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The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (Pt. 1) · Conspiracy! The Show

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Speaker 1: Winter insurance the troth I'm a check both insurance is
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Speaker 1: the adult. Hey, everybody, welcome to Conspiracy The Show. I'm
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Speaker 1: your host Adam Todd Brown joining me as co host today. Ooh,
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Speaker 1: my favorite co host of all No co host. I
0:43
Speaker 1: don't even have any guests. The reason for that being
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Speaker 1: this is another of those band media report episodes where
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Speaker 1: I talk about a book or a movie or documentary
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Speaker 1: that for whatever reason, has been sort of wiped from existence.
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Speaker 2: And you know, asking.
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Speaker 1: A co host to track down an out of print
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Speaker 1: book and read all three hundred plus pages of absurdly
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Speaker 1: tiny print is a little more than I'm willing to
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Speaker 1: do while also just paying out co host money for it.
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Speaker 1: So I do these episodes on my own. The book
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Speaker 1: we're talking about this time around is called The CIA
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Speaker 1: and the Cult of Intelligence by Victor Marchetti and John D.
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Speaker 2: Marx.
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Speaker 1: This is a hugely important moment in American history that
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Speaker 1: has mostly been lost to history. Important why because it's
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Speaker 1: the first book the American government ever sued to have
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Speaker 1: censored before it was published. Absolutely a landmark moment in
1:46
Speaker 1: terms of First Amendment protections. Despite all that, this book
1:50
Speaker 1: is very hard to find now it's currently out of print.
1:53
Speaker 1: If you rely on sites like Amazon, you're going to
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Speaker 1: pay five hundred dollars or more for a shitty use
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Speaker 1: to paperback copy. But I think that's just an algorithm thing.
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Speaker 1: Once there's not that many available, there's pricing software that
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Speaker 1: goes in and basically glitches out and prices stuff according
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Speaker 1: to scarcity. So books like this end up looking like
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Speaker 1: they are less attainable than they are. I got my
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Speaker 1: shitty used paperback copy on eBay for pretty cheap. It
2:23
Speaker 1: also appears to be available in some libraries, so you
2:26
Speaker 1: can find it. You're just not going to be able
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Speaker 1: to download it to your kindle or anything of the like.
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Speaker 1: As mentioned earlier, the book was written by Victor Marchetti
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Speaker 1: and John D. Marx. Victor Marchetti served in the US
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Speaker 1: Army during the early years of the Cold War. In
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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, he was recruited by and joined the CIA.
2:47
Speaker 1: During his time with the agency, he became the government's
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Speaker 1: leading expert on Soviet military aid to Third world countries,
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Speaker 1: which back then was probably a way more exciting assignment
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Speaker 1: than it sounds like it would be. Also, that's an
3:01
Speaker 1: important detail when it comes to this book because a
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Speaker 1: lot of it deals with US intervention and interference in
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Speaker 1: the affairs of third world countries. I think we call
3:12
Speaker 1: him under developed Nations. Now, this book is from the
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Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. If that's as culturally insensitive as it gets,
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Speaker 1: I'll be relieved anyway. Marchetti's research work as a CIA analyst,
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Speaker 1: among other things, led to our uncovering of the Soviet
3:28
Speaker 1: highjinks that culminated in the Cuban missile Crisis. From there,
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Speaker 1: he moved on to serve in a few different important
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Speaker 1: and high level offices within the CIA, including Special Assistant
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Speaker 1: to the Chief of Planning, Programming and Budgeting, Special Assistant
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Speaker 1: to the Executive Director, and executive Assistant to the Deputy Director,
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Speaker 1: and he credits working in these roles with giving him
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Speaker 1: a better understanding of how the CIA actually worked. At
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Speaker 1: the time, it was still claiming to just be a
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Speaker 1: central clearing house and producer of intelligence reports. What he
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Speaker 1: found during his employment was that the CIA didn't do
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Speaker 1: any of those things. Rather, to quote Marchetti, its basic
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Speaker 1: mission was that of clandestine operations, particularly covert action, the
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Speaker 1: secret intervention in the internal affairs of other nations.
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Speaker 2: End quote.
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Speaker 1: He resigned from the CIA in nineteen sixty nine, Nice
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Speaker 1: and immediately got to work on the book that he
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Speaker 1: hoped would lay bare the CIA's inner workings and true motivations.
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Speaker 1: And that book is not the one we're talking about today. Instead,
4:39
Speaker 1: it was a fictional novel called The Rope Dancer. The
4:43
Speaker 1: book didn't do much damage, though, so he moved on
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Speaker 1: to trying to get a review. An investigation of CIA
4:50
Speaker 1: operations started in Congress. Surprise, surprise, most of them didn't
4:54
Speaker 1: care either. So with that he decided to write this book,
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Speaker 1: The CIA and the Cultivan Intelligence. However, on account of
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Speaker 1: a whole bunch of legal intervention by the US government,
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Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in more detail, shortly, he had
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Speaker 1: to bring on a co author. That co author was
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Speaker 1: John Marx, and he was not in the CIA. He
5:13
Speaker 1: joined the Foreign Service, which is a wing of the
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Speaker 1: State Department, fresh out of college, and his feelings toward
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Speaker 1: the US government changed when he went to Vietnam to
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Speaker 1: work as a civilian advisor in something called the Pacification Program.
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Speaker 1: Just for the record, there are two definitions of the
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Speaker 1: word pacification. The first is the state of being pacified,
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Speaker 1: the second the act of suppressing or eliminating a population
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Speaker 1: considered to be hostile. So I'm guessing it was the
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Speaker 1: second one we were dealing with in Vietnam as far
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Speaker 1: as those definitions go. Anyway, while in that role, he
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Speaker 1: came to view US policy in Vietnam as not only ineffective,
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Speaker 1: but just straight up wrong. That's something I feel like
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Speaker 1: he could have determined just from the fact that he
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Speaker 1: was joining a pacification program there.
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Speaker 2: But I digress.
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Speaker 1: He was introduced to the US intelligence community after being
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Speaker 1: assigned to work as staff assistant to the State Department's
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Speaker 1: Intelligence Director, whose job was to act as a liaison
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Speaker 1: between the intelligence community and the State Department.
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Speaker 2: I bet that's fun.
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Speaker 1: There he saw the exact same inefficiency and poor decision
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Speaker 1: making that led us into the disaster that was the
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Speaker 1: war in Vietnam. Here's a quote from Marx. In the
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Speaker 1: high councils of the intelligence community, there was no sense
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Speaker 1: that intervention in the internal affairs of other countries was
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Speaker 1: not the inherent right of the United States end quote.
