MKULTRA and the CIA’s War on the Human Mind
September 9th, 2020Book: Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephen Kinzer
Via: Mises Institute:
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a fearsome reputation. The author and executor of countless coups and political assassinations, the CIA is notorious for waterboarding, “extraordinary rendition,” regime change, kidnapping, narcotics smuggling, financing of guerrilla wars, and many other unsavory activities around the world, including against Americans, even inside the United States.
But “fearsome” does not mean “flawless.” The CIA has failed at least as often as it has succeeded, and sometimes the failures are so flagrant—such as sending thousands of anticommunist guerrilla fighters behind enemy lines in Korea, Eastern Europe, China, and Southeast Asia during the Cold War, where nearly all of them died—that CIA insiders wryly refer to their organization as “Clowns In Action.”
Which is it? Is the CIA a dastardly menace or a hotbed of horrible mistakes? If Stephen Kinzer’s new book, Poisoner in Chief, is any indication, the answer is both.
“Which is it? Is the CIA a dastardly menace or a hotbed of horrible mistakes? If Stephen Kinzer’s new book, Poisoner in Chief, is any indication, the answer is both.”
Make sense to me: the CIA is run by evil human begins. Humans are inherently flawed and misguided (hence the mistakes); and evil humans are, well, evil (and, in this case, pretty much 100% unaccountable — what a combo!). So yeah, “both” is the reasonable answer