According to an article in Politico, Bernie Sanders, during his 1974 campaign for the Senate on Vermont’s Liberty Union Party ticket, called the Central Intelligence Agency “a dangerous institution that has got to go.” Sanders complained that the CIA was only accountable to “right-wing lunatics who use it to prop up fascist dictatorships.”
Jeremy Bash, a former CIA chief of staff who is now an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, told reporter Michael Crowley that Sanders’ comment “reinforces the conclusion that he’s not qualified to be commander in chief.” Bash explained: “Abolishing the CIA in the 1970s would have unilaterally disarmed America during the height of the Cold War and at a time when terrorist networks across the Middle East were gaining strength.” Bash was chief of staff for Leon Panetta at both the CIA and Defense Department, and now runs a consulting firm called Beacon Global Strategies.
But Sanders’ position is not that radical: Many prominent politicians, including two previous Democratic commanders in chief, have called for the CIA to be dismantled or severely constrained.
John F. Kennedy famously described his desire to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds” after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Peter Kornbluh points out in his book Bay of Pigs Declassified that the State Department at that same time proposed the CIA be stripped of its covert action capacity and renamed. However, the CIA escaped any serious repercussions — partly because, as Kornbluh explains, the CIA’s then-director, John McCone, made sure that most of the copies of a damning report on the Bay of Pigs by the agency’s own inspector general were literally burned.
Then in 1963, after Kennedy’s assassination, Harry Truman wrote a newspaper column explaining that “I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. … I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the president … and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.”
Beyond the two presidents, Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson wrote in his 1969 memoirs that upon the CIA’s creation he “had the gravest forebodings about this organization and warned the president that as set up neither he, the National Security Council, nor anyone else would be in a position to know what it was doing or to control it.”
In 1975 — that is, after Sanders’ statement — a congressional investigation of the CIA by senators including Walter Mondale and Gary Hart declared that “policy and procedural barriers are presently inadequate to insure that any covert operation is absolutely essential to the national security. These barriers must be tightened and raised or covert action should be abandoned as an instrument of foreign policy.” (My italics. The Politico article does mention and quote the investigation’s findings.)
In both 1991 and 1995, then-Sen. Daniel Moynihan, D-N.Y., called for the CIA to be abolished. Hillary Clinton would later be elected to Moynihan’s senate seat, and on his death she stated, “We have lost a great American, an extraordinary senator, an intellectual and a man of passion and understanding about what really makes this country great.”
So is it starting to sound to you a bit less like a scandal, and a bit more like effective oppo research?
It’s unclear how Crowley, Politico’s senior foreign affairs correspondent, obtained Sanders’ 1974 remarks. In a phone conversation, I asked him several times whether he had received them from anyone connected with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Crowley responded: “I had primary sources for everything I wrote about in that story. … I’ve written several stories about Bernie’s foreign policy and national security views. This is something I’ve been digging into independently for almost a month now. … I would just refer you to the stories I’ve been writing the last several weeks, I’m not going to talk about how I report my articles.”
If in fact the Clinton campaign is distributing Sanders’ remarks from many years ago, there’s obviously nothing wrong with that — just as there would be nothing wrong with the Sanders campaign distributing hers. Moreover, it’s standard operating procedure for campaigns to disseminate information they believe will make their opponents look bad while trying to keep their fingerprints off it. But that doesn’t mean reporters should collude with them to make it possible.
Top photo: Bernie Sanders takes the oath of office to become mayor of Burlington in 1981. Sanders formerly headed Vermont’s only major third party, the socialistic Liberty Union.
The CIA could have been necesary at some juncture of the Cold War… It unfurtunately discovered that was its raisond etr and so reproduced rather than prevail in that war… It has shamed and demerited the US arround the globe for half a century and demonstrably become a criminal organization, a dark force of evil… ?where are its triumphs?
I hope and pray that Sanders won’t follow JFK’s footsteps TOO closely when it comes to the CIA.
