> > > From: Robert Cherwink <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > thankx2: Michael Eisenscher > Via: imap [info appended] > > http://come.to/CIABASE > > " The CIA is not now nor has ever been a central intelligence agency. > It is the covert action arm of the president's foreign policy advisers. > In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while > reporting "intelligence" justifying those activities. It shapes its > intelligence, even in such critical areas as Soviet nuclear weapon > capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large > part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are > the primary target audience of its lies." > > -Ralph McGehee > > "CIABASE remains a one-of-a-kind, extraordinary resource for serious > scholars, journalists, and researchers, regardless of their political > leanings and research interests." > - John Macartney, > American University > > CIABASE , "An encyclopedia of CIA actions." > - San Francisco Chronicle > > Deadly Deceits - My 25 Years in the CIA, Ralph McGehee, Sheridan Square > Press, 1983. > > Ralph McGehee's Deadly Deceits has become a textbook in some college > classes. It is a tale that starts slowly and builds to an epiphany of > realization. During McGehee's twenty-five year CIA career he heartily > believed in its stated mission of "fighting communism." And as McGehee > writes, CIA candidates are psychologically screened before hired, and > one of the most treasured qualities of a CIA candidate is the > willingness to follow orders without questions and to not think too > much about it. > > Ralph W. McGehee joined the CIA in 1952 after being a star football > player at Notre Dame (Where Phil Agee studied also.) during their > national championship years. He was raised on and believed in the > American dream - "the Protestant work ethic, truth, justice, freedom." > He signed on as a dedicated cold warrior. He spent the next ten years > stationed at home and abroad: at Langley (the CIA headquarters in > Washington), Taiwan, Japan, the Phillipines, and then Thailand. McGehee > was dedicated to stopping the scourge of communism, and > enthusiastically did his part to keep the world free of its taint. > > In the mid 1960s Thailand was right next to the other Southeast Asian > nations of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and communism was sweeping the > land. McGehee's job was to save Thai villages from communist > insurgency. He stumbled upon an innovative way to bust communist cells > in the villages, sort of torching the grass roots. They found a method > of intelligence gathering (basically intelligent intimidation of > villagers) that identified communists and exposed their network. The > results of their methodology created a stir in the intelligence circles > in 1967, and accolades and awards came in. McGehee had the biggest > success of his 15 year career, he had found a way to expose the > communists, and his future in intelligence looked very bright. Just > then William Colby (future CIA head, and then Far East division chief) > came to visit him, and McGehee briefed him on what he had learned: > > "I explained the procedures of the survey and then outlined my general > conclusions, including my doubts about previous Agency reporting which > said that the Communists did not have the support of the local people > and that they forced people to support them with threats and > terrorism. > > "Such a picture is inaccurate," I told Colby..."We have found that the > Communists concentrate the majority, almost the entirety, of their time > winning the cooperation of the peasants." > > McGehee had exposed the Communist movement as a grass roots movement > that had the support of the peasants, mainly because the Communist > goals were to throw off the shackles of Imperialism, enforced by the > Thai ruling class and their industrialized-nation sponsors, and live > freely. McGehee had shown fairly undeniably that Communism in > Southeast Asia was a mass movement that had the support of the people. > > McGehee was extremely puzzled by Colby's response, "We always seem to > be losing." McGehee was eager to flush out all those communists with > his successful interrogation method, but soon after Colby's visit > McGehee was taken out of the field, his successful program canceled, > and he was put behind a meaningless desk at Langley. He didn't know > what had happened, and it took him years to figure it out. It turned > out that he had come up with the wrong answer in Thailand. Communism > couldn't be damned as an evil if the people themselves were in favor of > it. If that fact became known, what we were doing in Vietnam wouldn't > look too good: killing millions of people to keep them from choosing a > way of life we didn't approve of. > > Ralph McGehee receiving awards from the Vietnamese Special Police. > Awards include a medal, a Viet Cong pistol, and the Viet Cong flag that > flew over Saigon on Tet 1968. > > "We were there to impose a US-controlled regime over Vietnam....We > refused to admit the real strength of the South Vietnamese Communists. > Had we ever done it, then we would have to come up with totally new > justifications for being there or just pulled out." > > McGehee still fervently believed the propaganda he had been steeped in, > and volunteered to go to Saigon. His experience there beat out all of > the illusions he had been raised with. He saw the naked, insane evil of > what the United States was doing, and it almost ruined him. Visions of > napalmed children and cratered fields were seared into his brain. At > one point he had