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Kiriakou says everything changed after 9/11. I agree. Perhaps we should focus on the unanswered questions around the WTC destruction and not accept the usual explanation that sent us down the road of Iraq and Afghanistan, torture, renditions, black sites and so on.

If we had jumped on the remarkable demolition of Building #7 and asked how did this happen? How was this possible? We could begin to assign different causes to that disaster instead of blindly following willful ignorance artfully composed.

That means you Mr.Hedges, along with Chalmers Johnson and Chomsky. Good people who I feel let us down in this crucially important area.

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There is so much wrong with cia devotee Kiriakou's argument it appears difficult to know where to begin, yet it isn't difficult it is in fact easy, start at the foundation argument 'Why have a CIA' ?

Kiriakou argues that other amerikan agencies do it better, they are more efficient and efficacious etc. Telling the world that the cia gets it wrong and needs improvement doesn't get to the heart of anything really.

The real issue of 'we don't need a cia' must always be 'WTF is any government in the 21st century doing advancing the cause of imperialism?" Whatever other nations choose to do domestically should be no business of anyone other than that nation's citizens. Surely if some fascist administration somewhere is doing terrible things to some of its citizens, the only credible opponents to that can come from those nations who are known not to interfere in other nations politics and/or economics.

In fact that is where Kiriakou's support of Cigar Bill Clinton shows Kiriakou's clay feet. Clinton didn't oppose the cia because he was opposed to imperialism per se, he opposed cia practices because he saw them as old-fashioned, that it was no longer necessary to militarily impose control of another nation, because the 'new way' of imperialism was to control other nations economically by owning their elites via the world bank & imf, both puppets of amerika, rather than trying to bring nations in line with crude military methods.

Of course Clinton was being just as short-sighted; economic control also has limitations - see Saudi involvement in 911, Saudi Arabia's vast wealth and amerika's dependence upon that wealth means it isn't subject to simple economic string pulling.

When will these arsehole tools of amerika's oligarchs finally realise that imperialism is the real villain, all imperialism ever achieves is the same repression at home that the imperialist occupier claims to be fighting abroad?

The ludicrous situation where those humans elected to represent amerikan citizens tasked with overseeing the cia are controlled by way of "security clearances" says it all. I realise that those subjected to amerikan imperialist indoctrination will struggle to agree with this but any person elected to Congress/ the Senate must automatically have the right to see any document produced by any amerikan government institution, regardless of that institution's allegations, that something less than that is the antithesis of democracy.

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Chris, you don’t buy that the CIA was involved in the JFK assassination? Really? If true, then please indulge me with the following.

Read “JFK and The Unspeakable” by James Douglass and “Mary’s Mosaic” by Peter Janney. If you still hold to the view that the CIA was not involved, please point out the flaws in the arguments of these books.

As much as it clashes against the the mid century American liberal breast, that was a coup and the CIA was behind it.

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I would add to the list the FBI, the DIA, DARPA, the NSA, the NRO, the IRS and the Federal Reserve as all have violated their mission of supporting the US Constitution, and have dehumanized the world and consequently HAVE LOST THEIR INTEGRITY, MISSION AND CREDIBILITY. Used by the Deep State now for fulfilling its AGENDA to establish a WORLD GOVERNMENT, which is contrary to principles of Sovereignty inherent in every nation. These agencies destabilize govt's and commit crimes against humanity.

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The CIA is a criminal organization by any human rights standards. As with our military and most foreign policy operations, including border control. Same is true for most superpowers if they believe outside forces, are a threat. Which US policy has certainly created and exacerbated with GWOT. The real issues the dysfunctional system of global governance that puts the protection of National sovereignty above the protection of human rights and the environment. Even if the US eliminated the CIA, DOD, DHS...and USAID... the global forces of pandemics, climate change, war, genocide, species extinctions, violent extremism, white supremacy, and international crime cartels (cyber, drugs, human trafficking) would continue. And with this - government costs and increased domestic chaos...will accelerate... increasingly threatening our freedoms and security (and prosperity/sustainability). The CIA is just a consequence of this fundamental dysfunctional system of unjust and unenforceable 'international law'. Since the world's governments are not going to allow a world federation where the protection of human rights and the environment is superior to the protection of governments and corprorations....don't expect anything to get better. Albert Einstein and many other people in power (Kennedy!) recognized all of this over 70 years ago.

