I am not a supporter of Philip Agee. He didn’t just write a book exposing the methods of the CIA, he took it upon himself to expose the identities of our officers around the world. I’m pretty sure he is responsible for the deaths of more than a few United States intelligence officers, and their agents.
Moreover, he bought into Marxist class analysis to a lamentable degree. And, he has been accused of spying against the United States.
Yet, having said all that, Agee’s take on the CIA’s activities has a lot of validity. If you strip the following of its obvious Marxist vocabulary, you can see a critique that holds true to today in the Middle East:
Excerpts from the book, CIA Diary: Inside the Company
by Philip Agee, Penguin Books, 1975. p561:
A book on the CIA could also illustrate how the interests of the privileged minorities in poor countries lead back to, and are identified with, the interests of the rich and powerful who control the US. Counter-insurgency doctrine tries to blur these international class lines by appeals to nationalism and patriotism and by falsely relating movements against the capitalist minorities to Soviet expansionism. But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and their privileges. US national security, as preached by US leaders, is the security of the capitalist class in the US, not the security of the rest of the people – certainly not the security of the poor except by way of reinforcing poverty. It is from the class interests in the US that our counter-insurgency programmes flow, together with that most fundamental of American foreign policy principles: that any government, no matter how bad, is better than a communist one – than a government of workers, peasants and ordinary people. Our government’s support for corruption and injustice in Latin America flows directly from the determination of the rich and powerful in the US, the capitalists, to retain and expand these riches and power…
… The killings at Kent State and Jackson State show clearly enough that sooner or later our counter-insurgency methods would be applied at home.
:::flip:::
The CIA has always been primarily concerned with combating a sizable portion of the world community that has leftist political leanings. Hoover’s FBI also took this as their charge.
For most of the Cold War, their was a bipartisan consensus that the Soviet regime was an odious and tyrannical political system. Whatever claims they made for the little guy were more than outweighed by their repression, their lack of respect for the free exercise of religion, basic due process, and human rights.
But the lines between combating repression, and combating legitimate leftist critiques of our foreign, economic, and domestic policies were always blurry.
In the end, the CIA waged an unrelenting jihad against left-leaning thought of all stripes, and therefore became less an agent of national security than a tool for reactionary dominance.
The success of their mission can be seen in the disconnect between America’s health and education systems, and those of Canada and Western Europe. Any attempt to offer universal health care, or free education is seen as suspect by a large segment of the American population.
The attempts to reform the CIA, and to weed out the corrupt elitists of the Nixon/Ford era have failed utterly. It’s important to remember that the CIA has been as busy delegitimizing the left, as they have been in in protecting us from foreign attack. And it also crucial to realize that many of their activities, like the installation of the Shah in Iran, or the support for jihadists in Afghanistan, or the training of oppressors in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have mainly served to protect our moneyed class, at the expense of our true national security.
It’s true that America has reaped benefits from these corrupt relationships. We have enjoyed a steady supply of cheap oil and gas, for example. But it’s time to let the scales fall from our eyes. The CIA has not made us safer, and they have made helping the poor much more difficult.
So I wont.. but I think your slamming Marxism where it doesn’t need to be. I’m neither a capitalist or a Marxist. I see truth in both sets of ideas and I disagree with coverting either one of them into a way of life. They can be useful when applied to tools but not when used as systems.
That caveat out of the way; I don’t see what’s wrong with Marxist class analysis. It’s one of the few things he got right. It also definitely describes what we have in the US right now. The rich as the bourgeoisie defintely owns the means of production and our declining middle class seems to point to a proletariat since more and more the only thing we have to sell is our labor.
just like capitalism we are silly to try to apply our lives to a system based on either one of them. However, Marxism holds a lot of truth..just as capitalism does.
Besides that I agree with your post 😉
is that I am a philosophy major. And I am not a fan of Hegelian synthetic reasoning.
I can’t write a critique of Marxist theory in a comment. But, I don’t think his analysis of 19th-century European class structures has very much applicability to 20th-Century American economic bands.
In short, class analysis is a weak tool, and always was. First of all, the bourgeoisie are not the problem in American society, although they remain staunchly Republican, or libertarian.
We’ve moved into a corporate world where small businesses/shopkeepers are as likely, if not more, to be screwed by government action.
Agee dropped one unreflective philosophy for another one.
well!..see put that way I have to agree.. as my beef with Marx was pretty much the one you described! (making systems up out of whole cloth). Yeah a bad backward application of Kant.
Thanks for answering 🙂
BTW. Ive read a lot of philosophy in my liberal arts program (comparative lit, with an emphasis on myth) but not being a thick blooded phil major i can be expected to be imprecise in my thinking in a lot of this stuff
critique of the libertarians, is a critique of state power.
Give the state enough power to create univeral health care, and you also give them enough power to put a million people in jail for petty drug crimes.
