John Stockwell quotations excerp The Praetorian Guard a book by John Stockwell 1999 Amazon.com Google books Extracts The Reagan Revolution My Story - on the National Security Council Secret Third World Wars [The Roman praetors were first established in 367 B.C.. They evolved into the Praetorian Guard that came to exercise great power, making and unmaking emperors and allowing political and military action outside of the law. What rules that were observed were announced by the issuance of edicts. The Guard was characterized by corruption and political venality and was closed down by Constantine in 312 A. D..] The Reagan Revolution [The] revolution may have been misunderstood and underestimated by many Americans. President Reagan and his revolutionaries were not mincing words. They intended to effect a permanent revolutionary change to the U.S. system of government. They planned to catch the pendulum as it swung to the right and weld it in place, where it could never swing back to the left. Like committed revolutionaries, they were profoundly irreverent of sacred institutions. Reagan's first term in office was deliberately provocative. He preached that nuclear war was survivable; that we might drop "demonstration" weapons on Europe to intimidate the Soviets. He joked (once accidentally, on a live radio show) that he had already launched U.S. missiles against the Soviet Union. Jerry Falwell, who preached that nuclear Armageddon might be God's instrument for taking his chosen up on high, was a regular visitor to the White House. Reagan was openly contemptuous of environmental concerns: "If you've seen one redwood you've seen them all." He appointed James Watt, who systematically opened millions of acres of government land to commercial exploitation, to the Interior Department and Ann Burford, who used the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect corporations that were dumping and poisoning. Reagan willfully assaulted the human services infrastructure in the United States, boasting that he had eliminated over 1000 programs that served lower income groups. He proposed that ketchup and pickle relish would suffice for vegetables in school lunches. He raised taxes for the poor and middle class while slashing them by 60 percent for the ultra-rich. He put Elliott Abrams into the Human Rights Division of the State Department with orders to dismantle it. The Reagan administration sent the files of confidential testimonials that Pat Derian, under President Jimmy Carter, had accumulated from refugees from repressive countries to the police in those countries. Then the Immigration and Naturalization Services deported the refugees to countries where brutal police were waiting for them at the airports. President Reagan and his attorney general, Edwin Meese III, whose personal corruption came under investigation, ridiculed the plight of the poor and challenged the Constitution itself, saying that it was only a piece of paper. Meese repeatedly asserted the principle that arrested people were to be considered guilty until proven otherwise. Reagan put his and Meese's California friend Luis Guiffrida in charge of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which laid plans to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, and intern several hundred thousand people without due process. Secretary of State George Shultz lobbied vigorously (with indirect success) for a pre-emptive strikes bill that would give him authority to list "known and suspected terrorists" within the United States who could be attacked and killed by government agents with impunity. Shultz admitted (in a public address in October 25, 1984) that the strikes would take place on the basis of information that would never stand up in a court of law and that innocent people would be killed in the process. He insisted, however, that people listed would not be permitted to sue in court to have their names taken off that list. Many other laws were passed in favor of the national security complex at the expense of civil liberties. By the end of his eight years in office, President Reagan was also boasting that he had appointed 45 percent of the sitting federal judges. He tacitly encouraged the corruption and irresponsibility that eventually led to the Savings and Loan scandal and to 200 of Reagan's officials being indicted, investigated, or fired for corruption. Only Ronald Reagan, the "Great Communicator" (also called, by the Washington Post, the "Great Prevaricator") could have been such an effective point man for an irresponsible "revolution" that assaulted and violated the most profound U.S. traditions and institutions. My Story This was at the end of the 10-year war that followed a previous decade of CIA activity in Vietnam. Two million people- had been killed. The equivalent of one 500-pound bomb had been dropped on the country [Vietnam] for every citizen. Ninety-thousand tons of carcinogenic and toxic materials had been dropped on the country, some of which would