thought of killing himself to protest what the CIA was > doing, but in the end he committed himself to exposing what the CIA was > doing. As he left Vietnam: > > "I was glad to be going home. But I knew I would never be the same > person again. All of my ideals of helping people, all my convictions > about the processes of intelligence, all my respect for my work, all > the feelings of joy in my life, all my concepts of honor, integrity, > trust and love, all in fact that made me what I was, had died in > Vietnam. Through its blindness and its murders, the Agency had stolen > my life and my soul. Full of anger, hatred, and fear, I bitterly > contemplated a dismal future." > > McGehee had by that time put in almost 20 years with the CIA. He spent > the last several years of his career at Langley getting educated in the > CIA archives. He retired after he got his 25 years in and accepted a > career achievement medal, partly so his future work couldn't be called > the work of a CIA person with a failed career. He began his book's > conclusion with: "The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central > intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the President's > foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports > foreign governments while reporting "intelligence" justifying those > activities (McGehee says he has never once seen a CIA official tell the > truth to Congress. Instead comes a steady stream of lies.). It shapes > its intelligence, even in such critical areas as Soviet nuclear weapon > capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large > part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are > the primary target of its lies." > > "As noted in the Church Committee's final report, the Agency's task is > to develop an international anti-communist ideology. The CIA then links > every egalitarian (which means "all men are created equal" - ed.) > political movement to the scourge of international communism. This then > prepares the American people and many in the world community for the > second stage, the destruction of those movements. For egalitarianism is > the enemy and it must not be allowed to exist." > > McGehee calls for the abolition of the CIA. But the big reason I am > citing McGehee's book here is because of what he had to go through to > get his book published. He didn't want to lose his pension, go to jail, > or leave the country, so he had to abide by the secrecy agreement he > signed when he joined the CIA. In the book's appendix he tells the > surreal adventures he went through to get the book published. The > appendix begins: > > "The secrecy agreement that I signed when I joined the CIA allows the > Agency to review prior to publication all writings of present and > former employees to ensure that classified information relating to > national security is not revealed. This provision seems logical and > necessary to protect legitimate interests. However, my experiences in > getting this book approved show that the CIA uses the agreement not so > much to protect national security as to prevent revelations and > criticisms of its immoral, illegal, and ineffective operations. To that > end it uses all possible maneuvers, legal and illegal. Had I not been > represented by my attorney, Mark Lynch of the American Civil Liberties > Union (ACLU), and had I not developed a massive catalog of information > already cleared by the Agency's publication review board, this book > could not have been published." > > McGehee then recounts what he went through. I can't do justice to what > he went through, it has to be read to be believed. The CIA first tried > ambushing him with a room full of lawyers, until they knew he had > already obtained a lawyer with the security clearance to represent him > in those matters. Then the CIA man assigned to work with him on the > review set the tone early in the process: "It's too bad you didn't work > for the Israeli intelligence service. They know how to deal with people > like you. They'd take you out and shoot you." > > McGehee's original manuscript contained nothing that he felt was > classified information, and he was very careful about it. The CIA made > 397 deletions out of his first text, and that was after they had > retracted hundreds of their more whimsical deletions, before they knew > McGehee had obtained competent counsel. The battle took over two years, > and the CIA went around and around in circles. You have likely never > seen such double-talk in your life. First they would permit certain > passages after battling with McGehee, then they would retract that > permission, then back again, on different grounds each time. At one > point he was threatened with prosecution for stealing state secrets if > he couldn't prove every fact in his book was obtained in the public > domain. The final book is riddled with censorship deletions, like "[19 > words deleted]" in the middle of a sentence. > > McGehee states: > > "John Marks and Victor Marchetti's book The CIA and the Cult of > Intelligence, published in 1974 (9 years before McGehee's book), was > the last approved critical book written about the Agency by an > ex-employee. In light of my own experiences the reason is obvious: the > secrecy agreement and the way it is abused by the Agency. It is > virtually impossible to write in an atmosphere where everything is > secret until it is deemed otherwise....It is clear that the secrecy > agreement does not halt the flow of information to our enemies, for it > does not affect the CIA employee who sells information...What the CIA's > secrecy agreement does