This essay is an excerpt from Big Lies: How Our Corporate Overlords, Politicians and
Media Establishment Warp Reality and Undermine Democracy. Guma's latest book, Dons of Time, is a sci-fi look at the control of history as power.
By Greg Guma
Despite 24-hour news and talk about
transparency, there's a lot we don't know about our past, much less current
events. What’s worse, some of what we think we know isn't true.
The point is that it's no accident.
Consider, for example, the circumstances that led to open
war in Vietnam. According to official history, two US destroyers patrolling in
the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam were victims of unprovoked attacks in
August 1964, leading to a congressional resolution giving President Johnson
the power "to take all necessary measures."
In fact, the destroyers were spy
ships, part of a National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping program operating
near the coast as a way to provoke the North Vietnamese into turning on their
radar and other communications channels. The more provocative the maneuvers,
the more signals that could be captured. Meanwhile, US raiding parties were
shelling mainland targets.
Documents revealed later indicated that the August 4
attack on the USS Maddox – the pretext for passing the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution – may not even have taken place.
But even if it did, the incident
was still stage managed to build up congressional and public support for the
war. Evidence suggests that the plan was based on Operation Northwoods, a
scheme developed in 1962 to justify an invasion of Cuba. Among the tactics the
Joint Chiefs of Staff considered then were blowing up a ship in Guantanamo Bay,
a phony "communist Cuba terror campaign" in Florida and Washington,
DC, and an elaborate plan to convince people that Cuba had shot down a civilian
airliner filled with students.
That operation wasn't implemented, but two years
later, to justify escalating the war, the administration's military brass found a way to
create the necessary conditions in Vietnam.
Privatizing Defense (2004 Interview)
NSA and Echelon
For more than half a century, the
eyes and ears of US power to monitor and manipulate information (and with it,
mass perceptions) has been the NSA, initially designed to assist the CIA. Its
original task was to collect raw information about threats to US security,
cracking codes and using the latest technology to provide accurate intelligence
on the intentions and activities of enemies. Emerging after World War II, its
early focus was the Soviet Union. But it never did crack a high-level Soviet
cipher system. On the other hand, it used every available means to eavesdrop on
not only enemies but also allies and, sometimes, US citizens.
In Body of Secrets, James Bamford
described a bureaucratic and secretive behemoth, based in an Orwellian Maryland
complex known as Crypto City. From there, supercomputers linked it to spy
satellites, subs, aircraft, and equally covert, strategically placed listening
posts worldwide. As of 2000, it had a $7 billion annual budget and directly
employed at least 38,000 people, more than the CIA and FBI. It was also the
leader of an international intelligence club, UKUSA, which includes Britain,
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Together, they monitored and recorded
billions of encrypted communications, telephone calls, radio messages, faxes,
and e-mails around the world.
Over the years, however, the line
between enemies and friends blurred, and the intelligence gatherers often
converted their control of information into unilateral power, influencing the
course of history in ways that may never be known. No doubt the agency has had
a hand in countless covert operations; yet, attempts to pull away the veil of
secrecy have been largely unsuccessful.
In the mid-1970s, for example,
just as Congress was attempting to reign in the CIA, the NSA was quietly
creating a virtual state, a massive international computer network named
Platform. Doing away with formal borders, it developed a software package that
turned worldwide Sigint (short for "signal intelligence":
communication intelligence, eavesdropping, and electronic intelligence) into a
unified whole. The software package was code named Echelon, a name that has since
become a synonym for eavesdropping on commercial communication.
Of course, the NSA and its
British sister, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), refused to
admit Echelon existed, even though declassified documents appeared on the
Internet and Congress conducted an initial investigation. But a European Parliament
report also confirmed Echelon's activities, and encouraged Internet users and
governments to adopt stronger privacy measures in response.
In March 2001, several ranking
British politicians discussed Echelon's potential impacts on civil liberties,
and a European Parliament committee considered its legal, human rights, and
privacy implications. The Dutch held similar hearings, and a French National
Assembly inquiry urged the European Union to embrace new privacy enhancing
technologies to protect against Echelon's eavesdropping. France launched a
formal investigation into possible abuses for industrial espionage.
