Ralph McGehee, the CIA and Deadly Deceits
The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the President’s foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while reporting “intelligence” justifying those activities. It shapes its intelligence, even in such critical areas as Soviet nuclear weapon capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target audience of its lies. [ Quoted from: McGehee, Ralph (1999) [1983]. Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA, Ocean Press. p. 192. ISBN 1-876175-19-2.]
By Wade Frazier
Statement for Ralph’s Protection
My 1999 Synopsis of Deadly Deceits
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_McGehee
In 1990, when I was getting educated in the alternative media and other areas, I obtained Deadly Deceits, the memoirs of an ex-CIA operative, Ralph McGehee. When I was writing my original web site in 1996, I wrote a brief synopsis of Deadly Deceits, in a section where I outlined the sources that influenced my worldview. I contacted Ralph before I published the pages, asking him if I could publish the Deadly Deceits excerpts that I quoted on my web pages. He replied that it was OK by him, so I did.
Ralph is an ex-CIA employee who publicly criticized the CIA, and only a handful ever have. McGehee is interviewed on Bill Moyers’Secret Government video. Ralph maintained his CIABASE archives on the Internet for years, exposing the CIA’s activities using public domain sources. In running his CIABASE, Ralph was doing something that anyone could do. Still, he endured endless harassment from the CIA as they have tried silencing him. Ralph had more than my respect; he had my awe. After riding in the saddle with Dennis Lee for years, I discovered how rare a Dennis or a Ralph McGehee was. People of conscience, living it at those levels, are one in many thousands.
My web pages came down in early 1997 with no warning, something not entirely in my control. In early 1998, I discovered that some of my work survived and was being reproduced on the Internet. Not only had one person reproduced my entire 600-page web site, I also found that my synopsis of Deadly Deceits was reproduced in several places. I contacted Hank Roth’s The Golem web site, one place my synopsis appeared, asking him where he got it. The surprising response from Hank was that he thought Ralph McGehee gave it to him. It turned out that Ralph had published my synopsis of his book across the Internet as the defining synopsis of Deadly Deceits, which is the summary of his career. I was deeply honored.
When I discovered that my hurriedly written synopsis still dominated Ralph’s presentation of his work on his new web site, I wrote a version of it using more care. It is below. After escalating harassment by the CIA and friends, leading to bodily injury to Ralph, his CIABASE web site went down in the spring of 2000, and will probably never reappear.
Statement for Ralph’s Protection
In August 2001, I received the below statement from Ralph. He wanted to have me post it on my site, and wherever else it can be posted, for his protection.
“I moved to Florida in July 2000. Immediately the harassment I experienced in Herndon transferred here. A major difference is that the FBI here openly advises I am a threat to National Security — because, I assume, I tell unclassified truths to the American people.
“In 1990 the CIA officially advised me in writing that I may use any information in the public domain — making the FBI’s actions against me false if not illegal as I have never and will never expose secret persons or information.
“Harassment here has grown to such a degree that I fear staged incidents to arrest me for something — anything.
“I base my actions on what is in the best interests of the United States. This may be difficult to believe given my negative commentary, but I participated in and watched CIA operations in Vietnam and other countries nearly destroy the US/us.
“The CIA said I was an analyst with few peers and awarded me its Career Intelligence Medal. I use this ability and those experiences to inform about the CIA’s many opportunities and deficiencies.
“Anyone wishing to know more may find details via a Google search under my name.”
— Ralph McGehee
Ralph has also asked me to post his letter from the CIA that informed him that his CIABASE activities were perfectly legal, and were no threat to “national security.” Here it is.
My 1999 Synopsis of Deadly Deceits
Deadly Deceits became a college textbook. After a moving introduction it starts slowly, climaxing with a series of haunting revelations. During McGehee’s twenty-five year CIA career, he heartily believed in its stated mission of “fighting communism.” McGehee wrote that CIA fieldworker candidates are psychologically screened before being hired, and their most treasured quality is the willingness to blindly follow orders.
Ralph W. McGehee joined the CIA in 1952, after an All-American football career at Notre Dame (where Phil Agee also studied) during their national championship years. He was raised on and believed in the American dream – “the Protestant work ethic, truth, justice, freedom.” He signed on as a dedicated cold warrior and spent the next ten years stationed at home and abroad: at Langley (the CIA headquarters in Washington), Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and then Thailand. McGehee was dedicated to stopping the scourge of communism, and enthusiastically helped keep the world free of its taint.
During the mid-1960s, communism was sweeping Southeast Asia. McGehee’s job was saving Thai villages from communist insurgency. He viewed his career as a cross between “Peace Corps and missionary work.” Building upon a British method used earlier in Thailand, McGehee developed an inexpensive method of intelligence gathering that identified communists and exposed their network. The strategy was partly intimidating the villagers through terror, such as holding a gun to a baby’s head to get the mother to talk, yet was benign when compared to other “counterintelligence” methods of the time, among them torture and boiling suspected communists in oil.
The operation’s goal was to make communists confess their “crimes,” name their cohorts, return to the Thai government’s fold and become “good peasants” again. Forgiveness was offered and given to those who talked, with escalating intimidation for those harder to crack. The Catholic Church successfully used a similar carrot-and-stick strategy during its Inquisition days. The Thailand strategy was effective and Machiavellian, something that McGehee crafted and believed in. It obtained a quality of intelligence the region had never seen before. It also reversed communist inroads. The Thai government’s brute force response to “communist insurgency,” backed by its U.S. sponsors, alienated the villagers, driving them into the communists’ arms. McGehee’s method was far more subtle and effective.
