truth. If we as a
23:07
Speaker 3: government were engaging in that one a bunch, we probably
23:10
Speaker 3: wouldn't even have or need a CIA. Then there's gray propaganda,
23:14
Speaker 3: which is the truth with a little or a lot
23:17
Speaker 3: of lies mixed in with it. I think a good
23:20
Speaker 3: example of this can be found in a CIA related
23:23
Speaker 3: documentary that I bring up all the time, which is Wormwood,
23:26
Speaker 3: which you can see on Netflix. In that case, the
23:29
Speaker 3: CIA just straight up accepts responsibility for and admits to
23:33
Speaker 3: giving an agent too much LSD during an experiment gone awry,
23:38
Speaker 3: eventually causing him to jump to his death from a
23:41
Speaker 3: hotel window. Except that turns out there was a lot
23:44
Speaker 3: more to it than that LSD yes out a window. Yes,
23:49
Speaker 3: but it was less that he went crazy from the
23:51
Speaker 3: drugs and more that he grew a conscience because of
23:54
Speaker 3: the drugs and wanted to tell the world that we
23:57
Speaker 3: used chemical weapons in the Korean War. So the CIA
24:00
Speaker 3: had to have someone chuck him out a window for
24:03
Speaker 3: the good of the country. But hey, at least his
24:05
Speaker 3: family got to meet Gerald Ford. And then the third
24:07
Speaker 3: kind of propaganda, the worst kind, is called black propaganda.
24:12
Speaker 3: It's also affectionately referred to as disinformation, which is great
24:16
Speaker 3: because I feel very uncomfortable calling the worst kind of
24:18
Speaker 3: propaganda black propaganda that in and of itself feels like
24:22
Speaker 3: a psychological operation of some sort on the government's part.
24:25
Speaker 3: But as the name disinformation implies, this is just outright lies.
24:29
Speaker 3: Just the government lyon to the people, and somehow in
24:33
Speaker 3: any book or media of any sort that mentions this,
24:37
Speaker 3: Russia is always credited with inventing this, as if no
24:40
Speaker 3: one knew how to lie to their citizenry before Khrushchef
24:44
Speaker 3: took power. And what's weird about this section of the book,
24:47
Speaker 3: and a lot of the book in general, is that
24:49
Speaker 3: a lot of it is just kind of boring and mundane.
24:51
Speaker 3: That probably goes a long way toward explaining why the
24:54
Speaker 3: CIA has a Hollywood Liaison department that exists solely to
24:59
Speaker 3: consult on movie projects in the hope of making the
25:02
Speaker 3: agency look more like a bunch of well intentioned George
25:06
Speaker 3: Clooney's and less like a bunch of half Nazis acting
25:09
Speaker 3: on behalf of corporate America. While there is obviously lots
25:12
Speaker 3: of Routin and Teuton and gun shooting inherent to what
25:15
Speaker 3: the CIA does, a lot of it is also stuff
25:18
Speaker 3: like a story in the book about how they responded
25:21
Speaker 3: to a potentially inflammatory Russian forgery. It was a document
25:26
Speaker 3: that claimed to prove the United States was supporting the
25:28
Speaker 3: overthrow of the Indonesian government. And here's the problem. We
25:32
Speaker 3: were supporting the overthrow of the Indonesian government. Of course,
25:35
Speaker 3: we were so to put this story to bed. Richard Helms,
25:39
Speaker 3: then deputy director of Clandeston Services, eventual Director of the CIA,
25:43
Speaker 3: briefed the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee on communist forgeries and
25:49
Speaker 3: included the Indonesia documents among thirty or so other examples
25:53
Speaker 3: of obvious forgeries. When he presented this, he made no
25:57
Speaker 3: mention of the validity of the information in the Indonesia forgeries,
26:01
Speaker 3: just that these, along with the thirty or so others,
26:05
Speaker 3: were all just obviously fake documents. So they took this
26:09
Speaker 3: fake document that Russia was hoping the public would see
26:13
Speaker 3: and react to in a negative way, and to neutralize
26:15
Speaker 3: all that, they just showed it to the public and said, look,
26:18
Speaker 3: this is obviously fake, but just the document, not the
26:21
Speaker 3: words in it. They never said the words in it