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Speaker 2: He says the.
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Speaker 1: Last straw for him was the US invasion of Cambodia
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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy. Not long after that, he met Victor
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Speaker 1: Marchetti and the idea for this book was born. So
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Speaker 1: the authors of this book clearly have some in depth
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Speaker 1: understanding of the topic. When you combine that with the
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Speaker 1: fact that the government fought tooth and nail to have
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Speaker 1: this book censored, it makes for the rare conspiracy related
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Speaker 1: book that has none of that. Is this all a
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Speaker 1: lie stink to it? What's in this book is real
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Speaker 1: and it's fascinating. Granted, some of the information might be
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Speaker 1: a little outdated. I'm sure the CIA is getting up
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Speaker 1: to much wilder stuff now, but it was also pretty
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Speaker 1: crazy in the nineteen seventies. And that's what kind of
7:27
Speaker 1: stuff is in this book. It's about what the CIA
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Speaker 1: was getting up to in the sixties and seventies, beyond
7:34
Speaker 1: the things we already know about like Watergate and mk
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Speaker 1: Ultra and you know, Jonestown. So if you've ever been
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Speaker 1: curious about that, this is the book for you, provided
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Speaker 1: you can still find it. It really gets into the
7:47
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of the agency's operations and budgets and
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Speaker 1: even the organizational structure. I can't imagine there's a better
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Speaker 1: resource out there for information about what I would consider
8:00
Speaker 1: the glory.
8:00
Speaker 2: Years of the CIA.
8:02
Speaker 1: That point in history when they were doing whatever they
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Speaker 1: wanted and nobody knew anything about any of it. I mean,
8:08
Speaker 1: we're still kind at that point now. But this book
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Speaker 1: came out right as we as a country were on
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Speaker 1: the verge of really calling the CIA out on their
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Speaker 1: shit by way of the Pike Committee and the Church Committee.
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Speaker 1: This book also came out hot on the heels of
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Speaker 1: another historic attempt at censorship on the part of the
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Speaker 1: US government, that being the nineteen seventy one New York
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Speaker 1: Times Pentagon Papers scandal. Have you seen the Post the
8:34
Speaker 1: movie with Tom Hanks and Meryl Street that's about the
8:37
Speaker 1: Pentagon Papers. Go watch it if you haven't. But also
8:40
Speaker 1: I'll give you the Cliff's Notes version, and yes it
8:43
Speaker 1: is Cliff's Notes, not cliff Notes. In June nineteen sixty seven,
8:48
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara created something called the Vietnam
8:52
Speaker 1: Study Task Force, and his motivation, he claimed, was to
8:58
Speaker 1: put together quote an encyclopedic history of the Vietnam War.
9:03
Speaker 1: And again that's what he claimed. His motivation was why
9:06
Speaker 1: someone would want to document the history of the Vietnam War,
9:09
Speaker 1: and that much detail from within the US government is
9:12
Speaker 1: beyond me unless you were trying to sugarcoat all of
9:15
Speaker 1: the things that went wrong there, but he was not.
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Speaker 1: There were some reports that he planned to share the
9:21
Speaker 1: findings with his friend Robert F. Kennedy, who was seeking
9:25
Speaker 1: the Democratic presidential nomination.
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Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty eight.
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Speaker 1: Either way, he never informed President Lyndon Johnson or Secretary
9:34
Speaker 1: of State Dean Rusk about the study. Thirty six analysts
9:37
Speaker 1: worked on it. Half were active duty military officers, the
9:41
Speaker 1: other half were academics and civilian federal employees. The study
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Speaker 1: they produced consisted of three thousand pages of analysis and
9:50
Speaker 1: four thousand pages of documents, spread out across forty seven volumes.
9:56
Speaker 1: But please tell me more about how much praise you
9:59
Speaker 1: deserve for reading the Muller Report. It's four hundred pages anyway,
10:03
Speaker 1: So with it being that big, clearly I cannot tell
10:06
Speaker 1: you everything that was in there, but I can assure
10:09
Speaker 1: you it was highly controversial and not a good look
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Speaker 1: for the US government. Among other things, the study revealed
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Speaker 1: that the US had secretly increased the scope of its
10:19
Speaker 1: actions in Vietnam, and even worse, the Johnson administration had
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Speaker 1: quote systematically lied not only to the public but also
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Speaker 1: to Congress. End quote about the country's involvement in Vietnam.
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Speaker 1: One of the people who worked on that study was
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Speaker 1: Daniel Ellsberg. By the time he was granted security clearance
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Speaker 1: to access the full report, he had become vehemently opposed
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Speaker 1: to the war in Vietnam, and as such, he and
10:45
Speaker 1: a friend named Anthony Russo decided to photocopy the entire report,
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Speaker 1: which reminder, consisted of about seven thousand pages, with the
10:55
Speaker 1: intent of releasing it publicly at some point. That detail
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Speaker 1: is just one of the many reasons why I know
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Speaker 1: I will never even come close to toppling a government. Yes,
11:04
Speaker 1: what we did in Vietnam was terrible, but having to
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Speaker 1: photo copy seven thousand pages sounds like torture. I'm not
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Speaker 1: willing to endure for any cause. If you told me
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Speaker 1: I had to photocopy seven thousand pages, I'd tell you
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Speaker 1: to expect them sometime in the early twenty thirties. Who
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Speaker 1: even has that much paper laying around anyway? In Ellsburg's opinion,
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Speaker 1: the documents quote demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents,
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Speaker 1: the violation of their oath and the violation of the
11:35
Speaker 1: oath of every one of their subordinates. End quote. He
11:38
Speaker 1: also said the leak was intended to end what he
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Speaker 1: considered a wrongful war. Ellsberg talked to a New York
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Speaker 1: Times reporter named Neil Shehan about the study in nineteen
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Speaker 1: seventy one and provided him with forty three of the
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Speaker 1: forty seven volumes. The New York Times went back and
11:53
Speaker 1: forth over whether or not to publish it, but finally
11:56
Speaker 1: they decided they should on the grounds that the press
11:59
Speaker 1: had as a First Amendment right to publish information significant
12:03
Speaker 1: to the people's understanding of how their government works. They
12:07
Speaker 1: began publishing excerpts on June thirteenth, nineteen seventy one, and
12:11
Speaker 1: a wave of protests and lawsuits from the American people
12:16
Speaker 1: followed pretty much immediately thereafter. Shortly after publication, the study
12:21
Speaker 1: came to be known as the Pentagon Papers in the press.
