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Commentary
Paranoid
shift
By Michael Hasty
Online Journal Contributing Writer
January 10, 2004—Just before his death, James Jesus
Angleton, the legendary chief of counterintelligence at the
Central Intelligence Agency, was a bitter man. He felt
betrayed by the people he had worked for all his life. In the
end, he had come to realize that they were never really
interested in American ideals of "freedom" and "democracy."
They really only wanted "absolute power."
Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he
had gotten the counterintelligence job in the first place was
by agreeing not to submit "sixty of Allen Dulles' closest
friends" to a polygraph test concerning their business deals
with the Nazis. In his end-of-life despair, Angleton assumed
that he would see all his old companions again "in
hell."
The
transformation of James Jesus Angleton from an enthusiastic,
Ivy League cold warrior, to a bitter old man, is an extreme
example of a phenomenon I call a "paranoid shift." I recognize
the phenomenon, because something similar happened to
me.
Although I don't remember ever meeting James Jesus
Angleton, I worked at the CIA myself as a low-level clerk as a
teenager in the '60s. This was at the same time I was
beginning to question the government's actions in Vietnam. In
fact, my personal "paranoid shift" probably began with the
disillusionment I felt when I realized that the story of
American foreign policy was, at the very least, more
complicated and darker than I had hitherto been led to
believe.
But
for most of the next 30 years, even though I was a radical, I
nevertheless held faith in the basic integrity of a system
where power ultimately resided in the people, and whereby if
enough people got together and voted, real and fundamental
change could happen.
What
constitutes my personal paranoid shift is that I no longer
believe this to be necessarily true.
In
his book, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only
Superpower," William Blum warns of how the media will make
anything that smacks of "conspiracy theory" an immediate
"object of ridicule." This prevents the media from ever having
to investigate the many strange interconnections among the
ruling class—for example, the relationship between the boards
of directors of media giants, and the energy, banking and
defense industries. These unmentionable topics are usually
treated with what Blum calls "the media's most effective
tool—silence." But in case somebody's asking questions, all
you have to do is say, "conspiracy theory," and any allegation
instantly becomes too frivolous to merit serious
attention.
On
the other hand, since my paranoid shift, whenever I hear the
words "conspiracy theory" (which seems more often, lately) it
usually means someone is getting too close to the
truth.
Take
September 11—which I identify as the date my paranoia actually
shifted, though I didn't know it at the time.
Unless I'm paranoid, it doesn't make any sense at all
that George W. Bush, commander-in-chief, sat in a second-grade
classroom for 20 minutes after he was informed that a second
plane had hit the World Trade Center, listening to children
read a story about a goat. Nor does it make sense that the
Number 2 man, Dick Cheney—even knowing that "the commander"
was on a mission in Florida—nevertheless sat at his desk in
the White House, watching TV, until the Secret Service dragged
him out by the armpits.
Unless I'm paranoid, it makes no sense that Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sat at his desk until Flight 77 hit
the Pentagon—well over an hour after the military had learned
about the multiple hijacking in progress. It also makes no
sense that the brand-new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
sat in a Senate office for two hours while the 9/11 attacks
took place, after leaving explicit instructions that he not be
disturbed—which he wasn't.
In
other words, while the 9/11 attacks were occurring, the entire
top of the chain of command of the most powerful military in
the world sat at various desks, inert. Why weren't they in the
"Situation Room?" Don't any of them ever watch "West
Wing?"
In a
sane world, this would be an object of major scandal. But here
on this side of the paranoid shift, it's business as
usual.
Years, even decades before 9/11, plans had been drawn
up for American forces to take control of the oil interests of
the Middle East, for various imperialist reasons. And these
plans were only contingent upon "a catastrophic and catalyzing
event, like a new Pearl Harbor," to gain the majority support
of the American public to set the plans into motion. When the
opportunity presented itself, the guards looked the other way
. . . and presto, the path to global domination was
open.
Simple, as long as the media played along. And there
is voluminous evidence that the media play along. Number one
on Project Censored's annual list of underreported stories in
2002 was the Project for a New American Century (now the
infrastructure of the Bush Regime), whose report, published in
2000, contains the above "Pearl Harbor" quote.