When Allies Compete
A prime reason for Europe's
discontent was the growing suspicion that the NSA had used intercepted
conversations to help US companies win contracts heading for European firms. The
alleged losers included Airbus, a consortium including interests in France,
Germany, Spain, and Britain, and Thomson CSF, a French electronics company. The
French claimed they had lost a $1.4 billion deal to supply Brazil with a radar
system because the NSA shared details of the negotiations with Raytheon. Airbus
may have lost a contract worth $2 billion to Boeing and McDonnell Douglas
because of information intercepted and passed on by the agency.
According to former NSA agent
Wayne Madsen, the US used information gathered from its bases in Australia to
win a half share in a significant Indonesian trade contract for AT&T.
Communication intercepts showed the contract was initially going to a Japanese
firm. A bit later a lawsuit against the US and Britain was launched in France,
judicial and parliamentary investigations began in Italy, and German
parliamentarians demanded an inquiry.
The rationale for turning the NSA
loose on commercial activities, even those involving allies, was provided in
the mid-90s by Sen. Frank DeConcini, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee. "I don't think we should have a policy where we're going to
invade the Airbus inner sanctum and find out their secrets for the purpose of
turning it over to Boeing or McDonnell Douglas," he opined. "But if
we find something, not to share it with our people seems to me to be not
smart."
President Bill Clinton and other US officials buttressed this view
by charging that European countries were unfairly subsidizing Airbus. In other
words, competition with significant US interests can be a matter of national
security, and private capitalism must be protected from state-run enterprises.
The US-Europe row about Airbus
subsidies was also used as a "test case" for scientists developing
new intelligence tools. At US Defense Department conferences on "text
retrieval," competitions were staged to find the best methods. A standard
test featured extracting protected data about "Airbus subsidies."
Manipulating Democracy
In the end, influencing the
outcome of commercial transactions is but the tip of this iceberg. The
NSA's ability to intercept to virtually any transmitted communication has enhanced
the power of unelected officials and private interests to set covert foreign
policy in motion. In some cases, the objective is clear and arguably
defensible: taking effective action against terrorism, for example. But in
others, the grand plans of the intelligence community have led it to undermine
democracies.
The 1975 removal of Australian
Prime Minister Edward Whitlam is an instructive case. At the time of Whitlam's
election in 1972, Australian intelligence was working with the CIA against the
Allende government in Chile. The new PM didn’t simply order a halt to Australia's
involvement, explained William Blum in Killing Hope, a masterful study of US
interventions since World War II. Whitlam seized intelligence information
withheld from him by the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization
(ASIO), and disclosed the existence of a joint CIA-ASIO directorate that monitored
radio traffic in Asia. He also openly disapproved of US plans to build up the
Indian Ocean Island of Diego Garcia as a military-intelligence-nuclear outpost.
Both the CIA and NSA became
concerned about the security and future of crucial intelligence facilities in
and near Australia. The country was already key member of UKUSA. After
launching its first space-based listening post-a microwave receiver with an
antenna pointed at earth-NSA had picked an isolated desert area in central
Australia as a ground station. Once completed, the base at Alice Springs was
named Pine Gap, the first of many listening posts to be installed around the
world. For the NSA and CIA, Whitlam posed a threat to the secrecy and security
of such operations.
An early step was covert funding
for the political opposition, in hopes of defeating Whitlam's Labor Party in
1974. When that failed, meetings were held with the Governor-General, Sir John
Kerr, a figurehead representing the Queen of England who had worked for CIA
front organizations since the 50s. Defense officials warned that intelligence
links would be cut off unless someone stopped Whitlam. On November 11, 1975,
Kerr responded, dismissing the prime minister, dissolving both houses of
Parliament, and appointing an interim government until new elections were held.
According to Christopher Boyce
(subject of The Falcon and the Snowman, a fictionalized account), who watched
the process while working for TRW in a CIA-linked cryptographic communications center,
the spooks also infiltrated Australian labor unions and contrived to suppress
transportation strikes that were holding up deliveries to US intelligence
installations. Not coincidentally, some unions were leading the opposition to
development of those same facilities.
