Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Does The CIA Destabilize the World?

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Does The CIA Destabilize the World?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, February 14th, 2024. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us now. Professor Sachs, always a pleasure. Most people seem to regard the CIA as America's spies, as selfless individuals out there at the front lines gathering data that help inform the president and other officials of the United States of America as brave, courageous, patriotic people without whom we would be the prey of other intelligence agencies. What does the CIA actually do? Well, the main point is it does two things and two very, very different things. One is just as you described, it is an intelligence agency.

It gathers information, sometimes electronic, sometimes from satellites, sometimes human intelligence. It spies. It tries to understand the world. It tries to avoid surprise attacks by others and so forth. As an intelligence agency, there are many countries with intelligence agencies that play that role. But the CIA was created in 1947 with a completely different role as well. create subversive or covert operations abroad, to bring down governments, to create unrest, to create coups, to make assassinations, and so on. And the CIA does that, I think the most accurate description is as a private army of the U.S. president and with a very high degree of, if you call it deniability,

even when things are pretty obvious that something like that has happened, they deny it anyway because the underlying documentation is kept highly confidential. Anyone that leaks it ends up in prison and so forth. And so we have two different tasks in one organization. This is the result of how the OSS, which was the precursor during World War II of the CIA, happened. And in wartime, you can understand you have an agency that does behind the lines subversion, as well as intelligence gathering. But in 1947, after World War II, the CIA was created in that same way. And President Truman knew from the beginning and then wrote about it in the 1960s. My God, this is really dangerous to have put these two functions together this way. The purpose of my piece this week

was to emphasize how pervasive the CIA's covert role is in American foreign policy and how deeply destabilizing it has been over many, many decades now. We're talking about more than 70 years because this subversion is not effective. First of all, of course, it does not remain covert, even if it's a covert operation. Plenty of people figure out quickly. Then the U.S. denies it, and we get into this complete collapse of credibility. Second, other countries actually don't like their governments being overthrown by the United States. They don't. We can kind of figure that out because we don't like other countries meddling in our politics. But we have engaged, that is the CIA and its partner institutions, because there are others in the intelligence or secret community and in

secret operations of DOD and so forth, in at least 80 covert regime change operations around the world. And what's happening in Ukraine is part of this story. What's happening throughout the Middle East is part of this story. America bringing down governments, destabilizing countries, never leveling with the American people about what is really going on. And there's case after case. And what is so corrosive about this is most of these are lame brain operations. Most of them, in my view, are doomed to fail. But then the lying that comes afterwards disastrously weakens our own country because it means that our foreign policy is not at all democratically accountable. Let me make a couple of comments. The former

head of the CIA, we're going to show a clip of him a little later on, dancing with IDF killers. Mike Pompeo, also the former Secretary of the State, basically said, we lie, we steal, we deny it. This is what we're trained to do. We enjoy doing it. The piece you mentioned about Harry Truman, who of course signed the National Security Act of 1947 into law, was a very famous from the heart piece in the Washington Post written by him condemning what the CIA had become and calling for its abolition. In those days, the Washington Post had two editions, morning and afternoon. It ran in the morning edition. The CIA asked the Washington Post to cancel it. The former president of the United States, who was their creator, and the Washington Post, notoriously a mouthpiece for the CIA, did cancel it.

Third, does the president for whom the CIA works give the CIA some sort of immunity from criminal prosecution? Example, federal law defines terrorism as two or more criminal acts intended to alter the policy of the government. Well, if they're trying to overthrow another government and they engage in two or more criminal acts, they're terrorists under American federal law. Yeah, and by the way, there isn't a day when they're not violating international law as well and violating the U.N. charter. And the United States stands alone in this. We are the biggest violator of the UN Charter on an absolutely normal basis. Many Americans will

