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The Secret Government: the Constitution in Crisis A PBS Documentary
The National Security Act of 47 gave us the National Security
Council. Never have we had a National Security Council so concerned
about the nations security that were always looking for threats and
looking how to orchestrate our society to oppose those threats.
National Security was invented, almost, in 1947, and now it has
become the prime mover of everything we do as measured against
something we invented in 1947."
-- U.S. Navy Admiral Gene La Rocque in PBS Documentary "The Secret
Government" (view free)
In the revealing 22-minutes of the PBS documentary The Secret
Government available for free viewing below, host Bill Moyers exposes
the inner workings of a secret government much more vast that most
people would ever think. Though originally broadcast in 1987, it
is even more relevant today. Interviews with respected top military,
intelligence, and government insiders reveal both the history and
secret objectives of powerful groups in the hidden shadows of our
government.
If you take time to watch this engaging documentary and further
explore some of the vast amount of reliable, verifiable information
on WantToKnow.info, you will very likely come to the conclusion
that there is a powerful shadow or secret government which manipulates
global politics behind the scenes. Government bureaucracies are
known for their inefficiency, yet it is their very well-organized
and hierarchical military and intelligence services through which
those involved with the secret government are able to implement
their secret plans.
The text of "The Secret Government" is also provided below for your
convenience. Please help to strengthen democracy and educate others
by spreading this important information. For suggestions on how
each of us can work towards a better way, click here. Together, we
can and will build a brighter future for us all.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8536707153900925247 - "The
Secret Government" (22 minutes)
If the above link does not work, go to Google Video and search using
"The Secret Government"
http://www.pbs.org/now/series/billmoyers2.html - PBS website gives
brief bio of Bill Moyers
For another powerful, highly revealing documentary on the manipulations
of the secret government produced by BBC, see
http://www.WantToKnow.info/powerofnightmares (view free at link
provided). The intrepid BBC team clearly shows how the War on Terror
is largely a fabrication. For those interested in very detailed
information on the composition of the shadow or secret government
from a less well-known source, take a look at the summary at:
http://www.drboylan.com/shadgovt2.
Transcript
THE SECRET GOVERNMENT The Constitution In Crisis
Bill Moyers, Secret Government, PBS (Public Broadcasting Service)
1987
Moyers: The Secret Government is an interlocking network of official
functionaries, spies, mercenaries, ex-generals, profiteers and
superpatriots, who, for a variety of motives, operate outside the
legitimate institutions of government. Presidents have turned to
them when they cant win the support of the Congress or the people,
creating that unsupervised power so feared by the framers of our
Constitution. Just imagine that William Caseys dream came true.
Suppose the enterprise grew into a super-secret, self-financing,
self-perpetuating organization. Suppose they decided on their own
to assassinate Gorbachev or the leader of white South Africa. Could
a President control them and what if he became the enterprises
public enemy Number One? Who would know? Who would say no?
The history of our secret government.
World War II was over. Europe lay devastated. The United States
emerged as the most powerful nation on earth. But from the rubble
rose a strange new world, a peace that was not peace and a war that
was not war. We saw it emerging when the Soviets occupied Eastern
Europe. The Cold War had begun.
Winston Churchill: An Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.
Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of
Central and Eastern Europe.
Moyers: The Russians had been our ally against the Nazis, an expedient
alliance for the sake of war. Now they were our enemy. To fight
them we turned to some of the very men who had inflicted on humanity
the horrors of Hitlers madness. We hired Nazis as American spies.
We struck a secret bargain with the devil.
Erhard Dabringhaus: One that I know real well is Klaus Barbie. He
was wanted by the French as their number one war criminal and somehow
we employed a man like that as a very secretive informant.
Moyers: Erhard Dabringhaus was employed in the U.S. Army Counter
Intelligence Corps and assigned to work with Nazi informants spying
on the Russians. One of them was Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon',
who had tortured and murdered thousands of Jews and resistance
fighters. The Americans did not turn Barbie over to the French when
they finished with him. They helped him escape to Bolivia. Other
top Nazis were smuggled into the United States to cooperate in the
war against the new enemy.
So began the morality of the Cold War. Anything goes. The struggle
required a mentality of permanent war, a perpetual state of emergency.
It had met a vast new apparatus of power that radically transformed
our government. Its foundations were laid when President Truman
signed into law the National Security Act of 1947.
Admiral Gene La Rocque: Now that National Security Act of 1947
changed dramatically the direction of this great nation. It established
the framework for a national security state.