poison it for decades to come. We were returning to the "World," to continue our lives, while leaving our Vietnamese cohorts behind. *** In the meetings of the National Security Council, busy, _ important men come together to make decisions about U.S. policy on various problems all over the world. The Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Vice-President, sometimes the President, the CIA Director, people like that, with enormous responsibilities and power. They are aware of their power. The etiquette is that they do not keep each other waiting. They try not to show up 30 minutes late to those meetings, because the other people are powerful and busy too-and they really are busy. That is one thing I noticed about people in those positions: they do work hard, long hours, long days, lots of meetings, keeping a lot of balls in the air. In the first briefings on the Angola operation, the CIA Director, William Colby, with an aide with a flip chart, literally said, "Gentleman, this is a map of Africa. Here is Angola. Now, there are three factions in Angola. The FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola), they are the Good Guys; we have been working with them for fourteen years." And then he described the FNLA, and Holden Roberto, our rebarbative ally. Then he said, "The MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), they are the Bad Guys, led by the drunken psychotic poet"-that was what we had written into the briefing material-"Augustino Neto." And he used those words-"Good Guys" and "Bad Guys"-so these busy men would not be confused about the issues, and proceeded to brief them. One day Henry Kissinger came to the meeting late, and everyone had to wait. Now mind you, this is not a meeting of the Supreme Court, where law prescribes where everybody sits, according to seniority. The National Security Council, at least at that time, met in an office in the White House, wit-in an oak table and some drapes and some maps, but no electronic flashing boards or anything like that. People sat around the great big table, with the staffers sitting in an outer ring of chairs so they could lean forward to advise their individual masters. Often staffers were not present when sensitive decisions were being made. The Secretary of Defense plopped down in a chair to talk to somebody while we waited for Kissinger, and then Kissinger came steaming in and he told the Secretary of Defense, "I am here. We can go to work. Move down to your chair." To which the Secretary of Defense replied, "Well, I am all spread out here. You sit there today." And Kissinger said, "No, I am the Secretary of State, this is my chair. You sit down there." They proceeded to argue like five-year-olds for about five minutes. Eventually the Secretary of Defense would not move, and Kissinger had to go sit down at the far end of the table, but he turned his back on the briefings and sulked. He wouldn't pay attention to what we were saying that day because he couldn't have his chair-and we were making decisions that were getting people killed in Angola. I am not exaggerating that incident one bit. When the operation was formally launched by the National Security Council in January 1975, Angola was moving toward peaceful elections as it gained its independence. The CIA introduced fighting forces into the country, forcing a violent, undemocratic solution instead. (See the Angola section of the next chapter for a summary of the entire fiasco.) The program was stopped by the U.S. Congress in the winter of 1975-76. I spent six months reviewing the files and then resigned from the agency. After publishing a letter in the Washington Post on April 10, 1977, I testified for five days to congressional committees, eschewing the protections of the Fifth Amendment, while I gave them chapter and verse of what we had done in the misguided Angola operation. I gave them the numbers, dates and texts of cables and memoranda that proved we had broken laws and then lied about breaking them. I gave them the combinations to the safes where the documents were stored, and told them where in CIA headquarters those safes could be found. I challenged them to investigate thoroughly and do their duty. They did nothing. The hearings had been conducted in secret, and after the Watergate scandal, the ouster of President Nixon, and the defeat in Vietnam, they were not willing to tackle another big scandal that might oblige them to put Henry Kissinger and the CIA Director in jail. I proceeded to write my first book, In Search of Enemies, to make the public aware of what had happened so they could judge for themselves. It remains today the only insider's account of a major CIA operation. A year later, when Congress had had abundant time to investigate the secret scandal and prosecute the felons involved, In Search of Enemies was published. Without claiming that the book revealed any sensitive secrets, the CIA sued me and succeeded in seizing all future earnings. They also placed me under a court