Why
is it so hard to believe serious people who have repeatedly
warned us that powerful ruling elites are out to dominate "the
masses?" Did we think Dwight Eisenhower was exaggerating when
he warned of the extreme "danger" to democracy of "the
military industrial complex?" Was Barry Goldwater just being a
quaint old-fashioned John Bircher when he said that the
Trilateral Commission was "David Rockefeller's latest scheme
to take over the world, by taking over the government of the
United States?" Were Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt or Joseph
Kennedy just being class traitors when
they talked about a small group of wealthy elites who operate
as a hidden government behind the government? Especially after
he died so mysteriously, why shouldn't we believe the late CIA
Director William Colby, who bragged about how the CIA "owns
everyone of any major significance in the major media?"
Why
can't we believe James Jesus Angleton—a man staring eternal
judgment in the face—when he says that the founders of the
Cold War national security state were only interested in
"absolute power?" Especially when the descendant of a very
good friend of Allen Dulles now holds power in the White
House.
Prescott Bush, the late, aristocratic senator from
Connecticut, and grandfather of George W Bush, was not only a
good friend of Allen Dulles, CIA director, president of the
Council on Foreign Relations, and international business
lawyer. He was also a client of Dulles' law firm. As such, he
was the beneficiary of Dulles' miraculous ability to scrub the
story of Bush's treasonous investments in the Third Reich out
of the news media, where it might have interfered with Bush's
political career . . . not to mention the presidential careers
of his son and grandson.
Recently declassified US government documents,
unearthed last October by investigative journalist John
Buchanan at the New Hampshire Gazette, reveal that Prescott
Bush's involvement in financing and arming the Nazis was more
extensive than previously known. Not only was Bush managing
director of the Union Banking Corporation, the American branch
of Hitler's chief financier's banking network; but among the
other companies where Bush was a director—and which were
seized by the American government in 1942, under the Trading
With the Enemy Act—were a shipping line which imported German
spies; an energy company that supplied the Luftwaffe with
high-ethyl fuel; and a steel company that employed Jewish
slave labor from the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Like
all the other Bush scandals that have been swept under the rug
in the privatized censorship of the corporate media, these
revelations have been largely ignored, with the exception of a
single article in the Associated Press. And there are those,
even on the left, who question the current relevance of this
information.
But
Prescott Bush's dealings with the Nazis do more than
illustrate a family pattern of genteel treason and war
profiteering—from George Senior's sale of TOW missiles to Iran
at the same time he was selling biological and chemical
weapons to Saddam Hussein, to Junior's zany misadventures in
crony capitalism in present-day Iraq.
More
disturbing by far are the many eerie parallels between Adolph
Hitler and George W. Bush:
A
conservative, authoritarian style, with public appearances in
military uniform (which no previous American president has
ever done while in office). Government by secrecy, propaganda
and deception. Open assaults on labor unions and workers'
rights. Preemptive war and militant nationalism. Contempt for
international law and treaties. Suspiciously convenient
"terrorist" attacks, to justify a police state and the
suspension of liberties. A carefully manufactured image of
"The Leader," who's still just a "regular guy" and a
"moderate." "Freedom" as the rationale for every action.
Fantasy economic growth, based on unprecedented budget
deficits and massive military spending.
And
a cold, pragmatic ideology of fascism—including the violent
suppression of dissent and other human rights; the use of
torture, assassination and concentration camps; and most
important, Benito Mussolini's preferred definition of
"fascism" as "corporatism, because it binds together the
interests of corporations and the state."
By
their fruits, you shall know them.
What
perplexes me most is probably the same question that plagues
most paranoiacs: why don't other people see these
connections?
Oh,
sure, there may be millions of us, lurking at websites like
Online Journal, From the Wilderness, Center for Cooperative
Research, and the Center for Research on Globalization,
checking out right-wing conspiracists and the galaxy of 9/11
sites, and reading columnists like Chris Floyd at the Moscow
Times, and Maureen Farrell at Buzzflash. But we know we are
only a furtive minority, the human remnant among the pod
people in the live-action, 21st-century version of "Invasion
of the Body Snatchers."