Moyers: Admiral Gene La Rocque rose through the ranks from Ensign
to become a Strategic Planner for the Pentagon and now heads the
Center of Defense Information, a public interest group.
Admiral Gene La Rocque: The National Security Act of 47 gave us the
National Security Council. Never have we had a National Security
Council so concerned about the nations security that were always
looking for threats and looking how to orchestrate our society to
oppose those threats. National Security was invented, almost, in
1947, and now it has become the prime mover of everything we do as
measured against something we invented in 1947. The National Security
Act also gave us the Central Intelligence Agency.
Moyers: This is the house the Cold War built the CIA. The core of
the new secret government. Its chief legitimate duty was to gather
foreign intelligence for Americas new role as a world power. Soon
it was taking on covert operations, abroad and at home. As its
mission expanded, the CIA recruited adventuresome young men like
Notre Dames 'All American,' Ralph McGehee.
Ralph McGehee: I look back to the individual that I was when I
joined the agency. I was a dedicated Cold Warrior who felt the
agency was out there fighting for liberty, justice and democracy
and religion around the world. And I believed wholeheartedly in
this. I just felt proud every day that I went to work because I was
out at the vanguard of the battle against the international evil
empire international Communist evil empire.
Moyers: Iran, 1953: the CIA mounted its first major covert operation
to overthrow a foreign government. The target was the Prime Minister
of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq. He held power legitimately, through his
countrys parliamentary process and he was popular. Washington had
once looked to him as the man to prevent a Communist takeover. But
that was before Mosaddeq decided that the Iranian state, not British
companies, ought to own and control the oil within Irans own borders.
When he nationalized the British run oil fields, Washington saw
red.
The Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles and his brother Alan,
Director of the CIA, decided with Eisenhowers approval, to overthrow
Mosaddeq and reinstate the Shah of Iran. The mobs paid by the CIA,
and the police and soldiers bribed by the CIA, drove Mosaddeq from
office.
Newscaster: Crown Prince Abdullah greets the Shah as he lands at
Baghdad airport after a 7-hour flight from Rome.
Moyers: The King of Kings was back in control and more pliable than
Mosaddeq. American oil companies took over almost half of Irans
production. U.S. arms merchants moved in with $18 billion of weapons
sales over the next 20 years. But there were losers.
Kenneth Love (former New York Times reporter): Nearly everybody in
Iran of any importance has had a brother, or a mother, or a sister,
or a son, or a father, tortured, jailed, deprived of property without
due process. I mean an absolutely buccaneering dictatorship in our
name that we supported. SAVAK was created by the CIA!
Bill Moyers: SAVAK, the Shahs Secret Police, tortured and murdered
thousands of his opponents. General Richard Secord and Albert Hakim,
whom we met earlier, were among those who helped supply the Shahs
insatiable appetite for the technology of control. But the weapons
and flattery heaped by America on the Shah blinded us to the growing
opposition of his own people. They rose up in 1979 against him.
Death to the Shah! they shouted. Death to the American Satan.
Kenneth Love: Khomeni is a direct consequence and the hostage crisis
is a direct consequence, and the resurgence of the Shia is a direct
consequence of the CIAs overthrow of Mosaddeq in 1953.
Moyers: Guatemala 1954. Flushed with success Americas Secret
Government decided another troublesome leader must go. This time
it was Jacobo Arbenz, the democratically elected president of
Guatemala. Philip Roettinger was recruited from the Marines to join
the CIA team.
Colonel Philip Roettinger (Ret.) U.S. Marine Corps: It was explained
to me that it was very important for the security of the United
States that we were going to prevent a Soviet beach-head in this
hemisphere, which we have heard about very recently of course, and
that the Guatemalan government was Communist and we had to do
something about it.
Moyers: President Arbenz had admired Franklin D. Roosevelt and his
government voted often with the American position at the United
Nations. But in trying to bring a new deal to Guatemala, Arbenz
committed two sins in the eyes of the Eisenhower administration.
First, when he opened the system to all political parties he
recognized the Communists too.
Roettinger: Well, of course there was not even a hint of Communism
in his government. He had no Communists in his Cabinet. He did
permit the existence of a very small Communist party.
Moyers: Arbenz also embarked on a massive land reform program. Less
than 3 per cent of the land owners held more than 70 per cent of
the land. So Arbenz nationalized more than 1 = million acres,
including land owned by his own family and turned it over to peasants.
Much of that land belonged to the United Fruit Company, the giant
American firm that was intent on keeping Guatemala, quite literally,
a banana republic. United Fruit appealed to its close friends in
Washington, including the Dulles brothers, who said that Arbenz was
openly playing the Communist game. He had to go.