The CIA could be an honorable institution if it merely followed it’s own supreme loyalty oath to operate within the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. The real villains are the top leadership that are disloyal to their supreme loyalty oath, not the order-takers.
The Supremacy Clause and the 9th Amendment, ratified in the 18th Century, supersede all government agencies created in the 20th Century.
How to restore this agency built on an unconstitutional foundation? That’s the hard part.
The hinting at the end seemed unnecessary.
The article doesn’t mention it, but Ron Paul has also called for the abolishment of the CIA.
Everyone must read JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass. You will soon see why its the most censored book on earth.
Also the new book The Devil’s Chessboard by David Talbot on a must.
Talk about some bad opposition research. If anything, this will only help Bernie Sanders gather more support from Americans. I kinda feel bad for the Hillary camp, because there’s not anything that they can attack Bernie with.
NDI is a “non-government organization” set up by Reagan funded by tax dollars allocated by intelligence committees for the purpose of “spreading” democracy.
Hillary is very well acqainted with the softer side of subversion. She was a speaker at a National Democratic Institute dinner. For those who don’t know, that’s a “Non-government
Sanders will/would be assassinated before he (or anyone else) gets a chance to abolish or otherwise rein in the CIA. It’s far too late.
If Clinton ever quotes Sanders,
part of his response should be something like,
“Isn’t it funny how Madame Secretary can remember other
people’s words but she can’t recall her own –
even when they are much more recent.”
If he is a serious candidate, he needs to stop being
so accepting of the warmongering corporate phony.
Engineering Empire
http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/engineeringempire.html
Sanders says nothing in opposition to the CIA and Deep State today. He doesn’t inform his supporters about AFRICOM. He doesn’t spend any time underscoring the importance of war resistance, of tax resistance, of direct action. He supports Washington’s right wing coups, in Ukraine, and Washington’ right wing efforts in Syria . He calls for the arrest and prosecution of Edward Snowden. He doubles down on Obama’s murderous drone policy.
You can’t support imperialism abroad and talk of “democracy at home.”
You can’t promote the Big Lie that the US is fighting terrorism, and at the same time fuel fantasies of a social welfare state.
What does Jon Schwarz offer in defense of the fake-left Sanders?
War and the 2016 US elections
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/02/22/pers-f22.html
According to this USA Today article Sanders called for leniency for Snowden: “The information disclosed by Edward Snowden has been extremely important in allowing Congress and the American people to understand the degree to which the NSA has abused its authority and violated our constitutional rights”
Although you are correct that he did not call for him to be pardoned outright.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/06/snowden-clemency-sanders-nsa/4344467/
Sanders is an upright person with morals. As much as I wish he´d make it I´ve doubts that he´d live to see his Inauguration!
See also „Assassination of JFK: Half a Century of Lies“, http://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2013/11/22/assassination-of-jfk-half-a-century-of-lies/ & “Mary´s Mosaic”, Looking into an Abyss, Part II: http://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/marys-mosaic-looking-into-an-abyss-part-ii/
Andreas Schlüter
Sociologist
Berlin, Germany
Lets not rehash details of the Grassy Knoll over 50 years ago, jonjon, as a demonstration of the CIA’s choke-hold on … power.
When the Senate Select Intelligence Oversight committee bestirred themselves to investigate overwhelming evidence of CIA *torture* a few years ago, the CIA hacked into [their] SSIC oversight staff’s computers.
In this way, the falcon becomes the falconer.
*this is #3 on my list of Obama leg-acy shortcomings
An informative video on youtube, “DARK LEGACY” draws a map between the known and little-known facts of the assassins that murdered JFK in Dallas, and the CIA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNutyu3ypDo
Dark Legacy is deceptive and IMO is meant to near-intersection-scuttle much better work in Family of Secrets by Russ Baker. Family of Secrets is must reading.
The establishment will do eveything possible to keep a man or woman like this out of power.
