CNN Editor's note: Charles S. Faddis is a retired CIA operations officer and the former head of the CIA's unit focused on fighting terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction. The author of a recently published book about the CIA, “Beyond Repair,” Faddis is also president of Orion Strategic Services, a Maryland-based consulting firm.
Phi Beta Iota: We know and admire Charles Faddis. Below the fold are other references on the implosion of CIA, which is no longer fit for duty. Panetta means well, but he does not know what he does not know, and the stuffed shirts surrounding him are not about to tell him what he really does need to know, in part because they don't know, they've made a career out of pushing paper, inflating success, and avoiding accountability. The difference between the earlier set of anti-CIA retirees and our set are two: 1) we're not breaking rules and cannot credibly be labeled as traitors; and 2) we know vastly more about the real world of all-source intelligence than the incompetent insiders and we cannot be silenced. Eventually an honest political leadership will hear us.
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
We owe it to 7 fallen CIA agents (sic) to examine the state of the CIA, says Charles Faddis [PBI: US citizens are officers, the recruited foreigners are agents]
A retired CIA officer, Faddis says the agency is hobbled by bureaucracy
He says the CIA's leaders lack the experience to run counter-terror operations
CIA needs stronger training, better leadership and higher standards, he says
True Story, Part of the “Made in USA” Atrocities r' US
December 26, 2009
Sterling and Peggy Seagrave
I first met the authors after reviewing Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold and then traveling to Europe to interview them–they are in self-imposed exile–for a DVD that was shown at one of my earlier international conferences. [My rendition of this review at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, has live links Amazon does not allow here.]
This is a great read. I attended boarding school and later served as a Marine Corps infantry officer passing in and out of the Philippines; I have been inside Japanese tunnels and have a great regard for the Filipino people. Because the US has been so asidious in writing (and fabricating) the history of the Cold War, few know that the Huks were originally a loyal resistance to the Japanese occupiers–the US, despite its tolerance for out of control atrocity mongers like Landsdale, has managed to “occupy” with a softer touch, but one no less detrimental.
As a former spy–a recovering spy–for the Central Intelligence Agency I would certify that 90% of the CIA is good people trapped in a bad system with no blood on their hands. Our problem is the 10% that does renditions, tortures, helps train and arm those who would do genocide and atrocities (including the Israelis, who now teach us rather than learn from us).
RED SKY has no endnotes, but is based on solid evidence. [I provide others supporting references at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, as live links within this review there.] I consider Gold Warriors (with its CD containing 60,000 pages of maps and supporting documentation) to be the better book, but for some readers, this book will be much more fun and memorable. Here are the highlights from this most truthful account
+ Landsdale was never in combat–he spent WWII in San Francisco writing propaganda for the OSS.
+ When Truman closed down the OSS (he later regretted every starting the CIA) OSS people were scattered around to hide them, Lansdale was sent to Manile to work a desk for Army G-2.
+ Landsdale's bright shining moment came when he recognized the value of a captured driver (Major Kojima Kashi) to General Yamashita, and bribed him to reveal treasure locations. That treasure became the basis for the USA's covert post-war Black Eagle and Golden Lily slush funds used to restore Nazis in Germany and fascists in Italy and Japan, and to do those things Congress would never agree to pay for.
+ Santa Romana, a Vatican agent and member of Opus Dei, was Landsdale's co-conspirator (fast forward to the Opus Dei penetration of the US Government today, every bit as good as the Mossad's sayonim and the Mormon network).
+ Landsdale–the model for the book The Ugly American and also featured in Edward Lansdale's Cold War (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War)–became a “big shot” in OSS-CIA circles because of this success at finding and secretly harvesting the Japanese thefts from China and all across Asia that were hidden in the Philippines when US dominance of the seas prevented onward passage to Japan.
+ Landsale–whom all the books I've seen describe as an opportunist and con artist at heart–saw that anti-communism was the wave of the future in Washington circles (even then CIA was busy importing 100 Nazis a year), and he came up with the idea of demonizing the Huk's, who were freedom fighters, as part of the “Communist Menace.”
+ The book also covers the Chinese diaspora that the US Government has never understood and never taken seriously. The Chinese “High Cabal” is easily as powerful as the European “High Cabal,” they just work more discreetly and make better use of local fronts.
+ Landsdale needed to invent evidence of Russian support for the Huks, so he focused on Russian exiles living in Manila or enroute through the Philippines to other locations including the US.