The operation’s results were awarded universal praise in intelligence circles in 1967. McGehee had his career’s greatest success and was euphoric. He discovered a way of exposing and defeating the communists, and his future looked bright. He was at the top of his game. In the wake of the accolades, William Colby (future CIA director, and then the Far East division chief) visited, and McGehee briefed him:
“I explained the procedures of the survey and then outlined my general conclusions, including my doubts about previous Agency reporting which said that the communists did not have the support of the local people and that they forced people to support them with threats and terrorism.
“‘Such a picture is inaccurate,’ I told Colby…’We have found that the Communists concentrate the majority, almost the entirety, of their time winning the cooperation of the peasants.'”
McGehee exposed the communist movement as a grass roots movement with peasant support, mainly because their goal was freeing themselves from colonial and neocolonial oppression, enforced by the Thai ruling class and their industrialized-nation sponsors. The Communist Revolution in Southeast Asia was an exercise in freedom, although McGehee would not attain that realization for years. In 1967, McGehee was ecstatic that his method reversed communist infiltration.
Colby silently received McGehee’s presentation, finally muttering, “We always seem to be losing.” McGehee was astonished by Colby’s response.
Soon after Colby’s visit, McGehee was removed from the field, his successful program was canceled, and he found himself behind a meaningless desk at Langley. He was shocked and confused for years. He eventually realized that his intelligence work, although arguably the most effective the West had ever seen in Southeast Asia, produced an undesirable answer. Communism could not be damned as an evil if the people wanted it. If that fact became widely known, our Vietnam adventure could be seen in an unsavory light: killing millions to prevent them from choosing a government we disapproved of. The American experience in Vietnam was an attempt at reconquering the region, keeping it in the capitalistic fold and keeping those people enslaved.
McGehee still believed his indoctrination and volunteered for Saigon, something that no sane CIA employee did in 1968. McGehee was a true believer in America’s good intentions, even if their tactics sometimes seemed regrettable. Defeating the communists was his great desire.
One pivotal evening in his quarters near Saigon in December of 1968, McGehee finally figured it out.
“I sat there in agony thinking about all that had led me to this private hell. My idealism, my patriotism, my ambition, my plans to be a good intelligence officer to help my country fight the communist scourge – what in the hell had happened? Why did we have to bomb the people we were trying to save? Why were we napalming young children? Why did the CIA, my employer for 16 years, report lies instead of the truth?
“I hated my part in the charade of murder and horror. My efforts were contributing to the deaths, to the burning alive of children – especially the children. The photographs of young Vietnamese children burned by napalm destroyed me.”
McGehee will never lose the memory of the smell of burning Vietnamese flesh. McGehee thought of killing himself that night in Vietnam. He thought of various ways to kill himself to protest what was happening. In the end, however, he committed his life to telling the world what really happened in Vietnam and the true nature of America’s fight against communism. McGehee embarked on the hard, lonely road of exposing what his nation was really up to.
When his devastating tour of duty in Vietnam was finished, McGehee left:
“I was glad to be going home. But I knew I would never be the same person again. All of my ideals of helping people, all my convictions about the processes of intelligence, all my respect for my work, all the feelings of joy in my life, all my concepts of honor, integrity, trust and love, all in fact that made me what I was, had died in Vietnam. Through its blindness and its murders, the Agency had stolen my life and my soul. Full of anger, hatred, and fear, I bitterly contemplated a dismal future.”
The year was 1970, and McGehee had nearly twenty years of CIA service. He spent mere weeks in the United States before returning to Thailand. He sought somewhere to serve out his career’s remaining years; somewhere he could stand living. Ironically, he saw the fruit of his anti-communist efforts in Thailand. The peaceful culture of Southeast Asia was destroyed by American involvement. Where McGehee had earlier witnessed pastoral scenes of Thai and Vietnamese people quietly living their lives, Southeast Asia had been turned into an armed camp, with violence, drug use and prostitution commonplace. A barbed-wire fence surrounded the Thai school that his children happily attended on an earlier tour of duty. The students were bodily searched as they entered the school’s grounds. The Thai government destroyed the villages that McGehee had “helped” on his earlier tours. He helped establish the framework that destroyed those that he “helped.” He became a squeaky cog in the machine and was put on probation.
McGehee soon returned to Langley, spending several years getting educated in the CIA’s archives. He finally understood what communism meant to the communists, and realized that the Western view of communism was a fantasy to justify our violence against them. They were not trying to conquer the world. They sought freedom. For that crime, America murdered millions of them. McGehee retired after spending 25 years with the agency, accepting a career achievement medal so his future work could not be called that of a CIA employee with a failed career. He began his book’s conclusion with:
“The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the President’s foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while reporting “intelligence” justifying those activities. [McGehee says he has never once seen a CIA official tell the truth to Congress. Instead comes a steady stream of lies. – Ed.] It shapes its intelligence, even in such critical areas as Soviet nuclear weapon capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target of its lies.
“As noted in the Church Committee’s final report, the Agency’s task is to develop an international anti-communist ideology. The CIA then links every egalitarian [which means “all men are created equal” – Ed.] political movement to the scourge of international communism. This then prepares the American people and many in the world community for the second stage, the destruction of those movements. For egalitarianism is the enemy and it must not be allowed to exist.”