And
being paranoid, we have to figure out, with an answer that
fits into our system, why more people don't see the
connections we do. Fortunately, there are a number of possible
explanations.
First on the list would have to be what Marshal
McLuhan called the "cave art of the electronic age:"
advertising. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Karl Rove, gave credit
for most of his ideas on how to manipulate mass opinion to
American commercial advertising, and to the then-new science
of "public relations." But the public relations universe
available to the corporate empire that rules the world today
makes the Goebbels operation look primitive. The precision of
communications technology and graphics; the century of
research on human psychology and emotion; and the uniquely
centralized control of triumphant post-Cold War monopoly
capitalism, have combined to the point where "the manufacture
of consent" can be set on automatic pilot.
A
second major reason people won't make the paranoid shift is
that they are too fundamentally decent. They can't believe
that the elected leaders of our country, the people they've
been taught through 12 years of public school to admire and
trust, are capable of sending young American soldiers to their
deaths and slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent
civilians, just to satisfy their greed—especially when they're
so rich in the first place. Besides, America is good, and the
media are liberal and overly
critical.
Third, people don't want to look like fools. Being a
"conspiracy theorist" is like being a creationist. The
educated opinion of eminent experts on every TV and radio
network is that any discussion of "oil" being a motivation for
the US invasion of Iraq is just out of bounds, and anyone who
thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist." We can trust the
integrity of our 'no-bid" contracting in Iraq, and anyone who
thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist." Of course, people
sometimes make mistakes, but our military and intelligence
community did the best they could on and before September 11,
and anybody who thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy
theorist."
Lee
Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin of JFK, and anyone who
thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist."
Perhaps the biggest hidden reason people don't make
the paranoid shift is that knowledge brings responsibility. If
we acknowledge that an inner circle of ruling elites controls
the world's most powerful military and intelligence system;
controls the international banking system; controls the most
effective and far-reaching propaganda network in history;
controls all three branches of government in the world's only
superpower; and controls the technology that counts the
people's votes, we might be then forced to conclude that we
don't live in a particularly democratic system. And then
voting and making contributions and trying to stay informed
wouldn't be enough. Because then the duty of citizenship would
go beyond serving as a loyal opposition, to serving as a
"loyal resistance"—like the Republicans in the Spanish Civil
War, except that in this case the resistance to fascism would
be on the side of the national ideals, rather than the
government; and a violent insurgency would not only play into
the empire's hands, it would be doomed from the
start.
Forming a nonviolent resistance movement, on the other
hand, might mean forsaking some middle class comfort, and it
would doubtless require a lot of work. It would mean educating
ourselves and others about the nature of the truly apocalyptic
beast we face. It would mean organizing at the most basic
neighborhood level, face to face. (We cannot put our trust in
the empire's technology.) It would mean reaching across turf
lines and transcending single-issue politics, forming
coalitions and sharing data and names and strategies, and
applying energy at every level of government, local to global.
It would also probably mean civil disobedience, at a time when
the Bush regime is starting to classify that action as
"terrorism." In the end, it may mean organizing a progressive
confederacy to govern ourselves, just as our revolutionary
founders formed the Continental Congress. It would mean being
wise as serpents, and gentle as doves.
It
would be a lot of work. It would also require critical mass. A
paradigm shift.
But
as a paranoid, I'm ready to join the resistance. And the main
reason is I no longer think that the "conspiracy" is much of a
"theory."
That
the US House of Representatives Select Committee on
Assassinations concluded that the murder of John Fitzgerald
Kennedy was "probably" the result of "a conspiracy," and that
70 percent of Americans agree with this conclusion, is not a
"theory." It's fact.
That
the Bay of Pigs fiasco, "Operation Zapata," was organized by
members of Skull and Bones, the ghoulish and powerful secret
society at Yale University whose membership also included
Prescott, George Herbert Walker and George W Bush; that two of
the ships that carried the Cuban counterrevolutionaries to
their appointment with absurdity were named the "Barbara" and
the "Houston"—George HW Bush's city of residence at the
time—and that the oil company Bush owned, then operating in
the Caribbean area, was named "Zapata," is not "theory." It's
fact.