+ The heart of the story is how Landsale personally destroyed one innocent person and their family, ultimately making the person disappear after five years of surveillance, prison, and torture were brought to an end by a crusading attorney. Some sources have suggested that Landsdale ordered the murder of his trumped up Russian spy, who is believed to have been thrown from a helicopter into the South China Sea.
+ The book ends with Landsdale being rewarded by being sent to Viet-Nam to support Diem (a Catholic mandarin hated by the Buddhists, with a sister that makes Idi Amin look like a wimp) and I have seen other reports that suggest that Landsdale led an effort to plant bombs in the 1950's and early 1960's to achieve the US end of creating a local civil war that would demand US intervention.
There is also a happy ending, despite all the ills that befall the patsy, the source of much of the information in this book escapes and lived happily every after.
I still believe in America the Beautiful and the righteousness of The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen but I am disgusted and alienated by all that has been done “in our name” over the years, ultimately impoverishing the many to benefit the few. I earnestly believe that the public is a populist power that cannot be suppressed, and that information and communications technologies have changed the balance of power to favor the possibility of creating a prosperous world at peace.
This book is one of the many nails in the coffin of Cold War “irrational exhuberance” that has clearly been repeated in the failure to keep capitalism moral and the failure to keep government honest at home and abroad. We can do better.
Rather than provide links here, see the 98 categories of Reviews at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
Vote on Review
The authors provided us with the following additional supporting reference:
James Gibney, one of my most respected sources for common- sense and integrity, posted a review of this book on 15 January 2006 in the New York Times. At Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, I have posted that three-page review along with some other original references on “Colonel” Landsdale, a journalism drop-out from UCLA and former advertising person, that document the role he played in making genocide and atrocities part of the “Made in USA” Cold War tool-kit.
At Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog it is possible to access all of my reviews via any of 98 categories 9e.g. Intelligence, Secret; or Pathology of Power; or Empire, etcetera, something Amazon has refused to make possible since I began suggesting it years ago.
The author has achieved extraordinary synthesis and summation, with gifted straight-forward language.This book is not only a capstone reference, but demonstrates why we need to LISTEN–none of us could learn–in a lifetime–all that this author has in his head. That's why multinational engagement is a non-negotiable first step toward the future.
Key notes and quotes:
+ Bush Senior should not have left Saddam Hussein off the hook in Gulf I, should have finished off the regime while we had enough troops on the ground to make the peace.
+ US blew Gulf II from the moment of victory onward. “Incoherent” is a word the author uses frequently in describing virtually every aspect of US operations in Iraq. The one element that gets high marks from him is the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) but the fact that the bulk of the “reconstruction” money was mis-managed by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) makes AID's excellent a footnote in this sorry tale.
+ Book covers 2003-2006; the author was Minister of Defense and then Minister of Finance during the reconstruction period.
+ “Too few Americans actually cared.” Fred Smith (parent agency not clear) gets high marks from the author for caring and competence as the CPA-appointed advisor to the Ministry of Defense in the 2004 timeframe.
I disagree with those that criticize this book. This is PRECISELY the kind of book we need to see, at a reasonable price, being discussed in schools, clubs, and churches.
QUOTE page 27: “The Founders set out to prove that ordinary people could be entrusted with governing themselves in a state where no one could arbitrarily arrest them, lock them up, or torture them.”
I read a lot, and I confess to have been among those who “bought in” to the celebrity alarmism of Al Gore, but I never displaced the totality of the threats to Earth for an obsessive focus on carbon emissions. Among the three books I have always recommended that are far more balanced than anything by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are:
The Real Deal–Gripping Details & Lessons Learned & Lost
November 21, 2009
Thomas Leo Briggs
I served with the author in the clandestine service, saw the galley of this book in its early form, and was delighted when I received a copy of the finished book in the mail.
This is an absorbing detailed reference work, professional lessons learned document, “oral history” of the hidden war in Laos and Cambodia, and above all a patriotic “after action” report that should be–but has not been–absorbed by both Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Special Operations Forces (SOF) “leaders” and program managers.
Portions of the book are somewhat numbing in *necessary* detail, and other portions of the book gave me goose bumps. The book is something of a counterpoint to Blond Ghost, about Ted Shackley and his war in Laos, the most famous quote being his deputies, “We spent a lot of money and got a lot of people killed,” Lair remembered, “and we didn't get much for it.”
I take this officer at his word, and have absolute confidence in this book and its details. The two most important points:
True Story, Part of the “Made in USA” Atrocities r' US