Roettinger: This was sudden death for him. There was no chance of
him winning this fight because of the fact that he had done this
to the United Fruit Company. Plus the fact, that he was overthrowing
the hegemony of the United States over this area. And this was
dangerous, it [would] not be tolerated. We couldnt tolerate that.
Moyers: From Honduras, the same country that today is the Contra
staging base, the CIA launched a small band of mercenaries against
Guatemala. They were easily turned back. So with its own planes and
pilots the CIA then bombed the capital. Arbenz fled and was immediately
replaced by an American puppet, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas.
Roettinger: He overturned all of the reformist activities of President
Arbenz. He gave the land back to the United Fruit Company that had
been confiscated. He took land from the peasants and gave it back
to the land owners.
Bill Moyers: The CIA had called its covert action against Guatemala,
Operation Success. Military dictators ruled the country for the
next 30 years. The United States provided them with weapons and
trained their officers. The Communists we saved them from would
have been hard pressed to do it better. Peasants were slaughtered.
Political opponents were tortured. Suspected insurgents were shot,
stabbed, burned alive or strangled. There were so many deaths at
one point that coroners complained they couldnt keep up with the
work load. Operation Success.
Roettinger: What we did has caused a succession of repressive
military dictatorships in that country and has been responsible for
the deaths over 100,000 of their citizens.
Moyers: Success breeds success, sometimes with dreary repetition.
Mario Sandoval Alarcon began his career in the CIAs adventure in
Guatemala. Today hes known as the Godfather of the Death Squads.
In 1981, after lobbying Ronald Reagans advisors for military aid
to Guatemala, Sandoval Alarcon danced at the Inaugural Ball.
Richard Bissell, another veteran of the Guatemalan coup, went on
to become the CIAs Chief of Covert Operations. I looked him up
several years ago for a CBS documentary. Cuba, 1961, seven years
after Operation Success in Guatemala, Bissell was planning another
CIA covert operation.
Newscaster: The assault has begun on the dictatorship of Fidel
Castro.
Moyers: On April 17, 1961, Cuban exiles trained by the CIA at a
base in friendly Guatemala landed on the southern coast of Cuba,
at the Bay of Pigs. The U.S. had promised air support, but President
Kennedy cancelled it. The invaders, left defenseless, surrendered.
Seven months after the disastrous invasion, Kennedy delivered a
major foreign policy address.
President John F. Kennedy: We cannot, as a free nation, compete
with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false
promises, counterfeit mobs and crisis.
Moyers: The President was not telling the truth. Even as he spoke,
his administration was planning a new covert war on Cuba. It would
include some of the dirty tricks the President said we were above.
The Secret Government was prepared for anything.
Moyers interview with Richard Bissel: At one time, the CIA organized
a small department known as Executive Action, which was a permanent
assassination capability.
Bissel: Well, it wasnt just an assassination capability. It was a
capability to discredit or get rid of people, but it could have
included assassination.
Moyers: And it did. There were at least eight documented attempts
to kill Castro. He says there were two dozen. And there was even
one effort to put LSD in his cigars. To help us get rid of the Cuban
leader, our Secret Government turned to the Mafia just as we once
made use of Nazis. The gangsters included the Las Vegas Mafioso
John Roselli, the Don of Chicago, Sam Giancana, and the Boss of
Tampa, Santo Traficante.
If I read you correctly you are saying it is the involvement in the
Mafia that disturbed you and not the need or decision to assassinate
a foreign leader.
Bissel: Correct.
Moyers: It is a chilling thought made more chilling by the assassination
of John Kennedy. The accusations linger. In some minds, the suspicions
persist of a dark unsolved conspiracy behind his murder. You can
dismiss them, as many of us do. But knowing now what our Secret
Government planned for Castro, the possibility remains. Once we
decide that anything goes, anything can come home to haunt us.
Vietnam, 1968: American soldiers are fighting and dying in the
jungles of Southeast Asia. But the Vietnam War didnt start this
way. It started secretly off the books like so many of these ventures
that have ended disastrously. The CIA got there early, soon after
the Vietnamese won their independence from the French in 1954.
Eisenhower warned that the nations of Southeast Asia would fall
like dominoes if the Communists, led by Ho Chi Min, took over all
Vietnam. To hold the line, we installed in Saigon a puppet regime
under Ngo Dinh Diem. American-trained commandoes were used to
sabotage bus and rail lines and contaminate North Vietnams oil
supply.
