HOW THE CIA DESTABILIZES THE WORLD

Jeffrey Sachs Video Transcript

I don’t know if the following video transcript is that worthwhile, but I wanted to try out a transcribing app online. It’s at https://www.speechtexter.com/. It’s probably the only one I’ve tried. It’s gotten much better than it used to be early last year. It had very limited text storage before, but now it can transcribe at least 10 minutes of audio.

I’m not trying to sell that, just mention what I’m doing. I figure the video is likely relevant to RFK Jr’s campaign, esp. some of his followers, although the CHD Expose’s may be more informative. I’m not editing the transcript, at least yet. I may do so later if it seems worth it.

How the CIA Destabilizes the world

Jeffrey Sachs Essay February 12, 2024 youtube.com/watch?v=bFn7Zd_J69w

There are three basic problems with the CIA It's objectives, methods and unaccountability. It's operational objectives are whatever the CIA or the President of the United States defines to be in the US interest at a given time, irrespective of international law or U.S. law. Its methods are secretive and duplicitous. It's unaccountability means that the CIA and president run foreign policy without any public screw. Congress is a doormat, a sideshow. As a recent CIA director, Mike Pompeo said of his time at the CIA. I was the CIA director. We lied. We cheated. We stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment. The CIA was established in 1947 as the successor to the Office of Strategic Services, OSS. The OS had performed 2 distinct roles in World War 2, intelligence and subversion. The CIA took over both roles. On the one hand, the CIA was to provide intelligence to the US government. On the other, the CIA was to subvert the enemy. That is whomever the President or CIA defined as the enemy using a wide range of measures assassinations. 2. Stage. Arming of insurgents. And. It is the latter role that has proved devastating to global stability in the US rule of law. It is a role that the CIA continues to pursue today. In effect, the CIA is a secret army of the US capable of creating mayhem across the world with no accountability whatsoever. When President Dwight Eisenhower decided that Africa's rising political star democratically elected Patrice Lumumba of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, was the enemy. The CIA conspired in his 1961 assassination, thus undermining the democratic hopes for Africa. He would hardly be the last African president brought down by the CIA. In its 77 year history, the CIA has been held to serious public account just once, in 1975. In that year, Idaho Senator Frank Church LED a Senate investigation that exposed the CIA's shocking rampage of assassinations, coups, destabilization, surveillance and Manglish style torture and medical experiment. The exposed by the Church Committee of the CIA's shocking malfeasance has recently been chronicled in a superb book by the investigative reporter James Risen, The Last Honest Man, The CIA, The FBI, the Mafia and the Kennedys, and One Senators Fight to Save Democracy. That single episode of oversight occurred because of a rare confluence of events. In the year before the Church Committee, the Watergate scandal had toppled Richard Nixon and weakened the White House. As successor to Nixon, Gerald Ford was unelected, a former congressman and reluctant to oppose the oversight prerogatives of the Congress. The Watergate scandal investigated by the Senate Ervin Committee, had also empowered the Senate and demonstrated the value of Senate oversight of executive branch abuses of power. Crucially, the CIA was newly led by Director William Colby, who wanted to clean up the CIA operation. Also FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, author of Pervasive illegalities, also exposed by the Church ,. Had died in 1972. In December 1974, investigative reporter Seymour Hirsch then is now a great reporter with sources inside the CIA published an account of illegal CIA intelligence operations against the US anti war movement. The Senate Majority Leader at the time, Mike Mansfield, a leader of character, then appointed church to investigate the CIA. Church himself was a brave, honest, intelligent, independent minded and intrepid senator, characteristics chronically in short supply in US politics. If only the CIA's rogue operations have been consigned to history as a result of the crimes exposed by the church ,. Or, at the least, had brought the CIA under the rule of law and public accountability. But that was not to. The CIA has had the last laugh. Or better said, has brought the world to tears by maintaining its preeminent role in US foreign policy. Including overseas subverse. Since 1975, the CIA has run secretive operations backing Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan that utterly wrecked Afghanistan while giving rise to Al Qaeda. CIA has likely run secretive