A Brief History of the CIA

2… Alright, everybody, welcome to week… 2. Really excited to have you back, Matthew. And, I'll be tying up tomatoes while listening. Everybody else is also multitasking, so, you're… Our professor of the… month, and it's very exciting, to be doing this with you. I don't know if everybody got a chance to actually check out the documents, that I'm trying to get going for this course. The transcript has not been added yet.

But I needed to give Zoom time to process it. Zoom does a good job with transcripts, but that will be in a shared Google Doc, and we'll have, like, a sort of document for this course that has a key that can then take you to the other documents, such as the briefs for the actual texts that are recommended, the transcripts for the lectures. We'll have, like, this sort of master reference document.

And hopefully this becomes a sort of foundation for this kind of sober, deep state analysis. So, with that, welcome back, Matthew.

Thanks, Dave, happy to be here. There's, there's a ton of detail and an insane amount of history here, so I've had to really pull things, and I'm gonna have to gloss over a lot of detail. But I'm really excited to talk about these things because… my… my guess is that most people know close to zero about this topic, and so I'm figuring that anything is better than nothing at all, and so that's kind of my approach, is trying to string together a picture of In this lecture, the early years of the CIA, especially under Alan Dulles, Who is the longest-serving director?

And… Sort of set a lot of the culture that would continue on for the… For a few decades. So we're gonna look at some of the key events that happened there, and talk about how the CIA got… CIA got up and running, and how it ended up in all of these kind of covert operations, as opposed to its mandate to gather and analyze intelligence for the benefit of the President and the National Security Council. So… To go back a little bit, just to recap, last week we were talking about… how do we develop a theory of the deep state that I think flows from just a sober analysis of the current structure of our state?

We went with Aaron Goods. tripartite structure of the state, which is that there's a public state, there's the elected officials who make laws, there's the whole pomp and circumstance and ceremony, there's elections, all of that, and that has… power, there's power there, there's meaning there, what happens there matters.

But that's not… necessarily the only place, or even the primarily Primarily the place that power resides in the state. In the modern state, we also have the administrative state, which is this vast government apparatus that sits underneath the public state. Carrying out all of the ongoing processes. of… Making regulations of… developing policy, of enforcing decisions, of basically Congress makes a law, and then it gets passed off to an agency, and it's that agency's job to continue to execute on those directives, as long as they are, as long as that, law goes unmodified. So it's basically, you create, say, an agency.

Now they've got responsibilities, and they're just gonna keep doing them for as long as they're told to. And so you've got a whole vast apparatus. 99.9% of the government are… Ordinary people in the sense of they get hired, they get fired, they get a salary, they've got a job. After 30-some-odd years of service, they get a pension, all these kinds of things. So… And part of the contention of the seminar is that that structure itself entails that there is a deep state. That somewhere within the administrative state, there resides some sort of a locus where sovereignty is exercised In a way that's unaccountable, in a way that is secretive, in a way that is not subject to public opinion, and which can even act contrary to the stated objectives of the public state, of the president himself, not knowing what's going on, or being told things that aren't exactly true, or being manipulated, or being forced to react to problems that were created by the administrative state.

So. I think that we see this in the, history of the CIA, especially, and so that's why we're looking at it On top of the fact that, as I pointed out, I think studying the history of the CIA helps us to learn a more sober view of the deep state itself. In that, we see the deep state making mistakes, we see stupid decisions, we see, it's human, all too human nature.

We also understand the… we start to see the mechanisms that are at use. And it gives us an insight into the way that the administrative state can be mobilized in ways contrary to the electorate or of the public state. So, this lecture is going to look at the prehistory and the early years of the CIA, and then we're also going to be looking at, within that.

Some specific events, such as the CIA's overall failure in Europe, right after World War II and as the Cold War kind of gets up and going. We'll be looking at Alan Dulles a little bit, who's an important figure. And then we'll be… we'll be spending some time looking at the coup in Iran. I want to talk about that one because, one.

the CIA saw that as one of their greatest early successes. And it's also highly relevant to our moment in which we are in a kinetic war with Iran. So, one thing I am going to be doing is stringing along some of the events in Iran into these lectures, because I want folks to pick up a little bit of the backstory of our involvement in Iran, and how it's not so simple as, hey, there's this evil regime of radical Islamists who want to destroy Israel, so we have to defeat them, and we can never let them have a nuclear weapon. It's like, well.

Maybe we created that situation. Maybe we actually have a hand in it, and so I'd like to include some of that information in some of these lectures. I will briefly look at the… We'll touch on the coup in Guatemala in 1954. And… I want to talk a little bit about the war in Laos. Next week, I'm thinking we're probably gonna be looking at the… JFK, LBJ presidencies, maybe going into Vietnam as well. So things like Bay of Pigs invasion, what happened in Indonesia, Operation Condor.

the Congo, these type of things. There's, of course, like. honestly, we could have a lecture about any one of these events or elements, so again, my hope is to just paint a general picture that is accurate enough for you to have an understanding of the arc of things, and then whatever you find interesting, you can go dig into more.

One of the big… the big history that I read was, Legacy of Ashes by Tim… Tim Wiener. And… So that's informing a lot of what I know, I'm gonna be providing a list, like I mentioned, of recommended texts, and we've already discussed some of them. So at the end of this, I'm gonna have, like, a full bibliography, including stuff that I have on my digital shelf ready to be read, but that I haven't read yet. So try to provide you something comprehensive.

So let's go ahead and get into it. we could… I'm gonna start by talking about the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS, but I do want to note something at the outset that might strike us as a little strange, based on our current the current makeup of elites in our society. One thing you're gonna see in this story a lot is the military.

And… In the first half of the 20th century, it was actually high status to be in the military. So, this is why Seawright Mills includes military figures in his overall picture of elite networks. In his book, The Power Elite. Which feels dated to us, because the military feels like such a non-entity in our society. Today, the military has kind of become a society unto itself, and I think most people would be… hard-pressed to name a single important military figure in the past 50 years. Like, even for me, I think of David Petraeus and Norman Schwarzkopf, like, that's it.

I don't… I don't know if any of us can name The generals, like, the people who are running the military of the largest empire in human history right now, and they're not politically significant figures in the way they were in the past. For instance, Eisenhower was the last president who was a general. and Eisenhower… was elected… In the 1950s, like, early 50s, like, after Truman left office. So… In fact, the last president who ever served in the military was George H.W. Bush, who actually, coincidentally, was also the only president to have also been the Director of Central Intelligence. That was an interesting fact that I found out when I was reading this history, that George H.W. Bush was also the Director of Central Intelligence at one point. So, interesting fact there.

But overall, what I want to point out is that it was really common in this period for elites to go into the military. So a lot of these early OSS and CIA folks, you'll see that they went to Yale. But they served in World War II, they were in the Navy, they were in the Army, many of them would go in and out of the military, even.

And so what's interesting is you see the children of… the Roosevelts, of the Kennedys, like, these kind of figures, these folks go into the military. Many of them, actually. And so there is this high status accorded to that, and so we're gonna see a lot of these figures. And much of the early OSS and CIA culture comes from, basically, these Ivy League kids, Who go into the military.