say, yeah, of course, why should we live according to that? But how this poisons our own security, makes us insecure, and destabilizes the world is really impressive and terribly, terribly sad. I'm going to change subjects radically for a minute. You're Jewish, you're not Catholic, but you know what this is on my forehead. There you go, yes. Okay, because a lot of people are writing about it. So my dear friends, I have not been injured, and this is not hair dye. This is ashes put on by a priest after mass before the sun came up this morning. Because so many people are writing about it. I knew you would know, Professor Sacks. Has every president, going back

to Truman or Eisenhower, used the CIA for subversive, illegal, disruptive purposes, as well as her intelligence gathering? I'm sure on multiple occasions, though some we don't know about because you have to ferret them out. Let me give an example. Let me give two recent examples. One is there's been a raging war in Syria since 2011. And we have called that, the New York Times, Washington Post, mainstream media have called that a civil war where the opposition to the government took up arms to fight for their freedom. But we know that Barack Obama signed a presidential finding to the CIA to partner with governments in the region to overthrow the government of Syria. We know that.

But do we know the details? No, we don't know the details because it's completely hidden from view. But what is not hidden from view is hundreds of thousands of deaths, destruction of Syria, the space for ISIS to arise. What was the US doing? Were there congressional hearings on this? Of course not. Was there a vote of Congress on this? Of course not. Was there any review of this? Of course not. And then several years later, several years later, Syria asked President Putin to bring the Russian military in to defend Syria. Then we jumped up and down. You see how expansionist Russia is, how dangerous Putin is. We have to resist and so forth. It could not be phonier. It's just lies because we don't have any honest accounting of what happens and when it goes terribly wrong as it did in Syria,

by the way, predictably so. And I always say predictably. I predicted it. I predicted it on U.S. television repeatedly. Don't try to overthrow the Syrian government. It will go bad, as it did, but no accountability at all. Let me give you another case, which is exactly why we're in war right now. In early 2014, the United States was actively part of a coup against the Ukrainian government. We're part of it. How much? In what way? Well, we don't know all the details. What we do know is that Russia intercepted a call from Victoria Nuland, who was then assistant secretary of state and now is undersecretary of state, made to the U.S. who will be the post-Yanukovych government and how President Biden, who was then Vice President, will step in and, you know, make the deed secure by patting everybody on the back. That's described on tape. Did we ever have

one day of explanation of this? Of course not. This is one of the most important events that pulled Ukraine into open war that has now lasted 10 years, cost hundreds of thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, and a day of honesty, not a single day. This is how it works. When the Congress established the Church Committee, what did the Church Committee find? Named after Senator Frank Church. You know, interestingly, I was then a kid in 1975, and I was an intern for my senator, Senator Philip A. Hart of Michigan, in the Senate office building. So I used to go to watch these hearings, especially the Irvin Committee hearings. But in that period, the Watergate scandal had brought down Nixon. President Ford was the first ever, until now, the only unelected president. He had come out of the Congress, and Congress was seething mad about

all the abuses at that point, and people were quite unhappy about what had happened with Watergate. CIA had a new director. And Frank Church was an ambitious, very intelligent, very eloquent, aspiring senator from Idaho. And we had Mike Mansfield, who was also a real gentleman as the Senate majority leader. And he appointed Church to investigate the CIA. And interestingly, again, for where we are today, you know, Cy Hirsch, Seymour Hirsch, great investigative reporter for decades, has lots of sources in the CIA. And he told us last year that the U.S. blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, which I absolutely think is, of course, they did. And President Putin said it again on the interview a couple of days ago with Tucker Carlson. Seymour Hersh published at the end of 1974, from his inside sources already back 50 years ago,

a story about how the CIA was spying on Americans domestically. So all of that meant suddenly for the first time since 1947, that there would be a review of the CIA. These senators did not know what they were going to find. And when they started just to look a little bit under the rug, assassinations, coups, really terrible things, by the way, terrible things that are so unimaginable. Congo had just gained its independence from Belgium, and Belgium had run it like a slave colony. And there was a bright, young, aspiring political leader, Patrice Lumumba. And Patrice Lumumba said that he wanted an independent course, a non-aligned course for his new country, not in the US or in the Soviet camp. And in the White House, they said, ah, non-aligned,