President Kennedy sent the Green Berets to Vietnam and turned to
full scale counter-insurgency. He had once said that Vietnam was
the ultimate test of our will to stem the tide of world Communism.
By the time of his death, there were 15,000 Americans there. They
were called Advisors. The secret war was leading only to deeper
involvement and more deception.
President Lyndon Johnson: It is my duty to the American people to
report that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on
the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order
the military forces of the United States, to take action and reply.
Moyers: This President was not telling the truth either. The action
at the Gulf of Tonkin was not unprovoked. South Vietnam had been
conducting secret raids in the area against the North and the
American destroyer, ordered into the battle zone, had advanced
warning it could be attacked. But Johnson seized the incident to
stampede Congress into passing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. He
then used it as a blank check for the massive buildup of American
forces.
April, 1965: Two battalions of Marines land in South Vietnam. The
first of more than 2 = million Americans to fight there with no
Congressional declaration of war. The dirty little war that began
in secret, is reaching full roar. Free-fire zones, defoliation, the
massacre at My Lai, napalm, and the CIAs Operation Phoenix to round
up, torture and kill suspected Viet Cong.
Ralph McGehee: We were murdering these people, incinerating them.
Moyers: Ralph McGehee was there for the CIA and helped set up South
Vietnams secret police.
McGehee (Notre Dame "All American"): My efforts had resulted in the
deaths of many people and I just for me it was a period when I
guess I was I considered myself nearly insane I just couldnt
reconcile what I had been and what I was at the time becoming.
Moyers: Many of the secret warriors in Southeast Asia had no such
doubts or regrets. Some of the team that later joined the Iran-Contra
enterprise, helped to run the secret war in Laos. As General Richard
Secord later put it, 'Laos belonged to the CIA.' Looking back, it
is stunning how easily the Cold War enticed us into surrendering
popular control of government to the National Security State. Weve
never come closer to bestowing absolute authority on the President.
Setting up White House groups that secretly decide to fight dirty
little wars, is a direct assumption of the war powers expressly
forbidden by the Constitution.
Not since December, 1941, has Congress declared war. Since then,
weve had a police action in Korea, advisors in Vietnam, covert
operations in Central America, peacekeeping in Lebanon and low
intensity conflicts going on right now from Angola to Cambodia.
Weve turned the war powers of the United States over to, well we
are never really sure who, or what theyre doing, or what it costs,
or who is paying for it. The one thing that we are sure of is that
this largely secret global war carried on with less and less
accountability to democratic institutions, has become a way of life.
And now we are faced with a question brand new in our history. Can
we have the permanent warfare state and democracy too?
Congressional hearings: A shellfish toxin "
Moyers: In 1975 as the war in Vietnam came to an end, Congress took
its first public look at the Secret Government. Senator Frank Church
chaired the Select Committee to study government operations. The
hearings opened the books on a string of lethal activities. From
the use of electric pistols and poison pellets, to Mafia connections
and drug experiments. And they gave us a detailed account of
assassination plots against foreign leaders and the overthrowing
of sovereign governments. We learned, for example, how the Nixon
administration had waged a covert war against the government of
Chiles president, Salvador Allende, who was ultimately overthrown
by a military coup and assassinated.
Senator Church: Like Caesar peering into the colonies from distant
Rome, Nixon said the choice of government by the Chileans was
unacceptable to the President of the United States. The attitude
in the White House seemed to be if in the wake of Vietnam, I can
no longer send in the Marines, then, I will send in the CIA.
Moyers: This remains for me the heart of the matter. The men who
wrote our Constitution, our basic book of rules, were concerned
that power be held accountable. No party of government and no person
in government, not even the President, was to pick or choose among
the laws to be obeyed. But how does one branch of government blow
the whistle on another? Or how do the people cry foul when their
liberties are imperiled, if public officials can break the rules,
lie to us about it, and then wave the wand of national security to
silence us?
Can it happen again? You bet it can. The apparatus of secret power
remains intact in a huge White House staff operating in the sanctuary
of presidential privilege. George Bush has already told the National
Security Council to take more responsibility for foreign policy
which can of course be exercised beyond public scrutiny. And a lot
of people in Washington are calling for more secrecy, not less,
including more covert actions. This is a system easily corrupted
as the public grows indifferent again, and the press is seduced or
distracted. So one day, sadly, we are likely to discover once again
that while freedom does have enemies in the world it can also be
undermined here at home, in the dark, by those posing as its friends.
Im Bill Moyers. Good night."
Special Note: The above text and videos are excerpts of the full
90-minute version of "The Secret Government." To see the entire
broadcast, click here or search for the 90-minute version here.