And, as well as military folks who are, looking for some adventure. That kind of thing. And then later, you see a lot of… folks being recruited from state colleges, for instance. Like, just sort of average Joes being recruited into the ranks of the officers and the analysts who are gonna do the dirty work. But a lot of the early leadership is… really blue bloods. You see folks who went to Princeton, went to Ivy… Ivy League schools, like, Yale especially was the early recruiting ground for CIA operatives.

And you even see this kind of pipeline of, like. New England Blue Blood, who goes to some elite private school, like, school like Groton, goes to Yale, is in the Skull and Bones Society, and then goes into the military, ends up in the OSS, and then they get hired into the CIA. Like, that story, you see that repeated, actually, much more frequently than you'd expect.

So… What develops early on… Is a culture that's kind of already, like, this very human network and an insular? So the Office of Strategic Services was created by FDR during World War II. We talked about last week how the U.S. the U.S. military had some intelligence, agencies that were gathering intelligence that was useful to the Department of War and to the Armed Forces.

But there was no espionage program that was actively gathering information to understand the other nations' internal workings, their capabilities, what was going on, who were the factions inside. we were totally blind to any of that, partially because, as I pointed out, we hadn't really aspired to be a world power. And sort of got… began to get thrusted into this role in the early 1900s because of, World War I, and just our rapid industrialization produced this immense amount of wealth. It was like we sort of… Ended up unwittingly on the world stage as a global leader, and we didn't really have the infrastructure in place to be a leader at that time.

So during World War II, FDR creates this, OSS, and it's basically, like, it was never really larger than about 1,300 people. It was led by, an army commander, William Donovan, Bill Donovan, as they call him, and he really set the culture for the OSS, He was sort of this… he was just willing to try anything. He… we've got things about him, like.

trying to train bats and, like, tying bombs to them to, like, try to bomb Japanese cities with… Flocks of bats, like, all kinds of crazy stuff that they came up with at this time. he was basically just like, let's do cool shit, let's take out the enemy, let's infiltrate things, let's blow up bridges. For him and the culture he created, it was really about this espionage, sabotage, sort of high-stakes hijinks.

That, in many ways. it was a really… it was really a mixed bag. Some other ideas were stupid, some of them were never tried. Many of them… in some cases, like, we've got Frank Wisner, who's going to later be an important character, I mean, he's able to get 1,100 prisoners of war. airlifted out of Romania during this time, which is a massive success, but at the same time, you've also got, you've got terrible failures as well, of folks getting… folks getting found out, folks getting killed, operations failing.

All kinds of stuff. And many of the failures come from inexperience, moles penetrating the organization, all this kind of stuff. And… But this is really just, like, they're totally inexperienced, they've never done this before, and they're given, sort of, carte blanche to just, like, go get information, go cause trouble in Europe, and, support the troops.

So the OSS was… a lot of OSS veterans end up in the CIA later, and tend to be… they also tend to be in the leadership as well. So we see that kind of Bill Donovan's culture and the people he groomed there ended up inadvertently shaping the ethos of the CIA, which was much more… and the OSS, as I mentioned, is much more focused on espionage covert operations than it was the actual gathering and analysis of intelligence.

So, the OSS is disbanded when the war ends, and there was talk of, like, hey, maybe we need a peacetime intelligence agency of this kind, but… both FDR and Truman were really suspicious of that, because they were… they saw Bill Donovan's M.O. of secrecy and, all kinds of just covert tactics. to them, it stank of, like, a Gestapo, of, like, a secret police. And at this time, in the wake of the World War, with, being aware of Nazi Germany, as well as the, the USSR as an enemy, there was a massive fear about developing a secret police in America. Because they saw what it had done in other countries, they saw that it was a temptation and it was a possibility.

So it took a few years before Truman was able to draft up the idea for the Central Intelligence Agency, which, as we talked about last time, their primary mandate was to organize… to gather, organize, analyze information to present to the President. But as we've seen, the seeds were already being sown for that organization to become something different entirely.

One of the first directors of Central Intelligence was Roscoe Hillenkoter. And, basically, there were about 3 directors within the first few years, and none of them wanted the job. They got it foisted on them. They thought the organization… they, like, wasn't… they weren't sure what it was supposed to be. They didn't… they… they thought maybe it was a little kind of doomed to failure.

Roscoe… he was a bit too demure and didn't want to rock the boat amongst the intelligence community. As we talked about last time. The intelligence community at this time, there were other intelligence agencies. There's the State Department, there's the Department of Defense, there's all the military agencies, And… He basically saw that their job was to get information from them, and they were the newcomers on the block.

And so he decided that he was gonna play nice. But what this ended up doing was that it really hamstrung their performance. It was hard to get information, they ended up just repackaging information from other people rather than doing their own independent analysis, and frankly, their information just… their work wasn't that useful.

So… And unfortunately, at this time as well, there were a number of early embarrassments for the agency that took place under Hill & Coaters. Tenure as the director? chief among these was that the CIA did not see the first successful, atomic bomb test by the Soviet Union coming. They had no… they had no clue. In fact, the CIA had predicted mid-1950s was the time that they expected the Soviets to get ahold of an atomic weapon, And… it was September 20th, 1949, when the Soviets successfully dropped an atomic bomb. Hill and Coter made a bunch of excuses in front of Congress, and nobody was satisfied by it, basically. And so, this was seen as a major failure.

Which was followed all… which was followed, like. less than a year later, with a failure to foresee the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June of 1950. So… the CIA Its extensive job was to have this information, was to be building a picture of what does the president need to know, what's the state of affairs. what's high priority, what's brewing, what's not, what's important, and they didn't see the atomic bomb coming with the USSR, and they didn't see the North Korean invasion coming.

Truman ends up… basically, letting, Roscoe go. And Walter Bedell Smith takes over the CIA at this point. And so Walter Bedell Smith he's the figure who is… he's an OSS veteran, and he very much brings the CIA into its own, and gives it a direction His leadership is highly consequential in this period. And he's the one who brings in a lot of OSS veterans. For instance, he brings in Frank Wisner, who's gonna run the Directorate of Plans, which is basically the clandestine Operations Team, also known as the Department of Dirty Tricks.

Not officially, of course. And he also brings in Alan Dulles, who was an OSS veteran. He brings in Alan Dulles as basically his deputy director, and it's Alan Dulles who succeeds him. But Del Smith, bringing his OSS training, has… The two is credit. Bedell Smith really did invest in the actual analysis and report-making functions of the department. So, under Smith's leadership.

the CIA did start to produce valuable and original analysis that was going to the president, and began to build up the reputation for what they should have been. However. within the department, there was constantly brewing this, this pressure and a desire to do more clandestine operations, because that was what Smith's, experience was in. It's what a lot of the OSS veterans who were in the department was in, and so it's basically like, hey, we know this is our job.

and Smith, did get the CIA up to snuff in that respect. But there was also this, yeah, but we really want to do this. We really want to be sabotaging the enemy, and flying around the world, and, you know, meeting with people in secret, and having the secret handshake, and all this kind of stuff. So… How did they justify what came what came in the future, these clandestine operations. So, it's interesting to understand how this agency, that its job, ostensibly was to gather intelligence and report it, eventually took on these clandestine operations.

