Tag: cia

The CIA’s anal ‘feeding tube’ torture

Last week in a federal courtroom at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an American physician hired by the Pentagon testified about the CIA’s use of rectal “feeding” tubes on prisoners it detained and tortured in Thailand from 2001 to 2006.

The physician, Sondra S. Crosby, M.D., an expert on tortures and other trauma, described the painful repeated insertion of plastic tubes into the anal cavity of the defendant in the case, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, over a period of four years. Al-Nashiri is on trial for conspiracy to bomb the USS Cole in October 2000.

The hearing at which Dr. Crosby testified was ordered by the military judge when defense counsel told him the nature and extent of the torture visited upon their client by the CIA and its contractors. Dr. Crosby was given access to CIA raw notes and reports, some of which had not been seen by the investigators who produced the 2014 U.S. Senate 500-page documented study on CIA torture during the administration of President George W. Bush.

The site in Thailand at which al-Nashiri was tortured was run by Gina Haspel, the future CIA director, nicknamed by her colleagues “Bloody Gina.” The CIA infamously made videos of the torture of al-Nashiri and others, which Haspel destroyed.

Dr. Crosby, who was harshly critical of the CIA’s use of this internationally condemned interrogation technique, which is criminal under federal law, revealed that the CIA notes reflected that al-Nashiri and others who received this barbaric treatment were actually being fed nutrients via these anal tubes. She told the court that this must have been a subterfuge as there is simply no biological means to nourish a person via the person’s anal cavity.

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How Social Networks Became a “Subsidiary” of the FBI and CIA

The US Congress last tried to grapple with what the country’s ballooning security services were up to nearly half a century ago.

In 1975, the Church Committee managed to take a fleeting, if far from complete, snapshot of the netherworld in which agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and National Security Agency (NSA) operate.

In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the congressional committee and other related investigations found that the country’s intelligence services had sweeping surveillance powers and were involved in a raft of illegal or unconstitutional acts.

They were covertly subverting and assassinating foreign leaders. They had co-opted hundreds of journalists and many media outlets around the world to promote false narratives. They spied on and infiltrated political and civil rights groups. And they manipulated the public discourse to protect and expand their powers.

Senator Frank Church himself warned that the might of the intelligence community could at any moment “be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything… There would be no place to hide.”

Since then, the technological possibilities to invade privacy have dramatically increased, and the reach of the intelligence agencies, especially after 9/11, has moved on in ways Church could never have foreseen.

This is why establishing a new Church Committee is long overdue. And finally, in the most controversial of circumstances and for the most partisan of reasons, some sort of revival may finally be about to happen.

A protracted battle last month within the Republican Party to elect Kevin McCarthy as the new speaker of the House of Representatives forced him to cave to the demands of his party’s right wing. Not least, he agreed to set up a committee on what is being called the “weaponization” of the federal government.

It held its first meeting last week. The panel said its task would be to look at “the politicization of the FBI and DOJ and attacks on American civil liberties”.

Earlier, in a speech to the House on the new committee, Republican Representative Dan Bishop said it was time to cut out the “rot” in the federal government: “We’re putting the deep state on notice. We’re coming for you.”

Democrats are already decrying the committee as a tool that will be wielded in the interests of Donald Trump and his supporters, saying the Republican right wants to discredit the security services and suggest malfeasance in the treatment of the former president.

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These Bizarre CIA Documents Expose The Most Horrifying Secrets

“The Central Intelligence Agency has been a core part of the United States’ defense against foreign and domestic enemies for decades. However, it has attracted plenty of criticism for its methods and motives over the years. Declassified documents have only fuelled this criticism, revealing all manner of unethical or illegal conduct hidden in the CIA’s closet. Many of the declassified secrets are more absurd than creepy. Wacky plots and absurd technology like bird spy drones, catfish spy drones, dragonfly spy drones – a lot of animal spy drones, come to think of it – are among the stranger revelations from declassified archives. However, some of these documents reveal far more gruesome secrets. Plans for political assassinations, mind control, torture, and even inciting international wars reveal that the CIA has gotten up to far more than the public ever suspected.”

After serving in CIA, lawmaker now has role overseeing it

As former CIA Director David Petraeus recently told the House Intelligence Committee about the needs of the agency’s workforce, one of the committee’s youngest members flashed a knowing smile and began to nod.

Abigail Spanberger spent almost a decade as a CIA operations officer. Now, she’s a third-term Democratic congresswoman from Virginia who was just named to one of two committees that oversees the work of America’s spy agencies.