26:23
Speaker 3: were fake. But that's where the story died. Helm's testimony
26:26
Speaker 3: was entered into the public record, and the matter was
26:28
Speaker 3: put to rest without the FEDS even heaven to talk
26:31
Speaker 3: about it, and see not all that interesting. Turns out,
26:34
Speaker 3: there's a lot of mundane day to day tasks that
26:37
Speaker 3: come with upholding American ideals around the globe. Something else
26:41
Speaker 3: that comes up in the propaganda and disinformation section of
26:44
Speaker 3: the book. Is something that came up in the proprietary
26:47
Speaker 3: organization section also, which is the radio stations. There were
26:51
Speaker 3: a lot of them, because the radio was the shit
26:55
Speaker 3: at the time, which leads to what I think is
26:57
Speaker 3: a very obvious question, seeing as how podcast guests are
27:00
Speaker 3: the radio stations of today. Have you ever taken time
27:03
Speaker 3: to think about what podcasts are produced and funded by
27:07
Speaker 3: the CIA, because I have for starters and oh man,
27:35
Speaker 3: don't even get me started on anyway. Yeah, the radio stations,
28:06
Speaker 3: or just the radios as this book calls them, the
28:09
Speaker 3: CIA had a whole damn bunch back in the day,
28:13
Speaker 3: enough that their combined annual budgets ranged anywhere from thirty
28:17
Speaker 3: to thirty five million dollars in nineteen fifties money. The
28:21
Speaker 3: majority of the focus on the radios here is how
28:24
Speaker 3: they eventually fell out of use for a whole variety
28:27
Speaker 3: of reasons, not the least of which being that the
28:30
Speaker 3: stations and staff of both Radio Free Europe and Radio
28:34
Speaker 3: Liberty eventually became filthy with communist infiltrators. Here's hoping that
28:39
Speaker 3: doesn't happen to podcasts. One really interesting aspect of this
28:43
Speaker 3: book is what it shows about how the CIA spends
28:47
Speaker 3: that massive budget it has at its disposal, which is
28:50
Speaker 3: hilariously listed as just fifteen billion dollars per year as
28:55
Speaker 3: of twenty thirteen. They probably spend that on burner phones
28:59
Speaker 3: alone every year, but hey, there are starving intelligence agencies
29:03
Speaker 3: in this world that would love to have fifteen billion
29:06
Speaker 3: dollars to spend every year, and the CIA is obviously
29:09
Speaker 3: really good at spreading their money around. One of the
29:12
Speaker 3: operations mentioned in this book, for example, involves the cleverly
29:16
Speaker 3: named Asia Foundation. This was a group established by the
29:20
Speaker 3: agency in nineteen fifty six, with the usual non government
29:24
Speaker 3: board of directors set up that they used for the
29:26
Speaker 3: radio stations to make it seem like a private entity,
29:29
Speaker 3: and the aim of the group was just to promote
29:31
Speaker 3: academic and public interest in the East, and they mostly
29:35
Speaker 3: did that, just prominent names from Asian culture, promoting Asian culture,
29:40
Speaker 3: and seemingly nothing more, which made it all the more
29:43
Speaker 3: impactful when every once in a while an article or
29:47
Speaker 3: report that was critical of mainland China, North Vietnam, or
29:51
Speaker 3: North Korea would make its way to the public through
29:53
Speaker 3: the Asia Foundation. The whole point of the Foundation in
29:56
Speaker 3: real life was to spread pro American talking points and
30:00
Speaker 3: negative views of communist countries in Asia. But because it
30:03
Speaker 3: operated with that veneer of being a private entity with
30:06
Speaker 3: no government ties, the views spread by the Asia Foundation
30:10
Speaker 3: would make their way back to academics in the United States,
30:14
Speaker 3: who would then kind of unwittingly form their views on
30:17
Speaker 3: China and any communist country in Asia based on CIA
30:21
Speaker 3: talking points. That was the part the CIA cared about,
30:24
Speaker 3: and they spent eight million dollars annually just on this
30:29
Speaker 3: one effort. Again, that's in nineteen fifties and sixties money.
