The USA has 14 so-called "intelligence services". How "intelligent" are they, what "services" do they perform for whom? Who decides what they get up to? Who even knows? If killing is wrong, is it any less so if done for money behind pretenses of 'national secrecy'? What about helping pay for such acts, for example, by paying taxes? This week, a radio adaptation of Scott Noble's latest film uncovers more of the dark secrets of the security state, from the destabilization of the 1975 Australian government to the Nugan Hand Bank and the organization of global drug trafficking.
This week we hear a radio adaptation of parts 1 and 2 of Scott Noble's latest film, Counter Intelligence. This fast moving film uses a mixture of classic footage of events and news reports with historians and contemporary commentary to reveal a very different side to the activities of the so-called "intelligence agencies" to the stock fare dished up by their a$$et$ in the commercially-controlled media.
We begin with an overview of the origins of the CIA. While their destabilization of so-called "developing world" governments such as Iran, Guatemala and Chile are now widely known, the films notes that the CIA's criminal activities did not stop there. They also worked to manipulate governments of countries traditionally allied to USA. We hear about CIA involvement in provoking the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, the Nugan Hand bank scandal and a pointer to the BBC film on the plot against UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
Part 2 of the film, which we start in our second hour, notes the intimate connections between organized crime and the security services, starting with the WW2 secret deal struck by the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) and Lucky Luciano, considered the father of modern organized crime in the USA. As Peter Dale Scott notes, it is hard to locate a single area of the world in which the international drug trade isn't closely connected to support from intelligence agencies. Scott terms it a "real tragedy" that perhaps half of all US aid given to the Afghan resistance in the 1980s was given to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, at the time the world's largest drug trafficker. Looking at evidence of CIA involvement in Afghanistan the film reviews the developing relationship between organized crime syndicates, international drug dealers and agencies such as the CIA and DEA, drawing a bigger picture together from news reports of the isolated incidents which broke the public surface such as the role of drug money in the BCCI scandal, mass killings in Colombia and the repeated evidence of drug smuggling by the CIA.
We begin with an overview of the origins of the CIA. While their destabilization of so-called "developing world" governments such as Iran, Guatemala and Chile are now widely known, the films notes that the CIA's criminal activities did not stop there. They also worked to manipulate governments of countries traditionally allied to USA. We hear about CIA involvement in provoking the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, the Nugan Hand bank scandal and a pointer to the BBC film on the plot against UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
Part 2 of the film, which we start in our second hour, notes the intimate connections between organized crime and the security services, starting with the WW2 secret deal struck by the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) and Lucky Luciano, considered the father of modern organized crime in the USA. As Peter Dale Scott notes, it is hard to locate a single area of the world in which the international drug trade isn't closely connected to support from intelligence agencies. Scott terms it a "real tragedy" that perhaps half of all US aid given to the Afghan resistance in the 1980s was given to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, at the time the world's largest drug trafficker. Looking at evidence of CIA involvement in Afghanistan the film reviews the developing relationship between organized crime syndicates, international drug dealers and agencies such as the CIA and DEA, drawing a bigger picture together from news reports of the isolated incidents which broke the public surface such as the role of drug money in the BCCI scandal, mass killings in Colombia and the repeated evidence of drug smuggling by the CIA.
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