12:25
Speaker 1: Concern over the scandal crossed administrations, which, as I've mentioned before,
12:30
Speaker 1: is usually a sign of trouble. The story broke when
12:33
Speaker 1: Nixon was in office, but Nixon being Nixon, he didn't
12:37
Speaker 1: want to respond to it at all because it only
12:39
Speaker 1: impacted his enemies on the other side of the aisle,
12:43
Speaker 1: So why not just let them look bad in the
12:45
Speaker 1: eyes of the public, but the notoriously cool and good
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Speaker 1: for the world. Henry Kissinger thought not saying anything would
12:54
Speaker 1: set a bad precedent for hiding secrets in the future,
12:58
Speaker 1: so he pushed Nixon to act. I told you that
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Speaker 1: cross administration thing is bad, and Nixon did act. His
13:05
Speaker 1: administration argued that Elsberg and Russo were guilty of a
13:09
Speaker 1: felony under the Espionage Act of nineteen seventeen. That's treason,
13:14
Speaker 1: baby yikes. Nixon and his people followed that up by
13:18
Speaker 1: trying to coerce The New York Times into voluntarily ceasing
13:22
Speaker 1: publication of the Pentagon Papers. When that failed, they obtained
13:25
Speaker 1: a court injunction that forced the Times to stop publishing
13:29
Speaker 1: after three articles. They appealed that ruling, and, in response
13:33
Speaker 1: to the government's crackdown on the New York Times, the
13:36
Speaker 1: Washington Post also started publishing the Pentagon Papers. That prompted
13:40
Speaker 1: the government to seek a similar injunction against them, except
13:43
Speaker 1: this time the judge disagreed. In response to all of that,
13:47
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court agreed to hear the New York Times
13:50
Speaker 1: in Washington Post cases jointly, at which point fifteen other
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Speaker 1: publications started running the Pentagon Papers. And with that the
13:58
Speaker 1: Supreme Court sided with the people and allowed further publication.
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Speaker 2: But that wasn't the end of it.
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Speaker 1: Reminder, the government also charged Ellsberg and Russo with espionage,
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Speaker 1: and that still had to be dealt with. Unfortunately for
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Speaker 1: the government and fortunately for Ellsberg and Russo, a mistrial
14:16
Speaker 1: was declared after it was revealed that Nixon's goon squad
14:20
Speaker 1: called the Plumbers, same people who carried out the Watergate
14:23
Speaker 1: break ins, had also broken into the office of Daniel
14:26
Speaker 1: Ellsberg's psychiatrist in an effort to find information they could
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Speaker 1: use to discredit him. Representatives of the Nixon administration also
14:34
Speaker 1: approached the trial judge and offered him an FBI director job.
14:38
Speaker 1: So that's pretty shady. And a mistrial was declared and
14:42
Speaker 1: Ellsberg and Russo were released, and eventually the Pentagon papers
14:46
Speaker 1: were published in their entirety, and by eventually, I mean
14:50
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, that's when they were finally released in their entirety.
14:54
Speaker 1: But even back in the seventies, enough of them were
14:57
Speaker 1: released to the public to make it a huge problem
14:59
Speaker 1: for the government. So cut to ten months later. History
15:04
Speaker 1: doesn't mention it nearly as much, but right after the
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Speaker 1: government tried to shut down the news media. They tried
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Speaker 1: the same thing with this book. On April eighteenth, nineteen
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Speaker 1: seventy two, Victor Marchetti became the first American writer to
15:18
Speaker 1: be served with an official censorship order issued by a
15:22
Speaker 1: court of the United States. That order prohibited him from
15:26
Speaker 1: quote disclosing in any manner any information relating to intelligence activities,
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Speaker 1: any information regarding intelligence sources or methods, or any intelligence information.
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Speaker 1: The government's argument was that in his role with the CIA,
15:43
Speaker 1: Marchette signed several secrecy agreements that precluded him from revealing
15:48
Speaker 1: any information learned during his employment, and by writing that book,
15:51
Speaker 1: they claimed he was violating these secrecy agreements and that
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Speaker 1: publication of the book would quote result in grave and
15:58
Speaker 1: irreparable injury to the interests of the United States, And
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Speaker 1: as a result of these claims, Judge Albert Bryan, Junior
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Speaker 1: of the United States District Court for the Eastern District
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Speaker 1: of Virginia in Alexandria signed a temporary restraining order forbidding
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Speaker 1: Marchetti from disclosing any information about the CIA, and requiring
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Speaker 1: him to submit any manuscript, article, or essay, or other writing,
16:27
Speaker 1: factual or otherwise to the Cia before releasing it to
16:31
Speaker 1: any person or corporation. At that point, the ACLU got involved.
16:36
Speaker 1: The first court date happened a few days later, and
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Speaker 1: Judge Brian not only refused to lift the order, he
16:43
Speaker 1: also refused to let Marchetti's lawyers read the affidavit filed
16:47
Speaker 1: by the government on account of how they had labeled
16:50
Speaker 1: it secret. That meant none of Marchetti's legal team had
16:53
Speaker 1: the proper security clearance to read it in order to
16:55
Speaker 1: freely discuss the affidavit. Not only did the lawyers have
16:59
Speaker 1: to be granted security clearance, so did any witnesses they
17:03
Speaker 1: intended to call. In other words, they couldn't even talk
17:06
Speaker 1: to witnesses if the government didn't approve of those witnesses,
17:09
Speaker 1: which is insane. The ensuing appeals were unsuccessful, and in
17:14
Speaker 1: December nineteen seventy two, the litigation came to an end
17:18
Speaker 1: when the Supreme Court refused to hear the case again.
17:21
Speaker 1: Wildly important moment in US history. Up to this point,
17:25
Speaker 1: prior restraints aka injunctions against publication were considered a threat
17:31
Speaker 1: to the very core of democracy. Before they tried to
17:34
Speaker 1: stop the Pentagon Papers from being published, the US government
17:37
Speaker 1: had never even considered anything of the sort. A few
17:41
Speaker 1: states had tried it before, but they were always shot
17:44
Speaker 1: down by the Supreme Court.
17:45
Speaker 2: But now the.
17:46
Speaker 1: Federal government was trying it for the second time in
17:49
Speaker 1: less than a year, and this time around they were winning.
