Listen to a reading of this article:
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Citing “conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials,” a new report by Yahoo News has confirmed earlier allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency not only spied on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his associates, but also drew up plans for kidnapping, renditioning, and assassinating him.
These plans were reportedly made in coordination with the Trump White House as then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo and then-Deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel raged over WikiLeaks’ 2017 Vault 7 release which revealed that the CIA had lost control of an enormous digital arsenal of hacking tools. These included tools which enabled the surveillance of smartphones, smart TVs and web browsers, the hacking of computerized vehicle control systems, and the ability to frame foreign governments for cyber attacks by inserting the digital “fingerprints” of the hacking methods they employ for investigators to find. It was the single largest data leak in CIA history.
Normally we have to wait decades for confirmation that the CIA did something nefarious, and then people absurdly assume that such things no longer occur because it was so long ago, and because changing your worldview is uncomfortable. But here we are with an extensively sourced report that the agency plotted to kidnap, rendition and assassinate a journalist for publishing authentic documents in the public interest, just four years after the fact.
Journalists for Yahoo! News finally confirmed a narrative around Mike Pompeo and the CIA's war on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, which I outlined back in October 2019. It's an important report.
Thread. https://t.co/MLrNvv3bnV
— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) September 26, 2021
Which is about as spectacular a violation of virtually every value that western society claims to uphold. Particularly the assassination bit.
The authors of the story (who for the record insert their own flimsy spin insinuating ties between Russia and WikiLeaks) say it’s not known just how serious the assassination plans were taken at Langley. But they make it abundantly clear that such plans were made:
“[A]gency executives requested and received ‘sketches’ of plans for killing Assange and other Europe-based WikiLeaks members who had access to Vault 7 materials, said a former intelligence official. There were discussions ‘on whether killing Assange was possible and whether it was legal,’ the former official said.”
And that, right there, just by itself, should be reason enough to completely abolish the Central Intelligence Agency. Just the fact that this is an institution where such conversations even happen and such plans even get made, to say nothing of the obvious implication that they wouldn’t have such conversations and make such plans if they did not act on them from time to time.
I just can’t get over how this claim was openly confirmed by a mainstream journalism investigation and the public response has been “Oh wow what an alarming news story,” instead of, “Okay well the CIA doesn’t get to exist then.”
I mean, is it not out-of-this-world bizarre that we just found out the CIA recently drew up plans to assassinate a journalist for journalistic activity, and yet we’re not all unanimously demanding that the CIA be completely dismantled and flushed down the toilet forever?
https://twitter.com/SocialistMMA/status/1442301370258767873
This would after all be the same lying, drug-running, warmongering, propagandizing, psychological terrorizing Central Intelligence Agency that has been viciously smashing the world into compliance with its agendas for generations. It is surely one of the most depraved institutions ever to have existed, comparable in terms of sheer psychopathy to the worst of the worst in history.
So why does it exist? Why is there still an institution whose extensive use of torture has reportedly included “Rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electric shock (‘the Bell Telephone Hour’) rendered by attaching wires to the genitals or other sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue; the ‘water treatment’; the ‘airplane’ in which the prisoner’s arms were tied behind the back, and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling, suspending the prisoner in midair, after which he or she was beaten; beatings with rubber hoses and whips; the use of police dogs to maul prisoners”?
I am of course being rhetorical. We all know why the CIA still exists. An agency which exerts control over the news media with ever-increasing brazenness is not about to start helping the public become more well-informed about its unbroken track record of horrific abuses, and if anyone in power ever even thinks about crossing them they have “six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.”
The CIA is still a thing for the very reason we wish it wasn’t: because it is more savage and unscrupulous than anyone else around. Because it is willing to do whatever it takes to continue dominating and getting its way. Because terrible things happen to people it doesn’t like.
The date of the absolute last time the CIA ever did anything evil keeps getting moved forward. The CIA just casually had plans drawn up for the assassination of Julian Assange in case they decided that was something they wanted to do, but you’re a crazy conspiracy theorist if you think they might be doing other bad things right now.
The reason the latest Assange story isn’t getting more traction and causing more people to think critically about the CIA is because the US government making plans to kidnap, rendition and assassinate a journalist for telling the truth is so incomprehensibly evil that it causes too much cognitive dissonance for people to really take in. Our minds are wired to reject information which disrupts our worldview, and people who’ve spent their lives marinating in the belief that they live in a free democracy will have worldviews that are resistant to information which shows we are actually ruled by secretive power structures who laugh at our votes.
