REVIEW BY SIMON BUTLER
Deadly Deceits: My 25 years in the CIA
By Ralph McGehee
Ocean Press, Melbourne.
231pp. $26.95 (pb)
"My view, backed by 25 years of experience is, quite simply, that the CIA is the covert action arm of the Presidency. Most of its money, manpower, and energy go into covert operations that, as we have seen over the years, include backing dictators and overthrowing democratically elected governments."
This assertion by former Central Intelligence Agency operative Ralph McGehee does not shock today. Many people have become aware of the role the CIA has played — and still plays — in securing the imperialist interests of the United States at the expense of democracy and human rights.
But this was not always the case. It took exposes from former agents like McGehee to throw light on a shadowy institution that throughout the 1950s and '60s was unknown to most US people.
Recruiting and deception
A CIA recruit has to be naive, pliable and patriotic. It also helps to be athletic, religious and white. According to McGehee, the CIA's personality tests are biased towards "active, charming, obedient people who can get things done in the social world but have limited perspective and understanding, who see things in black and white and don't like to think too much".
Of the 30 students who went through the CIA paramilitary training with McGehee, about half had played college football and all were Caucasian. Those deemed suitably slow-witted and compliant were trained to use an assortment of weapons and bombs and shown how to move and operate in small units across a "simulated Iron Curtain border".
While at the training camps, recruits were forbidden to visit nearby towns. They were forced to wear military fatigues at all times and march in rank to classes. This conscious attempt to alienate recruits from broader society was referred to as "getting them into the military mode".
A significant part of the orientation course for CIA operatives was devoted to indoctrinating recruits with anticommunist propaganda. McGehee was shown a series of melodramatic, terrifying films on communism, such as I was a Communist for the FBI and Turn East on Beacon Street which dealt with FBI penetration of the Communist Party of the USA.
Another film portrayed a shy young man who, after a traditional upbringing, "had left home and returned a changed man — an obvious victim of communist brainwashing". He challenged all religious, family and government authorities. The trainees were encouraged to find him a despicable person who deserved imprisonment.
High-ranking CIA officials told the trainees that the Soviet Union "preys on lonely, shy, anti-social outcasts in this country and recruits them into the American Communist Party. These people have no friends, no links to decent society. The Soviets brainwash and exploit those undesirable humans to the point where they plan to violently overthrow our government."
Suppressing information
The CIA was formed to carry out covertly what the US military had once been able to do openly without significant international condemnation. Information is produced by the CIA according to the demands of US policy makers. Intelligence that does not support those plans is routinely suppressed.
McGehee experienced this when he was assigned to Vietnam in 1968. His research showed that the Vietnamese Communists were supported by the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese and that their fighting strength was greater than previously thought. Two conclusions were obvious: the US was not protecting the Vietnamese from a small minority of insurgents but was fighting an entire people, and the war could not be won by the US. McGehee's research was suppressed within the CIA; the war dragged on until 1975.
The CIA leaked false and misleading news stories, in some cases even running entire news services across the world. The CIA had employees working for the major press services.
By 1967, as many as 1000 books had been published with covert sponsorship from the CIA. The CIA funded a range of right-wing magazines, journals and cultural organisations in many countries. In Australia, the CIA backed Quadrant magazine.
In the US, the CIA heavily financed anticommunist trade unions. From 1952 to 1967, the National Student Association received approximately US$3.3 million so it could stifle the voices of radicalising US students.
Counter-revolution
During the 1950s, the CIA subsidised innumerable anticommunist political parties, individual leaders and trade unions throughout western Europe. Millions of dollars were poured into Portugal, Italy, France and Germany in particular.
The popular left-leaning president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, was overthrown by forces trained, armed and funded by the CIA. An attempt by the CIA in 1953 to overthrow the government of Costa Rica failed; in the same year, the CIA was instrumental in overthrowing Iran's Premier Mohammed Mossadeq and reinstalling the pro-US shah.
The CIA was infamously involved in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. Since then, it has been responsible for numerous assassination attempts on Fidel Castro and has trained and directed exiled Cubans in terrorism and sabotage operations.
In Indonesia, the CIA seized the opportunity to destroy the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and back the military coup of President Suharto in 1965. More than 1 million Communists and leftists were massacred during the coup. Media fabrications initiated by the CIA played a large role in popular resentment against the PKI, both in Indonesia and abroad.
Failing to block Salvador Allende becoming president of Chile, the CIA directed economic and political warfare which led to the military coup of Augusto Pinochet in 1973.
The CIA has run operations against governments, the left and liberation movements in many countries — including Angola, Afghanistan, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Japan, Nicaragua, Honduras, Grenada, Ecuador, Algeria, Congo, British Guyana, Namibia, the Soviet Union, Korea, China, Taiwan, Burma, the Philippines and Tibet.
McGehee's book was allowed to be published only after it was screened by the CIA. This has meant that information considered too "sensitive" has been deleted, leaving some frustrating gaps in the narrative. For instance, McGehee's explanation of CIA involvement in the 1965 Indonesian coup reads as follows: "Initially the Indonesian Army left the PKI alone, since it had not been involved in the coup attempt. [eight sentences deleted]. Subsequently, however, Indonesia military leaders [seven words deleted] began a bloody extermination campaign."
The only problem with this book is that it was first published in 1983. New information is needed on the CIA.