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The Secret Government: the Constitution in Crisis A PBS Documentary
The National Security Act of 47 gave us the National Security
Council. Never have we had a National Security Council so concerned
about the nations security that were always looking for threats and
looking how to orchestrate our society to oppose those threats.
National Security was invented, almost, in 1947, and now it has
become the prime mover of everything we do as measured against
something we invented in 1947."
-- U.S. Navy Admiral Gene La Rocque in PBS Documentary "The Secret
Government" (view free)
In the revealing 22-minutes of the PBS documentary The Secret
Government available for free viewing below, host Bill Moyers exposes
the inner workings of a secret government much more vast that most
people would ever think. Though originally broadcast in 1987, it
is even more relevant today. Interviews with respected top military,
intelligence, and government insiders reveal both the history and
secret objectives of powerful groups in the hidden shadows of our
government.
If you take time to watch this engaging documentary and further
explore some of the vast amount of reliable, verifiable information
on WantToKnow.info, you will very likely come to the conclusion
that there is a powerful shadow or secret government which manipulates
global politics behind the scenes. Government bureaucracies are
known for their inefficiency, yet it is their very well-organized
and hierarchical military and intelligence services through which
those involved with the secret government are able to implement
their secret plans.
The text of "The Secret Government" is also provided below for your
convenience. Please help to strengthen democracy and educate others
by spreading this important information. For suggestions on how
each of us can work towards a better way, click here. Together, we
can and will build a brighter future for us all.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8536707153900925247 - "The
Secret Government" (22 minutes)
If the above link does not work, go to Google Video and search using
"The Secret Government"
http://www.pbs.org/now/series/billmoyers2.html - PBS website gives
brief bio of Bill Moyers
For another powerful, highly revealing documentary on the manipulations
of the secret government produced by BBC, see
http://www.WantToKnow.info/powerofnightmares (view free at link
provided). The intrepid BBC team clearly shows how the War on Terror
is largely a fabrication. For those interested in very detailed
information on the composition of the shadow or secret government
from a less well-known source, take a look at the summary at:
http://www.drboylan.com/shadgovt2.
Transcript
THE SECRET GOVERNMENT The Constitution In Crisis
Bill Moyers, Secret Government, PBS (Public Broadcasting Service)
1987
Moyers: The Secret Government is an interlocking network of official
functionaries, spies, mercenaries, ex-generals, profiteers and
superpatriots, who, for a variety of motives, operate outside the
legitimate institutions of government. Presidents have turned to
them when they cant win the support of the Congress or the people,
creating that unsupervised power so feared by the framers of our
Constitution. Just imagine that William Caseys dream came true.
Suppose the enterprise grew into a super-secret, self-financing,
self-perpetuating organization. Suppose they decided on their own
to assassinate Gorbachev or the leader of white South Africa. Could
a President control them and what if he became the enterprises
public enemy Number One? Who would know? Who would say no?
The history of our secret government.
World War II was over. Europe lay devastated. The United States
emerged as the most powerful nation on earth. But from the rubble
rose a strange new world, a peace that was not peace and a war that
was not war. We saw it emerging when the Soviets occupied Eastern
Europe. The Cold War had begun.
Winston Churchill: An Iron Curtain has descended across the continent.
Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of
Central and Eastern Europe.
Moyers: The Russians had been our ally against the Nazis, an expedient
alliance for the sake of war. Now they were our enemy. To fight
them we turned to some of the very men who had inflicted on humanity
the horrors of Hitlers madness. We hired Nazis as American spies.
We struck a secret bargain with the devil.
Erhard Dabringhaus: One that I know real well is Klaus Barbie. He
was wanted by the French as their number one war criminal and somehow
we employed a man like that as a very secretive informant.
Moyers: Erhard Dabringhaus was employed in the U.S. Army Counter
Intelligence Corps and assigned to work with Nazi informants spying
on the Russians. One of them was Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon',
who had tortured and murdered thousands of Jews and resistance
fighters. The Americans did not turn Barbie over to the French when
they finished with him. They helped him escape to Bolivia. Other
top Nazis were smuggled into the United States to cooperate in the
war against the new enemy.
So began the morality of the Cold War. Anything goes. The struggle
required a mentality of permanent war, a perpetual state of emergency.
It had met a vast new apparatus of power that radically transformed
our government. Its foundations were laid when President Truman
signed into law the National Security Act of 1947.
Admiral Gene La Rocque: Now that National Security Act of 1947
changed dramatically the direction of this great nation. It established
the framework for a national security state.