So there's a clause, Section 102D5 in the, National Security Act. that says that the CIA, that authorized the agency to perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct. So, of course, this is a massive loophole. Such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security. The proviso is the National Security Council may, from time to time, direct.

So… What happened was that in 1948, in, NSC 10 slash 2, which is a national security directive. they created what was called the Office of Policy Coordination, the OPC, which they authorized to carry out clandestine operations and psychological warfare. So, the NSC created had this clause, it then created an independent agency underneath it.

That had the authority to do those things. the CIA, at the time, had started to create a similar office. That was sort of under… it was kind of under the table. And it was called, the Office of Strategic Operations. Because their mandate was slightly modified later in some legislation later, and that's a little complicated, but basically, under Bedell Smith, what he did was he took this independent agency that was under the NSC, and he took his office.

And he merged them. And now… there is the, within the CIA, there is now this agency called the Directorate of Plans. that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency can run. So he's sort of, like, it was created by the NSC, and then he sort of merged it into his department. And now, you've got this… Basically, this entire team and agency that's dedicated just to Whatever the national security demands, basically, such other activities and duties.

So… this was the vehicle that these OSS veterans and many of the people who were interested in these kinds of, clandestine activities used to start working. So the Cold War was unfolding on a lot of fronts, but, the front that really got a lot of the focus was Europe, obviously, so… Europe, Asia was also a really important front because of China, and of course, the USSR has influence in Asia, but really, it was Europe and Southeast Asia that were, like, really the big focuses early on of the Cold War, because you've got China exerting its influence in Southeast Asia. Vietnam later fell to communism, and so there was that fear there. Of course, China supports North Korea in… in, that communist regime and attempting to take over South Korea.

So… American intelligence in Europe is trying to navigate the fact that, okay, we're rebuilding Europe, but we've got this iron curtain. And the American intelligence is basically desperate for any lead or opportunity, because they didn't have… they didn't have a network of collaborators and spies built up yet. They're totally starting from scratch. So they're just looking for anything, and… Even though the US worked with the communists during World War II, after World War II, the communists were the enemies, and so what happens is we end up getting in bed with a bunch of fascist ex-Nazis war criminals, and… emigre communities who, like, left they've… they have left Soviet countries and set up in Western, in Western countries into these sort of ghettos, you know, like what we've got in Cuba and, like Cubans in Miami these days, Cubans who've left Cuba.

They live in Miami, And they all… they all kind of live together, I think our, It's… that's a similar phenomenon to what you find in Europe. So… These kind of groups produce kind of a hotbed of, like, people who are kind of zealous for getting back to their country, they want to fight communism, they hate what it's done to their country.

And so we end up… partnering with a lot of these, basically, ex-Nazi war criminals who They're deceptive, they know what they're… they know how to run operations. And these emigre communities who are very zealous to do something. We've also got defectors. Defectors are, of course, very interesting, and you know, you should be… You should probably be suspicious of defectors. They're very likely to be double agents, but… That's what we had to work with, and so we're basically just, like, taking every attempt that was offered to us.

Which just means that we were completely penetrated by moles and Soviet spies in Europe. Pretty much every operation that the CIA ran during this period was… Foiled, known about. Or was penetrated by moles. So even the famous, like, Berlin Tunnel, where they… Secretly dug this tunnel and set up a bunch of, like, radio and signal interception equipment underneath the Berlin Wall.

The Soviets literally knew about it from day one, and they were just feeding us disinformation the entire time. And then, when… they decided to… then they basically picked a date when they were going to discover us, and make a big show of discovering us, and making them look really good to their people. And so… a complete failure.

one of the… one of the common strategies at this time, too, is, like, take an emigre community, you've got Hungarians, you've got Ukrainians, fly them dead of… you know, you train them in basic paramilitary maneuvers. You fly them in the dead of night over the border, and they… they secretly infiltrate the country, and then you never hear from them again.

They literally just kept flying people over the border to their deaths. In… just in the hope that somebody would make it through, and that they'd be able to get somebody on the inside. Ultimately, they never succeeded. So, the fascinating thing about the CIA is that they never… got a high-level operative inside the USSR.

The most… we'll talk about this… the most consequential intelligence on the USSR came from israeli intelligence? It came from the U-2 spy plane flying over the country and taking pictures, or it came from high-level defectors who came to us. That's basically what we knew about the USSR. Further, at this time, there's a notorious double agent named Kim Philby, who was, basically in the highest ranks of MI6, but he'd been working with Moscow for decades, like, since he was in college, basically. And so this double agent, Kim Philby.

He's literally living in Washington and having lunch. with James Angleton, the head of counterintelligence. it's kind of insane when you think about it. And he… so he defects officially. to the USSR in 1961, but he's basically been blowing our country.

Sorry, Matthew. Yes. I think I missed something about… okay, he's having lunch with the head of these operations, like… What was it about him that made that crazy?

So James Angleton. I kind of didn't want to get to James Engleton, but James Engleton is the head of counterintelligence in the CIA. Counterintelligence is basically, like, your job is to investigate your own organization to make sure that there's no traitors. And so, one of the leading operatives who's based in Washington of MI6, which is Britain's intelligence agency.

has been a Soviet double agent for decades, and is literally eating lunch with the guy whose job it is to investigate The intelligence community for leaks, moles, spies, etc. And… So… Like, this is one of the reasons… why, the CIA was so unsuccessful in Europe early on, is Russia had a huge They had a huge advantage. Russia had a big jump on us.

In terms of they've been doing espionage much longer, they already had networks in place, but also, we were so sloppy. Because we were desperate, and we were inexperienced. the CIA was so sloppy that they ended up, their plans were blown constantly, they didn't think things through, they got suckered by, what looked like a good opportunity was… but was basically bait set by the Soviets.

So… One of the things that this kind of precipitates is a shift away from, like, human intelligence towards using technology to gather information passively. Which is, of course, a very American solution to it. It's like, okay, let's just use technology to replace the human element of things. So what you get is the CIA starts to heavily invest in and develop new types of wiretaps and bugs and what we're going to look at next, the U2.

So the U-2 spy plane program was started in 1954 by Richard Bissell Jr. Richard Bissell Jr. was another grotten Yale guy. Who ends up being in charge of the clandestine services. after Frank Wisner moves to other things, And he… he's approached by Lockheed Martin to develop this spy plane that flies at, like, 70,000 feet, takes pictures, And… This is huge for them, because they're like, okay, this is going to be… We can't get anybody inside the Soviet Union, so we'll just fly over at super high… at super high altitudes, and take pictures of their military installations to try to keep tabs on their military, their missile capabilities, their missile stockpiles, these kind of things.

And so… Bissell develops the YouTube program. at Area 51, which he basically runs during this period. And within 2 years, 90% of all U.S. intelligence about the Soviet Union is coming from these U-2 spy planes that are flying over the Soviet Union, basically, like, violating their airspace. So this becomes a big problem.

It actually ends up precipitating, like, one of the most embarrassing episodes in Eisenhower's presidency. Basically, the CIA has been lying to Eisenhower for a long time about the Soviet Union's actual military and missile capabilities. They've grossly overestimated them based on, like, guesstimates and, just kind of, like, a general atmosphere of fear and a fervor about the mission of America, fighting back against communism. They've intentionally exaggerated and lied about USSR's capabilities to Eisenhower.