McGehee called for the CIA’s abolition in Deadly Deceits, describing it as an unsalvageable organization. In Deadly Deceits’appendix, McGehee reported on the gauntlet that he ran to publish the book. He did not want to lose his pension, go to jail or leave the country, so he abided by the secrecy agreement he signed when joining the CIA. The appendix begins:
“The secrecy agreement that I signed when I joined the CIA allows the Agency to review prior to publication all writings of present and former employees to ensure that classified information relating to national security is not revealed. This provision seems logical and necessary to protect legitimate interests. However, my experiences in getting this book approved show that the CIA uses the agreement not so much to protect national security as to prevent revelations and criticisms of its immoral, illegal, and ineffective operations. To that end it uses all possible maneuvers, legal and illegal. Had I not been represented by my attorney, Mark Lynch of the American Civil Liberties Union, and had I not developed a massive catalog of information already cleared by the Agency’s publication review board, this book could not have been published.”
McGehee’s dark journey in publishing Deadly Deceits is a damning indictment of U.S. secrecy laws and their enforcement. The CIA tried ambushing McGehee with a room full of lawyers, before they knew he hired a lawyer with the necessary security clearance to represent him. The CIA man assigned to work with McGehee made his feelings plain, telling him, “It’s too bad you didn’t work for the Israeli intelligence service. They know how to deal with people like you. They’d take you out and shoot you.
McGehee’s original manuscript contained nothing that he felt was classified information, and he was careful. The CIA made 397 deletions from his original draft, after retracting hundreds of their more whimsical deletions, made before discovering that he had obtained competent counsel. The legal battle took more than two years, and the CIA went around in circles. They would permit certain passages after battling with McGehee, then they would retract that permission, then grant it again, then take it away once more, and on different grounds each time. The CIA’s effort was an incredible feat of double-talk and duplicity. At one point, Ralph was threatened with prosecution for stealing state secrets if he could not prove that every fact in his book was obtained in the public domain. The published book is riddled with censorship deletions, with text such as “[19 words deleted]” in the middle of a sentence. McGehee states:
“John Marks and Victor Marchetti’s book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, published in 1974 (9 years before McGehee’s book), was the last approved critical book written about the Agency by an ex-employee. In light of my own experiences the reason is obvious: the secrecy agreement and the way it is abused by the Agency. It is virtually impossible to write in an atmosphere where everything is secret until it is deemed otherwise….It is clear that the secrecy agreement does not halt the flow of information to our enemies, for it does not affect the CIA employee who sells information…What the CIA’s secrecy agreement does quite effectively, however, is to stop critics of the Agency from explaining to the American public what the CIA is and does. It is sad to say, but the truth is that the primary purpose of the secrecy agreement is to suppress information that the American people are legitimately entitled to.”
For all the mainstream media’s rhetoric regarding the First Amendment, freedom of speech in America has had a rough ride. From the Sedition Act of 1798, making it a crime to criticize high-ranking American officials (not dealt with by the U.S. Supreme Courtuntil 1964, in the New York Times versus Sullivan decision), to pre-Civil War Southern laws making it a crime to speak or write about abolition, to the Espionage Act that made it a crime to criticize World War I, freedom of speech has often been more imagined than real in America. During my lifetime, freedom of speech has waxed and waned.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) would be unnecessary if the principle of freedom truly guided the American legal system. The FOIA was originally passed during the Civil Rights days of the 1960s. The Nixon years saw the FOIA erode. The aftermath of the Watergate scandal tipped the scales back toward freedom. The Carter years saw a new openness in government and a focus on human rights, but that is relative. Under no U.S. president have we truly had freedom of information, nor have human rights concerns ever prominently guided America’s foreign policy. Knowledge is power, and keeping information secret is a time-honored method of amassing and maintaining power. The United States is no exception, and there is no reason why it should be. People can wave around the Constitution, but America’s freedom of information is scant for a nation that calls itself democratic, and has gotten worse since the World Trade Center attacks. America’s military and spy establishment has the largest secrecy apparatus of any nation, by far.
The rich and powerful run the Democratic Party, the same as in the Republican Party, but the Democratic Party sometimes has at least an appearance of allegiance to average Americans. The FOIA has endured many vicissitudes in my lifetime, with theReagan-Bush years witnessing the greatest assaults on the FOIA. The Reagan administration even tried reclassifying previously declassified information used in McGehee’s book, to enter bizarre, Orwellian realms. Bludgeoning Central America was one of many dark acts committed during the Reagan-Bush years, and secrecy was its handmaiden, evident in the Iran-Contra scandal, among others. Although the pendulum swung marginally back to freedom’s side during Bill Clinton’s reign, freedom of speech in America is a farce if one offends or exposes the powerful. Today, the “anti-terrorist” legislation Clinton has championed, and his recent “Fortress America” ideas of protecting America from “terrorists,” can easily be used to silence American critics of our government, by calling them “terrorists.” Those fears, voiced continually in right wing circles, are not so farfetched (events since theWorld Trade Center attacks make the above writing quite dated, as Bush, Ashcroft and friends seem to be trying to raise McCarthy from the grave).
To date, Ralph is one of a handful of ex-CIA employees to publicly criticize the CIA. Ralph does not agree with me, but I believe he did not attain his realizations due to his intelligence, which is considerable. He figured it out because he fervently digested his indoctrination and believed that his efforts made the world better. Because he was such a true believer, he chased experiences (such as volunteering for Saigon duty in 1968) that eventually provided him with his devastating revelations. When he realized that his efforts helped murder millions of people in Southeast Asia, his conscience assailed him. His pure heart enabled him to figure it out, not his intelligence.
I can only wonder how often Ralph thinks back to those Southeast Asians that he “helped,” abetting their horrific experiences at the United States’ bloody hands. He probably thinks about it every day. His CIABASE and other efforts have been attempts to help balance his scales, while helping us awaken, to help prevent further murders in greed’s name. Unfortunately, it is happening in Iraqtoday, and Armageddon might be just around the corner. Ralph’s weathering of the CIA’s continuing harassment has been inspiring. John Stockwell (another rare ex-CIA employee who spoke out, and has paid dearly for his efforts) has written, “More effectively than any other ex-CIA author, Ralph McGehee deals with the anguish of a principled man seeking a career in the CIA.”
