Counter- Revolutionary Role of CIA

Left to right: former CIA directors Allen Dulles, William Colby, and James Schlesinger; and John Downey, CIA spy captured in China.

On 2nd January a new Penguin was released in Ireland and Britain, Phil Agee’:

book ‘Inside the Company’, a detailed and extremely critical account of the C.1.A.'s activities.

Phil Agee himself, was for 12 years (1957—1969) an officer in the C.LA., operating in Ecuador, Uruguay and Mexico, During this period he was in charge of several projects, both aimed at collecting information and using it to maintain reactionary regimes by undermining the left. Since he broke with the C.I.A. ih 1969 he has become a revolutionary socialist and as such his stated intention in producing the book is to alert the revolutionary left to the dangers of the C.1.A. and help them counteract it, by knowing more about its methods.

The C.1.A.’s real role The book also makes the important point that the present situation in Indonesia, Uruguay and more recently Chile, are the result of the above.

activities in a crisis situation. They lead to the strengthening of the extreme right and the threat of fascism. The action of the C.|.A. in the above cases helped military dictatorships seize power and led to the installation of states based on the use of extreme repression. No doubt the C.1.A.

is at present working on contingency plans to pursue the same policies in Portugal. Kissinger certainly sees the coup and the activity of the masses there as a threat to US. interests. important lesson for revolutionaries Agee certainly paints overall a very black picture of the C.|.A4.’s power and organisation; however, the most important lesson of this book is not the C.1.A.’s strength but where its weakness lies, that is where the masses have been educated in the real role of the bourgeois state with its agents < the army and police, and are led to fight the class struggle in a real way.

C.1.A. Propoganda On paper and in its propoganda the C.1.A. takes its terms of reference from the ‘Wilson’ doctrine; the new ‘liberal’ capitalist theory in U.S. foreign policy proposed by Woodrow Wilson after the first World War. This maintains that the U.S. and its task force the C.1.A. is in favour of pushing a ‘third way’ throughout the world; an alternative to both the ‘old repressive imperialism’ and revolutionary socialism. \t is expressed as a liberal approach that is still capitalist but one which furthers long-term reforms and ‘democracy’ This is its apologia and, as Agee admits in his book was one that he believed in when he joined the C.I.A.

The reality as Agee describes it, is somewhat different; it is in fact that the C.1.A. are prepared to use any method to stop a country from ‘going communist’. They are in effect the protectors of the interests of U.S. imperialism throughout the world. Far from encouraging even long-term reforms or democracy, they will prop up or install any regime, however corrupt or brutal, that is prepared to offer the U.S. cheap raw materials, and investment or a market on the U.S.’s terms, they will crush any regime that will not.

Bulwark of U.S. Imperialism This is shown very clearly by the example of Santo Domingo. This island was invaded by the U.S. in 1965, an event that started Agee on his path away from the C.I.A. At first the president of Santo Domingo wes ‘favoured’ by the C.1.A. for as a reformist he presented a channel away from revolutionary activity, but he was not allowed back after the coup, the sugar interests were too threatened even by his moderate programme of agrarian reform.

Agee aiso describes in great details the methods the C.I.A. will use to further its aims. Chief among them are black propoganda against left wing forces; infiltration of suspect groups including the use of agent provocatuers to discredit organisations training local intelligence forces in counter insurgency methods; and the skillful use of right-wing groups and forces to stir up anti-left hysteria and unrest. The church has not been too squeamish to involve itself in this kind of cooperation with the C.1.A.. Aaee cites an example in Ecuador, where a cardinal allowed his house to be left-wing forces within them C.1.A. is not the only one same results. and groups like it are only able to gain a bombed by C.1.A. agents to aid a campaign against Ecuador's links with Cuba.*High on the C.1.A.’s list of priorities is also to the attempt to diffuse the revolutionary potential of the trade unions by setting up the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, and such bodies which attempt to keep the movement only interested in day to day struggles by squeezing out and operating to discredit _ This is of course also true of the struggle against all imperialist regimes; for the C.1.A. is not unique as a-counter revolutionary force. Special police and army intelligence groups use the same techniques throughout the world, with much the We have seen, ourselves, the use of black propoganda in Ireland, the terrorist activity of the S.AS. and the’infiltration of political organisations by British agents. Kitson's book on counter insurgency puts forward much the same methods as the C.|.A. are shown to have used. British Imperialism has its Chile's and |ndonesia‘s, cases in point were the coup against Obote in Uganda and the one which unseated Chedij Jagan in Guyana, both men were removed when they began to institute moderate reforms that would have interfered with the interests of Britain.

However we must re-emphasise that the C.|.A stranglehold in states where the class struggle - is held back and confused, as it was in Chile by Allende’s ambiguous attitude and that of the .P. dominated left, towards the army and the evolutionary process. The C.1.A.’s success there ! reiterates again the historical judgement on the effects of the ‘peaceful road’ and class collaboration ARGENTINIAN | COMRADES