How often, and to what effect,
such covert ops have succeeded is another of the mysteries that comprise an
unwritten history of the last half century. Beyond that, systems like Echelon
violate the human right to individual privacy, and give those who control the
information the ability to act with impunity, sometimes destroying lives and
negating the popular will in the process.
Hiding the Agenda in Peru
In May 1960, when a U-2 spy plane
was shot down over Soviet territory, President Dwight Eisenhower took great
pains to deny direct knowledge or authorization of the provocative mission. In
reality, he personally oversaw every U-2 mission, and had even riskier and more
provocative bomber overflights in mind.
It's a basic rule of thumb for
covert ops: When exposed, keep denying and deflect the blame. More important,
never, never let on that the mission itself may be a pretext, or a diversion
from some other, larger agenda.
Considering that, the April 20,
2001, shoot down of a plane carrying missionaries across the Brazilian border
into Peru becomes highly suspicious. At first, the official story fed to the
press was that Peruvian authorities ordered the attack on their own, over the
pleas of the CIA "contract pilots" who initially spotted the plane.
But Peruvian pilots involved in that program, supposedly designed to intercept
drug flights, insist that nothing was shot down without US approval.
Innocent planes were sometimes
attacked, but most were small, low flying aircraft that didn't file flight
plans and had no radios. This plane maintained regular contact and did file a
plan. Still, even after it crash-landed, the Peruvians continued to strafe it,
perhaps in an attempt to ignite the plane's fuel and eliminate the evidence.
"I think it has to do with
Plan Colombia and the coming war," said Celerino Castillo, who had
previously worked in Peru for Drug Enforcement Agency. "The CIA was
sending a clear message to all non-combatants to clear out of the area, and to
get favorable press." The flight was heading to Iquitos, which "is at
the heart of everything the CIA is doing right now," he added. "They
don't want any witnesses."
Timing also may have played a part.
The shoot down occurred on the opening day of the Summit of the Americas in
Quebec City. Uruguay's President Jorge Ibanez, who had proposed the worldwide
legalization of drugs just weeks before, was expected to make a high-profile
speech on his proposal at the gathering. The downing of a drug smuggling plane
at this moment, near territory held by Colombia's FARC rebels, would help to
defuse Uruguay's message and reinforce the image of the insurgents as drug
smugglers.
If you doubt that the US would condone
such an operation or cover it up, consider this: In 1967, Israel torpedoed the
USS Liberty, a large floating listening post, as it was eavesdropping on the
Arab-Israeli war off the Sinai Peninsula. Hundreds of US sailors were wounded
and killed, probably because Israel feared that its massacre of Egyptian
prisoners at El Arish might be overheard. How did the Pentagon respond? By
imposing a total news ban, and covering up the facts for decades.
Will we ever find out what really
happened in Peru, specifically why a missionary and her daughter were killed?
Not likely, since it involves a private military contractor that is basically
beyond the reach of congressional accountability.
In 2009, when the Peru shoot down
became one of five cases of intelligence operation cover up being investigated
by the US House Intelligence Committee, the CIA inspector general concluded
that the CIA had improperly concealed information about the incident. Intelligence
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairwoman Jan Schakowsky, who led the
investigation, didn’t rule out referrals to the Justice Department for criminal
prosecutions if evidence surfaced that intelligence officials broke the law.
But she couldn’t guarantee that the facts would ever come to light, since the
Committee’s report of its investigation would be classified.
The most crucial wrinkle in the
Peruvian incident is the involvement of DynCorp, which was active in Colombia
and Bolivia under large contracts with various US agencies. The day after the incident,
ABC news reported that, according to “senior administration officials,” the
crew of the surveillance plane that first identified the doomed aircraft
"was hired by the CIA from DynCorp." Within two days, however, all
references to DynCorp were scrubbed from ABC's Website. A week later, the New
York Post claimed the crew actually worked for Aviation Development Corp.,
allegedly a CIA proprietary company.