Ralph is the rare individual possessing the integrity to walk his arduous and heartbreaking path. Of the many thousands who have filed through the CIA’s ranks during the past fifty years, Ralph is in an elite company of less than ten people who woke up and took a public stance. That list includes Philip Agee, John Stockwell, Victor Marchetti and David McMichael. There are not many more, and probably no others of their stature. They have my admiration, and even my awe. None of them think of themselves as heroes. As Noam Chomsky says, their motivation is partly being able to look themselves squarely in the eye while shaving. They are responding to the insistent call of their consciences, and feel compelled to act. Ralph McGehee and those few others like him rarely see themselves as heroes, but are doing what any decent person would do. The problem is, few will do the decent thing if it might really cost them. I will always be grateful for the “heroic” efforts of McGehee, Chomsky, Agee, Stockwell, McMichael, Marchetti, Dennis Lee and others. They helped me figure out how our system works.
Wade Frazier, Seattle, March 1999 (slightly revised since original publication)
P.S. in 2004, John Perkins spoke out like Ralph did, but from the privatized “middle management.”
RALPH MCGEHEE’S LETTERS OF PROTEST AGAINST SERIAL HARASSMENT
President Clinton
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
Fax 202 456 2461
Mr. John Deutch
Director of CIA
Washington, D.C. 20505
Fax 703 482 6790
Herndon Town Council
P.O. Box 427
Herndon, VA 22070
My name is Ralph McGehee and I am a twenty-five year decorated veteran of the CIA and a critic. My primary effort in this regard is a computer data base, CIABASE. The below letter was posted on Internet today – a measure I reluctantly take in order to defend myself from efforts by local police, especially the Herndon Police, to apparently implicate me in some crime. The level of effort directed at me has increased substantially in the last few weeks — and I ask that these actions be halted.
I over the last few years have made similar appeals with no action taken in my defense. I appealed to Mary Pecora, of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (File no. MA-95-2196), only to be advised that she believed me but the CIA was exempt from the Counsel’s authority.
In October of last year there was an effort at Fair Oaks Mall to “catch me” as the exit door alarm sounded just as I entered the exit area. I veered away fearing to exit, only to be confronted by an angry, apparent security officer.
Due to a medical problem, I have in the last couple of weeks availed myself of the Jacuzzi at the Herndon Community Center. On my second visit a Herndon policeman came into the locker room and advised me that he would, “catch me later.” Yesterday shortly after I entered the center two apparent plain clothes police (one forgot to turn off his portable radio that began broadcasting) entered the area and focused their attentions on me and probably set a trap. A number of recent incidents in the local K Mart have made me avoid that establishment.
It is impossible to enter commercial establishments in Fairfax and Loudon Counties without being the subject immediate interest by the store security services. In my defense I have begun — just as I enter an establishment – to explain to the spotter that I am a critic of the CIA and that it is slandering me and this is the reason for (whatever) notice that have re me. For bona fides, I hand them a brochure of CIABASE.
In the past I have addressed letters to both you Mr. President and to you Mr. Deutch about this situation. I was advised by Lee S. Stickland, Chief Information, Privacy and Classification Review of the CIA, that his office would conduct an FOIA search but that I would have to wait my turn. From others I know that it takes around three years for action on a request. In any case it is extremely doubtful that the responsible Agency office(s) would make a written record of its illegal operations.
The actions against me began in the summer of 1993, shortly after a review of CIABASE appeared in the journals of AFIO and NMIA. It soon thereafter became obvious that my phone was tapped and that local commercial establishments had been warned about me. When I made my knowledge of the tap obvious, the tap was used as much for harassment as monitoring. I have also received an implicit phone threat and was surveillied on a trip to Maine.
Since I have the written approval of the CIA to distribute my data base — it uses only non-classified material — the actions taken against me by the CIA are in violation of United States law.
Do you Mr. Deutch wish to be the medium for violations of law? Has not your Agency disgraced itself enough without adding this crime to its record? Do you Mr. President allow your executive branch to operate illegally without taking action? Do you members of the Herndon Town Council, allow your police force to act as vigilantes and are you willing to accept the consequences of its actions?
I request that addressees take appropriate action and advise me of the results.
Ralph McGehee
422 Arkansas Avenue
Herndon, VA, 22070
The below is from a posting of 15 July 1995 in response to a number of requests for specific details of the actions taken against me.
Ralph McGehee 3/16/96
A number of people have contacted me about my postings re harassment and have asked for specific examples. Below I provide that information. Please note that I list specific individuals and organizations — all of which are checkable.
My name is Ralph W. McGehee and I am a 25 year veteran of the CIA and a severe critic of the CIA and compiler of the data base – CIABASE. I live in Herndon, Virginia, a bedroom community for the CIA’s Headquarters as well as the location of several CIA office buildings. Following comprehensive reviews of my computer data base on the CIA in “The Intelligence,” a publication of the pro-CIA veterans lobbying group – Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO); and, the magazine of the National Military Intelligence Association, “NMIA Newsletter,” an organization of generally retired military intelligence officers, in July 1993, I have been subjected to an investigation/harassment operation.
Over the last two years I wrote a number of letters to the FBI and the CIA complaining of harassment. The FBI responded a few weeks ago and said they were not investigating or harassing me and that I should direct my enquiries to another government agency.