quite effectively, however, is to stop critics > of the Agency from explaining to the American public what the CIA is > and does. It is sad to say, but the truth is that the primary purpose > of the secrecy agreement is to suppress information that the American > people are legitimately entitled to." > > And then McGehee goes on to warn that the Reagan administration was > making even more moves to clamp the lid of secrecy on the government's > activities. The gutting of Carter's Freedom of Information Act was one > of the big undertakings of the Reagan/Bush administrations, amply > documented in the independent press. > > KNOW-NOTHING'S > > It is obvious that the CIA is in the midst of a major officer > recruiting campaign that will determine the future of that institution > for the next few decades. > > In a number of articles I have quoted from case officers, to a > director, to an Inspector General, all on the general state of disaster > in the CIA -- its morale, procedures, operations and the deficiencies > of its personnel -- most at the top of the Directorate of Operations > (DO). > > These did not happen out of the mists -- the CIA in the past (and > probably also now) has used psychological testing criteria to recruit > the naive, the innocent, the team-player and the not too academically > outstanding, to man its outposts. (In my case I and a large number of > recruits came directly out of the manpower pool of rejected NFL > hopefuls). It does not want the person who can see the implications of > its actions. It wants the "know-nothing" who believes, or as the chant > says, "I don't know and I don't care." It wants the "operator" not the > intellect. > > Since leaving the CIA I have written a book, and began compiling a data > base on relevant information about the CIA. As I processed information > into the data base I was stunned to see the universal failure of its > intelligence over the past fifty plus years. > > In short I discovered that the CIA used its intelligence as a means of > bolstering its operations, while avoiding any data that challenged such > goals. > > The CIA universally supported and supports militarized regimes around > the world, and in so doing implicates itself in the work of death > squads, drug smugglers, terrorists and other less than desirable > elements. In so doing, it has destroyed many future "George > Washington's." > > But now the situation is somewhat different. We are faced with > international terrorism, there is a real need for real information, but > you have against that need, the know-nothings of the DO and the > know-nothings of other segments of the CIA. > > Do we want an operational or an intelligence agency? > > What the United States and the CIA needs now is real intelligence, not > propaganda packaged as intelligence. So my hope and prayer is that the > current leadership of the CIA or at least someone in the process, looks > to find and hire people with attributes of true intelligence officers. > Otherwise we face decades of more repression, more drugs, more death > squads, more terrorist attacks and more policy disasters. > > Ralph McGehee 1998 > E-Mail: CIABASE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: Robert Cherwink <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> thankx2: Michael Eisenscher Via: imap [info appended] http://come.to/CIABASE " The CIA is not now nor has ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the president's foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while reporting "intelligence" justifying those activities. It shapes its intelligence, even in such critical areas as Soviet nuclear weapon capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target audience of its lies." -Ralph McGehee "CIABASE remains a one-of-a-kind, extraordinary resource for serious scholars, journalists, and researchers, regardless of their political leanings and research interests." - John Macartney, American University CIABASE , "An encyclopedia of CIA actions." - San Francisco Chronicle Deadly Deceits - My 25 Years in the CIA, Ralph McGehee, Sheridan Square Press, 1983. Ralph McGehee's Deadly Deceits has become a textbook in some college classes. It is a tale that starts slowly and builds to an epiphany of realization. During McGehee's twenty-five year CIA career he heartily believed in its stated mission of "fighting communism." And as McGehee writes, CIA candidates are psychologically screened before hired, and one of the most treasured qualities of a CIA candidate is the willingness to follow orders without questions and to not think too much about it. Ralph W. McGehee joined the CIA in 1952 after being a star football player at Notre Dame (Where Phil Agee studied also.) during their national championship years. He was raised on and believed in the American dream - "the Protestant work ethic, truth, justice, freedom." He signed on as a dedicated cold warrior. He spent the next ten years stationed at home and abroad: at Langley (the CIA headquarters in Washington), Taiwan, Japan, the Phillipines, and then Thailand. McGehee was dedicated to stopping the scourge of communism, and enthusiastically did his part to keep the world free of its taint. In the mid 1960s Thailand was right next to the other Southeast Asian nations of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and communism was sweeping the land. McGehee's job was to save Thai villages from communist insurgency. He stumbled upon an innovative way to bust communist cells in the villages, sort of torching the grass roots. They found a method of intelligence gathering (basically intelligent