30:32
Speaker 3: There's a really frustrating deletion in this section. Also here
30:36
Speaker 3: goes during the nineteen sixties, the CIA developed proprietary companies
30:41
Speaker 3: of a new type for use in propaganda operations. These
30:45
Speaker 3: proprietaries are more compact and more covert than relatively unwieldy
30:50
Speaker 3: and now exposed fronts like the Asia Foundation. In Radio
30:54
Speaker 3: Free Europe, twenty seven lines deleted. Not even a hint
30:59
Speaker 3: as to what those new organizations might have been. Seeing
31:02
Speaker 3: as how this book was published in the early seventies,
31:04
Speaker 3: I'm going to guess that they were waterbed dealerships or
31:07
Speaker 3: disco albums or something, or maybe books. Remember books. I'm
31:11
Speaker 3: discussing one with you on a podcast right now. As
31:14
Speaker 3: it turns out, not only was the CIA interested in
31:17
Speaker 3: shutting down books like this one, they were equally interested
31:20
Speaker 3: and invested in helping publish books that make their adversaries
31:25
Speaker 3: look like jerks. That shouldn't come as too much of
31:27
Speaker 3: a surprise. Again, this was way back in the day
31:30
Speaker 3: when we still valued books. I'm assuming this is all
31:33
Speaker 3: even easier now that they just have to finance TikTok
31:36
Speaker 3: videos in New York Times editorials and whatnot. One particular
31:40
Speaker 3: area of interest when it came to book publishing in
31:43
Speaker 3: the Cold War era was defectors. People who fled Communism
31:47
Speaker 3: for the healing goodness of the West were treated like
31:51
Speaker 3: royalty back then, and according to this book, the CIA
31:54
Speaker 3: would often play a big role in that, including encouraging
31:58
Speaker 3: defectors to write books, helping them write those books, and
32:02
Speaker 3: then getting those books published, or in some cases they
32:05
Speaker 3: might have just low key written entire books. That was
32:08
Speaker 3: suspected to be the case with a book called The
32:11
Speaker 3: Penkovski Papers. It was a bestseller when it was released
32:14
Speaker 3: back in nineteen sixty five, and it was alleged to
32:17
Speaker 3: have been based in large part on the journals of
32:19
Speaker 3: Russian spy Oleg Penkowsky. He was a high ranking Russian
32:24
Speaker 3: military official who provided information to the West that was
32:28
Speaker 3: said to have been instrumental in our efforts to not
32:32
Speaker 3: die in a nuclear apocalypse during the Cuban missile crisis.
32:36
Speaker 3: He's for sure a real person who did some real
32:38
Speaker 3: spying that he got real executed by Russia. For the
32:42
Speaker 3: question is whether the book is real. Even back when
32:45
Speaker 3: it came out, people weren't so sure it was. For
32:48
Speaker 3: one thing, the authors of The CIA and the Cult
32:51
Speaker 3: of Intelligence argue that while some of Penkowski's information was
32:55
Speaker 3: useful in a limited capacity, all of the key intelligence
33:00
Speaker 3: that helped diffuse the Cuban missile crisis came from satellite
33:04
Speaker 3: photos of Russia, from tracking Russian ships, and from U
33:08
Speaker 3: to spy plane images of Cuba. There's also a deletion
33:12
Speaker 3: in this book that seems like it might be a
33:14
Speaker 3: reference to the Penkowsky papers. There's a section that starts
33:18
Speaker 3: with four and a half lines deleted, followed by this. Spies, however,
33:24
Speaker 3: do not keep journals. They simply do not take that
33:27
Speaker 3: kind of risk. Nor do they have time to do
33:30
Speaker 3: so while they are leading double lives end quote. And again,
33:34
Speaker 3: this is a book that's alleged to be based on
33:36
Speaker 3: the journals of a spy, and that echoes a concern
33:40
Speaker 3: raised at the time by Russia expert and Washington Post
33:43
Speaker 3: columnist Victor Zorza, which is that there was absolutely no
33:47
Speaker 3: way Penkowsky had the time to produce a manuscript of
33:51
Speaker 3: this nature all while living the life of a high
33:55
Speaker 3: ranking Russian spy. And those concerns were not at all
33:58
Speaker 3: assuaged by the fact that neither the publisher Doubleday in company,
34:02
Speaker 3: nor the manuscript translator, who also happened to be a
34:05
Speaker 3: former KGB agent who defected to work for the CIA,
34:09
Speaker 3: neither of them were willing to release the original Russian
34:12
Speaker 3: manuscript so it could be inspected independently. Victor Zorzol also
34:16
Speaker 3: noted that the book made errors in style, technique, and
34:20
Speaker 3: fact that Penkowski would not have made. Here's a quote
34:24
Speaker 3: from him, The book could have been compiled only by
34:27
Speaker 3: the Central Intelligence Agency end quote. And what would be
34:31
Speaker 3: the purpose of all this, Well, for one thing, it
34:32
Speaker 3: makes Russia look stupid, and that was like seventy five
34:35
Speaker 3: percent of the CIA's focus in the sixties, but there
34:38
Speaker 3: might have been a slightly more secret motivation. One thing
34:42
Speaker 3: the Cult of Intelligence book mentions a whole bunch is
34:45
Speaker 3: that intelligence gathering inside the Soviet Union was, at least
34:49
Speaker 3: at the time, a thing the CIA was absolutely terrible at,
34:52
Speaker 3: so much so that they eventually just sort of stopped
34:55
Speaker 3: trying for a while. When Oleg Penkowski first presented himself
34:59
Speaker 3: as a spy, he did it by directly approaching the CIA,
35:03
Speaker 3: and they turned him away because they were too scarred
35:07
Speaker 3: from their past failures at flipping in person spies that
35:11
Speaker 3: they didn't want to risk getting burned again. It wasn't
35:13
Speaker 3: until he approached MI six that the information started flowing
35:17
Speaker 3: from him, and the Penkowski papers rewrites that whole story,
35:22
Speaker 3: at least in that it makes it seem like the
35:25
Speaker 3: CIA had some success in gathering intelligence inside Russian borders.