The first observable event happened in August 1993 just after the two aforementioned reviews of CIABASE had been published. (This incident was followed in rapid succession by a series of other harassments). In early August 1993, I entered the super market at Reston’s Lake Anne area, gathered a few things and went to the check out counter. The two female checkout clerks were not there but soon arrived. I tried to pay for the food but the clerks kept stalling until apparently the manager and another male came and stood by the checkout clerk focusing their attention on me. When finally permitted to pay for the food and as I started to leave the manager stepped directly in front of me as if to confront me. I thought this was quite strange but thought they may have suspected me of being a shoplifter and were checking me out. About a year later I went back to the supermarket (now closed) and asked the same cashier why they acted as they did. She denied any such action.
A day or so after that, I was in Staples in Herndon and the store was nearly void of customers. As I entered Aisle 3 the loudspeaker told an employee to go to aisle 3. As I went to check out two employees apparently from the manager’s office stood and watched me. The reason for this I could not fathom except again that they may have suspected me of shoplifting. There have been two or three similar incidents in this store over the next two years. The manager and other employees of this store are a checkable resource. I did confront the manager in about May this year but he denied my accusations.
On about the first week of September, I went to Giant’s supermarket in Herndon, bought a few things and as I tried to check out a Giant employee came up immediately behind me in the two-person line. By now becoming upset at this procedure I left the line and went to the next one. As I was driving on the road in front of Giant’s, a car in a parking aisle that was facing front sped out of the space and came directly towards my truck. I had to swerve to avoid being hit. Later I saw that Giant employee park his vehicle in the same spot as the threatening vehicle – it appeared to be the same vehicle.
Again in September on a Sunday, I went in to Super Fresh in Herndon, bought two items and went to the checkout counter. The manager came immediately to stand beside the cashier who told him to go away as she could “handle this.” This latter employee I believe still works a Super Fresh.
On the 23th of September 1993, I planned to go with a friend to the afternoon showing of “Demolition Man,” at Worldgate in Herndon. I went to the ticket window and a male came up and said they were closed, I could not fathom this as the theater was operating at full capacity. I stood there and he repeated that they were closed. Finally as I stood there and as the line behind me began to grow, he deigned to sell me a ticket. I entered and handed my ticket to a ticket-collector who seemed upset to see me and asked “what is your name.” As the film ended and the viewers exited we had to walk through a narrow cordon of velvet ropes where a number of theater employees were standing eyeing those leaving including a large black man wearing a police or security-type jacket. This type of cordon is the first time this has ever happened to me in that theater. What is particularly upsetting about this event is that the employees all seemed to have been prepared in advance for my appearance. This of course is a very checkable event. All that needs to be done is to get the work sheets for that day and interview those on duty at the time.
From mid-October to mid-December 1993, I went bicycling about six times on the bike trail and parked my truck in the small parking lot across the street from the Herndon Golf Course. I went biking for approximately two and a half hours on each occasion. On three of the occasions when I returned, an occupied Herndon police car was the only other vehicle in the parking lot. The police car was facing the empty ball field – not the street. On one other occasion there was an occupied car next to the police car – I could not determine if this was an unmarked police car.
In Manassas at about this time I went with my wife, Norma, to get some glasses. The manager – after we went back to pick up the glasses – said nastily “Why don’t you go home.” He loudly proclaimed uncomplimentary information about my wife. We were both quite upset. Manassas is some 15 to 20 miles from Herndon – apparently word on me was wide-spread or was being disseminated based on phone taps or house bugs.
In about mid-December 1993, I went to the Book Alcove in Hunters Woods Plaza in Reston where I have often gone and purchased many used books from their excellent collection of books on intelligence. I spent a lot of time looking over their collection on intelligence and more on their art collection. When I turned around I saw immediately outside the window near where I was looking over the Art books, a person wearing a “police” or “security” jacket who was eyeing me. As I left he made sure to enter the door as I opened it and made a point of addressing me.
On Saturday the 7th of January 1994, I went with a friend to a clothing store – Nachman’s – on its announced last day of operation. A car with an older black man was sitting across the rear of cars pulled into a convenience store next to Nachman’s. I parked across the street and as I and my friend crossed in front of the apparently parked car – it leaped forward and struck me a glancing blow. The car had stopped just before it would have struck my friend. I did not report it as I was not hurt and I feared that the Herndon police who also had been harassing me would not be objective. My friend can attest to this incident. I am not suggesting that this was part of the harassment – merely a consequence of the distribution of derogatory information about me in the general geographic area of Herndon/Reston and Tysons Corner.
On 16 January 1994, about 3 p.m., I entered the nearly empty Jamesway Store at Herndon Junction. I shopped for about 10 minutes when the loud speaker announced that security should go to section 2 – an employee came hurrying up behind me, made a comment in my ear, and then went down an adjacent aisle. As I continued toward the front of the store – the loud speaker announcement said security should go to Section 5.
In about July 1994, after making telephone arrangements, two members of the Covert Action Working Group, visited my home. Just prior to their arrival at about 12 noon, two Herndon police cars pulled up and double-parked on the narrow street in front of my house. The two cars sat there for 20 minutes to a half hour and the police in the cars seemed to be looking in through my picture window. The two members of the group remember seeing the police cars there – this is a checkable resource.
I later speculated on the arrival of the two police cars just minutes before the two members were scheduled to arrive. We had discussed meeting arrangements over the phone – this and a number of other events led me to the conclusion that my phone was tapped.
