Central Intelligence Agency Quotes

even though in this case the objective The State Department, the Defense Department and most important President Kennedy had decided to get rid of Diem. Most of the Central Intelligence Agency thought that this was a very unwise policy, because Diem was a known risk, and the people who would replace him and their talents and policies were unknown. The negatives of Diem—the facts that he, a Christian, was persecuting the majority Buddhists, was totally corrupt, and not a very good leader was less distressful to the CIA than to the President and the other agencies as the intelligence agency frequently not only tolerated “offensive” allies, but actually employed them including war criminals. Another importance of this quotation is that it shows that it was by no means certain that the CIA would always follow the orders of the President and the government policy makers. Colby, who was not the agency director at that time but was the head of the South East Bureau, was one high level official who argued that the policies should always be followed even if they were unwise or foolish. Another importance of this quotation is that it illustrate a common error that administrations are frequently forced to make: making a policy decision to eliminate a problem while not having much of an idea of what the alternative or consequence would be when the policy is implemented. The Syrian Civil War in 2013 was a good example. The Government side appeared to have used Chemical Warfare on Civilians and public opinion demanded that we do something. However, having a no-fly zone or any of the alternatives to prevent (punish) the government for the Chemical Warfare would strengthen the rebel side which was made up of numerous factions—some of which were known Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and jihadists. If the balance of power were tipped toward the rebels, the consequence for the American national interests were unknown—just as the consequence of ousting Diem was unknown and turned out to also be bad and was probably worse.

2 weeks before a military junta, with the knowledge of America, overthrew the popularly elected, left wing President, Salvador Allende (see {640618}). America was very supportive of the new military junta. However, whereas the coup itself was not very bloody as all the military forces were on one side. However, General Pinochet and the other coup leaders, under the guise of “cleanup operations” murdered thousands of supporters of the deposed President, including many academics and writers. The total number will never be known, but this CIA cable was the harbinger of things to come in the new Chilean regime where any dissident or critic of the government under the military could lead to arrest, torture and often murder or “disappearance”. Years later Pinochet and others were convicted for crimes against humanity. The American silence during this period has always been a very controversial moral and political policy. It was in the midst of the Cold War and the Chilean Junta was strongly anti-Communist. The Junta kept denying the accusations crimes against political opponents and claimed that the reports were communist inspired to discredit them. The CIA knew much of the truth and never shared it with all of the Congress or the public. It is not clear which politicians knew and remained silent and which never knew nor knew that the CIA knew much of the criminal activity.

The inconsistency of the policy logic of attacking Iraq but not the other two countries of the "axis of evil" caused problems for our British allies who preferred justifying the attack on Iraq on its own merit without any linkage to Iran and North Korea. What made the Iraq invasion even more puzzling was that both Iran and North Korea were greater dangers to the United States and expressed a deep animus.

Boggs was working on some compromise positions that could be taken by the party at the 1968 Democratic National Convention to provide the anti war wing of the party with something. The President found out and met with Congressman Boggs.

There was no national uprising. Not a single Cuban came to assist the Bay of Pigs invaders, nor was there even one sabotage action or other revolutionary action anywhere in Cuba. The conviction of the CIA that Castro was hated by the Cubans and the overwhelming majority of Cubans would welcome an invasion was so completely wrong that it was stunning. The assurances the CIA planners had received that there would be an uprising came from Cuban anti-Castro émigrés who were being paid by the CIA to organize the invasion force. They would only continue to get paid if the American authorities felt that there was a very good chance of success so they turned out to have a serious conflict of interest. But the CIA planners had been hearing this from Cuban exiles not involved with the invasion and they had a strong bias that no communist government could be a popular one. It was a great illustration of the fact that experienced professional intelligence analysts and operatives are susceptible to self-delusion and confusing wishful thinking with reality.

We bombed the building but it was the Chinese embassy. The map and intelligence as to what was in the building was provided as a recommended target by the CIA in another of their serious blunders.

Powell, after being assured that the intelligence about the Iraq WMD showing that they were about to deploy a nuclear weapon and they had poison gas was absolutely true, was the major spokesperson to the UN and much of the United States justifying the Iraq War. It was all untrue, and Powell’s credibility which had been exceptional was hurt very badly. He soon resigned.

Mohammad Mosaddegh had been elected Prime Minister of Iraq. However, he was left leaning in the midst of the Cold War and some of our policy strategists thought that he could hurt the U. S. interests which were large there. Iran had huge oil reserves and American and British companies were active in operating the oil drilling and export. The new Prime Minister was threatening the British with oil nationalization to get a larger share of the oil revenue. The Shah, with CIA support, fired Mosaddegh, but that backfired and the Shah had to flee the country. This was when Smith sent this note to President Eisenhower. We were prepared to try and work with Mosaddegh. However, our chief ally did not agree and wanted to oust Mosaddegh. At the request of the British MI6 intelligence service, the CIA implemented a “spontaneous” coup d’etat to overthrow the popularly elected Iranian President Mohammad Mosaddegh. This enabled the Shah to return and take over. Ironically, although he was anti-Communist, he threatened the American and British Oil Companies and forced them to “renegotiate” their contracts with Iran and pay the Shah more money. The Shah was very unpopular with Iranians, and over the years the Iranians who opposed the Shah, blamed the United States for the fact that Mosaddegh had been overthrown and the Shah returned to power. See {637008} and {637007}.

At the time Devine was a clandestine CIA agent in Santiago, Chile. The top secret CRITIC cable took precedence over all other cables and messages and also got immediately delivered to the President and other key government officials. The US position at the time was that this coup ousting the very popular, elected left wing, President Salvador Allende was a spontaneous act of the Chilean armed forces in which the United States had no part. President Richard M. Nixon had ordered a series of economic attacks and sanctions on Chile, and the negative economic effect had set the mood for the coup. Years later this secret Cable come to light. It showed that our chief CIA operative in Chile knew about the coup in advance including minute details, and transmitted this data to the President and others in Washington. For many, it was unlikely that the coup plotters would share this level of detail in advance with any country that was not part of the team plotting the coup or had at least given their approval in advance.