17:51
Speaker 1: Even the Pentagon Papers effort wasn't a total loss. They
17:55
Speaker 1: did prevent a US publication from running a story for
18:00
Speaker 1: around fifteen days, after all. But even worse, when the
18:04
Speaker 1: Supreme Court decision came down, only two justices agreed that
18:09
Speaker 1: injunctions against publication were constitutionally forbidden under any circumstances. It
18:15
Speaker 1: was just that the majority believed it wasn't warranted in
18:18
Speaker 1: that particular case, and it was at quirk in the
18:21
Speaker 1: Supreme Court ruling that gave the government the confidence to
18:25
Speaker 1: try this again. In all of the justice opinions in
18:28
Speaker 1: the Pentagon Papers case, there was one thing they all
18:31
Speaker 1: agreed on. Information could be suppressed only if the disclosure
18:35
Speaker 1: would result in direct, immediate, and irreparable damage to the
18:40
Speaker 1: nation or its people. And the author's legal team wasn't
18:43
Speaker 1: concerned about that standard because they didn't think anything they
18:47
Speaker 1: planned to reveal would cause any damage, just like the
18:50
Speaker 1: Pentagon Papers didn't.
18:51
Speaker 2: The only damage or fallout from.
18:53
Speaker 1: That was to the reputation and careers of the government
18:59
Speaker 1: actors involved. It didn't do anything to hurt the country.
19:02
Speaker 1: None of us suffered for it, and Marchetti and Marx
19:05
Speaker 1: and their legal team were thinking same thing here, This
19:07
Speaker 1: should be a cakewalk. The problem was the government wasn't
19:11
Speaker 1: using that argument this time around. Instead, they argued that
19:15
Speaker 1: they were merely attempting to enforce a contract Marchetti signed
19:19
Speaker 1: with the CIA, so it's not a First Amendment case.
19:22
Speaker 1: It's just a contract action. But again, there wasn't a
19:25
Speaker 1: whole lot of precedent for the stipulations of the secrecy
19:28
Speaker 1: agreements like the one Marchetti signed actually being enforced.
19:31
Speaker 2: Either.
19:32
Speaker 1: Disclosing classified information, at least at the time, probably still
19:36
Speaker 1: wasn't a crime unless it was done in an espionage
19:40
Speaker 1: kind of way with the intent to harm the country.
19:43
Speaker 1: The government tried prosecuting Daniel Ellsberg for espionage in the
19:47
Speaker 1: Pentagon Paper's case. They failed only because a mistrial was declared,
19:52
Speaker 1: but there's a good chance they were going to fail anyway.
19:55
Speaker 1: They were making a pretty extreme argument. The difference here
19:58
Speaker 1: is that Marchetti was disc closing classified information and signed
20:03
Speaker 1: a contract with the CIA that said he wouldn't. They
20:06
Speaker 1: felt that gave them the proper legal footing to stop
20:09
Speaker 1: this book from being published, if nothing else, And unfortunately,
20:13
Speaker 1: the courts mostly agreed. And that might sound reasonable at
20:16
Speaker 1: first until you take into account that literally every government
20:20
Speaker 1: official who's ever written a memoir signed those same agreements
20:24
Speaker 1: and technically violated that agreement by writing said memoir. Still,
20:29
Speaker 1: this decision didn't mean the book couldn't be published at all.
20:32
Speaker 1: It just meant the CIA was allowed to read it
20:35
Speaker 1: first and censor any sections they didn't like. At first,
20:39
Speaker 1: they demanded that three hundred and thirty nine sections be removed,
20:43
Speaker 1: which amounted to around fifteen to twenty percent of the book.
20:47
Speaker 1: By the time the authors appealed that the FEDS had
20:49
Speaker 1: reduced the number of sections they wanted deleted to one
20:52
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty eight, and this part of the legal
20:55
Speaker 1: wrangling over this book went a little better for Marchetti
20:58
Speaker 1: and Marx. The government or ment's position was a pretty
21:02
Speaker 1: audacious one. In their opinion, material was classified if they
21:07
Speaker 1: said it should be classified, no other justification required in
21:11
Speaker 1: the government's opinion, and as if by magic. Judge Bryan
21:15
Speaker 1: disagreed with that and ruled that justification for why each
21:19
Speaker 1: section should be classified was required, and in most cases
21:23
Speaker 1: the government wasn't able to prove that point, so in
21:26
Speaker 1: the end, only twenty seven of those sections were considered
21:30
Speaker 1: classified and removed from the book. So that brings us
21:33
Speaker 1: to the obvious question, what kind of information is in
21:37
Speaker 1: the CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. The short answer
21:40
Speaker 1: is that, just like the CIA was probably afraid of,
21:44
Speaker 1: it's a very detailed account of how the agency worked
21:47
Speaker 1: at the time, what kind of shenanigans they were getting
21:50
Speaker 1: up to overseas and at home, and it even names
21:53
Speaker 1: names when it gets into describing the organizational structure. The
21:57
Speaker 1: book is divided into three parts. We're going to talk
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Speaker 1: about part one today and then parts two and three
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Speaker 1: on the next episode. Part one is further divided into
22:06
Speaker 1: three chapters. Chapter one is called the Cult of Intelligence.
22:10
Speaker 1: Chapter two it's called The Clandestine Theory. Chapter three the
22:14
Speaker 1: CIA and the Intelligence Community. Gonna be honest. That third
22:18
Speaker 1: chapter is mostly organizational hierarchy stuff, and as such it's
22:25
Speaker 1: kind of boring, so we'll mostly focus on those first
22:28
Speaker 1: two chapters for the rest of this episode. I doubt
22:31
Speaker 1: most of the people named in chapter three are even
22:34
Speaker 1: alive anymore. This was a long time ago, and you
22:37
Speaker 1: know they were all like fifty year old white men
22:40
Speaker 1: even by that point. So up first chapter one, the
22:43
Speaker 1: Cult of Intelligence. The first page of this chapter really
22:47
Speaker 1: sets the tone for the rest of the book, as
22:49
Speaker 1: I suppose any good first page should do. So if
22:53
Speaker 1: you will please bear with me, I'm just gonna read
22:55
Speaker 1: that first page for batim.
22:57
Speaker 2: Just a heads up.
22:58
Speaker 1: The print in this book very so this could take
23:01
Speaker 1: a bit. Sorry, here goes. There exists in our nation
23:05
Speaker 1: today a powerful and dangerous secret cult, the Cult of Intelligence.
23:10
Speaker 1: Its holy men are the clandestine professionals of the Central
23:14
Speaker 1: Intelligence Agency. Its patrons and protectors are the highest officials
23:19
Speaker 1: of the federal government. Its membership, extending far beyond governmental circles,
23:25
Speaker 1: reaches into the power centers of industry, commerce, finance, and labor.
23:29
Speaker 1: Its friends are many in the areas of important public influence,
23:33
Speaker 1: the academic world and the communications media. The Cult of
23:37
Speaker 1: Intelligence is a secret fraternity of the American political aristocracy.