In news Comments sections of a very diverse nature from the NYT to RSN I have written repeatedly over some years now that the CIAhas effectively become the government. They and the FBI have files with all of the skeletons in all of the closets that count. They have become our Gestapo. They used force, assassinations, blackmail and any other means they wish both domestically and internationally. Obama succumbed on Day 1. Hillary had back when Bill did (and, of course she has major, still unrevealed skeletons.) Here’s one on NBC that 3 days old:
NBC 2/17/16
There was a time, before the public found out how J Edgar Hoover was using the FBI for his personal purposes, when there would have been little or at least less objection. But thanks to the Bush administration and the Obama administration we now know that we can no longer blindly trust the agencies of our government. We have come to be like the citizens of China, Russia, and many other non-democratic nations. We have become the Germany of the early Thirties.
In the guise of fighting terrorism, the CIA, FBI, and Homeland have turned us away from democracy. They have put their bureaucratic interests above those of the public, just as the NVKD or the Gestapo did. This is not a fight about crime or about identity theft. This is about whether America is a free country or fascist.
As someone who has researched pre-WW II Germany for a book, let me tell you, the arguments are the same, the players are the same, and we know the results.
I did one longer and more detailled for the NYT just yesterday. Hillary and Panetta of the putty face planned and initiated all of the Arab Spring debacles as well as the Ukraine. Our obsessive viciousness towars Putin’s person and China in general comes from the Cia’s 1950s mentality that Hillary found irresistable.
Matt Bruenig responded to Freddie deBoer earlier today:
Following up with:
Not only are the policy organs refusing to work with Bernie, many major, and some more minor, media organizations are actively working on behalf of the Clinton campaign.
Politico’s (or, perhaps, more accurately the Clinton campaign’s) research is unlikely to dislodge anyone feeling the Bern; if anything it’s more cred to the Sanders’ campaign. But like the “English only,” or Clinton staffers dressing up to look like the nurses supporting Bernie, this “oppo” can chip at Sanders’ margins. Margins he can’t afford to lose.
Highlighting the CIA looks like Greenwald’s Stage 5 attack:
Protecting the CIA ought to be seen as meeting the needs of authoritarian and security state promoting right wingers… But, that would only be true if one were to miss the neoconservative needs of the Clinton campaign and “organs” like Politico, as well as those of many of her supporters.
I was ready to write off the Obama election as LOTE; plain and simple. Where else were reasonably sane voters taken with candidate “viability” and “electability” going to go? But, in this primary we have a choice. A real choice. And, the predilections and limitations of many of my fellow travelers has never been more stark; in an unfortunate way.
I’m really liking the looks of this option: …
… The Option
That’s a really interesting option. Hmmm.
You can still enjoy third-world living in the heartland of America for a mere pittance … http://www.pbase.com/bwick/red_river_gorge
*where the snakes are shy, the bears are friendly and … you can still buy a vote for only $5 bucks (and, maybe, a 1/2pint of rot gut.)
Oh yeah, my daughter sent me that a few days ago. Sounds pretty damn good to me, but not just as an option for a Trump victory…
Thank you Team B. The unaccountable trillions of dollars to fight an enemy that would vanish into thin air kept contractors safe from the scourge of peace.
And needed American funds. Preferably via the Saudis, but funders can’t always be choosers. Better jihad than Red.
Carl Bernstein said the same thing in the 70s.
http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/10/16/cia-owns-everyone-significance-major-media/
“The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” — former CIA Director William Colby”
Said the most dangerous man in the CIA sometime before he drowns after taking his canoe for a short morning jaunt. Funny, he is an expert swimmer. Meanwhile, Col. Fletcher Prouty is betting he has better luck after writing The Secret Team. Only to discover every copy of the 1st Edition has been secretly confiscated and bought up. JFK wasn’t so lucky. Although Prouty discussed various CIA actors in Dallas with Jim Garrison via a certain letter, with Ed Landsdale amongst them, whereby Garrison concluded during an interview with Playboy magazine in ’67…the CIA IS the government. Perhaps Bernie knows something we don’t.