To cultivate in him a sense of urgency about taking action and about expanding their ability to act. So… Bissell puts an immense amount of pressure on Eisenhower to keep running these U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, even after they've realized that the Soviet Union is absolutely paying attention to these planes, and is going on high military alert whenever they enter their airspace.

So an incident happens where finally a U-2 is shot down by the Soviet Union, and in fact, the pilot is captured behind enemy lines. Which becomes this massive disaster, especially because Eisenhower had just been meeting days before with Khrushchev to try to normalize relations. And… what happens is Eisenhower… he sort of regrets this, because he… he didn't want… he had been pushing back against Bissell and didn't want to run these… Flights right now, during this politically very tense moment when he was meeting with Khrushchev?

But Bissell is basically going around talking to everybody in the government, trying to get somebody to give him approval to fly it. Eventually, he does get Eisenhower's approval. There's a bunch of cloud cover, so they can't run it. And he's like, give me one more chance, give me one more chance. And Eisenhower foolishly gives him another chance.

And this is the one that ends up getting shot down. And Eisenhower lies. he says that it was a weather plane over Turkey, and that's the story that the CIA generates, that's the story that Eisenhower plays along with, and he later deeply regrets this decision, and it's extremely embarrassing both for him and for the CIA.

So… We've got this… Like… We've got these independent programs within the government run by folks like Bissell. That are developing technology. That is being used in ways that the president is either not fully aware of, or the president is being actively deceived about. There's also an independent agenda within the agency to deceive, to give the president a certain view of things that will allow them to justify what they want to do.

And they have the capability to do this because their job is to feed intelligence to the president. And, to be clear, nobody's ever punished for any of this. Like, nobody's ever held accountable for any of these things that happen. So… the U2… program was kind of an early… like, you could say it was a success, and in fact, it has been an extremely useful piece of technology for us.

the U-2 spy planes are still produced today. That program began under Alan Dulles. So Alan Dulles is appointed in 1953. He succeeds Walter Bedell Smith. And Dallas is the longest-serving director of Central Intelligence, serves from 1953 until he's dismissed by JFK in 1961. And, very weirdly. Dulles was also accorded a role on the Warren Commission, which would investigate JFK's assassination. So… the very guy that JFK dismissed as the DCI, because he didn't trust him, is the guy who helps oversee the commission about JFK, like, investigating JFK's assassination, which is very interesting.

But, to really understand this period of CIA, you do need to have this picture in your mind of who Alan Dulles is. He is… So he goes to Princeton, he's the son, he's Presbyterian, not a very religious man, actually, is how he's raised, but he, you know, he comes from this Ivy League background, and he studies law. He becomes a lawyer, he ends up being a corporate lawyer.

with one of the most important New York law firms, Oliver and Cromwell. This is important later because United Fruit Company, which precipitated the coup in Guatemala. coup in Guatemala, was a long-time client of Sullivan and Cromwell. So what we've got is Dulles, who was in the OSS, and then when the war is over, he comes back out and he continues law. He is this hotshot New York corporate lawyer.

for… he's deeply embedded into the business interests and, like, the… the muckety-mucks in New York City. Next, his older brother, John Foster Dulles, is also the Secretary of State at the same time that he is the Director of Central Intelligence. So, you've got the DCI and the Secretary of State are brothers. the Secretary… like, the State Department is kind of a constant thorn in the side of the… of the CIA, or rather, it's the other way around. The CIA is a thorn in the State Department's side, because Imagine you're a diplomat who's in a country, and you're trying to maintain normal relations with the leaders in a country, and there's this other agency that, in some cases, is even housed inside of your embassy.

that is actively undertaking plans that you are not privy to, and that they are lying to you about. So, like, this is the constant state of things. The State Department is trying to maintain normal relations and engage in good statecraft and diplomacy, and the CIA is actively subverting these things and, like. creating situations that are gonna blow up in the State Department's face, and they don't know about it.

So, but under… during this time, because the Dulles brothers are basically in charge. John Foster Dulles gives… doesn't really restrain this problem at all during his tenure, basically lets the CIA run amok. Alan Dulles… basically sees himself as this, like, 007 type. Like, he has this personal mythology about himself, of he is the dashing, classy spy who's always smoking pipes and drinking whiskey.

He lives in, like, the nicest house in Georgetown, and he throws… throws these dinner parties, always dreaming up mad schemes of how to subvert foreign governments, and… He gauged… he gauged in, like. It's estimated, like, hundreds of extramarital affairs. He loves to travel to foreign countries and meet with powerful people. He just has this gentleman spy thing as, like, he's totally invested in this personal vision of himself.

And… Of course, covert action stands at the heart of this, so… the CIA kind of becomes his… Personal vehicle for living this fantasy spy life that he has for himself. And… A lot of the other folks in the agency kind of buy into this, and this is the culture he creates, and those are the kind of people who get promoted, too, of who have this vision of, like.

We're spies, we're doing dirty things for the good of the country, you know, like, but also getting… there's this certain jouissance of, like, engaging in transgression, and being in contact with power, and being able to do what you want and not be accountable. And so, there is this… culture of, kind of, like, the good old boys that develops.

that Alan Dulles is at the center of creating. And this is why I think that the CIA during this time just becomes excessively risk-taking, because it was viewed as, like. They were flippant. About the ways that they engaged in these kind of behaviors, because they were basically in it for the fun. Like, they were… they found these adventures to be exciting, they… And then on top of that, you add this additional level of, like, we're doing this for national security, we're fighting communism, there's this existential threat.

This is why, like, intelligence analysis goes on the back burner. The analysts' work is constantly just getting thrown out the window, because really, the leadership is like, what's the coolest covert action thing we could be doing right now? And how can we justify to ourselves? How can we get around any sort of legal strictures? And we basically just need to try everything in the book to Get the president to allow us to do this.

And so, the CIA becomes a hotbed for secretive projects, which are highly legal, immoral, and often very stupid. The biggest early example of this Which actually, as I've mentioned, is an early quote-unquote success of the method. is the coup in Iran what's called Operation Ajax? where do I begin with this? The background to Operation Ajax is that Iran is, like, a parliamentary democracy at this time, with a Shah, who's sort of like a… He's like a king, but earlier he was more like a warlord a little bit. But basically, it's kind of this… monarchy and parliament sort of structure that you have in a lot of, like, British… like, British countries and such.

However, the… It's not purely ceremonial, the Shah really does have power. Iran was absolutely crucial to the defeat of the Nazis in World War II. It basically the British control of Iranian oil was what fueled the war machine in World War II. Without the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. running these oil fields in Iran. Basically, foreign countries completely owned the oil fields in Iran.

They were also cheating the Iranian government out of billions of dollars that they… Owed the government because… for using their fields. The people who were working these fields, and working in the country in general, were living in horrible conditions, absolutely squalid conditions, completely underpaid. Lacking clean water and all these sort of basic human necessities.