23:42
Speaker 1: The purpose of the cult is to further the foreign
23:44
Speaker 1: policies of the US government by covert and usually illegal means,
23:50
Speaker 1: while at the same time containing the spread of its
23:52
Speaker 1: avowed enemy, Communism. Traditionally, the cult's hope has been to
23:57
Speaker 1: foster a world order in which America would reign supreme,
24:00
Speaker 1: the unchallenged international leader. Today, however, that dream stands tarnished
24:06
Speaker 1: by time and frequent failures. Thus the cult subjectives are
24:10
Speaker 1: now less grandiose, but no less disturbing. It seeks largely
24:14
Speaker 1: to advance America's self appointed role as the dominant arbiter
24:19
Speaker 1: of social, economic, and political change in the awakening regions
24:24
Speaker 1: of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and its worldwide war
24:28
Speaker 1: against communism has to some extent been reduced to a
24:32
Speaker 1: covert struggle to maintain a self serving stability in the
24:36
Speaker 1: Third World, using whatever clandestine methods are available for the
24:40
Speaker 1: Cult of Intelligence. Fostering stability may in one country mean
24:44
Speaker 1: reluctant and passive acquiescence to evolutionary change, in another country,
24:49
Speaker 1: the active maintenance of the status quo, and yet another
24:52
Speaker 1: a determined effort to reverse popular trends toward independence and democracy.
24:58
Speaker 1: The cult attempts that which which it believes it can accomplish,
25:01
Speaker 1: and which, in the event of failure or exposure, the
25:05
Speaker 1: US government can plausibly deny the end of page one,
25:10
Speaker 1: I mean not the book. From there, the book gets
25:13
Speaker 1: into the wall of secrecy the CIA had built around itself.
25:18
Speaker 1: By this point, they describe it as the clandestine mentality,
25:22
Speaker 1: a mindset that thrives on secrecy and deception. To quote
25:26
Speaker 1: the book, you can tell Marchetti wrote a novel before this.
25:29
Speaker 1: He's good with words. The book still kind of reads
25:33
Speaker 1: like a novel. The clandestine mentality is also described as
25:37
Speaker 1: being one that encourages professional immorality, in this case, the
25:41
Speaker 1: belief that our country's righteous goals can only be achieved
25:46
Speaker 1: through normally unacceptable means. One of the really interesting things
25:50
Speaker 1: they touch on in this first chapter is the relationship
25:54
Speaker 1: between the CIA and the president. Their assertion is that
25:58
Speaker 1: the president and the CIA generally agree on things, and
26:02
Speaker 1: that the president usually knows what kind of stuff the
26:05
Speaker 1: agency is getting up to. It's just that it doesn't
26:08
Speaker 1: always seem that way. JFK is a good example. He
26:11
Speaker 1: said a lot of not nice things about the CIA,
26:15
Speaker 1: especially the part where he vowed to break them into
26:18
Speaker 1: a million pieces. But it was more because the Bay
26:20
Speaker 1: of Pigs invasion was a pr disaster, not because it
26:24
Speaker 1: was something he didn't know about, and as discussed on
26:27
Speaker 1: the Jonestown episodes, he was all for the CIA toppling
26:31
Speaker 1: the government of Guyana. Before him, the Eisenhower administration actively
26:35
Speaker 1: lied about CIA actions in Guatemala. Lyndon Johnson lied about
26:40
Speaker 1: pretty much everything involving the Vietnam War, including what the
26:44
Speaker 1: CIA was doing there After Kennedy, the Nixon administration covered
26:49
Speaker 1: for the CIA toppling the government of Chile. Jimmy Carter
26:54
Speaker 1: was the last president to really confront the CIA publicly.
26:58
Speaker 1: He came into office promise saying a whole bunch of
27:01
Speaker 1: reforms as a result of the Church and Pike Committee hearings,
27:06
Speaker 1: but behind the scenes, when the CIA got wrapped up
27:10
Speaker 1: in a scandal over millions of dollars of secret and
27:14
Speaker 1: unexplained payments they made to Jordan's King Hussein, it was
27:19
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter who lobbied the hardest for the agency's right
27:23
Speaker 1: to lie in the name of national security. And from
27:26
Speaker 1: there we move on to the Reagan years, which is
27:29
Speaker 1: a whole other story we'll get to in a future episode.
27:32
Speaker 1: Another interesting detail from the first chapter is what the
27:36
Speaker 1: CIA was supposed to be when it started, and how
27:39
Speaker 1: quickly it became something else entirely how it started versus
27:43
Speaker 1: how it's going. As the memes say, the CIA sprung
27:46
Speaker 1: to life by way of the nineteen forty seven National
27:50
Speaker 1: Security Act, which was signed into law by Harry Truman,
27:54
Speaker 1: a man history, it seems like, still kind of views
27:57
Speaker 1: as a whimp, even though he's the only world world
28:00
Speaker 1: leader to ever drop a nuclear weapon during war. Anyway,
28:04
Speaker 1: this whimp's vision for the CIA, as touched on earlier,
28:08
Speaker 1: was that it would just be a sort of clearing
28:10
Speaker 1: house for all of the intelligence gathered by the various
28:14
Speaker 1: other government agencies, and it would produce reports about things
28:18
Speaker 1: happening overseas so as to better inform our foreign policy.
28:23
Speaker 1: But Alan Dulles, the CIA's first director and a veteran
28:27
Speaker 1: of the wartime Office of Strategic Services, saw things a
28:31
Speaker 1: little differently. He envisioned the CIA more as a secret
28:35
Speaker 1: spy army that could help the US achieve its foreign
28:38
Speaker 1: policy goals when diplomacy failed, and obviously Alan Dulles won
28:43
Speaker 1: that argument. He did that by way of a seemingly
28:47
Speaker 1: unimportant passage in that nineteen forty seven National Security Act.
28:52
Speaker 1: The passage in question permitted the CIA to quote perform
28:56
Speaker 1: such other duties related to intelligence, as the National Security
29:00
Speaker 1: Council may from time to time direct end quote. And
29:04
Speaker 1: now here's a quote from the book regarding those words
29:07
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forty seven National Security Act. Quote from
29:11
Speaker 1: those few innocuous words, the CIA has been able over
29:14
Speaker 1: the years to develop a secret charter based on National
29:18
Speaker 1: Security Council directives and presidential executive orders, a charter almost
29:24
Speaker 1: completely at variance with the apparent intent of the law
29:29
Speaker 1: that established the agency.
29:31
Speaker 2: End quote.
29:31
Speaker 1: And that right there is the crux of this book,
29:34
Speaker 1: the disparity between what the CIA was supposed to be
29:37
Speaker 1: versus what it had become by this point in history.