About two weeks after the visit by the two Herndon Police cars, another Herndon police car sat across from my house as I installed a bike rack on the back of my truck. After finishing, I put the bike on the rack and just as I opened the door to get in the truck the police car started his motor. After this obvious warning I wrote letters to the Town Council and police harassment stopped for some time. I asked the Town Council to advise me of their determination re the police harassment – they have never responded – this is an easy-to-check resource.
After the Herndon Police temporarily stopped their harassments, civilians in a number of vehicles and situations apparently assumed their task. Since the various Faixfax County police forces work in close coordination with the CIA and receive training and support from the CIA – I suspect they had been used by the Agency and when the Herndon police were ordered to stop by the Town Council – then the CIA’s Office of Security stepped up the “investigation.”
On several occasions as I biked on the nearby bike trail, I suspected surveillance – once especially when I approached Partlow’s store in Ashburn, a man on a bike with a radio-phone reported my position as I passed by. On a number of other occasions persons on the trail whom I was not really looking at – shouted at me as if to draw attention to the fact that I was their target. A number of what appeared to be surveillance vehicles also parked in the golf course parking lot across the street from the small parking lot I use.
I speculated on how I was being harassed at various stores when I had only announced to my wife where I was going – and was alert for vehicular surveillance and noticed none. To test my theory that the house was bugged I shouted out that I was going to Kmart and instead went to Caldors across town. I shopped unmolested for about a half an hour and left. As I left, a well-dressed young white male in a discreetly marked yet obvious commercial van, sped up jumped out and recorded obvious and visible dismay when he saw me. I repeated this process a number of times with occasionally similar results.
I believe that the harassment developed a process wherein store managers or personnel when they saw me, called a number – either of the CIA’s Office of Security and/or the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and that a person or persons are frequently dispatched to try and arrange for a harassment action. If that is not possible, then the store personnel — who have obviously been provided derogatory information about me, on occasion take action on their own.
A number of incidents in the local Kmart – all initiated by supposed Kmart personnel – and my confronting the manager over them forced me to avoid that store for about a year. A number of unpleasant incidents at the nearby McDonalds, and 7/11 has forced me to stop going to those stores.
On 2 October 1994, I went to COMP USA on Route 7 near Vienna, Virginia. As I finished making my purchases the security man at the door walked toward me militantly and pulled my cart away from me. This special treatment seemed to apply only to me.
On 23 October 1994, at Computer City in Vienna, Va, as I approached the cash register, a young female rushed to the register and to the consternation of the cashier told the cashier to get away, leave. I then moved to a second cash register – the same woman rushed to that register but the transaction was completed before she could effectively intervene. Similar later incidents like this also happened in the same store. About three months ago to blunt the action I went up to the man standing watching those entering and told him I was a critic of the CIA and that it had initiated a defamation action against me and therefore asked that they assign a security person to accompany me. The manager was advised and he said I would have to exit though their security system and it was not necessary to send a security guard around with me. On this occasion I was overcharged about thirty dollars. I noticed the difference, objected, the security man or manager was summoned and the price was reduced to its regular price. Store personnel and managers are an easy-to-check resource.
About six to eight months ago I took my truck in for servicing at the near by Shell station where I have done business for years. As I went to pick up the truck one of the two owners/mechanics pointed and yelled at me and screamed at his employees to park their vehicles (across the exit route via the 7/11). I normally exit from the station using this exit. They did this and this was the only time I have ever seen that entrance blocked. The owner is an easy checkable source.
On 13 November 1994, at Crown Books at Herndon Junction as I was scanning the book racks – a large man came close and stood facing directly at me. He stayed the entire time I was there. As I left, a man with a radio-phone was outside the store looking in. I had a number of other confrontations at this store – this is an easy to check resource.
When I returned from a Christmas visit to my daughters family out of state – within hours I received a phone call from a person claiming to be her friend asking her address – but the caller in monotone recited all the details of where she lived – the town, how many children she had, where she lived previously, etc. I tried to talk to the individual but he was not interested in a conversation. The caller created the strong impression that this was a threatening phone call.
On 23 April 1995 my wife noticed our shed door lock’s hasp was sheared and the shed opened – nothing appeared to be taken. I did not report this to the police and I suspect they might have provided assistance to those conducting the break in. At about the same time a Herndon Police car tail-gated my wife’s car through town.
In about late June 1995 as I and a friend were returning from Walmart in Loundon County, I turned right on the Herndon Parkway about 50 yards behind a Herndon Police car. I was driving in the middle lane and the police car had pulled into the left turn lane – as my vehicle drew along side the police vehicle, it swerved widely out into my lane forcing me to swerve to avoid hitting being hit by the police car – my friend can attest to this occurrence.
The June 19, 1995 issue of “The New Yorker,” carried an article that mentions me and may or may not be part of the harassment effort – I do not suggest that the purpose of the article was to get me, but since it involved a group I had participated in – it was convenient to discredit me by calling me paranoid because of my comments re the harassment.
The above is a list of some of the more recordable incidents – representing perhaps about one half to one third of all that seemed to me to be harassments. Please note that I list specific incidents, specific stores and specific individuals – many can be checked – particularly the Herndon Mayor and Town Council, the Herndon Police, my friend, two members of the Covert Action Working Group, the reporter who wrote the article in The New Yorker, managers and employees of the named stores, theater personnel and a number of other sources and individuals.
What cannot be checked is the numerous sometimes daily “wrong number” phone calls seemingly by the same individual, the several identical recorded phone messages to re-schedule a visit by the “septic field” clean-up truck. What also cannot be checked without official government action are the past various incidents of vehicle surveillance, surveillance on or around the bike trail and of course the bugging and wire-tapping operation.
