On This Day in History: September 18

The CIA is formed

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In The Hunt for Red October Sean Connery, upon learning that Alec Baldwin is CIA, proclaims “CIA!?” in shock and disgust. We’re made to believe it’s motivated by his Soviet distrust of an American intelligence agency. In reality, we should all be disgusted by the organization that was formed on September 18, 1947. Because its crimes are legion.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: September 18, 1947--

Created by the signing of the National Security Act by President Truman a couple of years after the end of World War II, the CIA’s “primary mission is to collect, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the president and senior U.S. government policymakers in making decisions relating to the national security . . . The CIA may also engage in covert action.”

Much has come to light about past covert actions and how the CIA fucked over so many different peoples. It’s like, wow, these folks really suck at keeping secrets if they can’t hide their atrocities for shit. News flash: They’re not trying that hard to hide them. In a lot of cases, they don’t give a shit except during the time of atrocity execution and for a short while afterward.

The CIA knows that its covert actions are going to eventually come to light and that most people won’t care about them because by the time we learn what went down, it’s history, and happened far away in a “shithole country.” What the CIA and other intelligence agencies really care about keeping secret is the first part of the aforementioned quote: the stuff about collecting intelligence and how it influences foreign policy. Since Trump didn’t read, I doubt it made much difference while he was president, but historically much of American foreign policy has been directed by its spying. This is the boring part of spying. It’s also what the CIA keeps the tightest lid on.

The budget for the James Bond shit is a small part of overall CIA expenditures, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t used that money to stir up shit. The agency conducted operations throughout Latin America and the rest of the world to support right-wing military dictators. Operatives tortured suspected terrorists in black sites in violation of the United Nations Convention Against Torture. After World War II the CIA recruited over a thousand fucking Nazis to spy during the Cold War. And there are numerous allegations of CIA involvement in international drug trafficking.

And the shit CIA personnel did in Vietnam. Jesus Muppet Fucking Christ it was horrible. One example is the “Phoenix Program;” thousands of innocent Vietnamese were tortured and murdered solely on the word of being ratted out by their neighbors. One method of torture used was rape, including raping people with eels.

The fuck?

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