Moyers: Admiral Gene La Rocque rose through the ranks from Ensign
to become a Strategic Planner for the Pentagon and now heads the
Center of Defense Information, a public interest group.
Admiral Gene La Rocque: The National Security Act of 47 gave us the
National Security Council. Never have we had a National Security
Council so concerned about the nations security that were always
looking for threats and looking how to orchestrate our society to
oppose those threats. National Security was invented, almost, in
1947, and now it has become the prime mover of everything we do as
measured against something we invented in 1947. The National Security
Act also gave us the Central Intelligence Agency.
Moyers: This is the house the Cold War built the CIA. The core of
the new secret government. Its chief legitimate duty was to gather
foreign intelligence for Americas new role as a world power. Soon
it was taking on covert operations, abroad and at home. As its
mission expanded, the CIA recruited adventuresome young men like
Notre Dames 'All American,' Ralph McGehee.
Ralph McGehee: I look back to the individual that I was when I
joined the agency. I was a dedicated Cold Warrior who felt the
agency was out there fighting for liberty, justice and democracy
and religion around the world. And I believed wholeheartedly in
this. I just felt proud every day that I went to work because I was
out at the vanguard of the battle against the international evil
empire international Communist evil empire.
Moyers: Iran, 1953: the CIA mounted its first major covert operation
to overthrow a foreign government. The target was the Prime Minister
of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq. He held power legitimately, through his
countrys parliamentary process and he was popular. Washington had
once looked to him as the man to prevent a Communist takeover. But
that was before Mosaddeq decided that the Iranian state, not British
companies, ought to own and control the oil within Irans own borders.
When he nationalized the British run oil fields, Washington saw
red.
The Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles and his brother Alan,
Director of the CIA, decided with Eisenhowers approval, to overthrow
Mosaddeq and reinstate the Shah of Iran. The mobs paid by the CIA,
and the police and soldiers bribed by the CIA, drove Mosaddeq from
office.
Newscaster: Crown Prince Abdullah greets the Shah as he lands at
Baghdad airport after a 7-hour flight from Rome.
Moyers: The King of Kings was back in control and more pliable than
Mosaddeq. American oil companies took over almost half of Irans
production. U.S. arms merchants moved in with $18 billion of weapons
sales over the next 20 years. But there were losers.
Kenneth Love (former New York Times reporter): Nearly everybody in
Iran of any importance has had a brother, or a mother, or a sister,
or a son, or a father, tortured, jailed, deprived of property without
due process. I mean an absolutely buccaneering dictatorship in our
name that we supported. SAVAK was created by the CIA!
Bill Moyers: SAVAK, the Shahs Secret Police, tortured and murdered
thousands of his opponents. General Richard Secord and Albert Hakim,
whom we met earlier, were among those who helped supply the Shahs
insatiable appetite for the technology of control. But the weapons
and flattery heaped by America on the Shah blinded us to the growing
opposition of his own people. They rose up in 1979 against him.
Death to the Shah! they shouted. Death to the American Satan.
Kenneth Love: Khomeni is a direct consequence and the hostage crisis
is a direct consequence, and the resurgence of the Shia is a direct
consequence of the CIAs overthrow of Mosaddeq in 1953.
Moyers: Guatemala 1954. Flushed with success Americas Secret
Government decided another troublesome leader must go. This time
it was Jacobo Arbenz, the democratically elected president of
Guatemala. Philip Roettinger was recruited from the Marines to join
the CIA team.
Colonel Philip Roettinger (Ret.) U.S. Marine Corps: It was explained
to me that it was very important for the security of the United
States that we were going to prevent a Soviet beach-head in this
hemisphere, which we have heard about very recently of course, and
that the Guatemalan government was Communist and we had to do
something about it.
Moyers: President Arbenz had admired Franklin D. Roosevelt and his
government voted often with the American position at the United
Nations. But in trying to bring a new deal to Guatemala, Arbenz
committed two sins in the eyes of the Eisenhower administration.
First, when he opened the system to all political parties he
recognized the Communists too.
Roettinger: Well, of course there was not even a hint of Communism
in his government. He had no Communists in his Cabinet. He did
permit the existence of a very small Communist party.
Moyers: Arbenz also embarked on a massive land reform program. Less
than 3 per cent of the land owners held more than 70 per cent of
the land. So Arbenz nationalized more than 1 = million acres,
including land owned by his own family and turned it over to peasants.
Much of that land belonged to the United Fruit Company, the giant
American firm that was intent on keeping Guatemala, quite literally,
a banana republic. United Fruit appealed to its close friends in
Washington, including the Dulles brothers, who said that Arbenz was
openly playing the Communist game. He had to go.
