Bush�s approval
rating at under 40 percent, nearly two-thirds of Americans no longer in favor
of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the vice president�s chief of staff indicted,
the House Majority Leader indicted, the Senate Majority Leader under
investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Harriett Miers
fiasco, and now the Democrats shutting down the Senate? It all feels so
deliciously appropriate and so painfully overdue. Are the Democrats finding
their spines? Will Cheney be indicted? Will Bush be impeached?
Before succumbing
to ecstasy over these dramatic events, which sometimes seem too good to be
true, it behooves progressives to look deeper into the wormhole that the
criminal empire, the United States government, has become. Indeed, the next few
months will be messy, and Bush & Co. are irreversibly in demise, but the
hope these events might instill in us must be tempered by historical and
political perspective.
Make no mistake,
this is Bush�s �Watergate Burglary,� and it is so seductively enticing
to believe that the American people are growing weary of the neocons and that
somehow, the pendulum of history is swinging in the direction of democracy.
What we must remember, however, is that the American people do not run the
country�nor do presidents.
What we are
witnessing is the evisceration of the Bush administration by none other than
individuals employed by and working closely with the Central Intelligence
Agency. Libby was indicted, as Karl Rove may well be in the coming weeks, for
participating in the leaking of the identity of a covert CIA agent, Valerie
Plame�a crime which George Bush, Sr., once called treason.
Knowing exactly
who/what the CIA is and has been since its creation in 1947 might shed some
light on current events. The agency was created at the beginning of the Cold
War under President Truman by Clark Clifford, a Wall Street banker and lawyer.
His closest confidante and assistant was Allen Dulles, an attorney with
Sullivan & Cromwell, which was then and still is, a prominent Wall St. law
firm. It was about this same time that Dulles pulled the necessary strings to
bring hundreds of former Nazis into the United States to work for the CIA in
the agency�s intelligence operations against the Soviet Union. (CIA Admits Long Relationship
With WWII German Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, Maria Alvarez, The New York Post, September
24, 2000 and Operation
Paperclip Casefile)
During the Vietnam
War in the 1970s, the agency conducted a secret war in Laos financed by
extensive and sophisticated heroin trafficking. The details of this operation
are now extremely well-documented and explain how it was that Congress was both
unaware of the war and unwilling to appropriate any funds for it, even if it
had been aware. Alfred McCoy, professor of Southeast Asian History, University
of Wisconsin, has written extensively of these events in his book The
Politics Of Heroin. Additional
verification the CIA�s drug trafficking operations in Laos may also be read at Dark Alliance.
During the illegal
Contra War of the 1980s, the CIA, with the assistance of Oliver North, helped
finance that war by selling arms to Iran and trafficking crack-cocaine
throughout South Central Los Angeles. Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Gary
Webb, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, wrote an exhaustive
series on the CIA and South Central drug dealing, which was later incorporated
into a riveting book, Dark Alliance.
Following an investigation, the agency's inspector general, in a 1998 report,
found that the CIA was engaged in drug trafficking activities during the Contra
War. The next logical question would then be: Is the agency still involved in
drug trafficking in the twenty-first century? I believe that it is.
While some
Americans are aware of the CIA�s history of drug dealing, few are aware of how
the agency appropriates its drug profits. Many people believe it uses its
resources to finance wars, assassinations, and endless covert operations. While
this is true, the CIA has an even more urgent �budgetary line item.� That is to
simply launder its drug profits through the American stock market, killing two
birds with one stone: Washing the money and at the same time, pouring massive
amounts of liquid cash (translation: cheap money) into the economy. The
foremost authorities on this issue are Catherine
Austin Fitts, former Undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development under
Bush I, and Mike Ruppert,
former L.A.P.D. narcotics investigator whom the CIA attempted to recruit to
assist in its drug-trafficking operations in the 1970s and 80s. Extensive
information and documentation on this issue can be found at both Fitts� and
Ruppert�s websites.
When one analyzes
the issue of CIA and drug trafficking in depth, it becomes painfully obvious
that a revolving door exists between the agency and Wall Street. A
disproportionate number of inspectors general and directors have come on board
the agency from Wall Street or have returned to high-level positions in the
stock market upon leaving the CIA. Together, the CIA and the highest levels of
corporate capitalism call the shots in American domestic and foreign policy.
Many individuals,
including myself, have researched the CIA�s history and covert activities since
its creation. Some of its illegal, inhumane, and egregious activities include:
- Collaboration
with former Nazi war criminals
- Large scale
drug trafficking operations on several continents and within the U.S.
- Criminal
experiments with LSD and human mind control during the 1960s and 70s.
- Covert
operations resulting in orchestrated revolutions and overthrow of
governments around the world to serve the interests of the United States
- Extensive
involvement in assassinations internationally and within the United
States, including the assassination of John F. Kennedy
- The creation
of a black budget during the Reagan Administration which absolved the CIA
of accountability for its assets or expenditures (George [H.W.] Bush, The Unauthorized
Biography.