35:30
Speaker 3: Does that seem like a good use of CIA budget money?
35:33
Speaker 3: Probably not, But listen, that fifteen billion dollars a year
35:36
Speaker 3: ain't gonna spend itself. Okay. So the last chapter in
35:40
Speaker 3: Part two of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence,
35:43
Speaker 3: chapter seven, it's titled Espionage and Counter Espionage. This chapter
35:47
Speaker 3: kicks off with a few more pages that contrast the
35:51
Speaker 3: Hollywood image of the CIA as swashbuckland spies getting things
35:56
Speaker 3: done face to face on the ground with the reality
35:58
Speaker 3: at the time, which was that they spent a lot
36:00
Speaker 3: more time looking at satellite photos and making good guesses
36:05
Speaker 3: about publicly available news than they did using their dicks
36:08
Speaker 3: to defeat Communism. When there was an intelligence coup to celebrate,
36:12
Speaker 3: it usually happened because a disgruntled Russian walked in off
36:16
Speaker 3: the street to offer up their services, like with Oleg Penkowski.
36:20
Speaker 3: Something the agency apparently got a lot more espionage traction
36:23
Speaker 3: out of back then was covert listening devices, or bugs,
36:28
Speaker 3: as the industry calls them. The next part of the
36:30
Speaker 3: espionage chapter is all about the planting of bugs, and
36:34
Speaker 3: it paints a kind of fun picture of at least
36:37
Speaker 3: part of the CIA as being a group that was
36:40
Speaker 3: mostly dedicated not to asking what can we put a
36:44
Speaker 3: secret microphone in, but instead asking what can't we put
36:48
Speaker 3: a secret microphone in? Because it seems like even at
36:51
Speaker 3: that point in history when this book was written, the
36:53
Speaker 3: answer was and probably still is nothing. They were putting
36:58
Speaker 3: microphones in everything even back then. False teeth. They had
37:02
Speaker 3: false teeth microphones in the sixties, and that meant that
37:06
Speaker 3: instead of targeting enemy government officials to flip them as spies,
37:10
Speaker 3: the CIA would target security or maintenance staff at buildings
37:15
Speaker 3: where those officials worked, anyone who might be in a
37:18
Speaker 3: position to plant a listening device somewhere. Once again, this
37:22
Speaker 3: was apparently way more effective against countries that weren't Russia
37:25
Speaker 3: or China. Latin America, for example, was just absolutely filthy
37:30
Speaker 3: with CIA listening devices. Judging from this book, it seems
37:34
Speaker 3: like a lot of our motivation in fighting communism in
37:36
Speaker 3: Latin America was just that it was way easier to
37:40
Speaker 3: do there. If we can't beat Russia, we can at
37:42
Speaker 3: least beat the communism out of smaller countries with lesser defenses.
37:46
Speaker 3: And A more modern example of when the US would
37:49
Speaker 3: have likely had to target someone with physical access to
37:53
Speaker 3: a building to carry off an operation was an Obama
37:56
Speaker 3: era attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. There's a fantastic documentary
38:02
Speaker 3: about it called Zero Days came out in twenty sixteen.