order which requires that all future writings for publication be submitted to the CIA Publications Review Board for censorship. Since then, I have been on the greatest human adventure imaginable, of growth and of learning all the things about the world that they did not teach us in college. I began to read book after book about the United States and world security problems, and to meet the authors of some of them and talk to them about their findings. I travelled to countries that had been the targets of CIA destabilizations, including Grenada, Jamaica, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, and Vietnam. In my travels I met people like Carl Sagan, Admiral Gene LaRocque Admiral Gene Carroll, Jr., Director of the Center for Defense Information, anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott, Daniel Ortega, the martyred Grenadan leaderMaunce Bishop, and numerous other authorities on national security and the nuclear arms race. I was invited to lecture and have addressed over 600 audiences, learning much from them in return. I have enjoyed the experience more than I could ever have imagined. Much of this learning process was very personal. In March 1963 I was in Grenada for the anniversary celebration of the New Jewel Movement's takeover. At a cocktail party in a garden overlooking the Caribbean we received the news that President Reagan had given a speech announcing that Grenada was a threat to U.S. national security. The Minister of Education, Jacqueline Creft joked that they had been caught on the eve of their attack on the United States. She said their armies were about to take Washington and New York (Grenada is a small island, about 8 by 16 miles, with 80,000 people, and at the time had two poorly trained and equipped parapolice companies in its armed forces). They would sweep west and capture Chicago by the early summer and then launch their march on California. Everyone laughed, but I pointed out that President Reagan's speech wasn't really funny. If, out of all the million important things he could mention in a public address, he focusses on a country like Grenada and asserts that it is a threat to the "national security" it means that he is drawing attention to it in preparation for attacking it. Creft flared back at me, noting that I didn't need to lecture them about U.S. policy. They had been living under the wing and talon of the U.S. eagle for centuries; they knew its dangerous ways too well. But she was glad I was beginning to understand. As I learned more and more about the history and cynicism of the CIA's so-called secret wars, I also became more concerned about other major problems of world security, including the nuclear arms race, drug smuggling, the abuse of the environment, and the coming world economic crisis. Until we learn to control human behavior at the level of covert destabilizations against countries like Nicaragua, for example, I doubt seriously whether we shall be safe from the planet-threatening aspects of the nuclear arms race. Secret Third World Wars ANGOLA NICARAGUA INDONESIA CHILE ANGOLA ... In April 1974, the [Angolan] army rebelled in a coup in Portugal, making it clear that the colony of Angola, where a prolonged independence struggle had been fought, would be granted its freedom. The superpowers quickly chose sides between the three competing factions. The United States automatically sided with the FNLA (Front for the National Liberation of Angola), with whose leader, Holden Roberto, it had maintained contact over the years. In fact, Roberto was close to the Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seku, whom the CIA had installed and maintained in power since 1961. Historically the Soviet Union had generally sided with the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), although contact had been disrupted in the years preceding 1974. Reacting to Soviet policy, Communist China sent 400 tons of arms to the FNLA, and over 100 advisors. A third movement, UNITA (the National Union for the Independence of Angola), was left without a major sponsor. Led by Jonas Savimbi, it was historically the most radical of the three parties having received aid from China, North Korea, South Africa, and others over the years. In January 1975, leaders of the three movements met under Portuguese arbitration and signed the Alvor Accord in which they agreed to compete peacefully in elections that would be held in October. November 11 was fixed as the anticipated date of independence. Within a week, the National Security Council met in Washington D.C. and allocated $300,000 for the FNLA's use in the political campaign. The FNLA had sufficient arms from the Chinese and from Zaire and a record of bloody violence against the Portuguese and the MPLA. The CIA station chief in Kinshasa urged Roberto to move his FNLA forces inside Angola. His men went in armed and soon attacked and killed a team of MPLA organizers. At that moment the Alvor Accord was effectively sabotaged and the fate of Angola