Whatever the truth, State
Department officials refused to talk on the record about DynCorp's activities
in South America. Yet, according to DynCorp's State Department contract, the
firm had received at least $600 million over the previous few years for
training, drug interdiction, search and rescue (which included combat), air
transport of equipment and people, and reconnaissance in the region. And that
was only what they put on paper. It also operated government aircraft and
provided all manner of personnel, particularly for Plan Colombia.
Outsourcing Defense
DynCorp began in 1946 as the employee-owned
air cargo business California Eastern Airways, flying in supplies for the
Korean War. This and later government work led to charges that it was a CIA
front company. Whatever the truth, it ultimately became a leading PMC, hiring
former soldiers and police officers to implement US foreign policy without
having to report to Congress.
The push to privatize war gained
traction during the first Bush administration. After the first Gulf War, the
Pentagon, then headed by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid a Halliburton
subsidiary nearly $9 million to study how PMCs could support US soldiers in
combat zones, according to a Mother Jones investigation. Cheney subsequently
became CEO of Halliburton, and Brown & Root, later known as Halliburton
KBR, won billions to construct and run military bases, some in secret
locations.
One of DynCorp’s earliest
“police” contracts involved the protection of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, and, after he was ousted, providing the “technical advice” that
brought military officers involved in that coup into Haiti’s National Police.
Despite this dodgy record, in 2002 it won the contract to protect another new
president, Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai. By then, it was a top IT federal
contractor specializing in computer systems development, and also providing the
government with aviation services, general military management, and security
expertise.
Like other private military
outfits, the main danger it has faced is the risk of public exposure. Under one
contract, for example, DynCorp sprayed vast quantities of herbicides over
Colombia to kill the cocaine crop. In September 2001, Ecuadorian Indians filed
a class action lawsuit, charging that DynCorp recklessly sprayed their homes
and farms, causing illnesses and deaths and destroying crops. In Bosnia,
private police provided by DynCorp for the UN were accused of buying and
selling prostitutes, including a 12-year-old girl. Others were charged with
videotaping a rape.
In the first years of the 21st
century, DynCorp's day-to-day operations in South America were overseen by
State Department officials, including the Narcotic Affairs Section and the Air
Wing, the latter a clique of unreformed cold warriors and leftovers from 80s operations
in Central America. It was essentially the State Department's private air force
in the Andes, with access to satellite-based recording and mapping systems.
In
the 1960s, a similar role was played by the Vinnell Corp., which the CIA called
"our own private mercenary army in Vietnam." Vinnell later became a
subsidiary of TRW, a major NSA contractor, and employed US Special Forces vets
to train Saudi Arabia's National Guard. In the late 1990s, TRW hired former NSA
director William Studeman to help with its intelligence program.
DynCorp avoided the kind of
public scandal that surrounded the activities of Blackwater. In Ecuador, where
it developed military logistics centers and coordinated “anti-terror” police
training, the exposure of a secret covenant signed with the Aeronautics
Industries Directorate of the Ecuadorian Air Force briefly threatened to make
waves. According to a November 2003 exposé in Quito’s El Comercio, the
arrangement, hidden from the National Defense Council, made DynCorp’s people
part of the US diplomatic mission.
In Colombia, DynCorp’s coca
eradication and search-and-rescue missions led to controversial pitched battles
with rebels. US contract pilots flew Black Hawk helicopters carrying Colombian
police officers who raked the countryside with machine gun fire to protect the
missions against attacks. According to investigative reporter Jason Vest,
DynCorp employees were also implicated in narcotics trafficking. But such
stories didn’t get far, and, in any case, DynCorp’s “trainers” simply ignored
congressional rules, including those that restrict the US from aiding military
units linked to human rights abuses.
