This year, let us remember and share with every citizen you know the sordid history of the CIA and it’s extra-legal methods and agenda.

As I’ve written before (Are Your Thoughts Truly Your Own [or the CIA’s]? and Why Are Conspiracy Theories So Powerful?), it is always good to be critical and understand if and how your are being manipulated or covertly persuaded.

Back as early as World War II, the United States government’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was looking into the use of hypnosis to create “information couriers” and control the thoughts of individuals. One of the largest proponents of this research at the time was G.H. Estabooks, Ph.D, who has written extensively on the subject.

With the end of the war, the OSS was no longer necessary and was shut down. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created in 1947 via the National Security Act, marked the beginning of the end of inviolable individual rights in the United States of America. Read this:

CIA Publishes Its Own “Assassin’s Manual,” Proving It Condones Kill…

Steve Kangas’ has done a great job giving a general history of CIA atrocities in his article The Origins of the Overclass:

“It turns out the CIA has:

* Corrupted democratic elections in Greece, Italy and dozens of other nations; * Been involved to varying degrees in at least 35 assassination plots against foreign heads of state or prominent political leaders. Successful assassinations include democratically elected leaders like Salvador Allende (Chile) and Patrice Lumumba (Belgian Congo); also CIA-created dictators like Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic) and Ngo Dinh Diem (South Vietnam); and popular political leaders like Che Guevara. Unsuccessful attempts range from Fidel Castro to Charles De Gaulle.

* Helped launch military coups that toppled democratic governments, replacing them with brutal dictatorships or juntas. The list of overthrown democratic leaders includes Mossadegh (Iran, 1953), Arbenz (Guatemala, 1954), Velasco and Arosemena (Ecuador, 1961, 1963), Bosch (Dominican Republic, 1963), Goulart (Brazil, 1964), Sukarno (Indonesia, 1965), Papandreou (Greece, 1965-67), Allende (Chile, 1973), and dozens of others. * Undermined the governments of Australia, Guyana, Cambodia, Jamaica and more;

* Supported murderous dictators like General Pinochet (Chile), the Shah of Iran, Ferdinand Marcos (Phillipines), “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” Duvalier (Haiti), General Noriega (Panama), Mobutu Sese Seko (Ziare), the “reign of the colonels” (Greece), and more;

* Created, trained and supported death squads and secret police forces that tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians, leftists and political opponents, in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, Bolivia, Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Iran, Turkey, Angola and others;

* Helped run the “School of the Americas” at Fort Benning, Georgia, which trains Latin American military officers how to overthrow democratic governments. Subjects include the use of torture, interrogation and murder;

* Used Michigan State “professors” to train Diem’s secret police in torture;

* Conducted economic sabotage, including ruining crops, disrupting industry, sinking ships and creating food shortages;

* Paved the way for the massacre of 200,000 in East Timor, 500,000 in Indonesia and one to two million in Cambodia; * Launched secret or illegal military actions or wars in Nicaragua, Angola, Cuba, Laos and Indochina;

* Planted false stories in the local media;

* Framed political opponents for crimes, atrocities, political statements and embarrassments that they did not commit;

* Spied on thousands of American citizens, in defiance of Congressional law;

* Smuggled Nazi war criminals and weapon scientists into the U.S., unpunished, for their use in the Cold War;

* Created organizations like the World Anti-Communist League, which became filled with ex-Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, Italian terrorists, Japanese fascists, racist Afrikaaners, Latin American death squad leaders, CIA agents and other extreme right-wing militants;

* Conducted Operation MK-ULTRA, a mind-control experiment that gave LSD and other drugs to Americans against their will or without their knowledge, causing some to commit suicide;

* Penetrated and disrupted student antiwar organizations;

* Kept friendly and extensive working relations with the Mafia;

* Actively traded in drugs around the world since the 1950s to fund its operations. The Contra/crack scandal is only the tip of the iceberg –- other notorious examples include Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle and Noreiga’s Panama.

* Had their fingerprints all over the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcom X. Even if the CIA is not responsible for these killings, the sheer amount of CIA involvement in these cases demands answers; [editor’s note, see: Evidence That the CIA Murdered RFK] * And then routinely lied to Congress about all of the above.

The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. (4) Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an ‘American Holocaust.’

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Here is some further reading for those of you who sincerely care about waking people up to these problems:

Secret History of the CIA in Iran

CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents (Freedom of In…

CIA, Mossad Infiltrated Muslim Organizations Most of the files pertaining to MK-Ultra and Project Artichoke were destroyed before Congress could review them.

Is this because their experimentation on humans (an idea likely imported during Operation Paperclip), the CIA either intentionally or unintentionally created The Unabomber with the help of Henry A. Murray?

What about the assassination of Frank Olson?

How about the huge CIA cocaine importation in the United States?

Confessions of an Economic Hitman – Interview with John Perkins

You don’t think there is covert collusion between big business and big goverment?

CIA invests in start-ups. The payoff? Technology

CIA enlists Google’s help for spy work

CIA Monitors YouTube For Intelligence

Facebook – the CIA conspiracy

CIA bloggers spy on Internet

CIA mines ‘rich’ content from blogs

A Toast: Here’s to making 2009 the year of honesty and kindness, not secrecy and cruelty.