29:40
Speaker 1: Chapter ends with a really interesting sentence. Here goes, the
29:44
Speaker 1: aim of this book is to provide the American people
29:48
Speaker 1: with the inside information which they need and to which they,
29:52
Speaker 1: without question have the right to understand the significance of
29:56
Speaker 1: this issue and the importance of dealing with it. Say
30:00
Speaker 1: that last sentence is interesting because here's the thing, we
30:03
Speaker 1: never did deal with it. Seeing as how this book
30:05
Speaker 1: was published in the early seventies, We've had approximately fifty
30:09
Speaker 1: years to address the CIA's actions in other countries and
30:14
Speaker 1: intervening in the affairs of governments that we don't like.
30:18
Speaker 2: But we didn't.
30:19
Speaker 1: As worried as the CIA was about its publication, this
30:22
Speaker 1: book did absolutely nothing to stop them from continuing their
30:27
Speaker 1: work as a force for international instability on behalf of
30:32
Speaker 1: us interests. So now let's talk about chapter two, which
30:36
Speaker 1: is titled The Clandestine Theory. This is where the CIA
30:40
Speaker 1: censorship starts coming hot and heavy. In fact, the first
30:44
Speaker 1: line of the chapter just says one and a half
30:47
Speaker 1: lines deleted. Apparently the part they wanted deleted was a
30:51
Speaker 1: quote from Henry Kissinger, because the next two actual sentences
30:54
Speaker 1: are Henry Kissinger made that statement not in public, but
30:58
Speaker 1: at a secret White House meeting on June twenty seventh,
31:00
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. The country he was referring to was Chile.
31:04
Speaker 1: So Henry Kissinger said something about Chile, and the FEDS
31:08
Speaker 1: didn't want us to know what it was. I'm sure
31:10
Speaker 1: it was nothing major, probably just a joke that hasn't
31:12
Speaker 1: aged well or something.
31:14
Speaker 2: The first few pages of.
31:15
Speaker 1: Chapter two are all about that CIA intervention in Chile
31:19
Speaker 1: back when this book was published. The notion that the
31:22
Speaker 1: CIA interfered in another country's affairs to get their chosen
31:26
Speaker 1: candidate elected was mostly just a rumor and still a
31:30
Speaker 1: thing Nixon was publicly saying didn't happen. But now we
31:34
Speaker 1: know all about it. Now that is a thing that
31:36
Speaker 1: history has since confirmed did happen. But this book was
31:40
Speaker 1: on that train super early. There are still some super
31:43
Speaker 1: interesting details despite all their redactions, and we'll get to those.
31:48
Speaker 1: But sometimes the redactions themselves are interesting just because of
31:52
Speaker 1: the sense of mystery they evoke. Case in point, this
31:55
Speaker 1: line Henry Kissinger, the single most powerful man at the
31:59
Speaker 1: forty committee meeting on Chile Comma twenty five and a
32:03
Speaker 1: half lines deleted, and it would have been more like
32:06
Speaker 1: thirty three lines if not for one half of a
32:08
Speaker 1: sentence that was allowed to slip through before another six
32:12
Speaker 1: and a half lines are deleted that sentence during the
32:15
Speaker 1: next two months before Allende was officially endorsed as president
32:20
Speaker 1: by the Chilean Congress comma, and that's it. The sentence
32:23
Speaker 1: ends at a comma and then six point five more
32:26
Speaker 1: deleted lines.
32:28
Speaker 2: Nevertheless, like I said.
32:29
Speaker 1: There are still a few things of interest to be
32:33
Speaker 1: found here, like how the CIA met up with executives
32:37
Speaker 1: from two American corporations that were especially interested in stopping
32:42
Speaker 1: Allenda from taking power in Chile. Those two corporations were
32:45
Speaker 1: ITT International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. I'm sure they're still
32:50
Speaker 1: doing great, and the awesomely named Anaconda Copper. They don't
32:54
Speaker 1: want none if it ain't copper Son. What the CIA
32:58
Speaker 1: discussed with them was a four part plan of economic
33:02
Speaker 1: sabotage meant to destabilize the Aenday regime to the point
33:07
Speaker 1: that the people would revolt and the military would take over. Now,
33:11
Speaker 1: officials from ITT would later claim that they dismissed this
33:15
Speaker 1: plan as unworkable at the time, and that is probably
33:19
Speaker 1: not true.
33:20
Speaker 2: What is for sure true.
33:22
Speaker 1: Is that three years, almost to the day after Allenda
33:26
Speaker 1: was elected, Chile was mired in financial distress and chaos.
33:31
Speaker 1: The people revolted, Allende was killed in a coup, and
33:34
Speaker 1: a military junta took over. The US government tried its
33:38
Speaker 1: best to deny responsibility for the coup, but even way
33:41
Speaker 1: back in the seventies, we were already admitting that we
33:45
Speaker 1: did try to undercut the Allende government, which is a
33:49
Speaker 1: little bit, not much at all, just a little. All
33:52
Speaker 1: we did was cut off economic assistance, discourage private lines
33:56
Speaker 1: of credit, and block loans by international organizations, and we
34:01
Speaker 1: had a perfectly good reason.
34:02
Speaker 2: For doing it.
34:03
Speaker 1: We wanted to bring about the collapse of the Allende
34:06
Speaker 1: government and discredit socialism, that's all. But in the end
34:10
Speaker 1: we didn't do any of that. It just happened naturally, Baby,
34:13
Speaker 1: That is what we actually wanted and expected people to
34:17
Speaker 1: believe for the longest time. And remember that part at
34:21
Speaker 1: the end of chapter one about the need to stop
34:23
Speaker 1: doing things like this. You can find a good example
34:26
Speaker 1: of how we definitely did not stop doing that in Venezuela.
34:30
Speaker 1: That country had the gall to elect a non white
34:34
Speaker 1: socialist president named Hugo Chavez back in the early two thousands,
34:38
Speaker 1: and despite what the government told John Oliver to tell you,
34:42
Speaker 1: to the contrary, we've been waging economic war against Venezuela
34:47
Speaker 1: ever since. We've tried at least three or four times
34:51
Speaker 1: to topple that government since then, including right after Chavez
34:55
Speaker 1: got elected. We launched a coup, flew him away in
34:58
Speaker 1: a helicopter, and the people protested so hard we just
35:02
Speaker 1: let him go back to being president.
35:03
Speaker 2: And all of our.
35:04
Speaker 1: Subsequent attempts to topple the government since then have mostly
35:09
Speaker 1: just been efforts that ended up hurting the most poverty
35:12
Speaker 1: stricken Venezuelan citizens while having no real impact on who
35:17
Speaker 1: actually runs the country. See that's the thing about economic warfare.