In 2003, DynCorp won a
multimillion-dollar contract to build a private police force in post-Saddam
Iraq, with some of the funding diverted from an anti-drug program for
Afghanistan. In 2004, the State Department further expanded DynCorp’s role as a
global US surrogate with a $1.75 billion, five year contract to provide law
enforcement personnel for civilian policing operations in “post-conflict areas”
around the world. That March, the company also got an Army contract to support
helicopters sold to foreign countries. The work, described as “turnkey”
services, includes program management, logistics support, maintenance and
aircrew training, aircraft maintenance and refurbishment, repair and overhaul
of aircraft components and engines, airframe and engine upgrades, and the
production of technical publications.
In short, DynCorp was a trusted
partner in the military-intelligence-industrial complex. "Are we
outsourcing order to avoid public scrutiny, controversy or embarrassment?"
asked Rep. Schakowsky upon submitting legislation to prohibit US funding for
private military firms in the Andean region. "If there is a potential for
a privatized Gulf of Tonkin incident, then the American people deserve to have
a full and open debate before this policy goes any further."
If and when that ever happens,
the discussion will have to cover a lot of ground. Private firms, working in
concert with various intelligence agencies, constitute a vast foreign policy
apparatus that is largely invisible, rarely covered by the corporate press, and
not currently subject to congressional oversight. The Freedom of Information
Act simply doesn't apply. Any information on whom they arm or how they operate
is private, proprietary information.
The US government downplays its
use of mercenaries, a state of affairs that could undermine any efforts to find
out about CIA activities that are concealed from Congress. Yet private
contractors perform almost every function essential to military operations, a
situation that has been called the “creeping privatization of the business of
war.” By 2004, the Pentagon was employing more than 700,000 private
contractors.
The companies are staffed by
former generals, admirals, and highly trained officers. Name a hot spot and
some PMC has people there. DynCorp has worked on the Defense Message System
Transition Hub and done long-range planning for the Air Force. MPRI had a
similar contract with the Army, and for a time coordinated the Pentagon's
military and leadership training in at least seven African nations.
How did this outsourcing of
defense evolve? In 1969, the US Army had about 1.5 million active duty
soldiers. By 1992, the figure had been cut by half. Since the mid-1990s,
however, the US has mobilized militarily to intervene in several significant
conflicts, and a corporate “foreign legion” has filled the gap between foreign
policy imperatives and what a downsized, increasingly over-stretched military
can provide.
Use of high technology equipment
feeds the process. Private companies have technical capabilities that the
military needs, but doesn’t always possess. Contractors have maintained stealth
bombers and Predator unmanned drones used in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some
military equipment is specifically designed to be operated and maintained by
private companies.
In Britain, the debate over
military privatization has been public, since the activities of the UK company
Sandline in Sierra Leone and Papua New Guinea embarrassed the government in the
late 1990s. But no country has clear policies to regulate PMCs, and the limited
oversight that does exist rarely works. In the US, they have largely escaped
notice, except when US contract workers in conflict zones are killed or go way
over the line, as in the case of Blackwater.
According to Guy Copeland, who
began developing public-private IT policy in the Reagan years, “The private
sector must play an integral role in improving our national cybersecurity.”
After all, he has noted, private interests own and operate 85 percent of the
nation’s critical IT infrastructure. He should know. After all, Copeland
drafted much of the language in the Bush Administration’s 2002 National
Strategy to Secure Cyberspace as co-chair of the Information Security Committee
of the Information Technology Association of America.
Nevertheless, when the federal
government becomes dependent on unaccountable, private companies like DynCorp
and Blackwater (later renamed Xe Services) for so many key security services,
as well as for military logistics, management, strategy, expertise and
“training,” fundamental elements of US defense have been outsourced. And the
details of that relationship are matters that the intelligence community will
fight long and hard to keep out of public view.
Corporate Connections and
"Soft Landings"
Although the various departments
and private contractors within the military-intelligence-industrial complex
occasionally have turf battles and don't always share information or coordinate
strategy as effectively as they might, close and ongoing contact has long been
considered essential. And it has expanded as a result of the information
revolution. The entire intelligence community has its own secret Intranet,
which pulls together FBI reports, NSA intercepts, analysis from the DIA and
CIA, and other deeply covert sources.