that must mean he's really a crypto communist. And Eisenhower said, eliminate him. And the CIA ended up, it was the Belgians who ended up putting the bullet through his head, but the CIA launched an assassination effort and supported the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, after which Congo became a dictatorship under the dictator that the U.S. installed, Mobutu. It was named to Zaire, then later now to Democratic Republic of Congo. We did that. And now there are some books because things have been declassified. But that was a pretty leisurely conversation

in the Oval Office or in the White House when Eisenhower said, get rid of him. And the CIA, okay, we'll assassinate him. Has anybody ever been prosecuted? No. For these assassinations? The only prosecution I know of is John Kiriakaku, who observed torture and revealed its existence and revealed the names of the torturers by CIA, didn't participate in it. He spent two and a half years in a federal

prison, but the torturers and the killers were not prosecuted. No, the big crime in the United States is to reveal so-called, or it's not so-called, it's confidential material. But what is the confidential material doing? It's hiding crimes by the United States. That's what Snowden did. This is what Assange did. These are the big enemies, the ones who show what's really going on in the United States. Did the CIA train Islamic jihadists under President Carter, the same human beings or their successors that we fought against, American troops fought against under President George W. Bush? Of course. Not just that. We ran jihadist armies basically almost till now in some places. Sometimes there's a boomerang effect that the ones that you supported come around and attack you. I think they consider that part of business costs, collateral damage like 9-11. But of course, this is well known by those who look under the cover.

And Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was a really very clever advisor to President Carter, advised President Carter in 1979, use the CIA to arm the Islamic jihadist forces, they became known as the Mujahideen, to destabilize Afghanistan. And that will entice or induce the Soviet Union to invade. And that will be like their Vietnam. And Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled that all out in an interview that people can find online in Nouvelle Observateur. And if you just Google Zbigniew Brzezinski, Afghanistan, Mujahideen, CIA, you'll find this interview. And he explains all of this stuff. Now, after this, quote, success of destroying Afghanistan in order to entrap the Soviet Union, the U.S. government thought that's a pretty dandy thing we've just done. We can use these jihadists elsewhere.

We can help bring them into the crumbling Yugoslavia. We can help them to fight against Serbia. Why Serbia? Because Serbia is a friend of Russia. We want to destabilize Russia. We want to destabilize the periphery of Russia. So the war in Serbia in 1999 was a U.S. war to give independence to Kosovo, which was a piece of Serbia. We talk about don't change borders by force, but the United States broke Serbia in two using jihadists. And it did the

same thing in Chechnya. And there are books and books written about these things, but there's just flat deniability or denial, let's say, by the US because the attitude is we never have to look, we never have to apologize, we never have to tell the truth. Let's just move on, children. Don't look too closely. Let's just move on. Did any good or any changes come out of the church committee investigations? It seems as though you're telling us that post-1975, the era of the church committee, is just as bad, maybe worse, than pre-1975, the era they were investigating. I think that we will be next year,

at the 50th anniversary of the Church Committee, there will have been one investigation of the CIA ever since 1947 of a serious kind, and that was that one time. And I'm saying we need it again now, because really, to answer your question, we need facts. I know a lot, and there are hundreds of books on this, all denied. We need to get absolutely public oversight and explanation and understanding. For our own security, we need to stop this kind of behavior, by the way. It's a kind of American exceptionalism and arrogance. Many countries have intelligence agencies, many countries spy, But the United States is distinctive in overthrowing governments right and left, instead of using diplomacy to say, we don't agree with you. We're going to negotiate with you. We're going to bargain with you. We're going to cut a deal with you. No, no, no. We're going to overthrow

you. What role, if any, is the CIA playing in the war in Ukraine or the slaughter in Gaza? To tell you the truth, we don't know. We just don't know because we don't know what the assignments are. I hear things, you know, occasionally, thank God I don't see any secret documents. I never want to. Don't send them to me, God, I don't see any secret documents. I never want to. Don't send them to me, anybody. I don't want them. But I hear from a lot of people about the subversion. I read when there are leaks. I'll give another example, because I can't answer the cases right now of what's happening, but recently I wrote about something very current and very much in the news, which is the elections in Pakistan.