The relationship between Congress and the U.S. intelligence services can be uneasy and is often adversarial. That’s especially true now as lawmakers demand answers about classified documents found in the private possession of two presidents and the Biden administration’s response to a suspected Chinese spy balloon.

Years of high-profile fights over intelligence matters have taken a toll, with some Republicans accusing the agencies of being part of a “deep state” controlling U.S. politics.

Spanberger, 43, is part of a small group of former intelligence officers to have been elected to Congress. Like others with access to America’s top secrets, she will be called on to review intelligence matters in private and explain what she can to fellow lawmakers and the public.

“I know the lingo. I know the language. I know the culture,” Spanberger told The Associated Press in a recent interview in her office. “I hope that helps me do my job better. But I’m sure there will be points of frustration probably for me and for them, frankly speaking.”

She rejects talk of a “deep state” and called on other lawmakers not to promote conspiracy theories about intelligence or the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

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The CIA and the Media — Listen To the Mockingbirds

As perceptive observers such as Glenn Greenwald and Carl Bernstein have repeatedly pointed out the complacent and compliant pressitutes of the regime media are under the thrall of the intelligence community. The spooks have pulled their strings since the birth of the National Security State in 1947.

Operation Mockingbird

How the CIA Bamboozled The Public For 70 Years

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA
How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

The CIA and the Media: 50 Historical Facts the World Needs to Know

The CIA used to infiltrate the media. Now the CIA is the media

How the National Security State Manipulates the News Media
The American people, who count on the news profession to provide them with accurate, independent information about foreign affairs, are the ultimate victims.

Part 1: CIA’s Extraordinary Role Influencing Liberal Media Outlets Daily Kos, The Daily Beast, Rolling Stone

Part 1 of a two-part series takes a deep dive into the history of the CIA’s central role in orchestrating news and editorial coverage in America’s most influential liberal national media outlets — and its continued hold today.

Part 2: The Belly of The Daily Beast and Its Perceptible Ties to the CIA

Part 2 of a two-part series takes a deep dive into the history of the CIA’s central role in orchestrating news and editorial coverage in America’s most influential liberal national media outlets — and its continued hold today.

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Former CIA Moscow station chief calls out Biden for failing to explain Ukraine strategy

Longtime CIA officer and former Moscow station chief Dan Hoffman called out President Joe Biden for not being transparent about the role of the United States in the war in Ukraine. 

“The president needs to take a page out of President Reagan’s book or FDR’s book or JFK — somebody — and explain to us what’s going on and why it matters to us,” Hoffman said on the John Solomon Reports podcast. 

The U.S. announced this week that it would be sending three dozen tanks to the Ukrainians ahead of an expected Russian offensive. The 31 M1A1 Abrams tanks will equal roughly an entire Ukrainian battalion of vehicles, according to a recent report.

Other international allies that have been supporting Ukraine financially include the EU, the United Kingdom and Germany. German Chancellor Olaf Schulz is prepping to announce that Berlin will send a group of Leopard 2 tanks to the country. 

Concerned that Americans don’t seem to really understand their role in the Ukraine war and how it benefits the United States, Hoffman is calling for President Biden to spell it out.

“He’s got to explain to the American people why this is in the U.S. national interest to help Ukraine defend themselves from a nuclear-armed state mounting an imperial land grab,” he said. “That’s what this is all about.”

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‘Good’ Fellas: The History of US Covert Actions at Home and Abroad

Long before the attack on the Nord Stream, the United States has gained a reputation for blowing things up, spying and staging coups in foreign countries, all the while trying to portray itself as a stereotypical “good guy.”

US investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh has dropped a bombshell this week when he named the United States as the party responsible for the destruction of three of the four Nord Stream pipelines that used to supply Russian natural gas to Germany.

While the United States feigned ignorance in the wake of the pipeline’s destruction in September last year, Hersh claimed that it was US Navy divers who planted explosive charges on the Nord Stream during a NATO exercise in the Baltic Sea last summer.

The explosives were triggered remotely weeks after they were planted, the journalist wrote, citing a source familiar with the planning of this operation.

And though the White House officially denied the United States’ involvement, the US government and secret services have a long history of advancing Washington’s interests through espionage and sabotage, all the while claiming that they didn’t do it.