38:05
Speaker 3: To get the malware used in that attack into the
38:09
Speaker 3: Iranian facility, someone had to walk it in and physically
38:13
Speaker 3: install it. Using a USB drive, and now, because someone
38:16
Speaker 3: agreed to do that, something like one hundred and six
38:19
Speaker 3: percent of all the world's computers are infected with the
38:23
Speaker 3: stucksnet virus over it, Thanks Obama. Watch the documentary. You'll
38:26
Speaker 3: understand now, as you'd probably expect, the government deletions get
38:29
Speaker 3: pretty intense the further along you go in the espionage
38:33
Speaker 3: encounter Espionage section. This includes one section with a whopping
38:37
Speaker 3: eighty seven deleted lines. Fortunately, none of those deleted lines
38:42
Speaker 3: are the ones that make up the story about the
38:44
Speaker 3: time someone at the CIA suggested the idea of an
38:49
Speaker 3: airplane that agents could carry in a couple of suitcases
38:54
Speaker 3: until the need to assemble it and fly out of
38:57
Speaker 3: the country arose. Sure, lugging all that extra equipment around
39:01
Speaker 3: will be a hassle, but think of how grateful you'll
39:03
Speaker 3: be when you have to flee a dangerous situation on
39:06
Speaker 3: a moment's notice, and all it requires is finding a
39:10
Speaker 3: safe space to assemble two checked bags worth of airplane
39:14
Speaker 3: parts and a runway from which to launch yourself to safety.
39:17
Speaker 3: That is absolutely the CIA job I would want the most.
39:21
Speaker 3: Just sitting around thinking up wacky stuff our spies could
39:25
Speaker 3: do if only they were better at being spies. Again,
39:29
Speaker 3: that fifteen billion isn't going to spend itself. So there's
39:31
Speaker 3: a whole lot more to this book, like a whole
39:33
Speaker 3: third section that I'll probably get into on a later episode,
39:37
Speaker 3: if for no other reason than because the stuff about
39:39
Speaker 3: how the CIA recruited and trained agents back then is
39:43
Speaker 3: just full of thrills and chills. But I want to
39:45
Speaker 3: close out this discussion about Part two by focusing on
39:49
Speaker 3: a couple of interesting moments of foreshadowing that I found
39:53
Speaker 3: in the CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. For one thing,
39:56
Speaker 3: there's a whole bunch of stuff about the NSA, and
39:59
Speaker 3: on the surface that should be surprising. The NSA and
40:02
Speaker 3: the CIA are constantly jockeying for the number one spot
40:06
Speaker 3: in terms of annual budget and propensity for evil. Both
40:10
Speaker 3: the NSA essentially exists because the CIA isn't allowed to
40:15
Speaker 3: perform mass surveillance on Americans, so instead the NSA does
40:19
Speaker 3: it for them, just as the law intended. So of
40:21
Speaker 3: course they'd come up in this book, except for the
40:23
Speaker 3: part where, according to most official histories of the NSSA,
40:27
Speaker 3: we didn't even know about the NSA when this book
40:29
Speaker 3: was published. Here's the last sentence of the opening paragraph
40:32
Speaker 3: of the NSA's Wikipedia page. The existence of the NSSA
40:36
Speaker 3: was not revealed until nineteen seventy five end quote, which
40:41
Speaker 3: is weird because The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence
40:44
Speaker 3: was published in June nineteen seventy four. And yes, I know,
40:47
Speaker 3: Wikipedia isn't a reliable source. Encyclopedias were way more trustworthy
40:53
Speaker 3: when they were written by a secret cabal of old
40:55
Speaker 3: white men and were completely uneditable for a year or
40:59
Speaker 3: more at a time. I get it. But the source
41:01
Speaker 3: link for that claim is an NPR story called A
41:04
Speaker 3: Brief History of the NSSA, and you know how US
41:07
Speaker 3: libs trust NPR. They are technically correct, though, even if
41:10
Speaker 3: the existence of the NSSA was revealed in this book first,
41:14
Speaker 3: its existence didn't become widely known until the Church Committee
41:18
Speaker 3: hearings kicked off in nineteen seventy five. This despite the
41:21
Speaker 3: fact that the NSSA was established way back in nineteen
41:24
Speaker 3: fifty two by Harry Truman, the same president who established
41:28
Speaker 3: the CIA five years earlier and dropped two nuclear weapons
41:31
Speaker 3: on the nation of Japan for questionable reasons two years
41:34
Speaker 3: before that. I'm going to be honest, I think Truman
41:36
Speaker 3: might have been a bad president who made bad decisions.
