It may be soothing to focus on a few individuals who acted "with integrity and admirable values". The Guardian has a few articles about diplomats that recently resigned because they wanted no collusion with clear crimes against humanity. But that's anecdotal. The USA did their best to destroy democracy in South-America, put millions of people under military dictatures for decades, and induce the torture of tens of thousands. And most people in the USA agreed or didn't care.

People really ought to read the Wikipedia on this. After 50 years, the evidence of practical US involvement is theoretical.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_i...

On the flip side, the US military intervention in Granada saved its democratic government from a coup and in Panama liberated it from a dictatorship. But there is a segment of people who need the US to be a pure villain. Fortunately, there is a lack of evidence that the US is doing worse than any other nation would if it had its power.

The honest, moral ones seem to be the minority far too often.

There are also many YouTube documentaries/videos about Chile's "Cybersyn", e.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ACfgc1o3P6o&pp=ygUIY3liZXJzeW4...

And a decent Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn

Nuts that when the coup was mounted the military completely gutted the Cybersyn facility out of sheer ignorance about what was being done inside.

50 years from now the official position of representatives of powers (Russia, US, China, Israel, etc.) on their own actions from today will still be completely avoiding the topic. But some might, at best, halfheartedly admit that what happened "back then" was not their proudest moment and they could have done better, all while actually being worse. But that will be their water under someone else's bridge and as long as that water sill allows them to reap the benefits of their "not proudest moments" then it's just going to happen again and again with the next generations getting a minor point of conversation.

If Russia can "poison" Eastern Ukraine for their benefit, if the US can cut the legs from under a democracy for their benefit, if Israel can eradicate the people from a land for their benefit, etc. and live to fully enjoy that benefit, people are going to have these conversations on "ancient" history time and time again.

In my opinion, the transformation of the role of intelligence gathering arms of the state in the United States occurred after World War 2. What emerged from that heady moment was a transplantation of the ethos of the British Empire's intelligence apparatus. I noted in your bio a pdf -- "The Myth of Scarcity" -- that indicates that you have an inclination to pursue a matter to its root cause. What is proposed to you is that you review the provenance of 'Anglo-American' intelligence services to its beginnings in Elizabethan England.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Walsingham

Those who are familiar with that period of English history know full well that the 'realm' was engulfed in internal conflicts and that the 'system' devised to "protect the realm" viewed the "subjects of the Crown" as potential adversaries. There you will find the 'DNA' of CIA. [So r/1960s/1947 ..]

America won "World War 2" but lost its soul.

Thank you for this insight.

I'll do my best not to sound glib or combative, or judgmental; but I genuinely would love to know:

How did people working as 'intelligence officers' manage to make informed decisions without the fundamental knowledge that Iraq (and Afghanistan and Syria and Yemen etc) was basically a murderous, internationally illegal money laundering operation?

Or, to try and put it another way, what processes are used to make sure that people have enough information to be effective in their jobs, while also making sure they don't know/care about the unspeakable evil they're enabling? ... Is it just effective compartmentalization? Camaraderie? Nationalism?

Did you guys know, but just sort of not look at the elephant in the room? I'm probably failing at sounding non-judgmental... Apologies if so, but I've wondered this for a long time.

Well articulated. I hope you will continue this advocacy. If I can be of help at all even just as moral support, lmk.

> 1960s

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/TrumanLimitCIA....

[Deserves being quoted in full]:

Limit CIA Role To Intelligence by Harry S. Truman December 22, 1963 The Washington Post, page A11

INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21—I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.

I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.

Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.

But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.

Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department “treatment” or interpretations.

I wanted and needed the information in its “natural raw” state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.

Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being “upset.”

For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.

I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.

With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about “Yankee imperialism,” “exploitive capitalism,” “war-mongering,” “monopolists,” in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.

I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.

But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.

We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.

Copyright © 1963 by Harry S Truman

I see your September 11, 1973 and raise you the actual first 9/11, the fall of Barcelona in 1713 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41510919 ( tongue in cheek, no event is more important than another of course )

Remembered on this very day as "La Diada" in Catalunya.

I by no means support the efforts of the CIA in Chile, however it is worth noting how transformative the economy of Chile has been since then.

I think that's an accurate explanation that many people will take as an excuse or justification.

The short of it is "the US (like all powers which can afford to, but more) will do whatever it needs to do for its benefit while crucifying the same actions from anyone else".

That sounds scarily familiar to how Russia sees Ukraine today, and I'm unable to see how it could justify what happened in the past or justify what is happening now.

From a HN commentator in 2054:

> I think Russia was very concerned at the time that Ukraine under Zelensky would become a client state or a vassal of the US. Russia still upholds the "No outsiders" Doctrine which states that any intervention in the politics of the Russian World by foreign powers is a threat to Russia. Russia does not want any foreign interference or potential military bases in its 'backyard'.

It was in fact a Soviet client state, but the Soviets themselves were starving in 1973 (they were actually importing US grains) and couldn't provide enough assistance to both Cuba and Chile.

I agree with everything you've said here. The question is, what can really be done about it?

The US, at least since WW2, are the bad guys.

I'll go with "the US has been bad".

But to say that they were simply "the bad guys", in a world bursting full of bad guys in practically every corner, is simplistic and naive.

It also (ironically) denies these other societies any respect for their own agency, and their own salient capacity to be corrupt, incompetent, genocidal and warmongering, and run themselves into the ground in countless other ways without any help at all from the US. In that sense, it's actually quite a myopic and hegemonic way of looking at things.

Do you truly believe these documents will ever be released, unedited?

If there is anything really damning that happened, there is no reason it will be revealed, ever, or that documents about it still exist.

Why should they? Who is doing full constant oversight of whole CIA that has always upper hand above them to make it happen? Sorry but this is just a pipe dream, just look how that agency behaved when SHTF. Boeing kills whistleblowers despite literally whole world seeing what a shitshow that company is now. That's just effin Boeing, not folks who can kill almost anybody anywhere and not caring about consequences.

Yep, at least they don't do this sort of thing any more: https://archive.ph/TnumH

The CIA was never one thing, working toward a single coherent goal. The liberation of Eastern Europe in the 1990s and the defense of Ukraine were partly the work of the CIA and allied intelligence services.

Except for the Cold War aspects of regime change in South America, and we know a lot of it had very little to do with geostrategic concerns and a lot to do with US private sector economic interests, the South American dictators they installed have done a lot that harms US interests in addition to the obvious harm to the people living there.

The CIA is capable of both and a lot more.

They don't have to. You can't travel anywhere in LA, SA or the ME without encountering the view that people have no agency.

Their leaders even cultivate that view as a means to stay in power. And there is an endless queue of commenters to percolate it forever.

Greatest psyop ever. The CIA could have gone out of business decades back and it wouldn't change anything.

Of course. They achieved their goal.

Director William Casey Quote: "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything they believe is false!"