Roettinger: This was sudden death for him. There was no chance of
him winning this fight because of the fact that he had done this
to the United Fruit Company. Plus the fact, that he was overthrowing
the hegemony of the United States over this area. And this was
dangerous, it [would] not be tolerated. We couldnt tolerate that.
Moyers: From Honduras, the same country that today is the Contra
staging base, the CIA launched a small band of mercenaries against
Guatemala. They were easily turned back. So with its own planes and
pilots the CIA then bombed the capital. Arbenz fled and was immediately
replaced by an American puppet, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas.
Roettinger: He overturned all of the reformist activities of President
Arbenz. He gave the land back to the United Fruit Company that had
been confiscated. He took land from the peasants and gave it back
to the land owners.
Bill Moyers: The CIA had called its covert action against Guatemala,
Operation Success. Military dictators ruled the country for the
next 30 years. The United States provided them with weapons and
trained their officers. The Communists we saved them from would
have been hard pressed to do it better. Peasants were slaughtered.
Political opponents were tortured. Suspected insurgents were shot,
stabbed, burned alive or strangled. There were so many deaths at
one point that coroners complained they couldnt keep up with the
work load. Operation Success.
Roettinger: What we did has caused a succession of repressive
military dictatorships in that country and has been responsible for
the deaths over 100,000 of their citizens.
Moyers: Success breeds success, sometimes with dreary repetition.
Mario Sandoval Alarcon began his career in the CIAs adventure in
Guatemala. Today hes known as the Godfather of the Death Squads.
In 1981, after lobbying Ronald Reagans advisors for military aid
to Guatemala, Sandoval Alarcon danced at the Inaugural Ball.
Richard Bissell, another veteran of the Guatemalan coup, went on
to become the CIAs Chief of Covert Operations. I looked him up
several years ago for a CBS documentary. Cuba, 1961, seven years
after Operation Success in Guatemala, Bissell was planning another
CIA covert operation.
Newscaster: The assault has begun on the dictatorship of Fidel
Castro.
Moyers: On April 17, 1961, Cuban exiles trained by the CIA at a
base in friendly Guatemala landed on the southern coast of Cuba,
at the Bay of Pigs. The U.S. had promised air support, but President
Kennedy cancelled it. The invaders, left defenseless, surrendered.
Seven months after the disastrous invasion, Kennedy delivered a
major foreign policy address.
President John F. Kennedy: We cannot, as a free nation, compete
with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false
promises, counterfeit mobs and crisis.
Moyers: The President was not telling the truth. Even as he spoke,
his administration was planning a new covert war on Cuba. It would
include some of the dirty tricks the President said we were above.
The Secret Government was prepared for anything.
Moyers interview with Richard Bissel: At one time, the CIA organized
a small department known as Executive Action, which was a permanent
assassination capability.
Bissel: Well, it wasnt just an assassination capability. It was a
capability to discredit or get rid of people, but it could have
included assassination.
Moyers: And it did. There were at least eight documented attempts
to kill Castro. He says there were two dozen. And there was even
one effort to put LSD in his cigars. To help us get rid of the Cuban
leader, our Secret Government turned to the Mafia just as we once
made use of Nazis. The gangsters included the Las Vegas Mafioso
John Roselli, the Don of Chicago, Sam Giancana, and the Boss of
Tampa, Santo Traficante.
If I read you correctly you are saying it is the involvement in the
Mafia that disturbed you and not the need or decision to assassinate
a foreign leader.
Bissel: Correct.
Moyers: It is a chilling thought made more chilling by the assassination
of John Kennedy. The accusations linger. In some minds, the suspicions
persist of a dark unsolved conspiracy behind his murder. You can
dismiss them, as many of us do. But knowing now what our Secret
Government planned for Castro, the possibility remains. Once we
decide that anything goes, anything can come home to haunt us.
Vietnam, 1968: American soldiers are fighting and dying in the
jungles of Southeast Asia. But the Vietnam War didnt start this
way. It started secretly off the books like so many of these ventures
that have ended disastrously. The CIA got there early, soon after
the Vietnamese won their independence from the French in 1954.
Eisenhower warned that the nations of Southeast Asia would fall
like dominoes if the Communists, led by Ho Chi Min, took over all
Vietnam. To hold the line, we installed in Saigon a puppet regime
under Ngo Dinh Diem. American-trained commandoes were used to
sabotage bus and rail lines and contaminate North Vietnams oil
supply.
