After the CIA first set up detention centers at black sites overseas, the agent overseeing the program bluntly explained the logic of holding interrogations outside U.S. territory in an internal memorandum: doing so would allow the agency to conduct “certain activities which were not permitted by the United States government.”
The agent’s language is striking not only for its bluntness, but also for its assumption that moving offshore legitimized its behavior. Even more striking is the agent’s choice of words, which implied that the CIA existed somehow outside of “the United States government” and was empowered to operate outside its purview. But today, what is perhaps most striking about the memo is that it was written in 1951.
Its author was Allen Welsh Dulles, who became the CIA’s director two years after he wrote his memo on “Interrogation Techniques,” in which he went on to discuss “the possibilities of augmenting the usual interrogation methods by the use of drugs, hypnosis, shock, etc…” The ellipses are his; Dulles was an elliptical man and he is the titular devil in David Talbot’s new book, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government.…
"A few bad apples" — at the very top. The story of constructing "he state within the state," "deep state," or "shadow government." I would call it "the rogue state." There seems to be little question who is really in charge.
Allen Dulles and the Cold War Within the National Security State
Joseph Fronczak
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