The CIA is a terrorist organization

I will open with an essay I have written on the topic: In 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed and put into effect the newly passed National Security Act. This act created the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the country's first peacetime intelligence and covert operations agency ever. The CIA came to power during a time of great fear and anxiety: the Soviet Union was quickly becoming a superpower and had seized control of Eastern Europe. The threat of Communism had begun to spread. Strangely enough, many of the CIA's major operations over the years have had little to do with Communism, despite frequent claims by Presidents and their staffs to the contrary. By the 1970s the CIA had worked to overthrow many prominent, democratically elected leaders and had instituted any form of government that would support United States interests. These governments were often brutal dictators such as Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran or military juntas run by death squads. Multiple Presidents claimed these countries were on the verge of falling to Communism. Small acts of socialism—land reform or nationalization of an industry—became the falling dominoes that led to the destruction of many democratic governments and leaders at the hands of the United States. On November 12, 1963, ten days before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech at Columbia University. He informed the audience, "the high office of the President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American's freedom and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of this plight." Despite Kennedy's allegations, it is evident that not even his hands were clean. Just eight months earlier, in February of 1963, the CIA supported and aided a coup d'ï¿½tat against Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim in Iraq. Qasim had overthrown the former British-installed monarchy of Iraq and declared it a republic, making wide-sweeping liberal and socialist changes. He helped adopt a constitution declaring all citizens equal regardless of religion, race, or language. In addition, Qasim established relations with the Soviet Union, withdrew from military, arms, and equipment agreements with the United States, seized 98 percent of land owned by the British-controlled Iraq Petroleum Company, and sought to nationalize the oil industry in Iraq. To protect its military and oil assets, the CIA aided the radical Ba'ath party (of which Saddam Hussein was a prominent member) in ousting Qasim from power. Prime Minister Qasim, like many other leaders overthrown by direct CIA involvement, was acting under a sense of nationalism. He sought to nationalize the oil industry for the benefit of the Iraqi people, not Western superpowers. Unfortunately the Red Scare gave both the President and the CIA nearly unlimited access to power. Iraq was just one of the countries accused of Soviet Union influence over the years: Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Korea, Laos, Angola, Panama, Chile, Cuba… and the list continues. Many fell to dictators. These dictators often overthrew majority-elected or empowered heads of state that often did not want to directly support the United States, but instead desired independence and free trade. It became the job of the President to justify any operations made public, and thus a new era of American government began: the era of the puppet theatre. Containment of Communism became the main selling point that the average United States citizen would buy, and it soon became the only selling point. In the midst of it all, experimental rock musician Frank Zappa proclaimed that the "[United States] Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex," and his words are truer today than ever before. In modern society, there is no greater threat to the United States than that of Terrorism. Or is there? With the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the threat of Communism sank into the background of the public mind and a new "threat" began to build. In 1993, terrorists working for the Islamic organization al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center. The roots of fear had been planted once more, and on September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacked again. The roots had become a full-grown blossom of terror. Today, President George W. Bush utilizes the threat of Terrorism in the same manner that the Presidents before him utilized Communism: as a scare tactic. While the President tells the American people one thing, he orders the CIA to use its unlimited access to funds and classified status to complete whatever task he might assign. Unfortunately, the American people rarely know what the CIA actually does, and have never known how much of their federal tax dollars is spent to conduct these mysterious operations. Since 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency has acted as the hidden arm of the government, answering only to the President, and occasionally not even to him. They have overthrown or assassinated democratic leaders in dozens of nations for the benefit of the American economy, and have instituted brutal dictators who led their nations with policies of violence, torture, and fear. In 1961, former President Harry S. Truman, creator of the CIA, said this: '"I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in '47, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo." Since its inception, the CIA has acted as an official, government sanctioned terrorist organization.