The broken covenant of state power was carried out by the neo-cons, who have no compunction about cyncically using religious absolutists to gain narrow majorities for their war adventures, looting of the treasury, and general madness.
The libertarians will tell us that we are only on the receiving end of what we have been dishing out since FDR. And they’re right. But the Republican party used to stand for a restraint on state power, which dovetailed nicely with their opposition to communist absolutism.
Now, they have left the reservation, and we are left with no defense against the abuse of consolidated power in Washington.
I ad meant to say Hegel above..not Kant..but to my question..
I had thought true libertarianism was against state power, isn’t it? I’m not being critical i’m just easily confused and asking for clarification.
A lot of these guys call themselves libertarians, for example, but they turn right around and use more government not less.. which has the “purer” libertarians mad at them.
I was thinking that libertarianism was a rejection of any form of government except in those cases where it coulds be used to protect property rights. Is that about right?
in pure libertarian thought, the government is supposed to provide for the common defense, basic policing, and some coordination of services, but not much else.
Private property is inviolate, and the market should be left alone as much as possible.
But, there are different grades of libertarianism.
I would be willing to part with most federal powers if we could assure civil rights, and pass amendments to rein in the executive branch from using our military in over 100 countries around the world. If the trade off is no more neo-con looting in exchange for the states taking on many responsibilies now in the federal domain, I’d be tempted to accept.
But these are not our choices. We can’t assure basic civil rights for women and gays without the Feds support. And I wouldn’t be complacent about the rights of racial minorities either.
What we need, more than anything else, is a return to sanity from the Republican party, and a total rejection of the neo-con program.
We will push for better education and health care, the GOP will resist the intrusion of more federal powers over the states, and the citizenry, and we can try to find the right balance.
Until then, the GOP has become a cancer on our republic, and they must be dealt a death blow that will discredit their aberrant behavior for a generation, and chasten them into sanity.
Marxism is hardly an unreflective philosophy. Besides, Marx himself said, “I am not a Marxist.”
More to the point, of course class relations are different in the 21st century than they were in the 19th. Marxism is an historical philosophy that is very conscious of differences between one age/stage and another. If class relations weren’t different, now that would be a refutation of Marxism.
The power of class analysis can clearly be seen in a book I just happen to have right next to my computer, Navigating Public Opinion: Polls, Policy, and the Future of American Democracy. It’s a collection of essays primarily about how public opinion and policy interact. There are a number of insightful essays, arguing different aspects of this interaction. But towering above them all is the essay by William Domhoff, “The Power Elite, Public Policy, and Public Opinion,” a class analysis that highlights the extreme political dominance of corporations and the upper class. Does it explain everything? No, of course not. But it adds a dimension that shows how things fit together which simply can’t be comprehended otherwise.
Despite the “I” in CIA, the Agency really isn’t about “intelligence”. It has always been a (semi) covert effector of foreign policy.
In other words, the American government decides Foreign Policy X, which in this case might be “all leftist governments are bad”. The CIA then works semi-covertly to effect this policy, whether targeted assassinations, interfering with elections or out-and-out coups (Project Ajax, etc).
It’s sort of the State Department in the Dark, in other words. The “intelligence” part is simply gathering information to implement the stated policy.
Foreign Policy X right now is “Muslims extremists must be stopped unless they are in Russia or Serbia or Kosovo or Albania”. So that’s why the Milan 13 case makes sense, in every meaning of the word “make sense”.
Remember that the foreign policy of the government since 1812 has been “dominate foreign governments to protect the economic interest of the USA”. Nothing to do with spreading democracy or anything else. Leftist governments were abhorred and considered the #1 threat not because they were the enemy of democracy but because they threatened the economic interests of the USA.
Pax
and here is the crucial point:
They have, no doubt, protected America’s economic interests. We have benefitted economically from some of the activities of the CIA. But we have not benefitted equally.
Moreover, by attacking all leftist thought, they have undermined our ability to fight for policies on an even playing field.
So, a proper critique of the CIA must involve a questioning of the costs to third world countries that is paid for our benefit. And, secondly, an analysis of what the poorly insured, educated, and compensated American poor have lost as a result of an assault on all forms of socialist thinking, in comparison to what they have gained through trickle-down effects.
As you know quite well Boo, you’re talking to an advocate for peace. I don’t believe in the “one right way to live” theory… and I fully agree with you about what you said about poorer nations etc.
The realism on the ground for civilizations (including socialist ones) is that they all built around the concept of property rights – as in the planet earth and its various components can be owned. That’s true whether it’s a feudal kingdom, a capitalist democracy or a socialist state. And simply put, that means that the economic interests of whomever controls the state (whether king or upper class) will be the number one priority.
Therefore even in these “modern times” the number one goal of those who control the government will be to protect those economic interests, which is done both in the open (State Dept, Treasury, etc) way as well as the clandestine, secret way (CIA etc).
It’s only the people who care (or don’t care) about democracy, freedom and human rights.