intimidation of villagers) that identified communists and exposed their network. The results of their methodology created a stir in the intelligence circles in 1967, and accolades and awards came in. McGehee had the biggest success of his 15 year career, he had found a way to expose the communists, and his future in intelligence looked very bright. Just then William Colby (future CIA head, and then Far East division chief) came to visit him, and McGehee briefed him on what he had learned: "I explained the procedures of the survey and then outlined my general conclusions, including my doubts about previous Agency reporting which said that the Communists did not have the support of the local people and that they forced people to support them with threats and terrorism. "Such a picture is inaccurate," I told Colby..."We have found that the Communists concentrate the majority, almost the entirety, of their time winning the cooperation of the peasants." McGehee had exposed the Communist movement as a grass roots movement that had the support of the peasants, mainly because the Communist goals were to throw off the shackles of Imperialism, enforced by the Thai ruling class and their industrialized-nation sponsors, and live freely. McGehee had shown fairly undeniably that Communism in Southeast Asia was a mass movement that had the support of the people. McGehee was extremely puzzled by Colby's response, "We always seem to be losing." McGehee was eager to flush out all those communists with his successful interrogation method, but soon after Colby's visit McGehee was taken out of the field, his successful program canceled, and he was put behind a meaningless desk at Langley. He didn't know what had happened, and it took him years to figure it out. It turned out that he had come up with the wrong answer in Thailand. Communism couldn't be damned as an evil if the people themselves were in favor of it. If that fact became known, what we were doing in Vietnam wouldn't look too good: killing millions of people to keep them from choosing a way of life we didn't approve of. Ralph McGehee receiving awards from the Vietnamese Special Police. Awards include a medal, a Viet Cong pistol, and the Viet Cong flag that flew over Saigon on Tet 1968. "We were there to impose a US-controlled regime over Vietnam....We refused to admit the real strength of the South Vietnamese Communists. Had we ever done it, then we would have to come up with totally new justifications for being there or just pulled out." McGehee still fervently believed the propaganda he had been steeped in, and volunteered to go to Saigon. His experience there beat out all of the illusions he had been raised with. He saw the naked, insane evil of what the United States was doing, and it almost ruined him. Visions of napalmed children and cratered fields were seared into his brain. At one point he had thought of killing himself to protest what the CIA was doing, but in the end he committed himself to exposing what the CIA was doing. As he left Vietnam: "I was glad to be going home. But I knew I would never be the same person again. All of my ideals of helping people, all my convictions about the processes of intelligence, all my respect for my work, all the feelings of joy in my life, all my concepts of honor, integrity, trust and love, all in fact that made me what I was, had died in Vietnam. Through its blindness and its murders, the Agency had stolen my life and my soul. Full of anger, hatred, and fear, I bitterly contemplated a dismal future." McGehee had by that time put in almost 20 years with the CIA. He spent the last several years of his career at Langley getting educated in the CIA archives. He retired after he got his 25 years in and accepted a career achievement medal, partly so his future work couldn't be called the work of a CIA person with a failed career. He began his book's conclusion with: "The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the President's foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while reporting "intelligence" justifying those activities (McGehee says he has never once seen a CIA official tell the truth to Congress. Instead comes a steady stream of lies.). It shapes its intelligence, even in such critical areas as Soviet nuclear weapon capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target of its lies." "As noted in the Church Committee's final report, the Agency's task is to develop an international anti-communist ideology. The CIA then links every egalitarian (which means "all men are created equal" - ed.) political movement to the scourge of international communism. This then prepares the American people and many in the world community for the second stage, the destruction of those movements. For egalitarianism is the enemy and it must not be allowed to exist." McGehee calls for the abolition of the CIA. But the big reason I am citing McGehee's book here is because of what he had to go through to get his book published. He didn't want to lose his pension, go to jail, or leave the country, so he had to abide by the secrecy agreement he signed when he joined the CIA. In the book's appendix he tells the surreal adventures he went through to get the book published. The appendix begins: "The secrecy agreement that I signed when I joined the CIA allows the Agency to review prior to publication all writings of present and former employees to ensure that classified information relating to national security is not revealed. This provision seems logical and necessary to protect legitimate interests. However, my experiences in getting this book approved show that the