35:20
Speaker 1: It destabilizes governments by inflicting pain and suffering on the
35:24
Speaker 1: people of that country, so then they get mad enough
35:27
Speaker 1: to want the government out. We don't drop bombs, we
35:30
Speaker 1: don't send in tanks, but people die all the same.
35:33
Speaker 1: The CIA has a phrase for operations like the one
35:36
Speaker 1: in Chile, covert action, and according to the book, that
35:40
Speaker 1: has been the CIA's main business function almost since the
35:44
Speaker 1: inception of the agency, and the book also provides a
35:47
Speaker 1: fascinating explanation for why that was the case. Basically, the
35:51
Speaker 1: CIA was bad at espionage. Turns out, Russia was too
35:56
Speaker 1: much of a closed society and too good at surveilling
36:00
Speaker 1: people who entered their borders for any sort of intelligence
36:03
Speaker 1: gathering operations to have any impact. So the CIA just
36:08
Speaker 1: shifted focus to stopping less powerful countries from buddying up
36:13
Speaker 1: with the Ruskies. In other words, this is the point
36:16
Speaker 1: in history where America decides it's our job to protect
36:20
Speaker 1: the rest of the world from communism, and if we
36:22
Speaker 1: have to murder your democratically elected president in a bloody
36:27
Speaker 1: coup will do it for you. And a lot of
36:29
Speaker 1: those efforts were focused on Third world nations, and there
36:33
Speaker 1: is a reason for that focus. Here's what Richard Bissel
36:37
Speaker 1: of the CIA told the Council on Foreign Relations. Quote
36:41
Speaker 1: simply because their governments are much less highly organized, there
36:45
Speaker 1: is less security consciousness, and there is apt to be
36:48
Speaker 1: more actual or potential diffusion of power among the parties, localities, organizations,
36:54
Speaker 1: and individuals outside the central government end quote. In other words,
36:59
Speaker 1: their instability makes them prime candidates for the kind of
37:03
Speaker 1: instability that makes American corporations rich. And some of the
37:07
Speaker 1: things they got up to in the name of fomenting
37:11
Speaker 1: that instability are wild. Take Air Force Colonel Edward Lansdale,
37:16
Speaker 1: for example. He's specifically brought up in this book. He
37:19
Speaker 1: is so famous for his adventures in psychological warfare mind
37:24
Speaker 1: fuckery that he's the basis for the main character in
37:27
Speaker 1: two different novels about that very thing. His most notorious
37:31
Speaker 1: campaign happened in the Philippines, as the story goes, in
37:36
Speaker 1: that country, there exists a mythological beast that some portion
37:40
Speaker 1: of the population lives in fear of. It's called a
37:44
Speaker 1: swang Asua Ng. Under Lansdale's guidance, a psychological warfare squad
37:50
Speaker 1: entered an area in the countryside of the Philippines and
37:53
Speaker 1: planet rumors that an Aswang lived where their communist targets
37:59
Speaker 1: were based to. Two nights later, after giving the rumors
38:02
Speaker 1: time to circulate, the psychological warfare squad lays an ambush
38:07
Speaker 1: for the communist rebels that they're trying to put down,
38:09
Speaker 1: and when a patrol passed, the squad quietly snatches the
38:14
Speaker 1: last man in line, drags him into the woods, punctures
38:18
Speaker 1: his neck vampire style with two holes, hangs his body
38:22
Speaker 1: until the blood drains out, and then they just tossed
38:25
Speaker 1: the corpse back onto the trail. In other words, they
38:28
Speaker 1: made it look like he got killed by that fearsome
38:32
Speaker 1: mythological beast, and that was all it took to get
38:35
Speaker 1: those insurgents to flee that area. Another example of his
38:38
Speaker 1: shenanigans happened in Vietnam, where during the nineteen fifty five
38:43
Speaker 1: presidential election in South Vietnam, he made sure the presidential
38:47
Speaker 1: candidate of our choosing had his name listed in red,
38:50
Speaker 1: which is a color that means good luck in that country. Meanwhile,
38:54
Speaker 1: his opponent's name was listed in green. In that color
38:57
Speaker 1: in that country means you're a cuckold.
39:00
Speaker 2: That's right.
39:00
Speaker 1: This book uses the phrase cook, except the proper term,
39:03
Speaker 1: not the truncated Internet version that we know and love today.
39:07
Speaker 1: If from there, the book gets into kind of the
39:09
Speaker 1: operational procedures behind these covert actions in third world countries. Basically,
39:14
Speaker 1: a case officer would go in first. The case officer
39:17
Speaker 1: was responsible for lining up all of the contacts and
39:21
Speaker 1: sources and informants that the United States could ever need
39:26
Speaker 1: to bring down the government of that country. If we
39:28
Speaker 1: ever decide to the case officers and the agency in
39:31
Speaker 1: general call these sources and contacts penetrators. Ooh, and the
39:37
Speaker 1: actions they carried out on behalf of the CIA and
39:40
Speaker 1: the case officer, well, those are called penetrations. Oh yeah,
39:45
Speaker 1: look at the CIA being all sexy and stuff. And
39:48
Speaker 1: all of this has to be done ahead of time,
39:50
Speaker 1: because if you send the case officer in at the
39:53
Speaker 1: same time you're hoping to pull the trigger on top
39:56
Speaker 1: in that government, you're not going to have all the
39:57
Speaker 1: penetrations in place to be success. It's a long con
40:01
Speaker 1: The book mentions eight different tactics that the CIA would
40:05
Speaker 1: use back then during these interventions in the affairs of
40:09
Speaker 1: other countries. Let's go through them, shall we. Number one
40:13
Speaker 1: political advice and council. Number two subsidies to an individual.
40:17
Speaker 1: Number three, financial support and technical assistance to political parties.
40:22
Speaker 1: Number four support of private organizations including labor unions, business firms, cooperatives,
40:28
Speaker 1: et cetera. Number five covert propaganda. Number six, private training
40:34
Speaker 1: of individuals and exchange of persons. Number seven economic operations,
40:39
Speaker 1: and number eight paramilitary or political action kind of like
40:43
Speaker 1: the Beyapigs invasion. Those all seem pretty self explanatory, but
40:48
Speaker 1: after listing all of them, the book then tries to
40:51
Speaker 1: explain each one in a little more detail.
40:54
Speaker 2: They mentioned that the fifth and.
