The US Empire, the CIA, and the NGOs — Ludwig Watzal interviews F. William Engdahl

Disclaimer: F. William Engdahl is a controversial figure and this implies that his documentation should be scrutinized carefully, which I have not done in the case of his latest book on which he is reporting herein. But the outline he provides abut the establishment of NGOs for covert operations is corroborated by many others.

Ludwig Watzal: After WW II, hardly any coup d’état or organized uprising happened without the helping hand of the CIA. As I understood your book, in the last 25 years, the CIA got quite a few so-called little helpers in the form of NGOs. Please, could you elaborate on that?

William Engdahl: During the Reagan Presidency very damaging scandals were becoming public about CIA dirty operations around the world. Chile, Iran, Guatemala, the top secret MK-Ultra project, the student movement during the Vietnam War to name just a few. To take the spotlight away from them, CIA Director Bill Casey proposed to Reagan creating a “private” NGO, a kind of cut-out that would pose as private, but in reality, as one of its founders the late Allen Weinstein said in a later interview to the Washington Post, “doing what the CIA did, but privately.” This was the creation of the NGO named National Endowment for Democracy in 1983. Soon other Washington-steered NGOs were added like the Freedom House or the Soros Open Society Foundations, the United States Institute of Peace and so forth….

Of course, not all NGOs are doing the work of the CIA. I focus on the ones with a hidden political agenda, who, as I describe in the book, have weaponized human rights and the word democracy for devious ends....

LW: If you could give the NGOs a piece of advice, what would you tell them?

WE: For the honest persons who may have got caught up in nice rhetoric about values, human rights and such, I would suggest looking more closely at the money trail feeding your given NGO.

Russia and China have banned US NGOs as subversive, which the US claims is suppression of free expression.

NGOs have a legitimate aid and humanitarian purpose. When that purpose is used as a cover for intelligence and covert operations, the entire spectrum of NGOs suffers as a cloud of suspicion envelopes all of them and the good are banned along with the bad. Then it becomes a failed policy and also erodes American soft power.

Dissident Voice
The US Empire, the CIA, and the NGOs
Ludwig Watzal interviews F. William Engdahl

The US has also promoted "human rights activists" and "democracy activists" like the recently deceased Liu Xiaobo.

Liu’s admirers seldom discuss at length their hero’s other major views. Among other things, he supported the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. He backed the Vietnam and Korean wars even long after they ended, in a 2001 essay. Despite the immeasurable human-rights abuses of those conflicts, Liu stated in his “Lessons from the Cold War” that “the free world led by the US fought almost all regimes that trampled on human rights.” He insisted: “The major wars that the US became involved in are all ethically defensible.” Liu Xiaobo also admired Israel’s positions in the Middle East’s, saying the Palestinians were “often the provocateurs.”

Worse, to Chinese sensibilities, was perhaps his advocacy of all-out Westernization for China. He told an interviewer in 1988 that “to choose Westernization is to choose to be human.” Reported Britain’s Guardian newspaper: “He also faulted a television documentary, He Shang, or River Elegy, for not thoroughly criticizing Chinese culture and not advocating Westernization enthusiastically enough: ‘If I were to make this I would show just how wimpy, spineless and fucked-up [weisuo, ruanruo, caodan] the Chinese really are’. Liu considered it most unfortunate that his monolingualism bound him in a dialogue with something ‘very benighted [yumei] and philistine [yongsu],’ the Chinese cultural sphere … In a well-known statement of 1988, Liu said: ‘It took Hong Kong 100 years to become what it is. Given the size of China, certainly it would need 300 years of colonization for it to become like what Hong Kong is today. I even doubt whether 300 years would be enough’.”

Counterpunch
Liu Xiaobo: the West’s Model Chinese

Jon Schwarz — A New Biography Traces the Pathology of Allen Dulles and His Appalling Cabal

Meet the architect of the American deep state and the American empire. And, of course, he was not alone. His brother just happened to be US secretary of state, for example. Nor was the US alone, either. Gripping story of international intrigue in which people like Allen Dulles were the movers rather than James Bond.

As Talbot points out, Dulles stated his worldview publicly and explicitly in 1938 during his only run for political office: “Democracy only works if the so-called intelligent people make it work. You can’t sit back and let democracy run itself.” Unsurprisingly, homilies like this did not carry him to victory. But so what? He went on to wield far greater power than most elected officials ever have. And while Dulles is the star of The Devil’s Chessboard, he’s surrounded by an enormous supporting cast...

Yes, there is an amorphous group of unelected corporate lawyers, bankers, and intelligence and military officials who form an American “deep state,” setting real limits on the rare politicians who ever try to get out of line. They do collaborate with and nurture their deep state counterparts in other countries, to whom they feel far more loyalty than their fellow citizens. The minions of the deep state hate and fear even the mildest moves towards democracy, and fight against it by any means available to them. 

They’re not all-powerful and don’t get exactly what they want, but on the issues that matter most they almost always win in the end. And while all this is mostly right there in the open, discernible by anyone who’s curious and has a library card, if you don’t go looking you will never hear a single word about it.

Our ghouls versus their monsters.

The Intercept
A New Biography Traces the Pathology of Allen Dulles and His Appalling Cabal

Jon Schwarz

See also

Salon
“Every president has been manipulated by national security officials”: David Talbot exposes America’s “deep state”

Liam O'donoghue

Robert Parry — How Reagan’s Propaganda Succeeded

From the Archive: The U.S. political/media system is awash in propaganda drowning any rational debate about crucial foreign policy issues. But how did that happen? A key turning point was the Reagan administration’s pushback against public skepticism over Vietnam and CIA scandals of the 1970s, Robert Parry wrote in 2010.