So… The Anglo-Iranian oil company is… A foreign company that owns The largest oil… known oil field at the time, And… when it comes out that they've been cheating the Iranian government, the Shah. starts to take some actions that are, aggressive towards the Brits. And… In 1941, Churchill and Stalin actually invade Iran to depose the Shah, and they actually set up his son, who's only 21, who's basically, like, a pretty meek guy, he's basically a puppet for them.

So, in April 1954, the, the Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mosadegh. He was elected in 1951, a vote 72 to 12. He was fairly popular, he was confirmed by the Shah. His… the parliament that he leads in 1954, votes to nationalize Iranian oil. So… Mossadegh is also this social reformer who's introducing, like, unemployment compensation, pay benefits for sick and injured workers, he wants to free peasants from forced labor that's happening on Biggest states. He passes a land reform act that forces landlords to pay 20% tax on their revenue.

He's trying to build a development fund for public baths, rural housing, this kind of stuff. So, at one point, the Brits, the Brits try to take action against Mossadegh, before this nationalization happens. They get caught. And so, actually, they get kicked out of the country. It's at this point that Churchill then approaches Kim Roosevelt, who's Kermit Roosevelt Jr, who's the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, who is an OSS veteran.

And who works in the Mideast Division and the CIA. Churchill approaches Roosevelt and is like, we need to depose this Mossadegh guy. So… While Truman and his administration actually support Mossadegh at this time. in the, like, it's kind of the waning years of Truman's administration, and so the CIA is basically like, okay.

He's leaving office, we're gonna do our own thing. And Frank Wisner actually says this time, he says, the CIA makes policy by default. So this is basically a conspiracy to go against the wishes of the administration and to initiate an operation that is contrary to the publicly stated goals of the public state. And they're basically like, no, we're gonna set the policy.

And they decide that they're gonna unseat Mossadegh. So, the Kim Roosevelt… leads this Operation Ajax to undermine Mossadegh's support amongst Iranian political parties. he's given a million dollars, and they say, just start bribing people. Like, you have a million dollars, just start giving money to as many powerful people as will take it. And so he basically starts buying the allegiance of clerics, who… who start preaching against Mossadegh in their mosques.

they hire hitmen to literally battle in the street with Mossadegh supporters, which included, like, a pretty… like, a small sort of Soviet sympathizing party named the Tuda Party, and that was sort of how Mossadegh was painted as a Soviet sympathizer, was because this Communist Party supported him. Obviously, they supported him because of his land reforms, which are socialist and emancipatory in character, But, is basically paying as many powerful people as he can to just get… to start being anti-Mossadegh.

And the reasoning didn't matter. I mean, later they're producing propaganda that says, like, Mossadegh is a Jew, or Mossadegh is a traitor to Islam, or Mossadegh is a communist, like, there's nothing… coherent about any of it. It's just, how do we drum up anti-Mossadegh sentiment? You've got the, Rashidian brothers, who are these highly influential Iranian Anglo socialites, and… they are part of the British Influence Network, and they also are brought in, and they just start influencing people with their money and their power and that kind of thing.

So Alan Dulles ends up fabricating this report to Eisenhower that there's this credible revolution growing in Iran, some anti-Mossadegh sentiment, but Eisenhower doesn't actually, like, believe this. Like, he sees this, and he goes, well, why don't we just give them a loan to stabilize their country so they're not… gonna ask the Soviets for help. And so the CIA is like, oh man, alright, we gotta go back to the drawing board, we have to figure out how to get Eisenhower on board with this. Instead of, like, supporting a democratically elected regime, instead of supporting, the development of a country.

Instead of, you know, it's like, hey, let's draw them in to our influence and immunize them against Soviet influence by giving them a massive loan. They don't want to do it. They are committed to what the British government wants them to do. The entire time, this was motivated by the British government and the private interests of the Anglo-Iranian oil company.

And so our security apparatus is undertaking an operation to meet the objectives of a foreign nation, and actively plotting to deceive the president of our country. And yet, the British never involved themselves at any point. In, actually executing on the ground with this, project, which is hilarious to me. So there's a lot of running around that happens, there's… the big problem is that they're not able to get the Shah on board, because the Shah is actually afraid that the military's not gonna support him. He's actually pretty nervous about a coup, because he genuinely doesn't know whether he's gonna come out On the right side, if there actually is a coup.

kim Roosevelt has to pursue the Shah as he basically flees to his vacation home in the Caspian Sea. Then he flees the country to Baghdad, then he flies to Rome, and they're basically chasing him down, trying to get him to sign these papers that they're gonna serve to Mossadegh to try to create a situation where Mossadegh will defy the Shah, which will create a situation where he could, be dismissed as Prime Minister. So this plan all… but this plan also fails, and Mossadegh ends up actually Dismissing the Parliament, which he has the authority to do.

So he can't be dismissed himself. He dismisses them before they dismiss him. And there's just… there's a ton of intrigue that happens, but basically. they keep… the CIA keeps paying… protesters to show up in the streets. And eventually, one day, the protests get so out of hand. That the military steps in, They end… and they end up, they end up arresting Mossadegh.

And, basically they're able to overthrow the government and reinstall the Shah as sort of the ultimate power within the country. That's a major oversimplification of these all kinds of, like, detailed sort of maneuvering. But what happens… The headline is that at the behest of the British government, the CIA overthrows a democratically elected leader who was socialist, who was emancipatory, who was doing land reform, who nationalized, Iranian oil.

to put the Shah in place, who was not… actually organically popular with the people, because this entire thing is paid for and fomented by CIA money. we will see later, when the Shah is overthrown, we can then understand why. So… that gives us an idea, kind of, of what's going on there in Iran. I want to briefly talk about the, the coup in Guatemala.

And unfortunately, I'm not sure I'm gonna have time to talk about the war in Laos, There's just so much to talk about here. Let me just touch on them both. Briefly, so we've got the coup in Guatemala in 1954. In Guatemala, a reformer comes to power, by the name of Arbenz. And… he is not a communist? But he is a reformer, in the sense that a lot of these, like, former… a lot of these, like, countries that are just developing, or are former colonies, a lot of them are largely owned by either private corporations, or there's, like, a few head families that own thousands and thousands of acres, and most people live in just abject poverty.

So a lot of the… reform movements at this time are aiming to basically break up these large estates, hand out land to ordinary people, and try to get them some sort of rights, things like, work… like, working condition improvements, unions, all this kind of stuff. And so this is what Arbenz wants to do. Because, and I wish I had the exact numbers here. I heard them a couple weeks ago.

But the United Fruit Company was the largest landowner in Guatemala at the time. They own millions of acres. in the… at this point, the United Fruit Company. And they're actually not using most of it. So… This private… foreign private company owns… is the largest landowner in your country. And most of the land is actually lying fallow. They're not even using it.

And so, what Arbenz wants to do is take, like, a… A fraction of it. And give it to the people. And United Fruit Company freaks out about this. And so they go… they actually go to the CIA, And there's… there's also interest in the CIA, they've been paying attention to Guatemala. And there's this convergence of interests where it's like, okay, let's overthrow this Arbenz guy, we're gonna portray him as a communist, and, save the United Fruit Company's land and business in Guatemala, essentially.