Is the USA a gov’t of the people, for the people and by the people? I sure learned that in school. But you of all people know it’s never been true. It’s only in the last 50 years that there’s been a credible threat that the majority of the people can VOTE. Does it not surprise you that this has been resisted to the nth degree?
Woodrow Wilson estimated that only 120,000 (white men with property) out of a total pop of 4 million (everyone) had the right to vote when the USA became a country. And that was just fine with the “Founding Fathers”. THAT is the real “gov’t of the people”, not this horsecrap people learn in their civics class or whatever they call it now (social studies, etc).
Pax
and that is to be expected. Power is power. And the powerful always have the biggest voice.
I’m just trying to shine a little light on how the mechanisms work.
Ok, here’s my super short truth about how the government of the USA has always worked:
The end. God bless America.
Pax
The CIA actually was an intelligence agency under Truman. He turned down the idea of engineering a coup against Mosaddeq. Ike took over, reversed Truman, and the rest is history.
Kennedy should have returned it to its roots. The Bay of Pigs fiasco made him angry enough, and gave him every reason to do so, but he did not. This was a pattern with Kennedy. He also failed to root out the East Asian foreign policy establishment that continually pushed for deeper US military involvement in Vietnam. He vetoed a whole series of proposals they generated, but he never took the logical step of replacing personal and/or reorganzing the bureaucracy and giving it new marching orders.
“The CIA actually was an intelligence agency under Truman”
Not really. See Greece, Marsailles.
My excuse–I’m recovering from a cold & not thinking on all cylinders.
The real difference was how far the CIA could go. Here the difference between Truman and Eisenhower was significant. But you’re absolutely right, and as someone who’s written before about the persistent ties between the CIA and drugs, I certainly couldn’t forget the role they played in laying the foundations for the French Connection.
Just shows what a cold will do to you when you’re not on drugs. (Caffeine, to be precise.)
The CIA has never been “primarily concerned with combating a sizable portion of the world community that has leftist political leanings.” The CIA’s primary concern has always been to keep foreign governments from nationalizing US-owned property, and to protect US corporate interests in foreign countries. This includes making sure that cheap labor is in plentiful supply, that natural resources can be “purchased” at artificially low rates, and that there are no restrictions on what the corporations can do to the land and surroundings.
“Leftist political leanings” are attributed to any group who’s interests include such things as developing and sustaining a middle class, protecting workers from impossible working conditions, preventing the poisoning of the environment, providing adequate education to the population.
The sad fact seems to be that Americans rejected the monarchy as a form of government only to see their fledgling democracy taken over by a corporate/elitist
monarchy.
And the lessons of the recent past are that in order to gain and maintain power in this country you must control vast amounts of money, but you needn’t worry about how you acquired that money. For the Republicans, stealing and not getting caught seems to have become the ultimate proof of personal superiority.
This is what those of us who believe in real values must reject, and fight, wholeheartedly.
Don’t forget Major General (USMC) Smedly Butler:
http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National city Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.
Blaming Agee for the deaths of CIA agents is a longstanding canard of the right. An interesting perspective is provided in this preogram descrption from “Democracy Now!” Oct. 2, 2003:
INTRO: Whoever in the White House burned Wislon’s wife could be charged under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act which imposes strict penalties on the outting of agents. We speak with former CIA agent Phillip Agee, for whom, many believe, the Act was written.
Former acting ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson says that the outing of his wife other attempts to discredit him “are clearly intended to intimidate others from coming forward.” But it’s not just intimidation; it’s a felony. Until now, a crime the Bush family has taken very seriously.
Many believe the law was passed in direct response to former CIA agent Philip Agee’s blowing the whistle on CIA dirty tricks in his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary George H.W. Bush, who was vice-president when the law was passed, said some of the criticism of the Agency ruined secret U.S. clandestine operations in foreign countries.
So seriously did the Bushes take the crime of exposing CIA operatives that Barbara Bush, in her memoirs, accused Agee of blowing the cover of the CIA Station Chief in Greece, Richard Welch, who was assassinated outside his Athens residence in 1975. Agee sued the former first lady and Mrs. Bush withdrew the statement from additional printings of her book. Still, at a celebration marking the fiftieth anniversary of the CIA, the elder Bush again singled out Agee in his remarks, calling him “a traitor to our country.”
Agee did seek to encourage the outing of CIA agents’ identities–not with the intention of getting them killed, but to force them to flee, thus disrupting their covert activities. Given that they were routinely breaking domestic laws overseas, and often US law as well, it should be clear that arguments can be made both for and against what Agee did. But as for being responsible for any single death, it’s been 30 years now, and no one has successfully sued Agee. OTOH, Agee sued Barbara Bush, and he won.
Thank you for making this point, Paul. As I read down the thread, I was intending to question BooMan on his basis for saying that Agee is responsible for the deaths of intelligence officers and their agents. I think you’ve satisfactorily answered the matter.