From: cshi@cs.ulowell.edu (Chunde Shi)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: CIA
Date: 15 Oct 92 01:08:03 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts at Lowell

Keywords: John Stockwell describes CIA's naziistic torture chambers


    Thanks to Kerry Miller, astingsh@ksuvm.ksu.edu,
    we can now learn a bit more about the CIA's naziistic 
    atrocities. Kerry made the following transcript from
    a tape recording that I sent him of a broadcast by
    Pacifica Radio Network station 
                          WBAI-FM Radio (99.5)
                          505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
                          New York, NY 10018       (212) 279-0707


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NARRATOR:
John Stockwell spent 13 years with the CIA, including serving as a case
officer in Africa and Viet Nam. He was commander of the CIA's secret war in
Angola in 1975 and 1976.

JOHN STOCKWELL:
     In that job I sat on the subcommittee of the National Security Council,
so I was like the Chief of Staff, with GS-18s like three star generals,
Henry Kissinger, [CIA Director] Bill Colby, the GS-18s in the CIA, making 
important decisions. My job was to put it all together, make it happen, 
and run it. It was an interesting place from which to watch a covert action 
being done.

NARRATOR:
Stockwell began his CIA career in Africa.

JOHN STOCKWELL:
     We were doing things that seemed [?] because we were there, because it
was our function. We were bribing people, corrupting people, and not
protecting the US in any visible way. I had a chance to go drinking with 
Larry Devlin, the famous CIA case officer who had overthrown Patrice Lumumba, 
and had him killed back in 1960, in the Congo.
     He was moving into Africa Division Chief. I talked with him at length one
night, and he was giving me an explanation. I was telling him: "Frankly, sir,
you know this stuff doesn't make any sense. We're not saving anybody from
anything, and we are corrupting people. And everybody knows we're doing it,
and that makes the US look bad."
     He said I was getting too big for my britches. He said I was "trying to
think like the people in the NSC back in Washington, who have the big picture,
who know what is going on in the world, who have all the secret information,
and the experience to digest it. If they decide we should have somebody in
Bujumbura, Burundi, and that person should be you, then you should do your job.
Wait till you have more experience, and work your way up to that point, and
then you'll understand national secuirity, and you can make the big decisions.
Now, get to work, and stop this philosophizing."  And I said, "Aye, aye, sir.
Sorry, sir. Bit out of line, sir."
     It's a powerful argument. Our presidents use it on us. President Reagan
has used it on the American people saying, "If you knew what I know about the
situation in Central America, you would understand why it's necessary for us
to intervene."

NARRATOR:
In Viet Nam, Stockwell ran a CIA intelligence gathering post.

JOHN STOCKWELL:
     I had to work with a sadistic police chief. He liked to carve people with
knives in the CIA safe house. When I reported this to my bosses, they said,
One: the post is too important to close down. Two: they weren't going to get
the man transferred or fired because that would make problems politically.
He was very good at working with us in the operations he worked on. Three:
therefore, if I didn't have the stomach for it, they could transfer me, but
they hastened to point out that if I did demonstrate a lack of moral fiber, 
to handle working with this sadistic police chief, I wouldn't get another 
good job with the CIA. It would be a mark against my career.
     So I kept the job. I closed the safe house down. I told my staff that I
didn't approve of that kind of activity, and proceeded to work with him for
the next two years, pretending that I had reformed him and that he didn't do
this sort of thing anymore.
     The parallel is obvious with El Salvador today, where the CIA, the State
Department, works with the death squads.

NARRATOR:
In this second part of our special presentation, John Stockwell brings us up
to date with his experiences after leaving the CIA in 1977. He discusses CIA
covert operations in Central America, CIA manipulation of the press, and CIA
experiments conducted on the US public. John Stockwell: The Secret Wars of the
CIA, brought to you by the Other Americas Radio and your local public radio
station.