So to recap, the CIA made plans to kidnap and rendition Julian Assange and to assassinate him and his associates. The CIA also spied on Assange and his legal team, and a notoriously untrustworthy key witness for the prosecution in his case has admitted to fabricating evidence. And yet the CIA is not being burnt to the ground and its ashes scattered to the Langley winds, and the UK is still somehow proceeding right along with the US appeal to extradite Assange.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: as much light as WikiLeaks has shone on the dark inner workings of the powerful over the years, the persecution of Julian Assange by those very same power structures has revealed far, far more. The more they seek to persecute him the brighter that light shines on them, making it easier and easier for us to see who they are, what they do, and how they do it.
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32 responses to “How Is The CIA Still A Thing?”
It’s time to call out Mike Pompeo for what he is: A Mob-style, gob-hate, non-intelligent, criminal serpent.
https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/03/oligarchy-and-remedies/
The CIA is neither accountable to nor works for the American people.
Nor, really, do most elected officials in DC.
Nor nearly anyone who works in the civil service aka ‘administrative state.’
Simply put, as the above linked article well describes – both problem and remedies – America is no longer in truth a representative republic though most of us keep clinging to that visualisation because the actual country – which is now an unelected and undeclared oligarchy – is not revealed or part of our internalised or shared narratives.
And who is it who sets the narratives? Primus inter pares it is the CIA whose main job is to manage perception. Yes, they murder when necessary but the thing they are protecting the most is the deception that the US is still a representative republic, so anyone who threatens to expose the inner workings of the oligarchy is anathema and moreover someone whom it is their duty to suppress, coerce into silence or, if necessary, eliminate. They took care of JFK in full public view and to this day the true story still cannot be told; Assange is small fry in comparison.
My hope is that there are a few warring factions within the Secret Oligarchy and Assange is part of one of them. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t really matter. The great masses of people who hold the ultimate power don’t usually have the ability to organise themselves into any coherent force or movement. So it has always been and so it will always be. Rather, small influential minorities, often less than 1% of the population, can create multi-generational networks of influence infecting all the main organs of power along with – and this is one of their key power plays – controlling the national meta-narratives which shape our sense of personal and collective reality.
The CIA is part of the ruling regime. Why on earth would they be going anywhere?
Unfortunately, the CIA has taken on a life of its own so to speak. It operates, essentially independently though in concert with the super-powerful and wealthy to be sure, and is basically self-financed at this point, mainly though the global illegal drug\weapons trade. There is reason why the CIA is so prominent in the flow of illegal drugs, it provides them with access to vast sums of black funds required to carry out their dirty work.
When exactly did this happen? Likely before many of us were even born. Whatever ‘oversight’, or control the washingdum regime has over the CIA, is mostly cosmetic. I’d bet if the formal uS gov’t were to cut ALL CIA funding tomorrow that the CIA would likely be able to continue to function just fine with only minimal disruption. Getting ‘rid’ of something like what the CIA has become, is far easier said, than done, sadly.
Think about how many times, the CIA appears in popular movies, and how often they, or their fictionalized operatives are portrayed in a heroic or flattering light? Yes, they are that well financed they can easily afford to hire Hollywood to handle their PR work and public imaging and even maintain permanent liaisons with HW just for that alone. Just like the uS military.
Its a very deep rabbit hole when talking about those guys…..
Please excuse my cynicism, but why/how is this information coming to light now?
Is it a precursor to some other ‘shocking revelation/s?’
The CIA is an anathema to Truth and clarity.
While I agree with your position on JA Caitlin, I’ve gotta wonder why/who let the cat out of the bag. Or should that be ‘among the pigeons’ ?
Pompeo identified Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” That’s actually a very good definition of journalism. But that only makes sense when the CIA and associated agencies see the public as the enemy.
As the Pike Committee hearings revealed the CIA isn’t a rogue agency — it’s a president’s and his national security advisor’s personal death squad. Other cabinet agencies and even foreign governments also hire the CIA to do various “jobs.” The whole US government is a criminal enterprise. Every three letter agency exists to make sure the wealthy are protected from the masses.
The President does not have control over the CIA — the reverse is true.
The CIA … has control over the President.
