10 Shocking Cia Operations

10 Shocking CIA Operations 10. Operation Mockingbird During the Cold War, the CIA manipulated the media industry into spreading anti-Communist propaganda. The organization took control of leading publications such as Time, CBS, and the New York Times. They also bribed journalists who fabricated stories to skew public opinion in their favor. It was eventually revealed that the CIA had contracted over 3,000 reporters, costing the taxpayer over $235m a year, until 1976. That was the year CIA Director George H W Bush finally announced that the CIA would withdraw all contract relationships with news correspondents. Source: New York Times 9. Sex Tape In the lead up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the CIA drew up plans to shoot and release a fake video of Saddam Hussein. The video was intended to be a *** tape, featuring an actor playing Saddam Hussein having sex with a teenage boy. It was due to be filmed with a hidden camera to deceive viewers into believing that it was authentic, in the hope that they would withdraw their support for the Iraqi President, making the invasion easier for the US. The video was never shot, however, as senior CIA officials rejected the plans. Source: The Guardian 8. Operation Chaos For 15 years from 1959, the CIA illegally spied on American college students who they believed had adopted left-wing ideas. CIA agents would go undercover as radical students and fraternize with members of student organizations. In total, the domestic surveillance program spied on over 7,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations. The Black Panther Party, an African American revolutionary socialist party, was specifically targeted. By the time the program came to light in the 1970s, the CIA had conducted thousands of arrests, made hundreds of imprisonments on false charges, and assassinated dozens of Black Panther Members. Source: Global Research 7. Operation Acoustic Kitty In the 1960s the CIA spent over $20 million creating spy cats to try and gain intelligence into Kremlin and Soviet embassies. The CIA surgically implanted microphones into the cats’ ears, radio transmitters into the base of their skulls, and antennae into their tails. They were then trained to linger near enemy figures so that the CIA could eavesdrop on conversations. Cats are particularly difficult to train, however, and the first spy cat to be released was run over by a taxi before obtaining any information. Subsequently Operation Acoustic Kitty was canceled. Source: The Telegraph 6. Operation Mongoose Under President John F. Kennedy’s ruling, the CIA attempted to overthrow Cuba’s communist government and assassinate its Prime Minister, Fidel Castro. Attempts included putting tuberculosis into Castro’s scuba diving gear, planting exploding seashells at his diving sites, and giving him cigars that exploded when lit. The CIA even employed Marita Lorenz, Castro’s former lover, to assist with the mission. She subsequently smuggled a jar of cold cream containing poison pills into his room. It has been reported that over 600 assassination attempts were made, but none were successful. Sources: Perilous Options: Special Operations as an Instrument of US Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press 5. Operation Merlin A CIA operation in the year 2000 not only failed, but also completely backfired. Operation Merlin provided fake nuclear weapon blueprints to the Iranians to try to trick them into building something useless. To make the plans somewhat convincing, the CIA had to include some real data in the blueprints. However, a Russian defector spotted the mistakes and informed the Iranians, who were then able to ignore the mistakes and mine the plans for information. Instead of stalling their weapons program, the CIA had provided a wealth of free information to the Iranians on nuclear weaponry. Sources: The Guardian 4. Operation Northwoods During the 1960s, the CIA planned a series of terrorist attacks on their own citizens. The plan was to kill innocent US civilians, but blame Cuba, in the hope that the national media’s coverage of the attacks would improve public support for the war against Cuba. The plans were rejected by JFK, but drafted and signed by the senior leaders of the US Defense Department. It was not until 1997, when documents relating to the assassination of JFK were released, that the terror plans were revealed. Sources: ABC News In the 1950s, the CIA launched their MKULTRA project, which aimed to conduct harrowing mind control experiments. One of their programs, Project Artichoke, researched the psychological effects on test subjects who were hypnotized and drugged. Vulnerable American patients were kept on dangerous doses of LSD for 77 days straight. This repeatedly left them in trances after hypnosis techniques and caused amnesia. It was not until the mid 1980s that the illegal experiments were revealed. But many records were destroyed and so the full scale of the experiments remains a mystery. Source: National Security Archive 2. Fake Vaccinations In 2011 the CIA set up a fake vaccination program in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in an attempt to track down Osama Bin Laden. Dr. Shakil Afridi took blood samples of thousands of children, pretending that he was vaccinating them for hepatitis B. The blood was then used to uncover any relatives of Bin Laden. Days after the death of Bin Laden in his compound in Abbottabad, Afridi was arrested for working with US spy agencies and sentenced to 33 years in prison. Source: The Guardian 1. Phoenix Program During the Vietnam War, the CIA approved a mission to question and assassinate thousands of civilians. Methods involved using electrocutions, beatings, gang rapes, and using police dogs to maul captives. Some CIA officials inserted pieces of wood into victims’ ears and hammered until the wood pushed into their brains. The program left over 41,000 civilians dead. American labor activist Ed Murphy revealed the atrocity in 1970 and the program was shut down after public outcry. However, an almost identical program under the code name F6 was quietly phased in as a replacement. Source: Responsible Governance: A Case Study Approach: A Case Study Approach By Steven G. Koven