The CIA's unsettling history

This much-read AP piece avers that "The CIA had never been in the interrogation and detention business." Poppycock. As this FDL report proves, the CIA's been at it from the very beginning.

I'll mention one name which FDL writer Jeff Kaye leaves out: Dan Mitrione. His Wikipedia entry seems hesitant to call him a CIA officer, but everyone knows that he was. He taught torture to fascist police forces in Uruguay, and his motto was: "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect." Mitrione was the subject a compelling 1972 film by Costa Gavras called State of Seige. (The movie is quite accurate, although thefilm-makers gave him another name.)

Here's a clip from that film, which I saw as a young man. I never forgot these images, and neither will you:



The only thing more horrifying than torture is the teaching of torture, because the victim (who may be a peasant abducted at random) cannot end his torment by revealing the desired information.

Former CIA agent John Stockwell wrote a book entitled, The Praetorian Guard in which he explained a particular CIA training session for new recruits. After watching various films and teaching various torture techniques, the recruits were sent out on kidnapping missions. Stockwell identifies Dan Mitrione as the teacher of this training session.

Mitrione worked under cover of the Agency for International Development, well-known as a CIA front. Another AID alum, oddly enough, was Stanley Ann Dunham, our president's mother.

As you watch the YouTube clip, take note of the date and location: Dan Mitrione ran a torture school in Brazil in 1962. Also in Brazil at that time was none other than Jim Jones, who would become the most notorious cult leader of the 20th century. Jones and Mitrione first met in Indiana years earlier, when Jones was a boy and Mitrione was a local police officer who took the lad under his wing.

In 1962, Jones spent a bizarre period in Belo Horizonte, Brazil (a town mentioned in the clip above), living in ludicrously high style despite a lack of income. Writer Jim Hougan (author of Secret Agenda) has uncovered evidence that Jones must have worked with the Agency during this period. That was certainly the belief of the Brazilians who had him under surveillance.

Also see Will Savive's remarkable work here.

And yet the AP would have you believe that the CIA never detained or interrogated anyone before the Dubya administration. Why is our media complicit in these Orwellian attempts to rewrite history?

Now scroll down to the post below. How much do you wanna bet that Agent Fido has been trained to go for the balls? We all know how dogs were used at Abu Ghraib...