So… They go ahead and find this, Castillo Armas is, like, this, I can't remember if he was retired or not, but I think he was a retired military officer in the Guatemalan military, and… They give him a bunch of money to find and put together and train a militia, and they're basically going to… they're gonna over… they're gonna foment… they're… you know, it's the same playbook. They're gonna… Pay people to foment uprising and resistance, then they're going to step in And they're going to occupy key buildings in the Guatemalan government.

And… This is pretty much exactly how it goes. The coup in Guatemala. they do successfully get rid of Armas, sorry, not Armas, our Benz. And Castillo Armas does take power, but he's, There was a lot of questions about whether he was, like, really competent to be able to lead things at this time. So… things just don't go well for people. You know, United Fruit Company, they come out on top.

all of these reforms are completely squelched, and as the pattern goes, these countries end up with incompetent leaders who just roll over to Western interests, they get, they get bribes, they get kickbacks, and the people continue to live in poverty. So, Guatemala 1954, I recommend digging into that more. There's an interesting connection there with Edward Bernays, the son, the double grandson.

Of, or no, double nephew of… Sigmund Freud. who is credited with developing public relations and propaganda in the U.S. they actually used Hello. Bernays was involved with the development of the propaganda for for the Guatemalan coup. So there's this… there's a really interesting connection there as well. I wanna get into the war in Laos, but I feel like I'm running out of time.

Dave, do you want me to keep going, or do we want to.

Yeah, no, this is really good, and yeah, we're… I'm with, by the way, Alex is here, say hi. Hey, buddy! How are you, Matthew?

Hey, Alex, good to see you, man.

Good for you as well. Yeah, but we're eating this up. Yeah, no, go… give us a little bit of a… because I think, you know, I've heard more about United Fruit Company In Guatemala than I have about Laos, and so I'm super, super curious about that, even if it's a gloss, you know.

Yeah, it's, it's gonna be a gloss. It's hard to get into all the detail of the war in Laos, because it actually is basically a series of military operations that takes place over about 13 years. But the long and the short of the war in Laos is basically that the CIA ran a secret war for 13 years without anybody's approval.

One of the interesting books about the war in Laos is Peter Dale Scott's American War Machine. He's got a couple early chapters where he's focused on what happened in Laos. From the angle of… how they financed the operations. And so, what you basically have in Laos is, a pretty poor mountainous country that is… that borders both China and Vietnam, and it's basically seen as a battleground for communist influence, in Southeast Asia.

So Vietnam is heavily being influenced by Chinese communism at this time. there's real concern about which way Vietnam is gonna go. And Laos is seen as an opportunity, one, for Chinese nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek to resist. Chinese communism, as well as for the local… the Hmong people who live in the… who live in the hills of Laos to… fight back against the Vietnamese communist forces.

And so, basically, what the CIA conceives of is using the Lao people, especially the Hmong, who are not… like, who are, like, ethnic minorities within their country, and not in power. They… a lot of them live in tribal villages and such, and what they do is they basically recruit these mountain people as mercenaries to fight against the, the communists.

what they… The way they're able to do this for 13 years without any congressional approval. is interesting and complicated. But… The two things that… Peter Dale Scott focuses on is, one, The CIA, during this time, Owns private businesses. So, Air America is an example of a private business which the CIA owns And can basically tell it what to do, and they've got full plausibility because it's a private business, so there's no sort of reporting requirements, at all.

So, when the CIA owns a private business, they have access to bank accounts and funds and revenue that are… that is completely off books. for… as far as the administrative state is concerned. So they basically have this black budget, where they own This, like, these small regional airplane companies. So they can fly materials, and people, and ammunition, and weapons, and all kinds of stuff, and, number two, they fly drugs. So… Laos is, and especially Southeast Asia, but Laos specifically is… A hotbed, like an early triangle of drugs, especially, heroin and opium.

And so… what's happening is that General Vang Pao, who is leading these militias of Hmong and other ethnic minorities. They're basically financing their… they're financing these operations through… drug money is, like, a big way that they're financing. So, the CIA is helping them run drugs. they're selling drugs, they're getting a kickback, and all of this money is flowing through the system, and the CIA is able to use this money that never shows up on anybody's balance sheet.

And so you've got private companies where the CIA can fly their own materials. They can even fly bombing raids. Without having anybody in the government having to approve it or be aware of it. So… The war in Laos is considered by the CIA to be somewhat of a success. Laos never fell to communism. It's a failure in the sense that they didn't prevent Vietnam from becoming communist.

And it's also sort of viewed as a success in the sense of being an experiment where they were able to run They were able to run high, like, pretty well organized insurgent activities. get people trained, engage in warfare. There's all this, like, money moving around that they're able to experiment with. Basically, it becomes this proving ground for methods where the methods themselves were successful. They were able to carry out military operations for 13 years without involvement from other agencies. So in that sense, they, like, what they were proving there was success.

Of course, from the perspective of the ethnic minorities, it basically just devastated their communities. I was looking up some numbers, and I found that A large percentage of the bombs that were dropped on Laos are today undetonated. And so there's actually a huge problem in Laos of… I think since the war, something like… I can't remember if it was 30,000 or 300,000, there's… people… have died in Laos in peacetime just from stepping on bombs, basically, that were… that were never detonated during the war. And we've given… I guess apparently we've given Laos millions of dollars to, like, find and defuse these bombs, but that money magically always disappears, and something like 90% of these bombs have never been located.

So, we basically, like, completely destroyed their countryside, you know, with chemicals and with bombs. And, their communities, they lost a lot of their young men. We also… Tons of drugs flowing through there, lots of crime. And they have… they have basically nothing to show for it. So… I recommend digging deeper into the war in Laos, because it's sort of like a prelude to Vietnam.

But it has all of the interesting factors that help you see how the CIA operates by using private companies, by using off-books money, by buying local warlords, where it's like, okay, you get to keep a… you get to keep a cup of… Keep a cut of the proceeds. As long as you just do what we say. And it's basically, like, we don't care about their political ideology. In some cases, they don't have one. As long as they credibly claim that they are anti-communist.

They don't have to be pro-democracy. They don't have to be pro-human rights, anything. We will give them money, we will protect them. Peter, Peter Dale Scott points out that the… many of… So the, like. the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency of the federal government, very often when they get close to catching someone, the CIA will step in and be like, yeah, he's our guy, you need to back away. So it's, like, a really common problem that many folks in the underworld are working for the CIA, Because this allows the CIA to operate off the books, using untraceable funds, these people are also deeply embedded in their communities.

As you'd expect, and their loyalties are easy to buy. So, the war in Laos… that's the picture I would paint for you. There's a ton of details, you know, about battles, and what happened, where, and all that kind of thing. But it's representative of overall CIA methods, and in some sense, it's kind of the most brazen example of a totally illegal war that was carried out by the CIA, and how they did it Is interesting in itself, because we understand that They're able to use these methods.

Of, moving money around invisibly. Who they tap and use, their methods of enlisting local peoples and then leaving those local peoples high and dry when things get tough. Because they don't have the backing of the federal government. So when push comes to shove, and you need to be able to make that decision to go in, to actually treat your allies right, and to take a risk, they can't do that. They won't do that.