Pakistan is another case where the U.S. acted to bring down the Pakistan government. We warned, we, I mean, the State Department, told the ambassador of Pakistan back in 2022, you know, your prime minister is a danger to us. He wants neutrality, this aggressive neutrality. It's actually a word they use. It's a kind of oxymoron. What is aggressive about neutrality? Aggressive neutrality means It's actually a word they use. It's a kind of oxymoron. What is aggressive about neutrality? Aggressive neutrality means you're not supporting us. That's all it means. The United States doesn't accept neutrality. It's either you're with us or you're against us. That's the American view. So the Americans said, you know, if you bring down Imran Khan, things could work out okay. So, you know, the U.S. relations with the Pakistan military is very tight. It goes back to Afghanistan, to what we were discussing.

There's a lot of money at stake. And within a month, there was a vote of no confidence that brought down Imran Khan. They paid the legislators, they bribed, they do whatever. Then, if you really want to know the irony of it, as soon as that happened, and I know Imran Khan, and as soon as he was brought down, I heard indirectly that he was saying, you know, the United States did this. So he started saying this and he was attacked and ridiculed in Pakistan for making these outlandish claims, conspiracy theories and so forth. Then the document that had been sent by the Pakistani ambassador back to Pakistan, saying that the Americans say we got to bring him down, this cable, reporter, and it was leaked by somebody in the Pakistani military to Imran Khan's camp as well. So The Intercept published it. It explained the American role in bringing this guy down. Then Imran Khan went and said, here's the document

that proves that America was behind my house. What did they do to him because he held that document in his hand? They said, espionage. That's espionage. You're releasing a secret document. That's espionage. And he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for waiving the diplomatic document that proved that the United States had been behind his ouster. So what did the U.S. State Department officials say just a couple of weeks ago? We respect the Pakistani courts. Full stop. I wonder if they respect the Pakistani voters. Tell us what happened last week. So Imran Khan was put in prison. He had been in prison. Then he had one absolutely mind-boggling

sentence after another, like this espionage one and two others that went along. So he was barred from the election last week. His party was not allowed to run. So the emblem of the party was struck off all of the ballot rolls. But his parliamentary party members ran as independents in all of the districts across Pakistan. And what happened? They won an overwhelming landslide vote, despite all the repression, all the lies, all of the disqualification. But as the vote was being counted, of course, the vote count stopped they faked around 70 districts they couldn't completely fake everything so they said well Imran Khan won 100 seats whereas the actual account was 170 seats and now the military no doubt the U.S is., is behind the scenes trying to scramble to find someone other than Imran Khan to come to power after this. Let me switch gears.

We only have a few minutes left. Back to the CIA. Did the CIA know about 9-11 or October 7th before either of them happened? 9-11 and October 7, first of all, clearly were profound intelligence failures at the least. The nature of those intelligence failures was never documented or explained, and of course never will be, because who would do it? You'd have to understand what they knew.

So there are a thousand theories around. I have no insight into any of it beyond what people can read of the controversies. When it comes to October 7, which is more recent, the Hamas attack in Israel. We hear repeatedly that Israel was warned ahead of time, warned by the Egyptians ahead of time, warned by other security services. But as usual, there's not even an attempt to understand really what happened. Everything is handled by strict confidentiality and public lies whenever necessary. Professor Sachs, this is an amazing analysis. I'm sorry we have to run because I could hear you talk about this all afternoon, as have, of course, many, many people watching us now. Thank you very much for your time. Always great to be with you. We look forward to having you on again next week.

We'll do it. Good. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye. Coming up later today, Phil Giraldi and Aaron Mate, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching! Thank you.