Ulfkotte walks the very narrow line between general tin-hatism and new conservativism (intellectual wing of the neo nazis) – his input on this should be taken with a bit more than a grain of salt.
He is one of the guys who feed Pegida and the AfD in Germany with popululistic propaganda lies. And he loves to be a victim, like all of them.
Fair enough. Just pointing out that the allegation that the CIA is deeply embedded in major corporate media is an allegation that has come from many independent sources over the years. I think there is overwhelming evidence that such allegations or more likely accurate than not is all I’m arguing or suggesting.
Also, this article brings to mind two very, very important books which should be read by all concerned citizen-voters:
The Devil’s Chessboard, by David Talbot
Dark Money, by Jane Mayer
Great article, Jon!
Also Paul Street’s They Rule
And Laurence Shoup’s Wall Street’s Think Tank
Great catch, Jon – – and let’s not forget that the JFK administration did fire one-fifth of the personnel at the CIA, but should have fired four-fifths, unfortunately.
Also, unfortunately, he appointed McCone, not realizing he was yet another Rockefeller buddy, and McCone in turn appointed Nelson Rockefeller’s special assistant, Gen. Schuyler, to restructure the CIA!
The CIA should be re-tasked (as strictly an intelligence gathering entity) or abolished.
Many have argued that and I don’t think it is a particularly radical idea except for those who work for the CIA or its fans in Congress.
If everything they do isn’t fully transparent to all of Congress (not just a select few) and politically and legally accountable to the American people and international legal institutions, then it shouldn’t exist in its present form.
In its current state it is largely above and beyond the law and that is both undemocratic and very very dangerous.
But I don’t have any hope or expectation the current US Congress (or even any Congress in my lifetime) will do anything to rein it in. My one hope is that some day in the future, something like Anonymous hacks them and spills their dirty laundry all over the internet.
quote”The CIA should be re-tasked (as strictly an intelligence gathering entity) or abolished.”unquote
The entire CIA “should” be brought up on War Criminal charges in the Hague too. Unfortunately, when pigs fly comes to mind. Personally, I’d settle for a public firing squad. But my sensibilities reside in a parallel universe where rule of law actually stands for something.
Yup, I agree..
Abolished.
“My one hope is that some day in the future, something like Anonymous hacks them and spills their dirty laundry all over the internet.”
That would be a beautiful thing, indeed, rrheard.
The CIA’s regime changes over the past decades:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44257.htm
Take note that there were “presidents” who were “going along to get along” with the CIA for all these illegal military interventions.
Well thought, well said. We need an intelligence agency not a secret branch of Government.
@rrheard-I’m confident we can abolish all things of intelligence. Better, anything that is secret except IP. We have to know what our government is doing to make informed decisions. Maybe the nuclear weapons thing can be guarded.
While a member of two MI6-type Army units, I saw early on how the lack of control could lead to abuses. Whether it was at the micro level like the unit I served with in Vietnam or at the macro level, e.g., Iran-Contra, control is everything. At the very least, the CIA needs to be totally restructured. They have been in regime change game way too long.
No kiddin, a Vietnam vet? When were you there? I was drafted in 1966 into Charlie Company. You probably heard of the unit? National Geographic Channel did a 2 hour TV special just recently on my unit. The show was inspired by the book THE BOYS OF 67. The TV show left out the day I was shot with a 50 cal then shot in the head by the enemy as they stripped my body of valuables. The TV show left out the scene at my parents home when they were told of my death. The book breaks down my murder and the intimate scene of my grieving family at my childhood home. My dad had secrets he should have told me before I went to basic. I might still be alive if he did because I would have had a different set of facts that would have resulted in a different set of choices and opinions. My name is Phil Ferro and I was murdered by my government.
Just read the reviews on Amazon, which were very complimentary. I arrived 04/11/66 and left a year later to attend college, as I received an 82 day early-out. One of my best friends, a Marine, was KIA 07/04/67, and is mentioned, with photos, in a book that was written about the 167 Vietnam vets killed on July 4 between 1965 and 1973.