And so they leave the communities that they use, they leave them devastated and in a much worse situation than they were before. I think we can wrap up here, this… this early part of the CIA that I'm basically talking about, like, we haven't even… fully got to JFK yet. I think I'm gonna start… I'm gonna talk about JFK next week, like, Bay of Pigs invasion, Indonesia, stuff like that. We will not be talking about the JFK assassination. That could be its own lecture.

Yeah. And, so we'll go, like… we'll kind of look at, like, JFK, LBJ, like, into… into Vietnam. In future weeks, we'll look at things like the Iran-Contra affair, we're gonna look at, like, the drift of the organization as the Cold War comes to an end. We'll talk about some of their more, like, illegal activities here in the States.

We'll also look at Afghanistan, how the CIA created… basically created the situation in Afghanistan that we… which… ended up being why we spent, I don't know, how long were we in Afghanistan? Like, 20 years or something? Like… Basically, we created the problem. So we'll be looking at that as well. But you'll notice this pattern over and over again of, like.

We create the problem that then creates the pretext for a future intervention. And, that problem… Often comes about through, like, coordination that's happening outside of any sort of public accountability structure. this is kind of… this is why I view the CIA, at least during this period that we're talking about, as basically a vector For people's personal interests and projects.

Alan Dulles is using it as his, basically, plaything. Other people are using it as an opportunity to engage in experiments and develop technology that they might not otherwise be able to get money for. Other people are, again, in it for the thrills. There's also people who are… Heavily motivated by this Black and white vision of communists as… communism as the worst thing in the world, and we're the… and anything we do is justified to oppose it.

That ideology has captured the CIA at this time. And it's what allows so much of this behavior to go unchecked. All these risky decisions, undemocratic decisions. Ultimately, what we end up doing is we end up We end up overthrowing democratically elected leaders who are seeking Reforms, and we replaced them, Generally, with dictators. Or… Authoritarians who are… Their only qualification is that they claim to be anti-communist.

In this day, we don't… we don't advance democracy during this period. At least, not plausibly, in my opinion. So… I think we'll wrap up there. I'm happy to answer any questions, or if there's something that you wanted to hear about that I didn't bring up, I can try to address it, but… Following this arc of we see the OSS, the early years of the CIA, We see the development of the emphasis on covert action.

under Walter Burdell Smith, and then we see, kind of, full flowering under Alan Dulles. failures in Europe, the YouTube program and its debacle. And then we've got the coup in Iran, Guatemala. I didn't talk about Project MKUltra, we'll talk about another time, because that actually started under Alan Dulles. I think that'll do for this week.

Alright, everybody, yeah, put your… put your hands together here for Matthew, thank you. That was awesome. And, I'll lead off with a question, and We'll, we'll see if we can, get a few more… minutes out of this, before we close out. I'm… I… I… I'm fascinated by, how do you say his name? Alan Dulzall?

Dulles.

Dulles, okay, Dolas. Okay, yeah, yeah. Dulles, okay, Alan Dulles. It just sounds like there should be movies about this guy, for sure. And this period, you know?

He's been portrayed in a number of movies, actually.

Oh, for real?

Yeah.

Have you seen these movies?

No, I haven't watched any of them. I don't watch movies very much. He has.

Yeah.

that he ghostwrote in 1963 called The Craft of Intelligence, so you can actually read His, his, his, his own words, you know?

Cool. So this, yeah, it's a fascinating period, and I guess I… I'm curious, to what extent, the… CIA might be… Kind of covering its own… Reputation. by… portraying… It's, this period that is now, you know, largely public information. you know, thanks to Freedom of Information Act, and just enough time has passed that a lot of stuff gets out, portraying that period that has now come to light.

as its wilder days, as the good ol' boys club, as these guys wanted to be James Bond, as… you know what I mean? Like, basically, we… it's like… It's like, well, that was some bad apples.

Yeah, I think that's an interesting theory, I treat it with, like, a high level of truth, but also, I think that you're onto something as well. So, when you study the CIA and you see the figures who really made big decisions and who were the big players. This is… tends to be what you see, is people engaging in risky behavior, For… on the basis of… Both personal enjoyment and personal mythology, as well as a very radicalized anti-communist national security sort of paradigm.

We can see that the president is not fully in control of this agency that he created. as I pointed out, though, like, you do see something of these… in the two stories I picked of the Iran coup and the Guatemala coup, We do see private business interests, and that's kind of the one that, in American Exception, Aaron Good is trying to, like, he's trying to bring a little bit more of that into the story, because it tends to get downplayed. The story that gets told is the one that you're saying, and that I'm sort of generally pushing, because I think there's a lot of accuracy to it.

You know? But there's a whole realm of private business interests which is still very opaque. And that's part of what Peter Dale Scott is trying to get into, because his focus is actually on the interests of the underworld. how people, even within the CIA, enrich themselves through you know. Drug money, stuff off the books, how there were people who were making money, moving money around, having banks that were, not fully compliant.

So there's a… There's a whole world of private business interests. Both, above-board businesses and underground businesses. That is a part of the story that probably still needs to be told more. Because it's absolutely there. And we can't miss this connection between Dulles and Wisner and, many… like, a number of early… analysts and operatives who get hired on by the CIA, this connection to the world of New York law and business.

So that connection needs to be explored more as well. Because, Bernays has that same connection, too. Talking about Bernays, developing public communications, he's working for these large companies to develop marketing campaigns. And then he's also working for the CIA, so I mean, he's deeply embedded with the highest levels of corporate power, but then he's also being tapped to develop propaganda for, overthrowing foreign countries. So… At the highest level, all of these networks start to work together.

However, I do think that there is, like, I do still see, like, a high level of truth. To this, story about the individuals, because the world was smaller back then. Like, these people went to similar schools. Many of them grew up in New England, they all lived in Washington, and they actually lived… usually they all lived in kind of the Georgetown area, which was really cool, and they would have drinking parties together, they would travel together, they were in and out of the office, and so… The truth is that their world was smaller than we sort of think about it today.

you know, the CIA was genuinely smaller than it is now. And there's just fewer people in the world then, and so, like. Networks of power were just tighter due to, physical proximity. the number of key players was smaller, you don't have the internet, and that kind of thing. So, this kind of thing being true is more plausible then than it is now, in my opinion. Like, if somebody tried to tell this story now, I would be much more skeptical.

To me, there's a lot more truth to this story. Because of the constraints and nature of the period itself. But the un… like, it doesn't… But what they're doing, like, it also, to your point, it doesn't ultimately matter what their personal you know. mythology was, or whether they had a fetish for clandestine operations. The mechanism that they were exploiting was amenable to this type of exploitation, you know? And so, like, the mechanisms there… And the machinations are there, and the system still has all of the same capabilities, even if we don't have the gentleman spy in charge today. We've got John Ratcliffe, I think, is the current director of the CIA, appointed by Trump, he's just some Texas lawyer. Lawyer, again, who claims to have prosecuted a number of terrorists and these kinds of things, so… he doesn't seem like… he doesn't give off the Alan Dulles… you know, or later the McCone, Bill Colby, Type vibes of, like, being the… smart, savvy Washington bureaucrat, that kind of thing, so… I don't know, this is my read on things right now.

