The CIA as Organized Crime

How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World

De: Douglas Valentine

Narrado por: Stefan Rudnicki

The author of three books on CIA operations, Douglas Valentine began his research into the agency's activities when CIA director William Colby gave him free access to interview agency officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. It was a permission Colby was to regret. The CIA would eventually rescind it and made every effort to impede publication of The Phoenix Program, which documented an elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture, and assassination in Vietnam.

While researching Phoenix, Valentine learned that the CIA allowed opium and heroin to flow from its secret bases in Laos to generals and politicians on its payroll in South Vietnam. His investigations into this illegal activity focused on the CIA's relationship with the federal agencies mandated by Congress to stop illegal drugs from entering the United States. Based on interviews with senior officials, Valentine wrote two subsequent books, The Strength of the Wolf and The Strength of the Pack, showing how the CIA infiltrated federal drug enforcement agencies and commandeered their executive management, intelligence, and foreign operations staffs in order to ensure the unimpeded flow of drugs to traffickers and foreign officials in its employ.

Ultimately, portions of his research materials were archived at the National Security Archive, Texas Tech University's Vietnam Center, and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

This book includes excerpts from the aforementioned titles, along with subsequent articles and transcripts of interviews on a range of current topics, with a view to shedding light on the systemic dimensions of the CIA's ongoing illegal and extralegal activities. These articles and interviews illustrate how the agency's activities impact social and political movements abroad and at home.

A common theme is the CIA's ability to deceive and propagandize the American public through its impenetrable, government-sanctioned shield of official secrecy and plausible deniability.

Though investigated by the Church Committee in 1975, CIA praxis then continues to inform CIA praxis today. Valentine tracks the agency's steady expansion into practices targeting the last population to be subjected to the exigencies of the American empire: the American people themselves.

©2016 Douglas Valentine (P)2017 Skyboat Media, Inc., and Blackstone Audio, Inc.

The CIA as Organized Crime: A personal perspective

A must read for the better understanding of current and past negative world activities. While unfortunately most of the events and practices brought to light in this text come as little or no surprise, the historical reflection of how this organization came to be and how to try to corral this monster and all of its collaborative entities leaves little to the imagination.

New favorite book. Horrifying, illuminating

Very well written and preformed. The author is informative and while the subject matter is extremely disturbing I’m glad to know. I’ve also read The Phoenix Program by the same author, and I would say the two books pair well together.

Phoenix program=Gangstalking

The operation known as the phoenix program is the father of todays Gangstalking ptogram. People are being driven to imprisonment/death by this program covertly employed by our own government right now, today!

Tons of insight, but a little bias

I truly enjoyed this book and all the work it must have taken to write it. The only downside was the author's seemingly lack of any patriotism, whatsoever. BLM is falsely accused of being a terrorist organization? I didn't see when the book was written, but possibly before all the riots and killing that took place a couple summers ago. That,and other bias comments, turned me off. Nonetheless, a great book.I agreed with almost everything he asserted.

Most important book so far this century

The title of this review says everything you need to know about this exceptionally well written book.

Excellent read

Very informing. Stuff the American people (and world, frankly) need to know about how their government works.

Pure Shocking Shameful Truth

The Monsters Among US stripped to the core. Mass Murders and Wall Street Nazis, guess what party they belong to now?

This is the Big Picture like few have seen it before. When I publish ‘Big Brother, SpyRadio & The Hit Parade’ I’ll fill in a piece of the 70s, 80s, & 90s.

For instance, Metromedia Corporation was a CIA Front. Its nationwide network was spying on Americans, repacking and selling invasion of privacy as New Wave Rock n’ Roll. WNEW AM-FM-TV in New York was the Flagship. Former OSS Agent John W. Kluge was its appointed head who became the richest man in America until being displaced by Bill Gates.

That's why they call me...bad company

Doug Valentine would be described as a leftist, or liberal, or progressive....but the listener should not dismiss his books because of that. This book is extremely well written and informative.

When Valentine is focusing on the heinous actions of the CIA...de-stabilizing other governments, assassinating undesirables, terrorizing foreigners, drug running, etc...this book is excellent. In particular, it is informative to read of the CIA playbook, that everything must be deniable, and must further an overall agenda, for the CIA to do it. How the CIA is basically unaccountable, and not subject to the same laws that govern you and me.

I found the sections that featured transcripts from interviews Valentine did with the likes of Lew Rockwell and Ryan Dawson to be the highlights. They were simple, and not overly bogged down by detail. Less effective were the sections that dealt with structure and machinations of the CIA itself. It is enough to say...it IS organized criminality. I also quite liked the section where Valentine eviscerates phony murderer Bob Kerrey over his lying about atrocities he committed in Vietnam. Valentine also did a great job of summarizing the Phoenix program, though for more information you should listen to his book solely on that subject. And he also does an admirable job of showing how the Phoenix program blueprint was transferred to Iraq and Afghanistan in the war on terror, and possibly eventually to the US mainland.

On the downside, Valentine makes some significant errors in my view. For one, his insistence that the rise of the CIA is a result of a capitalist society. This is a silly argument. For one, the US does not have a capitalist system. It has a corporatist system, or cronism. Mussolini would call it fascism...the merger of state and corporate power. This is undeniably true, so when capitalism is portrayed as the boogeyman, that is wrong. The kind of favoritism and protectionism that multinational corporations, and the military-industrial complex receive, are not a facet of free market capitalism. Also, while it might play well with progressives who bash the CIA, the USA is not a right wing country. The political structure of the USA is clearly a hybrid of fascism/communism, and the so called Cold War was not really an ideological struggle against communism so much as it was cover for the burgeoning synthesis of east and west under a One World Order. That is the end the CIA has been working towards, eliminating any resistance worldwide to this agenda, along with its cohort the Mossad.

And also, calling Thomas Jefferson a serial rapist is kind of ridiculous. There isn't any proof of that, and it just makes the author sound like a self-hating white person ashamed of what "his" people did in the past. We can abhor the institution of slavery, without making allegations that are never even attempted to be proven. That is beneath a writer and researcher of Valentine's quality. I agree with his critiques of the police, that they enforce laws, they don't obey them...his constant harping on race and minorities makes it seem like the USA is awash in racism. If so, how in the Hell did Obama get elected? And we could say well Obama was selected, not elected, but did the masses or the the ruling class revolt and overthrow him? No.

A very good book, albeit misguided in some ways, that I really enjoyed. It is obvious we all owe a debt of gratitude to Valentine for his tireless work on this subject.

Deeply disturbing and provocative

This book builds on the insideous and extremely sad historical reality of the CIA's strategic contributions to perpetuating CAPITALISM AMERICAN STYLE via orchestrating government takedowns and resorting to Phoenix Program style modus operandi. Beware and do what you can within your own life and sphere of influence to choose and do good over evil.

A must-read for anyone who truly loves the U.S.

But only if you can handle the truth. Some hear this as revelation; others as confirmation. Others refuse to believe.