To help me determine the responsible parties I am filing a Freedom of Information Request and a Privacy request with the CIA. I doubt that I will receive any admissions of guilt but if I receive redacted documents dated the last two years I will have some substantiating material.
Ralph McGehee
Herndon, VA
Sender: o-imap@webmap.missouri.edu
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 96 17:29:34 CST
From: Ralph McGehee <rmcgehee@igc.apc.org>
Subject: CIA and the New World Order
Article: 2065
To: BROWNH@CCSUA.CTSTATEU.EDU
CIA and the New World Order
By Ralph McGehee, CIABASE, 9 December 1996
Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multi-civilizational world.
A book review in the New York Times Book Review of, THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS AND THE REMAKING OF THE WORLD ORDER, by Samuel Huntington [one of the fiercest hawks re Vietnam] says the war of ideologies and interests was over. The war of cultures—Western, Eastern Orthodox, Latin America, Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, Hindu and (possibly) African, had begun. He said Jews lined up with Judeo-Christian heritage of the West. These were the real actors to now watch.
Realist analysts of international affairs had neglected these deeply buried religious allegiances during the Cold War. Now, Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multi-civilizational world.
Western intervention is also useless—problems, for example, between Islam and Orthodoxy aren’t susceptible to Western mediation (differences have existed for centuries). Core states [must] abstain from intervention in conflicts in other civilizations.
Huntington’s argument that the West should stop intervening in civilizational conflicts it doesn’t understand makes a powerful claim that internationalists cannot easily ignore (end of review excerpts).
If Huntington’s arguments are adopted them the reasons for the CIA’s covert operations cease. This of course will be vigorously resisted by the CIA’s Operations Directorate that will continue to justify itself on the basis of its [extremely biased and flawed] perceptions of the world—many consciously or subconsciously manufactured to ensure the DO’s continued existence.
Re misunderstanding other cultures—Robert McNamara in his book, IN RETROSPECT, noted the failures of intelligence about Vietnam: We misjudged the North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong, and exaggerated the dangers to the United States; we totally misjudged the political forces in South Vietnam; we underestimated the power of nationalism; and, we had a profound ignorance of history, culture, and politics of the people in Southeast Asia.
Now the terribly flawed Central Intelligence Agency has jumped with both feet into further situations it does not understand. The CIA has, inter alia, declared a new holy crusade on Islamic Fundamentalism, calling it the more explosive and evocative International Terrorism.
The CIA directs paramilitary operations against Iraq, Libya, and Sudan. (The former Director of the CIA, Robert Gates said the CIA picks on the weaker Islamic countries to avoid the consequences of attacking the more powerful nations.)
The CIA probably runs political action operations of one degree or another in the remaining Islamic states, particularly Iran and Syria. It also uses its surrogate, the National Endowment for Democracy, to conduct political action operations in about 90 countries from Africa to Latin America. The potential consequences of all this interventionism could be devastating. But we can be assured of one thing, the CIA will never understand what is happening.
I cannot think of more powerful arguments for the abolishment of the covert action operations of the CIA than those presented by the current state of the world, the nearly fifty years experiences of the CIA’s misunderstanding of world events while exacerbating situations with its covert operations based on those misunderstandings.
When you have a superhawk such as Samuel Huntington recognizing the danger of further CIA interventions we all should all give his recommendations the most serious consideration.
C.I.A. ACCUSED OF MANILA ROLE
Published: May 26, 1987
An American fact-finding mission led by Ramsey Clark, the former Attorney General, charged today that the Central Intelligence Agency was behind the rise of vigilante groups opposed to the Communist insurgency in the Philippines.
Mr. Clark said at a news conference that involvement of the C.I.A. was evident in the emergence of right-wing vigilante groups and increased military operations in the countryside.
”Our concern is the role of the United States,” Mr. Clark said, adding that the group would attempt to gather ”evidence clearly establishing the implementation of a low-intensity campaign here.”
”Low-intensity conflict” is a term used in Washington to describe a method of fighting insurgencies by using an array of unconventional tactics and fighting forces.
Ralph McGehee, a former C.I.A. agent who has written critically about the agency and is now working with Mr. Clark, said Manila’s counter-insurgency operations were similar to C.I.A. operations in Nicaragua and Vietnam.
”I see very clearly the parallels here,” he said, ”the search-and-destroy missions, the creation of the anti-Communist vigilante groups.”
CENSORSHIP BY THE C.I.A. CHALLENGED IN COURT SUIT
Published: March 29, 1981
WASHINGTON, March 28— – A Federal court was asked yesterday to declare that the Central Intelligence Agency had improperly censored an article by a former C.I.A. employee that purported to describe “probable” efforts by the agency to fabricate evidence about Communist arms shipments to El Salvador.
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation filed the complaint in Federal District Court here on behalf of The Nation, a weekly magazine published in New York, and Ralph W. McGehee, who was employed by the intelligence agency from 1952 to 1977.
A copy of a typewritten 12-page manuscript of an article entitled “C.I.A. Operations in El Salvador” submitted to the court indicated that the agency had deleted most of one page and about 10 other lines of material.
Most of the deleted material appeared to involve an allegation by Mr McGehee that the intelligence agency played a role in the massacre of more than 300,000 Communists in 1965 after the Indonesian Army smashed an attempted coup and seized control of the nation.
Suharto, the model killer, and his friends in high places
28 January 2008
In an article for the Guardian, John Pilger says the death of General Suharto, the former dictator of Indonesia, is an opportunity to review the role of this “model” for high crimes in the modern era – from Indonesia, to Chile, to Vietnam – and the powerful friends who ensured he would never suffer the fate of Saddam Hussein.