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There is a good point made by Bushrod Lake. Very few people remember that Rumsfeld and Cheney were both young Republicans in the Nixon White House. The Senate Republicans rewrote the U.S. Civil Code and tried to push it through Congress as Nixon was fighting off Watergate investigators in the form of Senate Bill 1, a 750 page legislative document that Sen. Sam Ervin said would turn the country into a police state overnight. The neo-consewrvatives did not rest after Ford was defeated by Carter. The Grand Rapids Press printed a short article on the front page, lower right corner the first Monday of January after Reagan won the Presidential election in 1980, reporting that the Republiucans had re-introduced Senate Bill 1. As it turned out, too many people were aware of what it would do to the nation and it failed to be passed. Interestingly, it finally past easily, after 9/11, and it was dressed up as the Patriot Act. All the lies told during the Bush/Cheney administration, yet everyone accepts the fabrications of the 9/11 Commission. Like the Warren Commission Report, it has never served the public interest of revealing the facts of what happened that day.

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good interview - small correction, they don't speak arabic in Afghanistan, so as far as the case for analysis goes, sending an arabic speaker there wouldn't make a lot of sense. Some mujahadeen spoke the language but the Taliban don't and almost no one in Afg.

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An excellent analysis of the dysfunctions of the CIA. It should be limited to legal, ethical intelligence gathering and banned from paramilitary activities. The current activities of the CIA shows that the US will go to any extreme to control the world.

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Regarding the victims of MK-ULTRA, "they" had a name - Frank Olsen - and all the evidence points to him being pushed from said window. This is obvious to anyone with knowledge of the chemicals they were so recklessly "experimenting" with, that there are zero credible sources showing that anyone ever thought they could fly or committed suicide on LSD, psilocybin, or mescaline.

https://kylebronsdon.com/albums/a-model-psychosis/a-snake-under-every-stone/

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Aug 15, 2022·edited Aug 16, 2022

Great interview. but the remark about Clinton floored me. It's not as if Kiriakou isn't aware that the specialty of the CIA is to feed information and engage in other activities that allow governments to do their dirty work for them while hiding their role. For example, Clinton was happily supplying Turkey with loans to buy weapons, the weapons themselves, and information and support that the Turkish security forces needed to commit atrocities against Kurdish "terrorists." I'm sure the former residents of the 3,000 Kurdish villages destroyed by Turkey appreciated Clinton's concerns for human rights. I realize that we owe a debt of gratitude to John Kiriakou for blowing the whistle on torture and, in this instance, he was speaking specifically about Clinton's success at weeding out human rights abusers in the ranks of the CIA so, perhaps, this is an unfair criticism. Still, I wish he had not given Clinton a pass.

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Why does Mr. Kiriakou claim speaking Arabic qualified him to CIA service as a linguist in Afghanistan where the dominate language is Pashto?

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“Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....” Jen Easterly. Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency director [CISA is our nation’s newest federal agency established in 2018].

Hopefully, Ms. Easterly understands that our environment is our most vital infrastructure! And human security everywhere is inherently and irreversibly connected to it.

Security is an illusion. And unless we are responsible and virtuous with our freedoms, Americans and the rest of humanity will continue to lose both.

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Perhaps a small typo correction in your subtitle, rogue instead of rouge.

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Thank you yet again.

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"The CIA has evolved into a rouge"

I say this with love... it's rogue.

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Thanks. Illuminating to see things from the insider's perspective, especially one with principles I largely share. Not sure how far JK would go to question the ground premises of ANY kind of intelligence gathering and its analysis: what are both in the name of--what concepts, what ideas? Does the driving motive remain US national interests? Smaller point: why is it the US senator who fears for his security clearance or the red-haired CIA woman are not named? Maybe there's a reason, but it would help to clarify things if that reason for maintaining a smoke screen were given.

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