41:39
Speaker 3: Starting to think there have been a bunch of those
41:41
Speaker 3: over the years, honestly, and to give you an idea
41:43
Speaker 3: of just how secretive the existence and function of the
41:47
Speaker 3: NSSA truly was at this time when this book came out.
41:51
Speaker 3: Check out this quote from Senator Frank Church, the head
41:54
Speaker 3: of the Church Committee, which again is the committee that
41:57
Speaker 3: officially exposed the NSSA to the public. I apologize this
42:02
Speaker 3: quote is kind of long, but at least take solace
42:05
Speaker 3: in the fact that it's also horrifying. Here goes again.
42:08
Speaker 3: This is Senator Frank Church, head of the Church Committee,
42:11
Speaker 3: speaking about the NSA in the need to develop a
42:14
Speaker 3: capacity to know what potential enemies are doing. The United
42:17
Speaker 3: States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us
42:22
Speaker 3: to monitor the messages that go through the air. Now
42:26
Speaker 3: that is necessary and important to the United States as
42:29
Speaker 3: we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must
42:33
Speaker 3: know at the same time that capability at any time
42:36
Speaker 3: could be turned around on the American people, and no
42:40
Speaker 3: American would have any privacy left. Such is the capability
42:45
Speaker 3: to monitor everything telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There
42:51
Speaker 3: would be no place to hide if this government ever
42:54
Speaker 3: became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in
42:58
Speaker 3: this country. The technology capacity that the intelligence community has
43:03
Speaker 3: given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny,
43:07
Speaker 3: and there would be no way to fight back, because
43:10
Speaker 3: the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to
43:14
Speaker 3: the government, no matter how privately it was done, is
43:18
Speaker 3: within the reach of the government to know such is
43:21
Speaker 3: the capability of this technology. I don't want to see
43:24
Speaker 3: this country ever go across this bridge. I know the
43:28
Speaker 3: capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America,
43:33
Speaker 3: and we must see to it that this agency and
43:36
Speaker 3: all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law
43:41
Speaker 3: and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over
43:45
Speaker 3: that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is
43:48
Speaker 3: no return. That is Frank Church during an appearance on
43:53
Speaker 3: NBC's Meet the Press in August nineteen seventy five. And
43:57
Speaker 3: it is pretty yikes, especially when you take into account
44:02
Speaker 3: that the biggest revelation from the Edward Snowden leaks in
44:05
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen was a whole host of surveillance programs the
44:09
Speaker 3: NSSA was running on Americans, so clearly we did not
44:14
Speaker 3: rein in that capacity for tyranny, as Senator Church suggested. Also,
44:19
Speaker 3: did you notice what Frank Church did not do in
44:22
Speaker 3: that long warning here? I'll read it again in case
44:25
Speaker 3: you missed it. Just joking that quote was way too long,
44:28
Speaker 3: So I'll just tell you what he never does is
44:31
Speaker 3: mention the NSSA by name. He just says, we have
44:35
Speaker 3: the ability to do what we now know the NSSA
44:39
Speaker 3: does so. Again, the fact that the NSA comes up
44:42
Speaker 3: extensively in a book published a full year before Frank
44:47
Speaker 3: Church built up the nerve to say what he said
44:50
Speaker 3: on television is kind of surprising, but I also think
44:53
Speaker 3: I can explain it. When the authors brought up book
44:55
Speaker 3: publishing as a propaganda tool, they mentioned that quite often
45:00
Speaker 3: the main or only points of publishing said book would
45:04
Speaker 3: be to embarrass the enemy. And while I do think
45:06
Speaker 3: this book is mostly objective and definitely delivers a whole
45:10
Speaker 3: bunch of interesting information and insight into the early years
45:14
Speaker 3: of the CIA, the authors also clearly have a little
45:17
Speaker 3: bit of a bone to pick with the CIA and
45:20
Speaker 3: the intelligence community in general. I mentioned earlier in this episode,
45:24
Speaker 3: that a whole lot of attention is paid to how
45:26
Speaker 3: ineffective the CIA was when it came to gathering intelligence
45:30
Speaker 3: using spies inside the borders of hostile nations, and that
45:34
Speaker 3: all the real useful intelligence comes from the analysts examining
45:39
Speaker 3: collected intelligence in all its forms. With that in mind,
45:43
Speaker 3: it's worth reminding listeners that Victor Marchetti, the main author
45:46
Speaker 3: of this book, was a CIA analyst. He wasn't one
45:49
Speaker 3: of those inept James Bond wanna be war machines out
45:54
Speaker 3: in the streets shooting people dead with cufflink guns for
45:57
Speaker 3: shits and giggles. He did the real work, and I'm
46:00
Speaker 3: not in any position to judge whether he's correct in
46:03
Speaker 3: that assessment of the CIA's seeming inability to spy in person.