Parry wrote:

In the 1980s, CIA propaganda experts and military psy-war specialists oversaw the creation of special programs aimed at managing public perceptions in both targeted foreign countries and the United States, according to declassified documents at Ronald Reagan’s Presidential Library.

These documents – discovered in 2010 – buttress previously disclosed evidence that President Reagan’s CIA Director William J. Casey played a key behind-the-scenes role in pushing this political action initiative, which recruited well-heeled private-sector conservatives to subsidize the secretive government operations.

CIA Director William Casey.

The documents show that Casey used a senior CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist named Walter Raymond Jr., who was placed inside the National Security Council in 1982, to oversee the project and to circumvent legal prohibitions against the CIA engaging in propaganda that might influence U.S. public opinion or politics.

Though Raymond formally quit the CIA after going to the NSC, documents from Raymond’s personal NSC files reveal that he often passed on recommendations regarding the propaganda initiative after meetings at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or after conversations with Casey himself.

In one Nov. 4, 1982, “secret” memo, Raymond described Casey reaching out to right-wing mogul Richard Mellon Scaife, who was already working with other conservative foundation executives to fund right-wing publications, think tanks and activist groups seeking to shift U.S. politics to the Right.

Raymond told then NSC advisor William P. Clark that “Bill Casey asked me to pass on the following thought concerning your [scheduled] meeting with Dick Scaife, Dave Abshire [then a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board], and Co.
“Casey had lunch with them today and discussed the need to get moving in the general area of supporting our friends around the world.”

Besides a desire to “invigorate international media programs,” Casey wanted to help U.S.-based organizations, such as Freedom House, that could influence American attitudes about foreign challenges, Raymond said.

“The DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] is also concerned about strengthening public information organizations in the United States such as Freedom House,” Raymond told Clark. “To do this we have identified three overt tracks:

“–enhanced federal funding;

“–the Democracy Project study (although publicly funded this will be independently managed);

“–private funds.”

“A critical piece of the puzzle is a serious effort to raise private funds to generate momentum. Casey’s talk with Scaife and Co. suggests they would be very willing to cooperate.”

(In the following years, Freedom House emerged as a major recipient of funding from the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy, which was founded in 1983....)

Broadening the deep state created in the Truman administration. This would be combined with the Brzezinski doctrine land down in the Carter administration for achieving US global hegemony under neoliberalism. Global history since then is the story of the unfolding of the globalization project and the creation of the American Empire.

Citizens United affirmed the principle of oligarchic democracy advocated by first chief justice of the US Supreme Court John Jay: "Those who own the country should govern the country." This was the basis for the republic. Now the republic is maturing into an empire under the guise of liberal democracy.

In the 1980s, CIA propaganda experts and military psy-war specialists oversaw the creation of special programs aimed at managing public perceptions in both targeted foreign countries and the United States, according to declassified documents at Ronald Reagan’s Presidential Library....

Any wonder why Russia and india have passed laws regulating the activities of NGOs? If you are still wondering or don't agree, you probably haven't read the full article.

I am of the view that left to itself, liberalism is a strong enough force to do its own work. However, the leaders of the US decided that this was not fast enough for them and, moreover, they did not actually want liberalism but rather oligarchy. The result has been overreach that is undermining the liberal project and setting it back. And after reading this, anyone believing anything coming out of the US government or the corporate media is a fool. But most people are unaware of it and are being fooled.

Indeed, the evidence suggests that the Casey-Raymond media operations of the 1980s helped bring the Washington press corps to its knees, where it has remained most of the time through today. 

To soften up the Washington press corps, Reich’s S/LPD targeted U.S. journalists who reported information that undermined the administration’s propaganda themes. Reich sent his teams out to lobby news executives to remove or punish out-of-step reporters – with a disturbing degree of success.

And, of course, this is part of the "intelligence" that is being presented to Congress. It's operations masquerading as intelligence. This actually accounts for the "intelligence failures" of the CIA. They weren't intelligence failures at all, they were very success operations that "went bad" in CIA jargon.

Here's an added bonus of Orwellian double-speak.

Bureaucratic deception was also part of the secret operations inside the NSC. In the mid-1980s, I was told by one senior NSC official that a key early document laying the groundwork for raising money for the contra war in defiance of a congressional prohibition was marked as a “non-paper,” so it would not be regarded as an official document (even though it clearly was). 

Similarly, Raymond sent one Nov. 28, 1986, memo to an unnamed CIA officer reminding him to attend what Raymond called “the next non-group meeting.” So it appears that Reagan’s NSC sought to get around requirements for safeguarding historical records by circulating “non-papers” and meeting in “non-groups.”

You have to admire their creativity anyway.

The kicker:

That meant, however, that the American people never got to read the chapter’s stunning conclusion: that the Reagan administration had built a domestic covert propaganda apparatus managed by a CIA disinformation specialist working out of the National Security Council.

“One of the CIA’s most senior covert action operators was sent to the NSC in 1983 by CIA Director [William] Casey where he participated in the creation of an inter-agency public diplomacy mechanism that included the use of seasoned intelligence specialists,” the chapter’s conclusion stated.

“This public/private network set out to accomplish what a covert CIA operation in a foreign country might attempt – to sway the media, the Congress, and American public opinion in the direction of the Reagan administration’s policies.”

Consortium News
How Reagan’s Propaganda Succeeded

Robert Parry

See also

Denied crucial information about Syria, the American people are being led toward the precipice of another Middle East war, guided by neocons and liberal hawks who are set on “regime change” even if that means a likely victory for Sunni terrorists, writes Robert Parry.

Robert Parry, Sleepwalking to Another Mideast Disaster