In my film ‘Death of a Nation’, there is a sequence filmed on board an Australian aircraft flying over the island of Timor. A party is in progress, and two men in suits are toasting each other in champagne. This is an historically unique moment, says one of them, that is truly uniquely historical. This is Gareth Evans, Australias foreign minister. The other man is Ali Alatas, principal mouthpiece of the Indonesian dictator, General Suharto. It is 1989, and the two are making a grotesquely symbolic flight to celebrate the signing of a treaty that allowed Australia and the international oil and gas companies to exploit the seabed off East Timor, then illegally and viciously occupied by Suharto. The prize, according to Evans, was zillions of dollars.
Beneath them lay a land of crosses: great black crosses etched against the sky, crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides. Filming clandestinely in East Timor, I would walk into the scrub and there were the crosses. They littered the earth and crowded the eye. In 1993, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Australian Parliament reported that at least 200,000 had died under Indonesias occupation: almost a third of the population. And yet East Timors horror, which was foretold and nurtured by the US, Britain and Australia, was actually a sequel. No single American action in the period after 1945, wrote the historian Gabriel Kolko, was as bloodthirsty as its role in Indonesia, for it tried to initiate the massacre. He was referring to Suhartos seizure of power in 1965-6, which caused the violent deaths of up to a million people.
To understand the significance of Suharto, who died on Sunday, is to look beneath the surface of the current world order: the so-called global economy and the ruthless cynicism of those who run it. Suharto was our model mass murderer our is used here advisedly. One of our very best and most valuable friends, Thatcher called him, speaking for the West. For three decades, the Australian, US and British governments worked tirelessly to minimise the crimes of Suhartos gestapo, known as Kopassus, who were trained by the Australian SAS and the British army and who gunned down people with British-supplied Heckler and Koch machine guns from British-supplied Tactica riot control vehicles. Prevented by Congress from supplying arms direct, US administrations from Gerald Ford to Bill Clinton, provided logistic support through the back door and commercial preferences.
In one year, the British Department of Trade provided almost a billion pounds worth of so-called soft loans, which allowed Suharto buy Hawk fighter-bombers. The British taxpayer paid the bill for aircraft that dive-bombed East Timorese villages, and the arms industry reaped the profits. However, the Australians distinguished themselves as the most obsequious. In an infamous cable to Canberra, Richard Woolcott, Australias ambassador to Jakarta, who had been forewarned about Suhartos invasion of East Timor, wrote: What Indonesia now looks to from Australia is some understanding of their attitude and possible action to assist public understanding in Australia…
Covering up Suhartos crimes became a career for those like Woolcott, while understanding the mass murderer came in buckets. This left an indelible stain on the reformist government of Gough Whitlam following the cold-blooded killing of two Australian TV crews by Suhartos troops during the invasion of East Timor. We know your people love you, Bob Hawke told the dictator. His successor, Paul Keating, famously regarded the tyrant as a father figure. When Indonesian troops slaughtered at least 200 people in the Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, East Timor, and Australian mourners planted crosses outside the Indonesian embassy in Canberra, foreign minister Gareth Evans ordered them destroyed. To Evans, ever-effusive in his support for the regime, the massacre was merely an aberration. This was the view of much of the Australian press, especially that controlled by Rupert Murdoch, whose local retainer, Paul Kelly, led a group of leading newspaper editors to Jakarta, fawn before the dictator.
Here lies a clue as to why Suharto, unlike Saddam Hussein, died not on the gallows but surrounded by the finest medical team his secret billions could buy. Ralph McGehee, a senior CIA operations officer in the 1960s, describes the terror of Suhartos takeover of Indonesia in 1965-6 as the model operation for the American-backed coup that got rid of Salvador Allende in Chile seven years later. The CIA forged a document purporting to reveal a leftist plot to murder Chilean military leaders, he wrote, [just like] what happened in Indonesia in 1965. The US embassy in Jakarta supplied Suharto with a zap list of Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) members and crossed off the names when they were killed or captured. Roland Challis, the BBCs south east Asia correspondent at the time, told me how the British government was secretly involved in this slaughter. British warships escorted a ship full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits so they could take part in the terrible holocaust, he said. I and other correspondents were unaware of this at the time… There was a deal, you see.
The deal was that Indonesia under Suharto would offer up what Richard Nixon had called the richest hoard of natural resources, the greatest prize in south-east Asia. In November 1967, the greatest prize was handed out at a remarkable three-day conference sponsored by the Time-Life Corporation in Geneva. Led by David Rockefeller, all the corporate giants were represented: the major oil companies and banks, General Motors, Imperial Chemical Industries, British American Tobacco, Siemens and US Steel and many others. Across the table sat Suhartos US-trained economists who agreed to the corporate takeover of their country, sector by sector. The Freeport company got a mountain of copper in West Papua. A US/ European consortium got the nickel. The giant Alcoa company got the biggest slice of Indonesias bauxite. America, Japanese and French companies got the tropical forests of Sumatra. When the plunder was complete, President Lyndon Johnson sent his congratulations on a magnificent story of opportunity seen and promise awakened. Thirty years later, with the genocide in East Timor also complete, the World Bank described the Suharto dictatorship as a model pupil.
Shortly before he died, I interviewed Alan Clark, who under Thatcher was Britains minister responsible for supplying Suharto with most of his weapons. I asked him, Did it bother you personally that you were causing such mayhem and human suffering?
No, not in the slightest, he replied. It never entered my head.
I ask the question because I read you are a vegetarian and are seriously concerned about the way animals are killed.
Yeah?
Doesnt that concern extend to humans?
Curiously not.