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Nord Stream Sabotage Was CIA, US Navy Covert Op: Seymour Hersh Bombshell Prompts White House Response

Famed journalist and Pulitzer prize winner Seymour Hersh, who for decades was a star reporter writing for The New York Times and New Yorker, on Wednesday published a new bombshell as his first Substack post, prompting a quick White House response

After conducting his own investigation into who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines via a series of underwater blasts on Sept. 26, Hersh has concluded the United States blew up the Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline as part of a covert operation under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise.

Hersh, relying on unnamed national security sources, describes months of discussions and back-and-forth involving the Biden White House, CIA, and Pentagon. The report says planning was in the works all the way back to December 2021, with a special task force formed under the aegis of US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

“The Navy proposed using a newly commissioned submarine to assault the pipeline directly. The Air Force discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely. The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes,” the report, entitled How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline reads.

“The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022,” it continues.

As momentum gained to proceed with a covert sabotage attack, “Over the next few weeks, members of the CIA’s working group began to craft a plan for a covert operation that would use deep-sea divers to trigger an explosion along the pipeline,” Hersh writes.

But there was significant push back within the intelligence community, but any reservations were overcome in the lead-up and aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. According to the investigative report: 

Throughout “all of this scheming,” the source said, “some working guys in the CIA and the State Department were saying, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.’”

Nevertheless, in early 2022, the CIA working group reported back to Sullivan’s interagency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”

What came next was stunning. On February 7, less than three weeks before the seemingly inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden met in his White House office with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, after some wobbling, was now firmly on the American team. At the press briefing that followed, Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

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How a Network of Nazi Propagandists Helped Lay the Groundwork for the War in Ukraine

“History isn’t what happened, but the stories of what happened and the lessons these stories include. The very selection of which histories to teach in a society shapes our view of how what is came to be and, in turn, what we understand as possible. This choice of which history to teach can never be ‘neutral’ or ‘objective.’ Those who choose, either following a set agenda or guided by hidden prejudices, serve their interests. Their interests could be to continue this world as it now stands or to make a new world.” – Howard Zinn

In the aftermath of the Second World War, many of the architects of the worst atrocities in history were rescued and protected by American intelligence. The overt role of Nazi scientists such as Wernher von Braun (who personally oversaw the torture and murder of slave laborers) in the United States space program and West German industry has been common knowledge for decades.

In recent years the end of the Cold War has brought revelations about the CIA’s “gladiators” such as Yaroslav Stetsko and Licio Gelli influencing the world’s political development by any means necessary. From Germany and Italy to Japan and South Korea, there is now a vast collection of evidence proving the existence of large, well-funded networks of fascist terrorists who did not hesitate to use violence to ensure compliance from the “free” people of the world.

However, what is less well known is that thousands of fascist-leaning and anti-communist academics were also rescued and nurtured by the U.S. to wage an ideological war against Communism. These revisionist historians spent decades laboring in the shadows of the academic press until the fall of the Soviet Union allowed them to return home and finally rewrite history to their liking. After decades of effort, we can now see the results of their work, the seeds planted 70 years ago are finally bearing their poisoned fruit.

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THE CIA’S DESTABILISATION OF TIBET

The possibility of breaking China apart into separate regions, outside of Beijing’s influence, has been an integral part of American foreign policy ever since the end of the 1940s, when China exited Washington’s control following the communist revolution. 

The 1949 communist takeover of China was termed in imperialist language as “the loss of China” in Washington. China’s revolution was lamented by American politicians as a major blow to United States power, which it undoubtedly was, after China had been a Western client nation for many years. 

Soon thereafter the Harry Truman administration (1945–53), severely criticised for “losing China”, made concerted efforts to undermine America’s new rival. Between 1949 and 1951, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) increased the number of its operatives tenfold which were engaged in covert actions relating to China. (1) 

The CIA budget, for activities against China, reached 20 times greater than the sum of money expended on the 1953 US/British-backed overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh’s government in Iran. (2) 

Scanning maps of east Asia, US government strategists were inevitably drawn towards Tibet, in south-western China, as an area of critical importance. The Tibetan landmass, which is recognised internationally to be within China’s frontiers, is the highest in the world, and it has an average altitude of over 4,300 metres above sea level. At 1.2 million square kilometres in size, the region of Tibet is more than twice larger than France; but it doubles to 2.5 million square kilometres, by taking into account much of the surrounding Tibetan Plateau which is scarcely inhabited by humans. 

It should be noted, in modern history, that Tibet was under effective Chinese control for almost two centuries (from 1720–1912), during the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China. 

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