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The CIA, ever mindful of the need to justify its "mission", had military, and arrest Americans and hold them in detention camps. conclusive evidence by the mid-1980s of the deepening crisis of Add to the list of "statutory emergency plans" the Patriot Act, infrastructure within the Soviet Union. The CIA, as its deputy direc - passed in response to the September 11 attacks. According to tor Robert Gates acknowledged under congressional questioning in Washington Post staff writer Jim McGee (pp 1-2), thi 1992, had decided to keep that evidence from President Reagan and ...empowers the government to shift the primary missi his top advisors and instead continued to grossly exaggerate Soviet FBI from solving crimes to gathering domestic intelligence. In military and technological capabilities in its annual "Soviet Military addition, the Treasury Department has been charged with building Power" report right up to 1990. a financial intelligence-gathering system whose data can be Now, a troubling question arises. Given the impending collapse accessed by CIA. of the Soviet Union and the inexorable demise of communism, bin Most significantly, the CIA will have the authority for the first Laden's involvement in the crusade against the Soviets seems incon- time to influence FBI surveillance operations inside the United sequential. More succinctly, it is irrelevant. Yet, despite his States and to obtain evidence gathered by federal grand juries and axiomatic obsolescence in the anti-communist campaign, bin Laden criminal wiretaps. continued to receive funds. Since such financing did not represent The Patriot Act is designed to transform America into a surveil- an investment in the ongoing war with the Soviets, there must have lance society. Wiretapping has been expanded to invade the privacy been ulterior motives for maintaining bin Laden's network. of a larger portion of the populace. In the name of fighting terror- What was the true agenda that motivated the CIA to support what ism, the prying eyes of the government can now watch those merely would later become an international Frankenstein's monster? deemed "suspicious". Furthermore, wiretaps are no longer just a Former CIA Associate Deputy Director of Operations Theodore tool in criminal investigations. Under the Act, they become a means Shackley may have already answered this question in his book, The _ of gathering information on the citizenry. Unfortunately, the sur- Third Option (p. 17): prises do not stop there. The Act also lifts many of the constraints Senior intelligence officers like myself, who had experience in on the CIA's power. McGee writes (p. 4): paramilitary operations, have always The new law also gives the CIA insisted that the United States should unprecedented access to the most pow - also consider the third option: the use erful investigative weapon in the federal of guerrilla warfare, counterinsurgency law enforcement's arsenal: the federal techniques and covert action to achieve Terrorism is being used to grand jury. The grand juries have near - policy goals... Political warfare is very ly unlimited power to gather evidence in often the stitch in time that eliminates keep the rabble In line on secret, including testimony, wiretap bloodier and more costly alternatives. behalf of an elite that wishes transcripts, phone records, business It is possible that the September 11 records or medical records... attack represents a tangible enactment to maintain and expand The new law permits allow the FBI to of Shackley's third option. Bin Laden's its power. give grand jury information to the CIA ties to the intelligence community cer- without a court order, as long as the tainly reinforce such a contention. information concerns foreign Were al-Qa'ida and bin Laden consid- intelligence or international terrorism. ered part of a third option to facilitate The information can also be shared political and social change in the Unite: widely throughout the national security States? establishment... Consider a conversation that took place between former DEA All of the above points to a very frightening conclusion: there are agent Michael Levine and a CIA agent. It suggests that the CIA is some factions of government that consider terrorism to be a tool of ready and willing to use the third option in America. This discourse social engineering. The direction society is being steered by this is recorded in The Triangle of Death (Levine, p. 353): "tool" is even more frightening. "How can you be so good at what you do and have so little understanding of what really pulls your strings? Don't you realize Terrorism: A Tool of the Ruling Elite that there are factions in your government that want this to happen— Terrorism is being used to keep the rabble in line on behalf of an an emergency situation too hot for a constitutional government to __ elite that wishes to maintain and expand its power. In The Power handle." Elite, sociologist C. Wright Mills introduces these powerful "To what end?" I asked. individuals (pp. 3-4): "A suspension of the Constitution, of course. The legislation is The power elite is composed of men whose positions enable them already in place. All perfectly legal. Check it out yourself. It's to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and called FEMA. Federal Emergency Management Agency. 'Turn in women; they are in positions to make decisions having major conse - your guns, you antigovernment rabble-rousers. And who would be quences. Whether they do or do not make such decisions is less king, Michael?" important than the fact that they do occupy such pivotal positions: "CIA," I said. their failure to act, their failure to make decisions, is itself an act Terrorism in the United States is one of the methods employed to _ that is often of greater consequence than the decisions they do generate the changes desired by Levine's CIA friend. It has provid- make. For they are in command of the major hierarchies and ed a pretext for the introduction of draconian laws and measures organisations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. previously unthinkable. Representative Henry Gonzalez recognised They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. this fact when he made the following comment (Cuddy, p. 164): They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic The truth of the matter is that you do have those standby command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered provisions, and the statutory emergency plans are there whereby you __ the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity could, in the name of stopping terrorism, apprehend, invoke the which they enjoy. Terrorism is being used to keep the rabble in line on behalf of an elite that wishes its power. Terrorism: A Tool of the Ruling Elite Terrorism is being used to keep the rabble in line on behalf of an elite that wishes to maintain and expand its power. In The Power Elite, sociologist C. Wright Mills introduces these powerful individuals (pp. 3-4): The power elite is composed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major conse - quences. Whether they do or do not make such decisions is less important than the fact that they do occupy such pivotal positions: their failure to act, their failure to make decisions, is itself an act that is often of greater consequence than the decisions they do make. For they are in command of the major hierarchies and organisations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy. APRIL — MAY 2003 NEXUS = 15 to maintain and expand www.nexusmagazine.com