Spooks, mooks and crooks--Nixon's CIA
This is absolutely incredible. The long-rumored allegations about CIA skul-duggery during the turbulent '60s and '70s have more or less been confirmed yesterday by the release of the hithero classified collection of Agency paperwork known as "The Family Jewels."
Most of this stuff had been revealed to Congress and generally known, if not confirmed by the public, but still...Some of the highlights include:
- The CIA did try and get the Mafia to kill Castro, offering two underworld Dons $150,000 to feed the Cuban leader a poison pill
- The CIA did test LSD and other hallucinogens on innocent and unsuspecting civilians, including at least one government scientist who subsequently killed himself.
- Richard Helms, the head of CIA during the Nixon era received a letter from one of the Watergate conspirators, James McCord, an ex-CIA employee, describing the break-in. Helms suppressed the document, even though Congress was in the middle of an investigation
That these documents existed surprised no one. Seeing them is nothing short of confirmation for the paranoid. All of these allegations were considered to reside exclusively in the province of nuttyville and were believed by tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists who perpetually walked funny because of too many alien probes.
So I wonder, which of the many conspiracy stories that live today in Crazytown will turn out to be true 30 years from now? My bet is on Cheney and his slippery oil industry pals lubing up Iraq for some American lovin'.
Posted on June 27, 2007