CIA uses the agreement not so much to protect national security as to prevent revelations and criticisms of its immoral, illegal, and ineffective operations. To that end it uses all possible maneuvers, legal and illegal. Had I not been represented by my attorney, Mark Lynch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and had I not developed a massive catalog of information already cleared by the Agency's publication review board, this book could not have been published." McGehee then recounts what he went through. I can't do justice to what he went through, it has to be read to be believed. The CIA first tried ambushing him with a room full of lawyers, until they knew he had already obtained a lawyer with the security clearance to represent him in those matters. Then the CIA man assigned to work with him on the review set the tone early in the process: "It's too bad you didn't work for the Israeli intelligence service. They know how to deal with people like you. They'd take you out and shoot you." McGehee's original manuscript contained nothing that he felt was classified information, and he was very careful about it. The CIA made 397 deletions out of his first text, and that was after they had retracted hundreds of their more whimsical deletions, before they knew McGehee had obtained competent counsel. The battle took over two years, and the CIA went around and around in circles. You have likely never seen such double-talk in your life. First they would permit certain passages after battling with McGehee, then they would retract that permission, then back again, on different grounds each time. At one point he was threatened with prosecution for stealing state secrets if he couldn't prove every fact in his book was obtained in the public domain. The final book is riddled with censorship deletions, like "[19 words deleted]" in the middle of a sentence. McGehee states: "John Marks and Victor Marchetti's book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, published in 1974 (9 years before McGehee's book), was the last approved critical book written about the Agency by an ex-employee. In light of my own experiences the reason is obvious: the secrecy agreement and the way it is abused by the Agency. It is virtually impossible to write in an atmosphere where everything is secret until it is deemed otherwise....It is clear that the secrecy agreement does not halt the flow of information to our enemies, for it does not affect the CIA employee who sells information...What the CIA's secrecy agreement does quite effectively, however, is to stop critics of the Agency from explaining to the American public what the CIA is and does. It is sad to say, but the truth is that the primary purpose of the secrecy agreement is to suppress information that the American people are legitimately entitled to." And then McGehee goes on to warn that the Reagan administration was making even more moves to clamp the lid of secrecy on the government's activities. The gutting of Carter's Freedom of Information Act was one of the big undertakings of the Reagan/Bush administrations, amply documented in the independent press. KNOW-NOTHING'S It is obvious that the CIA is in the midst of a major officer recruiting campaign that will determine the future of that institution for the next few decades. In a number of articles I have quoted from case officers, to a director, to an Inspector General, all on the general state of disaster in the CIA -- its morale, procedures, operations and the deficiencies of its personnel -- most at the top of the Directorate of Operations (DO). These did not happen out of the mists -- the CIA in the past (and probably also now) has used psychological testing criteria to recruit the naive, the innocent, the team-player and the not too academically outstanding, to man its outposts. (In my case I and a large number of recruits came directly out of the manpower pool of rejected NFL hopefuls). It does not want the person who can see the implications of its actions. It wants the "know-nothing" who believes, or as the chant says, "I don't know and I don't care." It wants the "operator" not the intellect. Since leaving the CIA I have written a book, and began compiling a data base on relevant information about the CIA. As I processed information into the data base I was stunned to see the universal failure of its intelligence over the past fifty plus years. In short I discovered that the CIA used its intelligence as a means of bolstering its operations, while avoiding any data that challenged such goals. The CIA universally supported and supports militarized regimes around the world, and in so doing implicates itself in the work of death squads, drug smugglers, terrorists and other less than desirable elements. In so doing, it has destroyed many future "George Washington's." But now the situation is somewhat different. We are faced with international terrorism, there is a real need for real information, but you have against that need, the know-nothings of the DO and the know-nothings of other segments of the CIA. Do we want an operational or an intelligence agency? What the United States and the CIA needs now is real intelligence, not propaganda packaged as intelligence. So my hope and prayer is that the current leadership of the CIA or at least someone in the process, looks to find and hire people with attributes of true intelligence officers. Otherwise we face decades of more repression, more drugs, more death squads, more terrorist attacks and more policy disasters. Ralph McGehee 1998 E-Mail: CIABASE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
