Spying, information warfare, and deception are as old as human civilization. Such activities can take place on every level, from personal relations to international geopolitics.

However, organized intelligence, utilizing modern technology and operating in a supposedly “democratic” society is something that we should be highly skeptical of. The history of the US intelligence community is full of repressive, illegal, anti-democratic, even fascistic, policies and actions.

The CIA is perhaps the most infamous of all intelligence agencies ever to exist. It has overseen the reshaping of our world through information manipulation and covert operations. You can trace the hand of the CIA in the assassinations of progressive US leaders of the 60s and in the overthrow of democratically elected governments throughout the world.

The CIA has acted as a tool of the status quo and the ruling classes and corporations. Leaders who have challenged these interests and stood up for equality and fairnesss (both in the US and abroad) have come to know the sinister and far-reaching power of the CIA.

The CIA has been linked to drug trafficking and organized crime. Between roughly 1948 to 1958, the CIA program Operation Ohio was responsible for a hundred assassinations in Europe. 1

The Church Committee (Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) reports, published in 1975-6, reveal widespread abuse of power, illegal activity, suppression of dissent, and assassinations by the CIA.

According to the official Intelligence Community website, “The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has all-source analytical capabilities that cover the whole world outside US borders. It produces a range of studies that cover virtually any topic of interest to national security policymakers. CIA also collects intelligence with human sources and, on occasion, undertakes covert actions at the direction of the President. (A covert action is an activity or activities of the US Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the US role will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.)” 2

Israel’s Mossad’s motto was, until recently, “By way of deception thou shalt make war.”

The National Intelligence Director, a new position created in the wake of 9/11, is John Negroponte. As ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, Negroponte was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra affair and has been linked to human rights abuses, death squads and torture.