The CIA Holocaust

When the party's over, anyone seriously concerned with the issues of terrorism and mass murder (indeed anyone serious) will know that Osama bin Laden and his fanatics are mere pikers in comparison with his killers, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

But don't just take my word for it. Listen to what 14 ex-CIA officials had to say back in 1987 about the agency's then 40-year killing spree. The truly staggering and deeply resonant figure they advance (see below) beggars belief. Factor in the agency's death-dealing in the 24-year period since 1987, the extent of which I am not privy, and the mind, as they say, boggles.

My reference to the assessment of these former CIA officials comes from a polemic by Washington Post journalist (and peace activist) Colman McCarthy published in The Guardian Weekly of December 20, 1987:

"Philip Roettinger is an old boy enrolling in a new school. Tall, straight-backed, and well-spoken, Roettinger, 72, is an alumnus of the CIA. Among other inglorious deeds in the spying trade, he was part of the 1954 successful effort to overthrow left-leaning Guatemalen President Jacobo Arbenz... Roettinger, ex-CIA case officer and former Marine colonel, is now president of the newly formed Association for Responsible Dissent (ARDIS). Some of that dissenting was heard recently when Roettinger and 13 other former CIA officials - from undercover agents to counterintelligence specialists - announced the purpose of their group: 'We are going to try to expose covert action. We're going to try to get it legally banned because we can find no reason, no justification, for covert action on the part of the American people'.

"The group spoke of the congressional and public records being 'replete with accounts of US covert operations that killed, wounded and terrorized millions of people whose countries were not at war with the United States nor possessed the capabilities to do remarkable physical hurt to the United States, who themselves bore the United States no ill will nor cared greatly about the issues of 'communism' or 'capitalism'. With the group estimating that 'at least 6 million people have died as a consequence of US covert operations since World War II', one question rushes in from the cold. With 6 million dead, why not go beyond the banning of only covert actions to abolishing the CIA altogether?" (Excesses of the CIA)

Indeed!