CIA and Pentagon Fusion Revolutionizes Modern US Covert Action Complex

by Justin O'Connell
The Dollar Vigilante

Previously by Justin O'Connell: The Last Gang in Town: Income Tax vs. Capone

The Pentagon will expand its spy network over five years to rival the CIA in size, according to US officials, as it constructs the thus far classified Defense Clandestine Service or DCS. The project will "transform" the Defense Intelligence Agency from a Cold War, multiple-war agency to include increased operations against Islamists in Africa, North Korea-Iran weapons transfers, and Chinese military modernization that is now underway. Once completed, the DIA will have approximately 1,600 so-called "collectors" the world over who will be "closely aligned" with the CIA and elite military commando units. As the Washington Post notes, "an unprecedented total for an agency whose presence abroad numbered in the triple digits in recent years."

Military attachés and other uniformed agents will be deployed during this "Five Year Plan" alongside a cohort of clandestine operatives. The new operatives will be CIA-trained and work often with the US Joint Special Operations Command, although their orders will come from the Department of Defense.

 "This is not a marginal adjustment for DIA," the agency's director, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, said at a recent conference, during which he vaguely outlined the plan. "This is a major adjustment for national security."

The convergence of the military and intelligence agencies operations has blurred the lines between their once-separate missions and training. According to the Washington Post (which was once called "Pravda on the Potomac" before endorsing Republican congressional candidates, and then twice endorsing Barack Obama) states: "The plan reflects the Obama administration's affinity for espionage and covert action over conventional force."

Of course, The Post is somewhat mistaken, because the president in the US today is merely an actor, precisely as Zbigniew Brezinski predicted in his 1971 nonfiction book Between Two Ages (a new paperback version of which you can buy at Amazon for $250). "Zbig" is a shadowy foreign policy director who has steered presidents from both sides of the political aisle on foreign policy. He created the Jimmy Carter public image (you know, with the sweaters) and also helped to groom Barack Obama for the presidency (you know, with the brown skin). He also gained notoriety in the "left-mainstream" by condemning President Bush's War on Iraq. In reality, in his dark genius, he subscribed instead to the sort of covert action highlighted by the DCS. In an interview with French papers, Brzezinski spoke of his affinity for covert action:

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [From the Shadows], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention [in 1989]. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

The DCS effectively functions as a freer branch of the CIA, as the military is not subject to the same congressional oversight as is the CIA, especially since the Church Committee. The Pentagon currently has 500 spies in the DIA, a number which is to reach 1,000 by 2018. A central lament of Capitol Hill opposition has been that this is essentially an increase in staff at the CIA, protesting that the new DIA operatives "for the most part are going to be working for CIA station chiefs." One congressional official who had been briefed on the plan told The Post: "If CIA needs more people working for them, they should be footing the bill."

"It's the nature of the world we're in," said the senior defense official involved in overseeing the changes at the DIA. "We just see a long-term era of change before things settle."

The DIA received an infusion of approximately $100 million to begin the program. The CIA has agreed to make room for more persons in its training classes at its facility in southern Virginia, called the Farm. The DIA has accounted for 20 percent of each class in recent years, but that figure will increase.

But it's not only new recruits the DIA will have to make room for...

The CIA is now recruiting openly gay men and lesbians, persons who once used to be unable to receive a security clearance. Earlier last week, CIA officials held a networking event for the Miami gay community. "This is the first time we've done a networking event of this type with any of the gay and lesbian chambers of commerce in the United States," says Michael Barber, a self-identified "straight ally" and the spy agency's LGBT Community Outreach and Liaison program manager.

Sounds like a fascinating film plot: a "straight ally" CIA employee has to meet routinely with members of the LGBT gay community seeking to join the CIA.

The CIA has been historically involved in a diverse array of clandestine covert action. Among the "sexiest" was the CIA's foray into the world of entertainment and culture post-World War II, in which vast resources were diverted to a secret program of cultural propaganda in western Europe. In the wake of the War, western and much of central Europe were "Americanized," as is detailed in an excellent book on the topic by Reinhold Wagnleiter called Coca-Colonization and the Cold War. In her book, The Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor Sanders points out that, at its peak, the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom had offices in 35 countries, published 20 prestige magazines, held art exhibitions, owned news and features services, organized high profile international conferences, and rewarded musicians and artists with prizes and public performances. As Sanders writes:

"Drawing on an extensive, highly influential network of intelligence, personnel, political strategists, the corporate establishment, and the old school ties of the Ivy League universities, the incipient CIA started, from 1947, to build a 'consortium' whose double task it was to inoculate the world against the contagion of Communism, and to ease the passage of American foreign policy interests abroad. The result was a remarkably tight network of people who worked alongside the Agency to promote an idea: that the world needed a pax Americana, a new age of enlightenment, and it would be called The American Century."

(Dollar Vigilante editor-in-chief Jeff Berwick got his own special taste of this "American Century" when the CIA sent a blond to rendezvous with and court him on an island excursion.)

But this is not the height of the Cold War, and today the expansion of the CIA does not necessarily represent an Endgame move for the establishment to establish the one-world state solution, but a defensive move on behalf of the Pentagon to re-orchestrate its operations from the "hard power" of the Cold War to the "soft power" of the present. Both agencies involved – the CIA and the Department of Defense – have worked domestically, so there is no reason to think that this new spy network will be completely dedicated abroad, but there is plenty of reason to internalize the grave truth that this is for real: the CIA has essentially been granted expanded powers and have inherited more personnel via the Pentagon. Exactly how many more spies are percentage-wise being added to the CIA payroll is impossible to know, since "neither the number of employees nor the size of the Agency's budget can, at present, be publicly disclosed." But one can be certain that this expansion and fusion of the CIA and Pentagon, which has been a long time in the making, will revolutionize the makeup of Pentagon-CIA operations forevermore. 

December 6, 2012

Justin O'Connell studied History and German Language at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, where, in his spare time, he researched current events and their relationship to history. In his studies he has found that societies have been managed by philosophically-kindred ruling classes seeking persistently a singular, total order across the planet. Justin does not believe in government as a medium for human relationships, preferring instead the race of human ideas stemming from a diverse, vibrant culture. Currently, he is a proponent of physical silver as a means of wealth preservation and disobedience to the financial system, and lives in southern California. He writes at the Dollar Vigilante-inspired site, Silver Vigilante.

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