Private firms are connected to
this information web through staff, location, shared technology, and assorted
contracts. Working primarily for the Pentagon, for example, L-3 Communications,
a spinoff from major defense contractor Lockheed Martin, has manufactured
hardware like control systems for satellites and flight recorders. MPRI, which was
bought by L-3, provided services like its operations in Macedonia. L-3 also
built the NSA's Secure Terminal Equipment, which instantly encrypts phone
conversations.
Another private contractor active
in the Balkans was Science Applications, staffed by former NSA and CIA
personnel, and specializing in police training. When Janice Stromsem, a Justice
Department employee, complained that its program gave the CIA unfettered access
to recruiting agents in foreign police forces, she was relieved of her duties.
Her concern was that the sovereignty of nations receiving aid from the US was
being compromised.
In 1999, faced with personnel
cuts, the NSA offered over 4000 employees "soft landing" buy outs to
help them secure jobs with defense firms that have major NSA contracts. NSA
offered to pay the first year's salary, in hopes the contractor would then pick
up the tab. Sometimes the employee didn't even have to move away from Crypto
City. Companies taking part in the program included TRW and MPRI's parent
company, Lockheed Martin.
Lockheed was also a winner in the
long-term effort to privatize government services. In 2000, it won a $43.8
million contract to run the Defense Civilian Personnel Data System, one of the
largest human resources systems in the world. As a result, a major defense
contractor took charge of consolidating all Department of Defense personnel
systems, covering hiring and firing for about 750,000 civilian employees. This
put the contractor at the cutting edge of Defense Department planning, and made
it a key gatekeeper at the revolving door between the US military and private
interests.
Invisible Threats
Shortly after his appointment as
NSA director in 1999, Michael Hayden went to see the film Enemy of the State,
in which Will Smith is pursued by an all-seeing, all hearing NSA and former
operative Gene Hackman decries the agency's dangerous power. In Body of Secrets,
author Bamford says Hayden found the film entertaining, yet offensive and
highly inaccurate. Still, the NSA chief was comforted by "a society that
makes its bogeymen secrecy and power. That's really what the movie's about.''
Unlike Hayden, most people don't
know where the fiction ends and NSA reality begins. Supposedly, the agency
rarely "spies" on US citizens at home. On the other hand, the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act allows a secret federal court to waive that
limitation. The rest of the world doesn't have that protection. Designating
thousands of keywords, names, phrases, and phone numbers, NSA computers can
pick them out of millions of messages, passing anything of interest on to
analysts. One can only speculate about what happens next.
After 9/11 the plan was to go
further with a project code named Tempest. The goal was to capture computer
signals such as keystrokes or monitor images through walls or from other buildings,
even if the computers weren't linked to a network. One NSA document,
"Compromising Emanations Laboratory Test Requirements,
Electromagnetics," described procedures for capturing the radiation
emitted from a computer-through radio waves and the telephone, serial, network,
or power cables attached to it.
Other NSA programs have included
Oasis, designed to reduce audiovisual images into machine-readable text for
easier filtering, and Fluent, which expanded Echelon's multilingual
capabilities. And let's not forget the government's Carnivore Internet surveillance
program, which can collect all communications over any segment of the network
being watched.
Put such elements together,
combine them with business imperatives and covert foreign policy objectives,
then throw PMCS into the mix, and you get a glimpse of the extent to which
information can be translated into raw power and secretly used to shape events.
Although most pieces of the puzzle remain obscure, enough is visible to justify
suspicion, outrage, and a campaign to pull away the curtain on this Wizard of
Oz. But fighting a force that is largely invisible and unaccountable – and able
to eavesdrop on the most private exchanges, that is a daunting task, perhaps
even more difficult than confronting the mechanisms of corporate globalization
that it protects and promotes.
In the early 20th century the nation’s progressive movement attempted to control concentrated wealth and widen democratic participation. For a quarter century, reforms addressed workers’ rights, monopoly excesses, political corruption, uncontrolled development, and the impacts of the early industrial era. In the process, many people got relief from the worst effects of uncontrolled capitalism, a considerable accomplishment. 
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