operations in the Balkans against Serbia, in the Caucuses against Russia and in Central Asia, targeting China. All deploying CIA backed jihadist. In the 20 tens, the CIA ran deadly operations to topple Syria's Bashar al-Assad, again with Islamic jihadists. For at least 20 years, the CIA has been deeply involved in fomenting the growing catastrophe in Ukraine. Including the violent overthrow of Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 that triggered the devastating war now engulfing Ukraine. What do we know of these operations? Only the parts that whistleblowers, a few intrepid investigative reporters, a handful of brave scholars, and some foreign governments have been willing or able to tell us. With all of these potential witnesses knowing that they might face severe retribution from the US government. There has been little to no accountability by the US government itself. Or meaningful oversight or restraint imposed by Congress. On the contrary, the government has become ever more obsessively secretive. Pursuing aggressive legal actions against disclosures of classified information. Even when or especially when that information describes the illegal actions by the government itself. Once in a while, a former US official spills the beans, such as when's big new Brazinski revealed that he had induced Jimmy Carter to assign the CIA to train Islamic jihadists to destabilize the government of Afghanistan. With the aim of inducing the Soviet Union to invade that count. In the case of Syria, we learned from a few stories in the New York Times in 2016 and 2017 of the CIA subversive operations to destabilize Syria and overthrow Assad as ordered by President Barack Obama. Here is the case of a dreadfully misguided CIA operation, blatantly in violation of international law, that has led to a decade of mayhem and escalating regional war, hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced people. And yet there has not been a single honest acknowledgement of this CIA LED disaster by the White House. Or. In the case of Ukraine, we know that the US played a major covert role in the violent coup that brought down Yanukovych. And that swept Ukraine into a decade of bloodshed. But to this day, we don't know the details. Russia offered the world a window into the coup by intercepting and then posting a call between Victoria Newland, then US assistant Secretary of State, now Under Secretary of State. The US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, now assistant Secretary of State, in which they plot the post coup governor. Following the coup, the CIA covertly trained special operations forces of the post coup regime in the US had helped bring to power. The US government has been mum about the CIA's covert operations in UK. We have good reason to believe that CIA operatives carried out the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, as per Seymour Hirsch, who is now an independent reporter. Unlike in 1975, when Hirsch was with the New York Times at a time when the paper still tried to hold the government to account. The Times does not even Dane to look into Hershey's account. Holding the CIA to public account is, of course, a steep uphill struggle. Presidents and the Congress don't even try. The mainstream media don't investigate the CIA, preferring instead to quote senior unnamed officials and the official cover up. Are the mainstream media outlets lazy, suborned, afraid of advertising revenues from the military industrial complex, threatened, ignorant, or all of the above? Who knows? There is a tiny glimmer of hope. Back in 1975, the CIA was led by a reformer. Today the CIA is led by William Burns, one of America's long standing leading diplomats. Burns knows the truth about Ukraine since he served as ambassador to Russia in 2008. He cabled Washington about the grave error of pushing NATO enlargement to Ukraine. Given Burns stature and diplomatic accomplishments, perhaps he would support the urgently needed accountable. The extent of the continuing mayhem resulting from CIA operations gone awry is astounding. In Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Kosovo, Ukraine, and far beyond, the needless deaths, instability and destruction unleashed by CIA subversion continues to this day. The mainstream media, academic institutions and Congress should be investigating these operations to the best of their ability and demanding the release of documents to enable democratic accountability. Next year is the 50th anniversary of the Church Committee hearing. 50 years on, with the precedent, inspiration and guidance of the Church Committee itself. It's urgently time to open the blinds. Expose the truth about the US-led mayhem. And begin a new era in which US foreign policy becomes transparent, accountable, subject to the rule of law, both domestic and international, and directed towards global peace rather than subversion of supposed enemy.