President Kennedy sent the Green Berets to Vietnam and turned to
full scale counter-insurgency. He had once said that Vietnam was
the ultimate test of our will to stem the tide of world Communism.
By the time of his death, there were 15,000 Americans there. They
were called Advisors. The secret war was leading only to deeper
involvement and more deception.
President Lyndon Johnson: It is my duty to the American people to
report that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on
the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order
the military forces of the United States, to take action and reply.
Moyers: This President was not telling the truth either. The action
at the Gulf of Tonkin was not unprovoked. South Vietnam had been
conducting secret raids in the area against the North and the
American destroyer, ordered into the battle zone, had advanced
warning it could be attacked. But Johnson seized the incident to
stampede Congress into passing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. He
then used it as a blank check for the massive buildup of American
forces.
April, 1965: Two battalions of Marines land in South Vietnam. The
first of more than 2 = million Americans to fight there with no
Congressional declaration of war. The dirty little war that began
in secret, is reaching full roar. Free-fire zones, defoliation, the
massacre at My Lai, napalm, and the CIAs Operation Phoenix to round
up, torture and kill suspected Viet Cong.
Ralph McGehee: We were murdering these people, incinerating them.
Moyers: Ralph McGehee was there for the CIA and helped set up South
Vietnams secret police.
McGehee (Notre Dame "All American"): My efforts had resulted in the
deaths of many people and I just for me it was a period when I
guess I was I considered myself nearly insane I just couldnt
reconcile what I had been and what I was at the time becoming.
Moyers: Many of the secret warriors in Southeast Asia had no such
doubts or regrets. Some of the team that later joined the Iran-Contra
enterprise, helped to run the secret war in Laos. As General Richard
Secord later put it, 'Laos belonged to the CIA.' Looking back, it
is stunning how easily the Cold War enticed us into surrendering
popular control of government to the National Security State. Weve
never come closer to bestowing absolute authority on the President.
Setting up White House groups that secretly decide to fight dirty
little wars, is a direct assumption of the war powers expressly
forbidden by the Constitution.
Not since December, 1941, has Congress declared war. Since then,
weve had a police action in Korea, advisors in Vietnam, covert
operations in Central America, peacekeeping in Lebanon and low
intensity conflicts going on right now from Angola to Cambodia.
Weve turned the war powers of the United States over to, well we
are never really sure who, or what theyre doing, or what it costs,
or who is paying for it. The one thing that we are sure of is that
this largely secret global war carried on with less and less
accountability to democratic institutions, has become a way of life.
And now we are faced with a question brand new in our history. Can
we have the permanent warfare state and democracy too?
Congressional hearings: A shellfish toxin "
Moyers: In 1975 as the war in Vietnam came to an end, Congress took
its first public look at the Secret Government. Senator Frank Church
chaired the Select Committee to study government operations. The
hearings opened the books on a string of lethal activities. From
the use of electric pistols and poison pellets, to Mafia connections
and drug experiments. And they gave us a detailed account of
assassination plots against foreign leaders and the overthrowing
of sovereign governments. We learned, for example, how the Nixon
administration had waged a covert war against the government of
Chiles president, Salvador Allende, who was ultimately overthrown
by a military coup and assassinated.
Senator Church: Like Caesar peering into the colonies from distant
Rome, Nixon said the choice of government by the Chileans was
unacceptable to the President of the United States. The attitude
in the White House seemed to be if in the wake of Vietnam, I can
no longer send in the Marines, then, I will send in the CIA.
Moyers: This remains for me the heart of the matter. The men who
wrote our Constitution, our basic book of rules, were concerned
that power be held accountable. No party of government and no person
in government, not even the President, was to pick or choose among
the laws to be obeyed. But how does one branch of government blow
the whistle on another? Or how do the people cry foul when their
liberties are imperiled, if public officials can break the rules,
lie to us about it, and then wave the wand of national security to
silence us?
Can it happen again? You bet it can. The apparatus of secret power
remains intact in a huge White House staff operating in the sanctuary
of presidential privilege. George Bush has already told the National
Security Council to take more responsibility for foreign policy
which can of course be exercised beyond public scrutiny. And a lot
of people in Washington are calling for more secrecy, not less,
including more covert actions. This is a system easily corrupted
as the public grows indifferent again, and the press is seduced or
distracted. So one day, sadly, we are likely to discover once again
that while freedom does have enemies in the world it can also be
undermined here at home, in the dark, by those posing as its friends.
Im Bill Moyers. Good night."
Special Note: The above text and videos are excerpts of the full
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