The CIA's Deadly Deceits and the Vietnam War, with Ralph McGehee (1986) | Hacker News Reader

The CIA's Deadly Deceits and the Vietnam War, with Ralph McGehee (1986)

ourhiddenhistory.org

104 pointsAndrewBissell65 comments

I think "intelligence" agencies are dynamical entities that currently find opposition only from other entities of their type.

A combination of nearly unbounded public funds, a definite impunity and presumptuousness, and a solid position to feed the monster of the military industrial complex has led to a situation where their actions seem to be directly opposed with what would benefit the average citizen, of either their respective countries or the world.

>"I think "intelligence" agencies are dynamical entities that currently find opposition only from other entities of their type."

What does that mean? Aside from the scare quotes are you saying that intelligence agencies only work against counter-intelligence, or are you saying they're all collaborating. What does 'dynamical' mean?

>"A combination of nearly unbounded public funds, a definite impunity and presumptuousness, and a solid position to feed the monster of the military industrial complex has led to a situation where their actions seem to be directly opposed with what would benefit the average citizen, of either their respective countries or the world."

I think you need to read a little more about public opinion, and about how government works. The intelligence agencies are often working against their military (navy, army, etc.) counterparts, as competitors. In addition, most people believe their government is working to further truth and justice, so they actually support the espionage agencies.

Your comment seems to imply that your anti-expionage/military/industry views are common and righteous, yet unspoken or unacknowledged. I think you're totally wrong; there's no conspiracy, and people have widely disparate (often inconsistent) goals.

>most people believe their government is working to further truth and justice, so they actually support the espionage agencies

The article mentions how citizens are manipulated with media and false flag operations and the end result is the only winners are the big industry(the article gives some examples at the end)

> manipulated with media

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/18/books/how-the-cia-played-...

We believe what these acronym tells us they do in their taglines! To think the executive branch is coordinated is blasphemy!

I think you need to read a bit on dynamical systems theory, and come back when you're done, sans ad hominem

> I think you need to read a little more about X, and about how Y works.

Can be read with a denigrating undertone.

Is it time we question whether or not we actually need these groups? Or at least whether they should have this much power? The CIA, the NSA, even the FBI sometimes, I feel they all have horrific stories attached to them and it's questionable whether they need government backing, military power, incredible finances, formiddable spying tools, and incredible secrecy to protect people.

It’s a simple game of competition. If your competitors have them, then you must have them too. The situation is not dissimilar to nuclear weapons.

In 2020, people seem to forget that the Cold War happened and that the KGB, GRU, etc. existed. Most of these outrageous CIA actions were done in the context of combating the Soviets.

In short, you will probably never be able to remove the role of intelligence from geopolitics.

But this logic doesn't explain why we need the NSA to spy on its own citizens? I mean, sure if someone else is spying on you, you need to spy on them. But if someone else is spying on you, you definitely don't need to spy on yourself.

Sure but that’s just a typical example of abuse of power. The initial comment was about dismantling such institutions.

Well I also questioned whether they should be given as much power, since it can lead to abuse. Would be as simple as changing a law so they can no longer abuse their power. And if it's not that simple, maybe you have to question why.

I would assume that NSA spying is used primarily for insider trading and other forms of market manipulation.

>Most of these outrageous CIA actions were done in the context of combating the Soviets.

"In the context of combatting the Soviets" isn't a good excuse. If these acts were done to combat the Soviets it may have been worthwhile, but using the Communist scape goat to force your will on the world, which is what the article is claiming happened, should not be common foreign policy.

I didn’t say it was a good excuse, I said that was the context in which it happened.

With that logic, you can cover for any thinkable activity 'because soviets'. We don't like european politicians? Bam, because soviets. Cause millions of deaths around the world? Worth the cause, 'coz soviets. Anybody does anything but exactly what we need them to (which in many cases would mean self-harm)? Commie ruskie, bam!

Change soviets with terrorists for 21st century.

Can you stop being unnecessarily hostile? As I already said, I was explaining the rationale for the actions, not justifying them.

Take your low-effort outrage elsewhere, please.

The article details numerous situations where the Soviets were not the rationale, merely the scapegoat. That's what led me to respond, I don't see how the fake rationale changes anything.

