Appointing Hayden Makes Perfect Spook Sense
Monday May 08th 2006, 8:31 am

All the brouhaha over the likely nomination and appointment of Gen. Michael Hayden to head up the CIA is rather silly. It should be remembered that the CIA is basically a military creature, although civilian leaders have run the agency in recent decades. The CIA emerged from the Central Intelligence Group with the signing of Truman’s National Security Act in July 1947. A flourish of Truman’s pen also created “an independent Air Force, provided for coordination by a committee of service chiefs, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and a Secretary of Defense, and created the National Security Council (NSC). The CIG became an independent department and was renamed the Central Intelligence Agency,” explains the Federation of American Scientists. “Chaired by the [Intelligence Advisory Committee], the Committee included representatives from the Departments of State, Army, Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Stag, and the Atomic Energy Commission.” The first director of the CIA was Rear Admiral Sidney W. Souers, followed by General Walter Bedell Smith.

The first “civilian” DCI was the notorious Allen Dulles, who served the Office of Strategic Services in Europe during the Second World War. Under Dulles, the CIA brought onboard Richard Bissell as Directorate for Plans and covert or black operations (euphemistically called Executive Action) against “unfriendly governments” (i.e., governments that had their own ideas about how to run their countries) began in earnest. Early actions included a coup d’état organized against the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (who made the mistake of introducing land reform and nationalizing the United Fruit Company), the assassination of Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, overthrowing the Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, General Abd al-Karim Kassem of Iraq, and Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. In effect, the policies of the CIA, as a cudgel wielded by presidents since Truman (who represent corporations and financial interests, not the American people), has remained the same, regardless of who actually held the title of DCI.

In essence, it matters not an iota if the Pentagon “gobbles up” the CIA, since policies will remain the same—the destruction of governments and countries targeted by the global elite, the cabal that runs the country at the behest of transnational corporations (note the CIA’s first act was accomplished primarily because the United Fruit Company took umbrage at the people of Guatemala for demanding agrarian reform). The CIA has always served as a lawless and rogue organization and has worked closely with criminals such as the mobsters Santos Trafficante and Sam Giancana (in an effort to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro). In fact, as recent documents reveal, the CIA worked closely with Nazis after the Second World War as well.

Early last year, the National Security Archive “posted the CIA’s secret documentary history of the U.S government’s relationship with General Reinhard Gehlen, the German army’s intelligence chief for the Eastern Front during World War II. At the end of the war, Gehlen established a close relationship with the U.S.,” writes Tamara Feinstein. “The documentation unearthed by the [Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group] reveals extensive relationships between former Nazi war criminals and American intelligence organizations, including the CIA. For example, current records show that at least five associates of the notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann worked for the CIA, 23 other Nazis were approached by the CIA for recruitment, and at least 100 officers within the Gehlen organization were former SD or Gestapo officers.” General Reinhard Gehlen was a big time war criminal, responsible for organizing the Iron Guard in Romania, the Latvian Vanagis, and the Croatian Ustashe, groups responsible for brutal atrocities against the “untermenschen” of Eastern Europe (not only Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and communists, but anybody who opposed Nazi rule).

Of course, that the CIA embraced Nazi murderers (including the notorious Claus Barbie) should come as no surprise. “Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy,” William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, noted in 1937. “They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.” William Randolph Hearst, Sr., the Mellon-Davis-Duke Alcoa monopoly, the Du Pont corporation, ITT, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, the anti-Semite Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company, and of course the Bush crime family and no shortage of Wall Street bankers and financiers all supported and bankrolled the Nazis. Remember, the CIA’s first covert op was conducted in the name of the United Fruit Company and it has worked diligently in the service of corporations ever since.

In fact, CIA director Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster created “international finance networks for the benefit of the Nazis,” according to the research of John Loftus and Mark Aarons (The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). “In the beginning, moving money into the Third Reich was quite legal. Lawyers saw to that. And Allen and his brother John Foster were not just any lawyers. They were international finance specialists for the powerful Wall Street law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell.”

In essence, since its inception, the CIA has labored under what should be called the “Gehlen mentality,” a Nazi mindset. Like Nazi intelligence in Europe, the CIA has employed its own Iron Guard and Ustashe for more than fifty years (most notably in Central America, where CIA trained and financed death and torture squads have roamed free, terrorizing an impoverished population). Like Nazi intelligence, the CIA prefers murderous cut-throats such as Saddam Hussein to do the bidding of the neolibs and Wall Street banksters (that is until they fall from favor, as Hussein and Manual Noriega in Panama eventually did).

Thus the petty argument over appointing a Pentagon careerist to run the CIA is, to say the least, small apples. Regardless of who runs the agency, the same policies will be implemented—overthrowing “rogue” nations, or that is to say nations that refuse to play ball on the terms dictated by the global neoliberal elite and their hand-picked representative in the White House. Gen. Hayden simply represents a conflation of the spook and subversion organizational chart and the CIA my end up where it belonged all along—in a suite of offices in the Pentagon.