46:07
Speaker 3: I'm just saying he repeatedly gives the impression that the
46:10
Speaker 3: CIA was mostly inept and inferior at that type of
46:14
Speaker 3: spying compared to Russia or China. Same thing with the NSA.
46:18
Speaker 3: There's lots and lots of details about what they were
46:21
Speaker 3: capable of, but it's all presented as if they still
46:24
Speaker 3: didn't really know what to do with all of the
46:27
Speaker 3: information they were gathering. He credits most of the nssa's
46:30
Speaker 3: successes to what are referred to as breaks, which yes
46:34
Speaker 3: exactly what it sounds like, usually has the word lucky
46:37
Speaker 3: in front of it. Breaks essentially means the enemy lets
46:40
Speaker 3: their guard down just a little while you happen to
46:43
Speaker 3: be watching and are able to exploit the opportunity. One
46:46
Speaker 3: example they use in the book is a Russian agent
46:49
Speaker 3: who sent a message to a KGB office but forgot
46:52
Speaker 3: to encrypt it. Then, realizing what he'd done, he sent
46:55
Speaker 3: the message again, but this time he encrypted it and naturally,
46:59
Speaker 3: the NSSA intercepted both of these messages, meaning they now
47:03
Speaker 3: had the cipher used to encrypt messages, and they had
47:07
Speaker 3: an unencrypted message to compare that cipher too, and from
47:11
Speaker 3: that point, anyone with know how to operate a decoder
47:14
Speaker 3: ring can crack any messages sent with that cipher in
47:18
Speaker 3: the future. Also, intelligence agencies tend to save encrypted messages
47:22
Speaker 3: for the inevitable day when they're able to crack them
47:25
Speaker 3: in the future, so this break would have compromised a
47:27
Speaker 3: whole bunch of messages sent previously as well. And the
47:31
Speaker 3: authors of this book mostly paint the NSSAY as an
47:34
Speaker 3: organization that succeeds in that way not because they're good
47:37
Speaker 3: at what they do, but because the enemy is bad
47:40
Speaker 3: at what they do sometimes. And I think that's why
47:43
Speaker 3: the government let all of the NSSAY info pass in
47:46
Speaker 3: this book. For being a section that is about things
47:48
Speaker 3: that wouldn't become public knowledge for at least another year,
47:52
Speaker 3: the NSSA section of the book is shockingly light on
47:55
Speaker 3: government mandated redactions. I can't prove it, obviously, but my
47:59
Speaker 3: guy tells me that's because they knew those Church Committee
48:03
Speaker 3: investigations were coming down the pike and thus had no
48:06
Speaker 3: problem with an account of the NSSAY as a bunch
48:10
Speaker 3: of ineffective, busy bodies who survive mostly on luck, making
48:15
Speaker 3: its way to the public first. At least I hope
48:17
Speaker 3: that's what happened, because there is the other, even less
48:20
Speaker 3: savory possibility, that this book was all just one big
48:24
Speaker 3: gray propaganda campaign in and of itself, just like all
48:28
Speaker 3: the others this book describes. With Watergate having already happened
48:32
Speaker 3: in more large scale investigations guaranteed to be coming in
48:36
Speaker 3: the future, it is entirely possible that those moments where
48:39
Speaker 3: the book makes the CIA and the NSSA seem less
48:42
Speaker 3: scary and effective than we think they are. That could
48:46
Speaker 3: be the entire point of this book, just a little
48:49
Speaker 3: watering down of the story before the true horrors were
48:52
Speaker 3: revealed in a way that the general public would be
48:55
Speaker 3: less willing to consume in its entirety. This is one book,
48:59
Speaker 3: and it sold really well. The final Church Committee report
49:02
Speaker 3: was six books and they were all long as shit.