sealed in blood. During the spring all of the factions scrambled to organize, obtain arms, and establish control over whatever territory they could. The MPLA was by far the most successful. By mid-summer, it controlled 13 of the 15 provinces. The National Security Council, which was dominated by Henry Kissinger, demanded a paper outlining possible options from the CIA. This was July 1975, just three months after the last helicopter had left the embassy rooftop in Saigon, marking the decisive end of the Vietnam War. Many, including CIA Director William Colby were surprised that the CIA would move so quickly into another adventure. The CIA's paper offered four options: one for $600,000 which would provide political support for the FNLA, one for $6 millionwhichwould include some military support, one for $14 million which would involve substantial military; and one for $40 million. The $40 million, it was estimated, would equal anything the Soviet Union was likely to try in Angola. These options and the estimate of the Soviet reaction were not the result of a massive study. The CIA's Africa Division chief and his staff plucked the figures out of a round table discussion, and Colby relayed them to Henry Kissinger as authoritative. It must be noted that neither the Africa Division chief nor his deputy had any substantive experience in Africa. One had spent his career in Europe, the other in the Pacific Basin. Only the deputy had any substantive experience in managing paramilitary activity: he had been part of the programs that had just dramatically failed in Southeast Asia, and had never set foot in Africa. A fifth option, staying out of the conflict and letting Angola make its own way toward independence, was not included in the paper. Was this a viable option? The Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Ambassador Nathaniel Davis, firmly believed so. Of the proposed CIA program, he said, "It's the wrong game for a great nation, and the players we've got are losers." The U.S. Consul General in the Angolan capital of Luanda, Tom Killoran, who was the only senior American diplomat who had worked with all three Angolan movements, firmly believed that the MPLA was in fact the best organized, the most likely to prevail, and ultimately the friendliest to U.S. interests. Kissinger picked the second option, then decided $6 million didn't sound impressive and cabled Langley from a Paris trip authorizing $14 million. The CIA quickly mobilized to support the FNLA, fighting the MPLA. Just returned from the evacuation of Saigon, I was ordered to put the CIA's task force together and manage the secret war under the supervision of the CIA's Africa Division chief in Langley and the National Security Council's Interagency Working Group on Angola. One month after we were formally committed to the secret war, I was sent inside Angola to assess the competing forces. I found that Roberto's forces were disorganized and numbered one-hundredth as many as he told us. Savimbi's UNITA forces seemed determined and he was scrupulously honest in the counts and estimates he gave us. We decided to co-opt him into our program. It should be noted that, at this point, I was skeptical of the CIA and of covert action in general. What I had seen in Vietnam had amounted to a debacle. However I had spent my career out in the field. I couldn't resist the opportunity to see for myself how these operations worked from the level of the National Security Council. I truly hoped I would find that they were better reasoned and managed than they had seemed. I quickly abandoned this forlorn soldier's dream Throughout the fall of 1975, arms were jammed into Angola, mercenaries were hired, battles were fought, and several thousand people were killed and wounded. The United States actively discouraged United Nations and other formal efforts to mediate. Our budget eventually totalled $31.7 million, a good part of which was siphoned off into corruption. We encouraged South African forces to support our Good Guys, while Cuban soldiers joined the MPLA Baddies. By winter, the program was thoroughly exposed and the Congress mercifully passed the Tunney Amendment to the FY 76 Defense Appropriation Bill that ordered our operation closed down. In the field, our forces had been routed and the MPLA effectively controlled all of the provinces. We had given Jonas Savimbi the wherewithal to keep the Benguela Railroad closed, which was our client-state Zaire's only economically viable egress to the sea for its copper. We had lied to nearly everyone, lies that were quickly exposed. Some of those lies to the U.S. Congress, covering up what we had done, amounted to perjury and could have been prosecuted as such. We had allied the United States with South Africa in military activities, which was illegal and impolitic. We had delivered white mercenaries into Angola to kill blacks as a technique of imposing our policies on that black African country. 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