In CIA We Trust

“The imperial populace is immensely forgiving of crimes against weaker peoples.”

More than a year after the Democrats began blaming Hillary Clinton’s campaign problems on Russia, the allegations of massive Kremlin interference in U.S. elections are still based on the “high confidence” – but evidence-free – CIA assertion that Vladimir Putin ordered the hacking of the Democratic National Committee. One cannot imagine a less credible authority than the agency headquartered in Langley, Virginia: an organization specializing in disinformation, mass psychological manipulation, false flag operations, assassination, and regime change. No single entity in modern history, foreign or domestic, has told more lies -- and been caught bloody-handed, during or after the fact -- than the CIA.

Only a fool, or a willing accomplice, would believe a word from the CIA’s mouth. Yet, the agency has arguable reached the all-time height of its influence over U.S. domestic affairs as the key player in the unfolding decapitation of the U.S. government, while the imperial war machine plays nuclear “chicken” with a range of demonized adversaries.

The Mother of All Liars is deemed the arbiter of truth. The CIA first conjures and then ritually deciphers both the crisis in domestic governance (the Russians did it) and the crisis (also Russia-based) of shrinking U.S. influence in the world. That the CIA continues to command such respect and authority, after all these years of ceaseless lying, is testament to the depth of the crisis of legitimacy that wracks U.S. ruling circles at this stage of capitalist decay.

“No single entity in modern history, foreign or domestic, has told more lies -- and been caught bloody-handed, during or after the fact -- than the CIA.“

We are inflicted with the spectacle of the Black political class -- worthless misleaders -- clucking that Russians are the root of escalating white supremacist outrages in the U.S. The Kremlin, supposedly on a social media budget of about a hundred thousand dollars, has replaced (or absorbed) the Republican White Man’s Party as the wily villains of U.S. voter suppression, if you believe Atlanta Black Rep. John Lewis. Los Angeles Congresswoman Maxine Waters has forgiven the CIA for bringing crack cocaine to the ghetto; she now blames the Russians for sowing social “dissension,” putting Black lives in danger. Waters revels in being called “auntie” by mostly white “liberal” crowds of Democratic “resisters” against Trump, and rants about “the Kremlin Klan” that pulls the strings in the White House, while a majority of her colleagues on the Congressional Black Caucus cast their votes for the Orange Menace’s gargantuan war budget -- thus guaranteeing the further gutting of social programs for their constituents.

The logic is clear: if the Russians have taken command of Trump’s brain, and harnessed Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ deep-fried racism to their own ends, then war with Moscow is the only path to racial justice in the United States. Eighty-four percent of U.S. cops supported Trump, according to a survey by Police magazine. That makes them dupes for the Kremlin -- which is, therefore, retroactively responsible for police violence in Black communities. There is a Russian behind every nightstick.

“Waters rants about “the Kremlin Klan” that pulls the strings in the White House.”

The CIA has pulled off one of the greatest psychological ops of all time, converting the bulk of elected officials representing the most left-leaning, anti-war constituency in the U.S. -- Black people -- into rabid Russia-haters.

It’s a good bet that the recent release of nearly 3,000 previously classified documents detailing the CIA’s history of domestic and international terrorism, false flag operations and regime change schemes, will have little political effect on the agency’s credibility on all things Russian. Although the CIA has become, if anything, more murderous with time, the imperial populace is immensely forgiving of crimes against weaker peoples. Most politically aware Americans already knew the CIA waged biological warfare against Cuban crops, and attempted scores of times to assassinate Fidel Castro; that one of Eisenhower’s last acts was to order the death of Congolese president Patrice Lumumba; and that the CIA considered the 1953 overthrow of Iran’s elected leader a great feat. The new batch of documents, related to the assassination of President John Kennedy, details a CIA scheme to stage bombings in Miami and even sink a “boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida” and blame it on Castro, at the risk of killing innocent people. However, it is well known that CIA operatives actually did carry out lethal bombings in Cuba, and destroyed a Cuban airliner full of passengers. The CIA killed 50,000 Vietnamese in Operation Phoenix and collaborated in the slaughter and disappearance of tens of thousands of Latin Americans. In league with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the CIA literally created the international jihadist network that became al Qaeda and its off-shoots around the world, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands. And almost every sentient American knows the CIA gave thumbs up to “intelligence” claiming Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

“In league with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the CIA literally created the international jihadist network that became al Qaeda and its off-shoots around the world.”

To compile a list of the CIA’s crimes, is to describe U.S. foreign policy since the agency’s founding in 1947. The CIA has never been a law unto itself. It is the clandestine arm of U.S. foreign policy, and carries out the objectives of the U.S. ruling class -- or various factions of that class. Its mission is maintenance and expansion of an empire that is not subject to the laws that constrain other nations. That is the meaning of American “exceptionalism.”

Those Americans that regularly “forgive” CIA crimes understand that it acts in service of U.S. empire. The problem is not that these people are so enamored of the CIA and its dark works, but that they identify with U.S. power in the world, and lack solidarity with the rest of humanity. This applies to millions of folks that think of themselves as “progressive,” as well as Trump’s “delplorables.”

That’s why Maxine Waters can’t shake the imperialist disease.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].