In fact, ever since the CIA Assassination of President Kennedy we have only had CIA-approved puppet people occupying The White House: 1) Johnson (CIA approved) who participated in the Assassination and Cover-Up, 2) Nixon (CIA approved) who employed Jack Ruby, E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, CIA-man George H.W. Bush, and made Warren Commission Cover-Up man Gerald Ford his VP, 3) Ford (CIA approved) – who Covered-Up both the JFK Assassination, and The Watergate Tapes (releasing them all back to Nixon after he pardoned him), 4) Carter a lone exception to the CIA puppet template – but still a Globalist who consulted with Z. Brzezinski , 5) Reagan (CIA approved) – a Globalist who expanded the CIA powers (after some restraint in the late-1970s), and rescued the career of CIA Operative George H. W. Bush and set him up to take over The Presidency, 6) George H. W. Bush the first direct CIA Black Ops criminal to take over and run The White House, 7) Bill Clinton Globalist, CIA-approved puppet, 8) the CIA-bred and scripted George W. Bush puppet occupier who stole the Election with the help of the CIA and Jeb, and green lighted the 9/11 attack, 9) Obama a CIA-trained Globalist con man, and 10) Joe Biden – a totally scripted Globalist Puppet under the control of China (with the CIA’s blessing).
The single significant exception to this was Trump – but even Trump was not ever trying to wrest control back from the CIA. Instead the CIA (with the FBI) perpetrated ‘Coup attempt after ‘Coup attempt for 4 years .. until they finally succeeded with the widespread 2020 Election Fraud.
It is the CIA that calls the shots, not The U.S. President (ever since the removal of Kennedy from power).
Trump was controlled opposition and still is. Soon they will be rounding up all his supporters whom he has brought into the open as people who won’t meekly obey the new post-republic oligarchy-run techno-feudal new order. It will start with the so-called vaccines (which Trump has pushed btw): pretty much anyone who resists can be regarded as a potential threat. Then it will be something else and something else and each time the Deplorable types will be marginalised, weakened or outright punished further.
So I’m not convinced Trump shouldn’t be on your list since wittingly or not he went along with the regime for which the CIA is a front operation just fine….
The Trump vs. The Deep State is an interesting area of inquiry. After his surprise win in 2016 I was fascinated to learn whether Trump would aggressively pursue a criminal investigation into the Russiagate fraud perpetrated by the Dems. I thought he would do so. He did not do so. Some speculated that he had the “offer he could not refuse” from the Deep State, which would certainly have to be considered fact based reasoning, based on the sordid criminal history of the Deep State. However, I wondered if Trump’s failure might be attributable to incompetence and stupidity, two of his most prominent characteristics. We will probably never know what actually happened. There was quite a lot of commentary about the real concern on the part of the Clinton Gang as to whether a legitimate investigation (as opposed to the usual whitewash job) would be launched by Trump. If I had my wishes, I would eliminate almost all of the 17 (or is it 19?) so-called “intelligence agencies”. Their biggest job, especially since 9-11, is to spy on the American people and destroy our civil liberties, especially the 1st and 4th amendment rights. Goodbye CIA, Homeland Security…and so on. Oh, also raze to the ground the giant spy site in the West (Utah, I think). Well, I can dream.
When we remember how to believe the Truth again, we will have taken our first step towards being free.
It’s part of a dying empire.
While I wholeheartedly agree with this article, I wonder if the revelations in it will make a difference with the great uninformed.
The majority of the public is far more familiar with AlQeda and Isis than with Julian Assange. Yet when informed that the CIA created, armed and trained AlQeda to keep tabs on Russia, that public didn’t care about illegalities. It was only when AlQeda turned on the U.S. that the public responded like Pavlov’s dogs to then hate and fear AlQeda, most still unaware that the CIA had created the alleged terrorist organization. And, when the CIA created, trained and armed Isis, purportedly to chase AlQeda out of U.S. occupied Iraq, no one knew about that either. Isis just became our next hate target, a bit before Osama bin Laden was the object of a formal assassination plan.
If the propagandized public can see everything about the CIA’s excessive behavior as acceptable, when in response to hated organizations, the hatred unwittingly created by CIA propaganda, why will it like the CIA any less that it does now?
This is a public that sees most of its prime time, over the air, TV programming portray war, soldiers and police as heroes, and similar. It doesn’t matter to them if 25% of the inmates are innocent, nor that 75% of them are black, It is trained to believe in subterfuge and hatred. Why will its opinion change over one journalist that it knows little or nothing about, having been shielded from the truth by a government and media in cahoots to hide that truth?
Exactly what is it that will make the majority of Americans stand up and scream for truth, justice and the American way when the haven’t been living under any of that? They’ve just been told that they have. And, like the naive victims of financial scams, they simply believe what they are told to believe – by government officials, news media, the CIA and the big, bad FBI.
How Is The CIA Still A Thing?”