>>"In 2020, people seem to forget that the Cold War happened and that the KGB, GRU, etc. existed. Most of these outrageous CIA actions were done in the context of combating the Soviet"

If this article have a message is that those dirty wars were against the poor people living in those countries, not against the KGB.

And what is the excuse after the cold war? Because nothing has really changed.

I find it absolutely ridiculous that the news uses headlines such as "sources from FBI say" (or any other US spy agencies) as though they are the real source of truth, whereas reports such as these show that they should be treated with a greater amount of suspicion. But you know what, people still fall for it all the time!

Tax-paid lairs, serving god-know-whos interests.

Yup, it's amazing how intelligence sources get passes 100% of the time. "High ranking CIA source says..." is assumed to be 100% true.

That's a pretty big assumption that is no doubt abused.

I love Matt Taibbi's example where the FBI got a search warrant, based on a news article that they were the source on. Talk about compromised incentives.

>Yup, it's amazing how intelligence sources get passes 100% of the time. "High ranking CIA source says..." is assumed to be 100% true.

That 100% are just not true, every respectable paper and or journalist know that there is quite a big chance that your are being used, not just from Services but also from Company's, just have a look at Elon's Hyperloop and the massive Fan-hype (even in the University Space (which is kind of super-sad))

If you look at the people who started the CIA & FBI, and the sorts of things they got up to in the orgs' early days, it becomes pretty clear that their purpose is not their publicly stated ones. Of course, that's also why it will be next-to-impossible to get rid of them.

The stability and success of a nation in the modern world basically requires an active approach in achieving national security.

Complex obstacles require a complex approach towards solutions so it makes sense to have multiple communities working together.

And sure, horrors occur but we don't get to know what horrors are avoided.

Word salad. What horrors were avoided by the El Mozote massacre, exactly?

When I was a kid, any stories of the CIA doing bad things were labeled "conspiracy theories." How could they possibly be true?

A similar book is Philip Agee's book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" (1975), just not about Vietnam, but about Latin America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Agee#Leaving_the_CIA

He also wrote books about the CIA in Europe (similar to Ganser's classic Gladio book "Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe") and Africa.

Not specifically about the CIA, but Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988, revised 2002) also examines the propaganda campaigns on Vietnam, Latin America, etc. in detail.

While the CIA has done a lot of awful things, one should be careful about quoting Chomsky, who talked out of all four sides of his mouth from both of his faces on the subject of the wars in Southeast Asia. Please see: Chomsky Lies: Denial of the Khmer Rouge Holocaust in Cambodia [0].

[0]: https://jim.com/chomsdis.htm

The hardcover and paperback versions, that the post is based on, are selling for 430 and 967 respectively. [1] Another fun example of crazy Amazon pricing - looks like a price gouging individual/algorithm who is riding a wave of scarcity.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Deceits-McGehee-12-Dec-1984-Pa...

In the '90s McGehee claimed that he was being harassed in Herdon, Va. where he lived, in part due to his CIABASE database.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_McGehee#Controversies

http://www.pinknoiz.com/covert/protect.html

France meticulously trapped US in Vietnam War :(

The US digged itself in pretty well.

As another commenter mentioned, the US was all too happy to get involved later on. However, France certainly deserves its share of the blame, as do the British for their "traps" in Iran, Iraq, etc. It's especially unfortunate that in recent decades the US has moved from condemning to supporting to taking over their role as resource (and especially oil) kingpins by continuing their exploitation of these resources through governmental interference.

Innocent US stumbled into the Vietnam War after evil France meticulously trapped the US into the war, reports US government. French fries will hereafter be known as Freedom fries, declares US government in ensuing report.

The pattern of using farmer/women/student/x-liberation groups to approach villagers and promise redistributed land in exchange for insurgency support is basically venture banditry or chartered theft. Wrap it in an ideology and the rest is just sales. Their internsectionalist approach is what establishes a foothold in the community and the radicalism of a converted now-intolerant minority neutralizes opposition and essentially flips the population. The result around the world has predictably been a regional kleptocracy, because that's literally what the plan was from the beginning - to take other peoples stuff instead of producing it.

Hard to defend the CIA, but the cold war was a response to a country that had metastasized from that initial venture bandit play of 1918 by learning the ropes of totalitarianism from Dutch colonies, and then Germany. Suppressing communism failed in China, and that played out as well as expected, with the same metastastacizing producing the dystopia they have today.

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