That
George Bush was the CIA director who kept the names of what
were estimated to be hundreds of American journalists,
considered to be CIA "assets," from the Church Committee, the
US Senate Intelligence Committe chaired by Senator Frank
Church that investigated the CIA in the 1970s; that a 1971
University of Michigan study concluded that, in America, the
more TV you watched, the less you knew; and that a recent
survey by international scholars found that Americans were the
most "ignorant" of world affairs out of all the populations
they studied, is not a "theory." It's fact.
That
the Council on Foreign Relations has a history of influence on
official US government foreign policy; that the protection of
US supplies of Middle East oil has been a central element of
American foreign policy since the Second World War; and that
global oil production has been in decline since its peak year,
2000, is not "theory." It's fact.
That, in the early 1970s, the newly-formed Trilateral
Commission published a report which recommended that, in order
for "globalization" to succeed, American manufacturing jobs
had to be exported, and American wages had to decline, which
is exactly what happened over the next three decades; and
that, during that same period, the richest one percent of
Americans doubled their share of the national wealth, is not
"theory." It's fact.
That, beyond their quasi-public role as agents of the
US Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Banks are
profit-making corporations, whose beneficiaries include some
of America's wealthiest families; and that the United States
has a virtual controlling interest in the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization,
the three dominant global financial institutions, is not a
"theory." It's fact.
That—whether it's heroin from Southeast Asia in the
'60s and '70s, or cocaine from Central America and heroin from
Afghanistan in the '80s, or cocaine from Colombia in the '90s,
or heroin from Afghanistan today—no major CIA covert operation
has ever lacked a drug smuggling component, and that the CIA
has hired Nazis, fascists, drug dealers, arms smugglers, mass
murderers, perverts, sadists, terrorists and the Mafia, is not
"theory." It's fact.
That
the international oil industry is the dominant player in the
global economy; that the Bush family has a decades-long
business relationship with the Saudi royal family, Saudi oil
money, and the family of Osama bin Laden; that, as president,
both George Bushes have favored the interests of oil companies
over the public interest; that both George Bushes have
personally profited financially from Middle East oil; and that
American oil companies doubled their records for quarterly
profits in the months just preceding the invasion of Iraq, is
not "theory." It's fact.
That
the 2000 presidential election was deliberately stolen; that
the pro-Bush/anti-Gore bias in the corporate media had spiked
markedly in the last three weeks of the campaign; that
corporate media were then virtually silent about the Florida
recount; and that the Bush 2000 team had planned to challenge
the legitimacy of the election if George W had won the
popular, but lost the electoral vote—exactly what happened to
Gore—is not "theory." It's fact.
That
the intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was
deceptively "cooked" by the Bush administration; that anybody
paying attention to people like former UN weapons inspector
Scott Ritter, knew before the invasion that the weapons were a
hoax; and that American forces in Iraq today are applying the
same brutal counterinsurgency tactics pioneered in Central
America in the 1980s, under the direct supervision of
then-Vice President George HW Bush, is not a "theory." It's
fact.
That
"Rebuilding America's Defenses," the Project for a New
American Century's 2000 report, and "The Grand Chessboard," a
book published a few years earlier by Trilateral Commission
co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski, both recommended a more robust
and imperial US military presence in the oil basin of the
Middle East and the Caspian region; and that both also
suggested that American public support for this energy crusade
would depend on public response to a new "Pearl Harbor," is
not "theory." It's fact.
That, in the 1960s, the Joint Chiefs of Staff
unanimously approved a plan called "Operation Northwoods," to
stage terrorist attacks on American soil that could be used to
justify an invasion of Cuba; and that there is currently an
office in the Pentagon whose function is to instigate
terrorist attacks that could be used to justify future
strategically-desired military responses, is not a "theory."
It's fact.
That
neither the accusation by former British Environmental
Minister Michael Meacham, Tony Blair's longest-serving cabinet
minister, that George W Bush allowed the 9/11 attacks to
happen to justify an oil war in the Middle East; nor the RICO
lawsuit filed by 9/11 widow Ellen Mariani against Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Council on Foreign Relations (among
others), on the grounds that they conspired to let the attacks
happen to cash in on the ensuing war profiteering, has
captured the slightest attention from American corporate media
is not a "theory." It's fact.