Very simple. The CIA is “still a thing” because people continue to vote into office candidates who maintain its existence.
If you do not want More Of The Same, do not vote for another R or D, ever, no matter what an R or D promises!
I do not wish to be argumentative, but the ballots I am given have only Rs and Ds on them.
Even JD is beginning to understand that the R’s & D’s don’t matter. It is the System. Throw at it what you like, the system is geared for survival, and will corrupt even the most incorruptible.
And if you think it wasn’t that way at some point in history, you would be mistaken.
What if the CIA were repurposed to spread genuine intelligence (education) instead of mayhem throughout our planet? What if the MIC were repurposed to preserve life (the entire ecosystem) instead of taking it? What if corporations were repurposed to promote human and environmental prospering over profit? As far out as this line of thinking seems, it is IMHO our only lifeline. Long past the point where further revelations and condemnations of this or that particular evil (even those as well done as Caitlin’s) can have any lasting impact, we either learn to think THIS BIG or go down. Can we once again, against all odds, summon a passionate faith in the human spirit, a belief in its extraordinary possibilities? There was an exhilarating flash of this in the 60s, when I was young. If we can recover it, deepen it, run with it like our lives depended on it, we can move mountains.
IF the “leadership” of the U.S. government were convinced to serve the interests of the people rather than the interests of the 1% (whom I call the “thieves”) the CIA or any other agency would not be needed to implement the policies necessary to accomplish that purpose. The CIA is so corrupt and evil to its core that, in my opinion, only the total destruction would put an end to the commission of its criminal behavior. There are two major stumbling blocks to effecting any meaningful change: 1. Our electoral/political system is now a system of legalized bribery (I call it the “Whores For Hire” system), which has effectively destroyed any vestige of democracy, thereby enabling the thieves to decide which candidates we are allowed to “choose” when we vote; and 2. The people are so completely propagandized by the government and all its agents, including the mainstream media, think tanks, academia and other influential institutions that almost none of the people even know, or bother to try to learn, that these problems exist. How many people do anything other than praise the CIA, the murderers euphemistically called “special forces”, outright mercenaries used to commit crimes of every description in order to avoid any accountability whatsoever, etc.? I don’t know, but my best guess is less than 10%. In my limited experience, I have found that most people do not want to know about these problems and are offended if anyone suggests that this evil government is anything other than the “Exceptional” country the propaganda says it is.
I agree with much of your assessment, Jim. But on my end I run into virtually NO ONE who doesn’t think the status quo is FUBAR. That point has been made ad infinitum, yet we seem to be stuck there in our thinking. All deconstruction, no construction, makes Jack or Jill a dull boy or girl. No vision, no left.
Careful, now, you may actually encourage me. And I am an old guy who is hard to encourage. ☺ I hope you are right.
Indeed … we are far more powerful than we know. Their brutality will not work, it will just wake up more. Their schemes will backfire. It’s time.
Yes indeed. Kennedy was right. But it got him killed. See how powerful they are? They can even get away with taking out the POTUS … their ultimate boss. Way past time in a civilised world this sort of evil was extinguished.
I still believe a “red pill event” or “ring zero event” is in the making. I am working very hard myself to actualize this through my own consciousness. And I am not the only one, though the numbers of us who understand ourselves and our own power enough to do so is still extremely small. And yet, I see the movement throughout consciousness of wider awareness, and our ability to create our own reality outside of these influences.
While these institutions will likely continue, and those who wish to continue to interact with their environment in the old way are unlikely to change, the type of event I am referring to will render what anyone else does inert and irrelevant. We will not change the world – we will change and everything else will matter not.
At that point, once the punters see what can be done, they will get on board, and then perhaps system-wide changes will begin to take place. But it really doesn’t matter so much – as we will already have circumvented all of these apparent limitations. And none of it will be a threat to us.
We are now 20 years into the objective portion of the Shift of Consciousness. The die is cast, the subjective choices have been made by the Collective – there is no turning back. Time to turn our attention to ourselves, and see what powers we can avail to ourselves.
Self-determination and self-structuring is the key to our freedom. The chains and shackles are all our own. We have only to step into our power. It is not easy, especially for those of us who have time and history within the old way. But the electric dog-fence has been deactivated. We just need to move outside of our own yards, and find ourselves on the other side.
I am working it, fits and starts, but determined, committed and tenacious. My life will never be the same. Perhaps the intelligentsia who follows you will be able to use this upcoming event to break their own shackles. Or at least to see the fallacy of our limitations.
