By Beauty Damned

History Repeats Itself

I had been designated as the task-force commander that would run this secret war [in Angola in 1975 and 1976].... and what I figured out was that in this job, I would sit on a sub-committee of the National Security Council, this office that Larry Devlin has told me about where they had access to all the information about Angola, about the whole world, and I would finally understand national security. And I couldn't resist the opportunity to know. I knew the CIA was not a worthwhile organization, I had learned that the hard way. But the question was where did the U.S. government fit into this thing, and I had a chance to see for myself in the next big secret war....

I wanted to know if wise men were making difficult decisions based on truly important, threatening information, threatening to our national security interests. If that had been the case, I still planned to get out of the CIA, but I would know that the system, the invisible government, our national security complex, was in fact justified and worth while. And so I took the job.... Suffice it to say I wouldn't be standing in front of you tonight if I had found these wise men making these tough decisions. What I found, quite frankly, was fat old men sleeping through sub-committee meetings of the NSC in which we were making decisions that were killing people in Africa. - John Stockwell

I did a search on the internet today to see if any of John Stockwell's writings would turn up. Some may remember that John Stockwell was a very high ranking CIA official who went public during the Reagan years with his knowledge of the CIA's covert operations and secret wars (i.e. things you could never and would never want to imagine our government doing). A brilliantly honest and comprehensible speaker and writer, his book "The Praetorian Guard" was my introduction to the innerworkings of our government and the CIA. While I was home schooled in the 8th grade, I became very interested in that subject and many others and I had already become a voracious reader. When I read that book, I was struck by the most amazing feeling. I understood what it meant to have knowledge. To be informed about something that really mattered. In all my years in public school, I had never had such a feeling. I realized that the key to knowledge was not sitting in a classroom and listening to a teacher provide you with the information that they felt was pertinent to your growth or development. Knowledge is reading.

Because of the issues that we are facing in our world today, with the "war on terror," wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, grappling with the responsibility of the press and whether or not they are even provided the information necessary to give us a clear picture of what is going on, whether they would want to provide the American people with that information even if they had it, fighting amongst ourselves about the true intentions of our government, John Stockwell's writings and lectures once again become incredibly relevant.

In order to identify and foresee the problems that we face and the future that we are creating, it is imperative that we look at the past and not forget what has been done. Forgetting our history would be our most fatal mistake.

I remember directly after 9/11, when I was still awash in angst and gut wrenching trauma, my mother brought forth her knowledge and tried to explain to me the reasons that this was happening. My mother is a very smart, highly educated woman. And nothing lights her fire like talking about the CIA and the wrongdoings of our government. Some of my most vivid childhood memories are of my parents raving about the Iran Contra scandal and other various issues of the day. But when she spoke to me after 9/11, I was blinded by rage and emotion. I tuned her out. I didn't listen. Nothing she could say would make me believe at that moment that those attacks were justified by anything that the United States has ever done to anyone else nor that they were orchestrated by a branch of the United States government itself.

But when my emotions cleared, and sound logic returned, and the truth began to emerge before my eyes, I realized, it is very, very important that we look at the role that our government has played in the world for the past fifty years and logically connect the dots. Get rid of indignance, get rid of pride, arrogance, anger, blind patriotism. Examine history, and let that speak its own self evident truth.

A good start is to read. John Stockwell is such an easy read. Because he was there, and he tells his stories and conveys his knowledge from the standpoint of a person who lived it, there is no confusion, no intricacies that are difficult to comprehend. The only thing difficult to comprehend in his writings, is how on earth it is possible that our government could be so fucking evil. The scary thing is, he gave this lecture in 1987 and it is all still relevant today and in the context of our current foreign and domestic policy. And if you don't believe me, get reading.

THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA:
THE INNER WORKINGS OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL AND THE CIA'S COVERT ACTIONS IN ANGOLA, CENTRAL AMERICA AND VIETNAM
by John Stockwell
a lecture given in October, 1987

Part I

Part II

Posted by Maria at November 9, 2004 07:27 PM | TrackBack