That
the FBI has completely exonerated—though never identified—the
speculators who purchased, a few days before the attacks
(through a bank whose previous director is now the CIA
executive director), an unusual number of "put" options, and
who made millions betting that the stocks in American and
United Airlines would crash, is not a "theory." It's
fact.
That
the US intelligence community received numerous warnings, from
multiple sources, throughout the summer of 2001, that a major
terrorist attack on American interests was imminent; that,
according to the chair of the "independent" 9/11 commission,
the attacks "could have and should have been prevented," and
according to a Senate Intelligence Committee member, "All the
dots were connected;" that the White House has verified George
W Bush's personal knowledge, as of August 6, 2001, that these
terrorist attacks might be domestic and might involve hijacked
airliners; that, in the summer of 2001, at the insistence of
the American Secret Service, anti-aircraft ordnance was
installed around the city of Genoa, Italy, to defend against a
possible terrorist suicide attack, by aircraft, against George
W Bush, who was attending the economic summit there; and that
George W Bush has nevertheless regaled audiences with his
first thought upon seeing the "first" plane hit the World
Trade Center, which was: "What a terrible pilot," is not
"theory." It's fact.
That, on the morning of September 11, 2001: standard
procedures and policies at the nation's air defense and
aviation bureaucracies were ignored, and communications were
delayed; the black boxes of the planes that hit the WTC were
destroyed, but hijacker Mohammed Atta's passport was found in
pristine condition; high-ranking Pentagon officers had
cancelled their commercial flight plans for that morning;
George H.W. Bush was meeting in Washington with
representatives of Osama bin Laden's family, and other
investors in the world's largest private equity firm, the
Carlyle Group; the CIA was conducting a previously-scheduled
mock exercise of an airliner hitting the Pentagon; the chairs
of both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were
having breakfast with the chief of Pakistan's intelligence
agency, who resigned a week later on suspicion of involvement
in the 9/11 attacks; and the commander-in-chief of the armed
forces of the United States sat in a second grade classroom
for 20 minutes after hearing that a second plane had struck
the towers, listening to children read a story about a goat,
is not "theoretical." These are facts.
That
the Bush administration has desperately fought every attempt
to independently investigate the events of 9/11, is not a
"theory."
Nor,
finally, is it in any way a "theory" that the one, single name
that can be directly linked to the Third Reich, the US
military industrial complex, Skull and Bones, Eastern
Establishment good ol' boys, the Illuminati, Big Texas Oil,
the Bay of Pigs, the Miami Cubans, the Mafia, the FBI, the JFK
assassination, the New World Order, Watergate, the Republican
National Committee, Eastern European fascists, the Council on
Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the United
Nations, CIA headquarters, the October Surprise, the
Iran/Contra scandal, Inslaw, the Christic Institute, Manuel
Noriega, drug-running "freedom fighters" and death squads,
Iraqgate, Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, the
blood of innocents, the savings and loan crash, the Bank of
Credit and Commerce International, the "Octopus," the
"Enterprise," the Afghan mujaheddin, the War on Drugs, Mena
(Arkansas), Whitewater, Sun Myung Moon, the Carlyle Group,
Osama bin Laden and the Saudi royal family, David Rockefeller,
Henry Kissinger, and the presidency and vice-presidency of the
United States, is: George Herbert Walker Bush.
"Theory?" To the contrary.
It
is a well-documented, tragic and—especially if you're
paranoid—terrifying fact.
Michael Hasty is a writer, activist, musician,
carpenter and farmer. His award-winning column, "Thinking
Locally," appeared for seven years in the Hampshire Review,
West Virginia's oldest newspaper. His writing has also
appeared in the Highlands Voice, the Washington Peace Letter,
the Takoma Park Newsletter, the German magazine Generational
Justice, and the Washington Post; and at the websites Common
Dreams and Democrats.com. In January 1989, he was the media
spokesperson for the counter-inaugural coalition at George
Bush's Counter-Inaugural Banquet, which fed hundreds of DC's
homeless in front of Union Station, where the official
inaugural dinner was being held.
Permission to reprint is granted, provided it
includes this autobiographical note, and credit for first
publication to Online Journal. |
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