@subbob-thanks for your service! Puts a smile on my face to hear a combatant making it home alive. The author of Boys of 67 explains how he wrote about Charley Company. A Charley Company veteran tried diving for cover during a combat video shown in a classroom at a college. The veteran’s skull wasnt harder than the concrete floor. His PTSD reminded us of the WWII veterans in our family. One family member that saw action in the pacific had severe PTSD. Any noise would send him in a violent rage and crave the taste of Japanese soldiers, because he consumed them.
I was in Special Forces about same time, not in Viet Nam. I had a very seasoned SF A team leader pull me aside and waned me. “Do not to get involved with some half-baked CIA plan, if you want to see home again. THEY are very bright college boys with lots of “big” ideas but no thought of “blowback” and in the great scheme of things they give not a damn for a soldier’s life.
This guy had served in OSS in WWII and had respect for the original Organization. Also his language was a bit more parochial and colorful. “If you don’t want you brains shoot out or b—s blown off keep these idiots at arms length.”
My limited experience, THEY often had good information but were cloistered and secret to the point of not getting good feedback. This too often resulting in kind of false reality. Thus we fought a war of attrition with Viet Nam who historically had fought “until the cows come home” many other Nations.
I was in a covert unit in Nha Trang. Although we interacted with CIA and SF on a regular basis, I always preferred hanging out with SF personnel. The only CIA guys I liked were the Air America pilots, whom I obtained rides with on several occasions. They seemingly realized the absurdity of the war and had a didn’t give a fuck attitude. I would say the A Team CO had a pretty accurate assessment. The Nha Trang station chief turned out to be an alcoholic and his ass was sent home for that reason.
Speaking of OSS, I was with the 513th MI Group at Camp King, Germany, before Vietnam. Our group CO was former OSS, with a stellar career during WWII. The 513th was a joint venture involving Army, CIA and other allied intelligence agencies. When the OSS transitioned to CIA, everything changed. If one googles Camp King, info can be found how the CIA used the Camp King facilities to conduct experimental drug use, including LSD. Obviously, the CIA went off the tracks shortly after the agencie’s inception.
Make that agency’s. I should learn to not type when my wife is speaking to me.
Yes SF and Air America “contractors” were generally good company and actors too often receiving bad direction. Now they have productions in 135 countries with mission largely masked, secret, blacked-out to taxpaying citizens. With Bush and Obama directing and rubberstamping the scripts what could possibly go wrong.
Bob
A Teams are “generally” run by senior NCOs only peripherally by CO. The two Officers assigned to each A-Team were more command and control coordinators between the team and Command up the line. Officer gets and briefs the mission the Team member with the right MOS skills is generally is in charge.
The United States Government. Margaret Wheatley the author of “Quantum Management” has consulted for the Department of Defense. Wheatley extols the Army Special Forces A Team as a prime example of quantum management principles where team structure can sinuously adapt for a specific mission or change in tactical situation. Quantum management principles involve problem solving by methods similar to those that organize natural systems from the disorder of chaos and are directly applicable to both unconventional warfare or research environments.
You should have seen the look on the West Point Lieutenant’s face when our NCO team leader told me “Specialist Cowan take charge of this man and see he don’t get killed and learns the ropes.” On an A Team Officers are respected; however, the right to Command was earned not a given. We generally with every sixth man an Officer did not salute and if you did not make the cut or keep your edge you were out of there. The Lieutenant did fine.
Fred: Thanks for your perspective. I socialized with A Team members who came to our main house in Nha Trang that had a wet bar, color tv, etc. I also talked to some B Team members in Ban Me Thuot, where we had a small office, but never got to know any of them. My favorite office to visit was in Dalat, which reminded me more of the mountains of Colorado. Americans were only allowed to go there if on official business, although I took a week of R&R there and hung out in the beautiful house we rented there. Our office in Ban Me Thout was on the edge of town next to a saw mill. Only time in my life that I slept with a tommy gun as my companion.