Indeed … we are far more powerful than we know. Their brutality will not work, it will just wake up more. Their schemes will backfire. It’s time.
I would like to thank you for restoring the ‘add a comment’ section of your posts. And while I still can take this opportunity to praise Caitlin Johnstone for her tireless tenacity in exposing the truth about the world we live in. I could add to the truth she tells by revealing my experiences with the system (US Military, and Los Angeles County Fire Department, among others). I’ve been told I should write a book, for which I have no talent. And the only people who would read it already know the truth. So suffice it to say thank you for your efforts. Best wishes to you and yours.
Harry Truman, who created the CIA, regretted the direction it had taken, expressed in an editorial he wrote in the Washington Post on December 22, 1963, very soon after JFK’s assassination.
Among the lines in the editorial “For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment…”
https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/TrumanLimitCIA.html
Can we even imagine a U.S. presidential candidate running on a platform that included dismantling the CIA? We all know what happened to the last president—JFK—who did that. That was 60 years ago, and nothing but crickets since from the two corporate political parties, both of which now increasingly select former intelligence agency employees as candidates. The DNC and RNC ought to be rebranded the DNC(IA) and RNC(IA). And the corporate media the same, not MSNBC, but MSNBC(IA). Not CNN, but C(IA)NN. (And let’s not forget the intelligence arm known as FOX, which is in the henhouse.) Clearly, the greatest enemy of Americans themselves is not a foreign power, but the intelligence agencies operating within their own government and secretly funded by their own tax dollars. If a CIA whistleblower revealed that the gates of hell had opened in a subbasement of CIA Headquarters, would that be so far farfetched?
Excellent suggestions.
… that would explain everything.
It seems obvious to me that if you give a group of people the ability to spy on what everyone else is doing, while keeping their own actions secret; if you give them special privileges to break laws–you will soon have an unaccountable and dangerous mafia that makes “the Mafia” look like a small club of unimportant thugs. Of course, there have been ties between the CIA and the Mafia; and between the CIA and its foreign counterparts (or foreign divisions). Looks like JFK came to realize how dangerous and destructive the CIA was and tried to rein it in–they destroyed him instead, and likely despite the coverup, any president or other powerful entity that gets ideas about reining in the CIA has a little talk, in which they’re told how JFK was killed and some others, and what will be done to anyone the person cares about if they try to move forward with controlling that association of psychopaths. The CIA has long since been powerful enough to carry this out (though why they didn’t succeed in killing Castro in all those attempts is hard to understand). If the person is not a sociopath, there will be people he or she cares about enough that this is intolerable, knowing the CIA can and will carry out the threat. If the person is a sociopath, he or she can be co-opted, brought in. So, I think much of the world would say Hell yes, the CIA should be brought down, its headquarters ransacked, its crimes exposed and their still-living perpetrators tried. But who’s gonna bell that cat?
Wow. Suddenly comments are back. I haven’t been able to see any on this site since Sept.11th. Nor have I been able to comment.
The CIA controls our government, and has since Nov.22nd, 1963. “The Devil’s Chessboard” and “JFK and the Unspeakable” are two must reads for those with any doubt.
The Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings was obviously the victim of Vault 7 technology, and he was working on an expose of Brennan at the time.
Our only hope is that human consciousness will suddenly expand to the point where the “evil ones” can no longer amass any power. Look into the eyes of Chuckie Schumer above and you can see the evil emanating from them. The eyes truly are the window of the soul.
The greatest American Hero alive today is from Australia. You know, that backwater retarded cousin of the Empire that pretends to be a country? Trying to out-fascist the CIA by all the cuckholding 5-I countries, (looking at you, Britain) is a game they’ll lose at the very moment they need a favor returned. The USA will “fuck’em all to death” right before it collapses.
Caitlin, you are absolutely right. The totally out of control CIA should not exist. As Kennedy said, it “should be broken into a thousand pieces” (and, I will add, all those pieces should be permanently destroyed). However, the U.S. public is so ignorant and propagandized that it refuses to believe that “their” government is doing anything which is against their interests. That, of course, assumes they think about anything substantive at all, which is usually not the case. So they believe that Assange is “evil” and that “our” government is doing everything it does to “keep us safe” (as most believed about Bush’s launching the illegal forever wars). I have given up on the American people’s ability to critically think about anything, including the obvious crimes being committed by the U.S. government, particularly its thuggish “intelligence agencies” and the always glorified murder corps known as “special forces”. The American people are well trained to “see no evil” when considering the world’s biggest thug, the U.S. government.