JOHN STOCKWELL:
"What we're going to talk about tonight are the CIA's secret wars. But
the subject is much broader than merely little CIA dirty tricks and
shenanigans. We're talking about a situation -- we're living in a world which
has grievous problems. Our planet is terminally ill, and it's not a long term
disease. We're talking about the nuclear arms race.
     This is something. These 52,000, soon to be 70,000, nuclear weapons are
going to be going off sooner rather than later. At the same time, the world
is facing serious economic problems, of the sort that triggered world wars in
the past. Leaders of countries, leaders of banks, for purposes basically of
greed, have never been able to balance their checkbooks. They always
overspend. They run countries into bankruptcy.
     When the world has gotten blocked up before, like a Monopoly game where
everything is owned and nobody can make any progress, the way they erase the
board and start over has been to have big world wars. Erase countries, bomb
cities, and bomb banks, and then start from scratch again. This is not an
option to us now, because of all these 52,000 nuclear weapons.
     The Center for Defense Information counts 60 wars that are being fought
in the world today, in which they estimate 5 million people will die. The US
is on the brink of its next war: the Central American War. In this situation
of a volatile world, about as troubled as it can get, the US CIA is running 50
covert actions, destabilizing further almost one third of the countries in the
world today.
     Now these things inter-relate. The nuclear arms race, conventional wars,
the world debt, CIA covert actions; they're all viewed from our point of view,
they're all part of our national security. They're supervised by the National
Security Council - the National Security Advisor advises the President - and
we respond to them in terms of our own national security compulsions.
     By the way, everything I'm sharing with you tonight is in the public
record. The 50 covert actions are secret, but that [information] has been
leaked to us by members of the oversight committee of Congress. I urge you not
to take my word for anything. I'm going to stand here and tell you and give
you examples of how our leaders lie. Obviously, I could be lying. The only
way you can figure it out for yourselves is to educate yourselves. The French
have a saying, "Them that don't do politics will be done." If you don't fill
your mind eagerly with the truth, dig out the records, go and see for
yourself, then your mind remains blank, and your adrenalin pumps, and you can
be excited and mobilized to do things that are not in your interest to do.
     Approaching this subject from my own point of view, my own experience,
my special expertise, the CIA covert actions, let's look at Nicaragua. This is
the most famous covert action of the 50 that are going on today. They say
there are 13 "major" ones. This is not the biggest one. Afghanistan is. We've
spent several hundred million dollars in Afghanistan, We've spent somewhat
less than that, but close, in Nicaragua. Nicaragua is the most famous one, and
there's a reason. Part of it is, it's closer, but a big part of it is the fact
that the Administration is using Nicaragua for a very special purpose, so they
have made it public from the outset.
     What this is is a technique of destabilization. In covert action, you
call it destabilization. You have a target: a government that you don't like.
You pick a country you're going to go after. The reasons are quite whimsical.
We go after a country for a while, and if it doesn't work, sometimes we wind
up big friends with them. They pick a government, they target them, they send
the CIA in with its resources and its activists: hiring people, hiring agents
to tear apart the social and economic fabric of the country. [It's] a
technique for putting pressure on the government, hoping they can make the
government come to the US's terms, or that the government will collapse
altogether and they can engineer a coup d'etat, and have the thing wind up
with their own choice of people in power.
     Now ripping apart the economic and social fabric is fairly textbookish.
What we're talking about is going in and deliberately creating conditions
where the farmer can't get his produce to market; where children can't go to
school; where women are terrified, inside their homes as well as outside;
where government administered programs grind to a complete halt; where the
hospitals are treating wounded people, instead of sick people; where
international capital is scared away and the country goes bankrupt.
                         (to be continued)
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     This is one of countless stories unveiling the deeply corrupted     
     and subverted state of our theoretically democratic Government.  
     This story makes disgustingly obvious the fact that patriotism
     is not the waving of flags, the tying of yellow ribbons and the 
     mindless support of the Government, just because it happens to be ours.
     You don't support cancer just because you happen to have it.
     Patriotism is telling the truth to the people of our country
     in order that they may unite to conquer the anti-democratic
     cancer that is gradually destroying ours and our children's
     freedom. So please post the installments of this series to
     other bulletin boards, and post hardcopies in public places,
     both on and off campus.  That would be a truly patriotic deed.

       John DiNardo