49:04
Speaker 3: Which one would you be more likely to read? Which
49:07
Speaker 3: one am I reading? Exactly? And I get paid to
49:09
Speaker 3: do this, So yeah, definitely possible that this entire book,
49:13
Speaker 3: as weird as it might sound, was just a ploy
49:16
Speaker 3: to make the American intelligence apparatus seem less scary than
49:20
Speaker 3: it really was. However, there is one other bit that
49:23
Speaker 3: gives me hope that I'm wrong about that. In this
49:25
Speaker 3: final chapter of Part two, a whole lot of space
49:28
Speaker 3: is given to the CIA's various dealings with colleges and
49:32
Speaker 3: universities across the country. At the time, it mentions, the
49:35
Speaker 3: agency's connections to American college campuses was so vast and
49:40
Speaker 3: compartmentalized that even then Director Richard Helms wasn't quite sure
49:45
Speaker 3: who was doing what or who they were doing it for,
49:48
Speaker 3: or who was even tracking it. They also go into
49:50
Speaker 3: detail about some of the things that they knew the
49:52
Speaker 3: CIA was using college campuses for, which mostly amounted to
49:57
Speaker 3: stuff like launching propaganda campaign against foreign countries from the
50:02
Speaker 3: campus of the University of Michigan for some reason. Stuff
50:05
Speaker 3: like that. You know what's not mentioned the part where
50:08
Speaker 3: the CIA conducted decades and decades worth of psychological experiments
50:13
Speaker 3: on unwitting American citizens. That's called mk ultra folks. And
50:18
Speaker 3: despite also being about a year away from becoming public,
50:21
Speaker 3: knowledge that most massive of CIA programs is never named
50:27
Speaker 3: or discussed in this book. But there is one paragraph.
50:31
Speaker 3: It comes after a couple of pages about a nineteen
50:34
Speaker 3: sixty seven study about CIA activities on college campuses. Here's
50:39
Speaker 3: what that paragraph says, and it's worth noting this is
50:42
Speaker 3: in bold print in the book. Here goes the nineteen
50:45
Speaker 3: sixty seven study on the CIA's ties with American universities
50:49
Speaker 3: covered all the activities described above, but the staff officer
50:53
Speaker 3: responsible for preparing it was told that no research program
50:57
Speaker 3: concerning the use of drugs was to be mentioned in
51:01
Speaker 3: the report. End quote. Those two sentences alone restored my
51:05
Speaker 3: faith in this book as not being a government propaganda effort,
51:09
Speaker 3: and I imagine those two sentences had to be extra
51:12
Speaker 3: frustrating for the government's efforts to censor this book, because,
51:16
Speaker 3: on their own and in the context of this book,
51:19
Speaker 3: those two sentences don't amount to a disclosure of information
51:23
Speaker 3: that would threaten national security. They almost read like throwaway lines.
51:27
Speaker 3: But given what we would go on to learn about
51:30
Speaker 3: mk Ultra very shortly after this book was published, those
51:33
Speaker 3: two sentences amount to what has to be one of
51:36
Speaker 3: the most jaw dropping examples of foreshadowing ever in a
51:40
Speaker 3: book about the American government. I don't know if the
51:42
Speaker 3: authors knew what they were saying, but they were definitely
51:45
Speaker 3: saying something with those two sentences. And with that we
51:48
Speaker 3: have reached the end of Part two of The CIA
51:52
Speaker 3: and the Cult of Intelligence, the first book the United
51:55
Speaker 3: States government ever tried to censor on national security grounds.
52:00
Speaker 3: I mentioned shortly ago. I'll probably do a third episode
52:04
Speaker 3: about this book at some point. Part three does have
52:07
Speaker 3: some interesting details about how the CIA recruited and trained
52:11
Speaker 3: their agents, and the things the government did to try
52:15
Speaker 3: and control the CIA after it was founded, and how
52:19
Speaker 3: poorly that all failed. So we'll get into that on
52:22
Speaker 3: a future episode. In the meantime, do we have anything
52:25
Speaker 3: to plug before we get out of here? No, no,
52:28
Speaker 3: we don't. This is a solo episode. I usually don't
52:30
Speaker 3: plug stuff on solo episodes. I will say thank you
52:34
Speaker 3: so much for listening. I very much appreciate it. If
52:37
Speaker 3: you want to read up more about this book or
52:40
Speaker 3: any of the things we mentioned in this episode about
52:43
Speaker 3: the book, just click on that show notes link. You
52:45
Speaker 3: can read it all there. And all right, let's get
52:47
Speaker 3: out of here, Adam say goodbye, goodbye, everybody. We love you.
53:00
Speaker 1: About the NBA data, the Naba data, Ana Lata about Alabamata,
53:08
Speaker 1: the bab data about the Bata and alab