- Human
rights violations and torture, including the recent disclosure of the
maintenance of a covert prison system around the world where terrorist
suspects are incarcerated and probably tortured.
It should be
emphasized that not all individuals employed by the CIA are evil executioners.
However, the policies and covert activities of the agency for over five decades
have frequently been abhorrent in their implementation and outcome. As the
principal intelligence agency of the most powerful nation on earth, the
agency�s activities are more often than not, reprehensible, yet at the same time,
its persona and modus operandi are highly professional. It seeks
world domination, but not with fangs dripping with blood as do the
neconservative thugs of the current Bush administration. Personally, I like to
think of the CIA�s approach as a �kinder, gentler fascism.�
Few Americans
understand the scope or financial underpinnings of the CIA or the fact that it
owns hundreds of proprietary companies and could very well have an annual
budget that dwarfs the budget of the United States government itself by
comparison. It is, as many CIA researchers have theorized, a government within
a government. That said, we must ask: What happens to any individual or group
of individuals who might attempt to challenge or supercede �the company,� as
its employees fondly refer to it? Indeed, many high-ranking CIA officials
backed the current Bush administration at its inception. Others did not.
Valerie Plame was
an undercover CIA officer working �officially� for Brewster, Jennings &
Associates, a well-established CIA proprietary company linked for many years
with ARAMCO.
The British Guardian reported in April, 2002 that ARAMCO constitutes 12
percent of the world�s total oil production. It�s the largest oil group in the
world, a state-owned Saudi company in partnership with four major U.S. oil
companies. ARAMCO operates, manages, and maintains virtually all Saudi oil
fields or 25 percent of all the oil on the planet. Almost the entire Bush administration
has an interest in ARAMCO. Given that the Saudis have been less than truthful
in recent years regarding the actual amount of oil they are producing, and
given America�s heavy reliance on Saudi petroleum, from the point of view of
the CIA, the Plame operation was invaluable, and having it shattered by means
of personal vengeance by someone inside the White House was the final straw for
the agency. Remember that the CIA director�s job is to advise the president on
scientific data on foreign resources. The outing of Plame made this impossible,
hence threatening national security.
Journalists Wayne
Madsen and Mike Ruppert conclude in the analysis
of the Plame leak that: �The Bush administration has proved itself to be an
insular group of inept, dishonest, and dangerous CEOs of the corporation known
as America. They have become very bad for business and the board of directors
is now taking action.�
Bush & Co. have
gotten in the way and essentially shot themselves in the foot and crossed
swords with the agency which wanted a �kinder, gentler,� less belligerent, less
dramatic fascism. Someone else did that 35 years ago. His name was Richard
Nixon, and the agency brought him down.
The
real question is: Who runs America? Who runs the world? Certainly presidents
don�t, nor do the American people. A critical analysis of U.S. history since
the end of the Civil War strongly suggests that while we may not know the
identities of all of the players, we do know that they are essentially the top
1 percent of the socio-economic milieu of the country. Names like �Bush� come
to mind, but other names like �Rockefeller� seem quaint and less
relevant�except when we consider that 1) the Rockefellers brought the Bush
family to power even before both were financing Hitler, and 2) one of the first
officials in 2003 to request an FBI investigation of the forged documents used
to justify the invasion of Iraq was none other than a distinguished Senator
from West Virginia named Rockefeller. Jay Rockefeller renewed his rumblings
immediately after the Libby indictment, and one can only imagine that this is
sending shivers up the spines of some White House occupants.
Why does this
matter? Because what we may well be seeing is not �democracy in action� but a
coup d'�tat by the ruling elite
to reclaim their preferred world domination scenario�one that frequently
masquerades as �liberal,� �progressive,� or �humanitarian.� At I write this
article, we are seeing new documents released by the New York Times
confirming that critical intelligence was falsified as a pretext for the
Vietnam War. Remember that in that war, it was not a group of rabid,
conservative militarists who led the nation into �the fog of war� but an
Eastern liberal establishment of lifelong Democrats. (See Beyond
Bush II)
I watch the meltdown of the current regime with
as much glee as any other progressive, but I also fear that in our eagerness to
witness Watergate II, we will naively embrace the next globalist Pied Piper
(Piper-ess?) who wants to convince us that two political parties and legitimate
elections actually exist in America, that we can continue to consume energy as
if there were no tomorrow, and who will kindly, gently preserve a policy of
endless war for the last remaining drops of oil on earth. Will we settle for
this because �it�s the only system we have,� or will we demand the total meltdown,
not only of Bush & Co., but the one-party criminal empire that is
obliterating the ecosystems and the future of the human race?