40:55
Speaker 1: Eighth categories covert propaganda and paramilitary action are good to
41:00
Speaker 1: be their own chapters later in the book, But when
41:02
Speaker 1: they try to get into explaining the other six points,
41:05
Speaker 1: that's when the CIA redactions come back in full force,
41:09
Speaker 1: to the point that it's not even worth trying to
41:12
Speaker 1: go through it. We're talking pages where in between each
41:16
Speaker 1: paragraph there are fifteen to thirty lines deleted, and honestly,
41:20
Speaker 1: that's not that surprising because when we're getting into this
41:23
Speaker 1: section of the book, we're getting into actual tactics. The
41:27
Speaker 1: CIA uses to do what they perceive to be their
41:30
Speaker 1: job overseas, or at least that's what they did back
41:33
Speaker 1: when this book came out. Either way, they didn't want
41:36
Speaker 1: us to know. It's one of the redactions in this
41:38
Speaker 1: book that probably makes the most sense to me. And
41:41
Speaker 1: after all those reactions, the chapter ends by reminding us
41:44
Speaker 1: of something that was mentioned at the beginning of the
41:46
Speaker 1: book and at the beginning of this episode, which is that,
41:50
Speaker 1: for the most part, every president has been mostly fine
41:54
Speaker 1: with all of the covert operations and actions carried out
41:58
Speaker 1: by the CIA overseas. Here is another direct quote from
42:01
Speaker 1: the book. Once again, it's kind of long. Apologies, here
42:05
Speaker 1: goes in no instance, as a president of the United
42:09
Speaker 1: States ever made a serious attempt to review or revamp
42:13
Speaker 1: the covert practices of the CIA. Minor alterations in operational
42:17
Speaker 1: methods and techniques have been carried out, but no basic
42:20
Speaker 1: changes in policy or practice have ever been demanded by
42:24
Speaker 1: the White House. And this is not surprising. Presidents like
42:27
Speaker 1: the CIA. It does their dirty work, work that might
42:30
Speaker 1: not otherwise be doable. When the agency fails or blunders,
42:34
Speaker 1: all the president need do is to deny, scold, or threaten.
42:38
Speaker 1: For the CIA's part, being the focus of presidential blame
42:41
Speaker 1: is an occupational hazard, but one hardly worth worrying about.
42:45
Speaker 1: It is merely an aspect of the cover behind which
42:49
Speaker 1: the agency operates. Like the other aspects of its cover,
42:53
Speaker 1: it is part of a deception. The CIA fully realizes
42:56
Speaker 1: that it is too important to the government and the
43:00
Speaker 1: American political aristocracy for any president to do more than
43:04
Speaker 1: tinker with it. The CIA shrugs off all the blunders
43:08
Speaker 1: and proceeds to devise new operations, secure in the knowledge
43:12
Speaker 1: that the White House usually cannot resist its offerings, particularly
43:17
Speaker 1: covert action. Covert action that dominates, that determines, that defines
43:22
Speaker 1: the shape and purpose of the CIA. America's leaders have
43:26
Speaker 1: not yet reached the point where they are willing to
43:28
Speaker 1: forsake intervention in the internal affairs of other countries and
43:33
Speaker 1: let events naturally run their course. There still is a
43:36
Speaker 1: widely held belief in this country that America has the
43:40
Speaker 1: right and responsibility to become involved in the internal political
43:45
Speaker 1: processes of foreign nations. And while faith in this belief
43:49
Speaker 1: and that of doctrinaire anti communism may have been somewhat
43:53
Speaker 1: shaken in the last decade. Six lines deleted. That's how
43:58
Speaker 1: the passage ends, and that's how this chapter ends, just
44:02
Speaker 1: like it started. Deleted lines, in this case six lines deleted.
44:07
Speaker 1: But you get the idea. They're saying. The Presidency has
44:10
Speaker 1: always been in favor of CIA covert action. They just
44:14
Speaker 1: prefer that it stays covert so they don't have to
44:16
Speaker 1: say anything about it now. I mentioned earlier that the
44:18
Speaker 1: CIA did sort of get taken to task not long
44:22
Speaker 1: after the publication of this book by way of the
44:25
Speaker 1: Church Committee and the Pike Committee that said, do you
44:28
Speaker 1: remember what the resulting action from all that hubbub was?
44:32
Speaker 1: The CIA was banned from operating on American soil against
44:36
Speaker 1: American citizens. In other words, they were banned from doing
44:39
Speaker 1: something they had no interest in doing in the first place.
44:43
Speaker 1: They just wanted to fuck up Latin America and not
44:46
Speaker 1: get any guff for it, and no one ever stopped
44:48
Speaker 1: them from doing that. So, as I mentioned previously, the
44:51
Speaker 1: third chapter of this book, titled the CIA and the
44:54
Speaker 1: Intelligence Community, is kind of dull. It mostly deals with
44:58
Speaker 1: organizational structure and higher so basically the authors doing their
45:02
Speaker 1: best to estimate how huge the CIA really was at
45:06
Speaker 1: that time. There were official personnel figures available, but none
45:10
Speaker 1: of them took into account all of the contractors and
45:13
Speaker 1: various other intermediaries and penetrators the agency worked with. Their
45:18
Speaker 1: final estimation was that the CIA was huge, and they
45:23
Speaker 1: probably haven't gotten any less huge since. And with that,
45:27
Speaker 1: we've reached the end of part one of The CIA
45:30
Speaker 1: and the Cult of Intelligence. Will probably drop a bonus
45:33
Speaker 1: episode in between, but on the next free episode we'll
45:37
Speaker 1: dive into parts two and three of this book.
45:40
Speaker 2: Until then, I don't know.
45:42
Speaker 1: You can follow the show on Twitter or Instagram at
45:46
Speaker 1: Conspira pops. If you want to hear bonus episodes, you
45:49
Speaker 1: can subscribe at patreon, dot com, slash and pops or
45:52
Speaker 1: on popsnetwork, dot Supercast, dot tech. Got a whole bunch
45:55
Speaker 1: of different options for you to subscribe there. And I'm
45:58
Speaker 1: launching a substack soon called Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Friends,
46:03
Speaker 1: where you'll be able to give me money to read
46:05
Speaker 1: the things I make instead of, uh, listen to them.
46:09
Speaker 1: It's writing. Substack is for writing. I used to write.
46:13
Speaker 1: I don't know if people who listen to this podcast
46:14
Speaker 1: know that, but there'd be different topics it's not You're
46:17
Speaker 1: not just going to go.
46:18
Speaker 2: I don't know.
46:19
Speaker 1: It'll look at it when it launches. Okay, all right,
46:22
Speaker 1: I think that's it for now. Let's get out of here.
46:25
Speaker 1: Adam say goodbye. Goodbye everybody, We love you.