Awesome. Now… since nobody else seems to be chomping at the bit to go right now, I've got something that is a bit of a… can of worms, and you can kind of take it as far as you want to go with it, and I know you're probably going to write about it eventually. I'm hoping that some kind of gloss on it right now could be fruitful for The development of what you'll be writing, if you are gonna write about it, but it's the, Well, it's kind of spurred on by the fact that last week, you know, you did part one of this series.

and you… are, to some extent, based in what can be called elite theory, and… or you're, you know, thinking along these lines of elite theory. And, Benjamin Studebaker, who taught Political Theory 101 here at Theory Underground last year. on the same day that you do your first lecture, I think totally coincidentally, I don't think he did this intentionally at all, releases, the transcript of his talk that he gave at the Platypus Affiliate Association in, somewhere in California, I think it was Irvine… Irvine. And it's called Against Elite Theory, and There's a variety of… of points that he makes. You know, he's basically saying that at the point that people gave up.

on a kind of, class politics, or realized that it wasn't gonna work. In a lot of cases, they turned to elite theory. You know, I think he's kind of calling out Bernie Bros, to some extent, I feel like, somewhat implicated, you know, because he, he hits on, you know, he says that people will start talking about the PMC at this point, and it's like, well, I obviously do that.

And, did a whole course on the PMC, and I've always thought that it's very important, for reasons different than why it might be, for instance, important for someone like Catherine Liu, I think it's especially important for anybody who is either within that Class strata, or for anybody who has sort of internalized its It's worldview. And it's just important because, it's not a neutral worldview, and it comes with a lot of assumptions about institutions, and that in a lot of cases are no longer relevant, but it's also… it tends to be inherently anti-popular, which has been suicidal in a time of, populism, you know, the last decade. And so.

you know, like, these are some of the reasons that I take it seriously, beyond just the importance of living the examined life and how this is a part of it today. that's my qualifier, is just to say, you know, I think that, insofar as professional managerial critique counts as some kind of elite theory, it's important. But you have your own approach to it, and your own reasons why you think it's important, and I wanted to give you the opportunity here, considering that he did just drop that right at the beginning of this course to… to maybe address it to some extent. And if you want me to give a quick you know, summary or rehash of some of the arguments in the piece, I can do that too, but I'll also just kind of give you a chance to do that.

Yeah, Benjamin engages in two redefinitions in that piece. So the first redefinition that he engages in is changing the word elite theory from referring to the actual tradition of elite theory, too. He abstracts it to this idea of. The belief that there's a particular class that does politics. So he abstracts it because, I assume because he wants to be able to talk, actually, about his in-group, he wants to talk to them because they don't… Because they actually think, they believe in, you know, the action of the proletariat. And so for him, that's, like, actually a form of elite theory. Which is interesting in its own right, but it's a redefinition. Like, it's not a fair portrayal of the actual tradition of elite theory.

Elite theory is trying to make an empirical claim of how politics works. when I… I've talked about this with Benjamin in the past, and his response is interesting. I think it's a value. I mean, he's… his claim is, like, okay, even if it's empirical, like, is it necessary? Like, just because this is how politics… even if we could establish that politics has always worked this way, which, you know, there's always exceptions, even if you could establish politics was always the… Essentially driven by conflict and interests within the elite factions.

You still couldn't extrapolate that from the argument that, like, that's how politics should always work. And that's fair, like, I think it's, like, that's sort of, like, you can't argue an is or an ought from an is, you know, sort of argument. The other thing… but, like, the sort of reactionary right response to that is, like, well.

Like, if we can establish that's how politics works. Then, you have to view that as, like, basically an essential limit of how you engage in politics. And I think that maybe that's where… a lot of the right nowadays is talking about, like, what are the limits? What are the things that you have to include in your calculus that the left basically says, like, oh, we can overcome these things, or these things aren't necessary, but, like, maybe there is a necessary element to them, or maybe there's some way where you can't just hand-wave them away.

And when you pretend that they're not real, you actually end up playing into them. In a way that's completely blind. which is sort of what PMC theory is about, is that, like, elites who don't realize that they're elites, or, or, like. Downwardly mobile elites who end up covering For the actual elites, these kind of things.

And there's another redefinition that Benjamin engages in, which is to change… is to basically argue for a very… very specific Definition of politics. Which, for him, like, he puts certain things outside of the realm of politics, where it's basically, like, if somebody's just, like, dictating orders to you, that's not actually politics. So for him.

He sort of cleverly redefines a society where… that is run by elites as to not being… actually engaging in politics, because for him, politics is about… Finding you… finding yourself in a situation of, like. Disagreement with other groups, but being able to mutually commit to some sort of objective structure or process together.

Where you sort of agree To the very process itself. And you accept decisions that you might not agree with? Because you're committed to the process itself. And so for him, like, politics is actually a realm of contradiction and disagreement, where people make real compromises. It's sort of this brutal union kind of thing.

And so, wherever that's not happening, he just says, oh, that's not politics, actually. So… You sort of have this… these two redefinitions go together of, like, In a society where the elites run things. Benjamin, I think, is arguing that that's just politics is not happening in that society, so you can't have an elite theory of politics.

So, I think that really what it comes down to is, like, is elite theory persuasive in its claims? which I take to basically be the ideas… There's, like, a few sort of central ideas, which is that Politics in society is primarily driven by the conflict and interest of elite… elites amongst themselves. And that these elites, as a part of their calculation, take the masses into account.

So it's not that the masses have no influence whatsoever. There's a sense in which the elites Have to mollify. the masses. They know that the masses have an advantage in numbers. And so there's… they cannot ignore them. So the… but the masses are one factor amongst many other Factors which are more controlling of how things go.

So… people with money, people who stand at the top of organizations in society, whether they're universities, Federal Reserve, government, large businesses, these are the people who set the direction and the directives, and they create the frames and the narratives that society runs on. And… politics… is often… Like, from the masses perspective.

They feel like they're engaged in politics, but the options that are available to them are narratives which have some sort of elite interest or, some sort of elite interest or faction which is behind them, because it benefits them in some way. And so, you know, the choice between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, or even the different factions within, say, the Republican Party.

Your options are determined by The symbolic frame and the financing and the institutional structures that make up those movements, which are obviously Financed by people. with wealth. And people… Don't richly finance things with their wealth if those things are not, to some extent, in their interest. Now, elites can engage in disinterested.

Support of things like… Art and culture and these sort of things. certainly there are, like, even, you know, elites are human beings, too. Some of them have ideals and things that they care about regardless of monetary return. But ultimately, all of these… everything that's on offer in the political realm… is there because it serves the interest of some elite, and all of these competing narratives are sort of proxy wars for conflicts amongst the elite themselves. Like I… in our conversation.

that we had, on YouTube leading up to this, I talked about kind of this transition taking place in the deep state, where Silicon Valley is kind of stepping up and wanting to take on more of a role. This is where you see these competing narratives of, like. transhumanism, or AI as inevitable, there's, like. parts of MAGA, these kind of things, like, there's… you can find… If you dig into these narratives enough, and you dig into networks of funding and all these kind of things, you can see how you're like, oh, this is, like, the universe that's funded by Peter Thiel, and this is the universe that's sort of patronized by, like, Elon Musk, and here's the, like, sort of constellation of institutions that are patronized by, like.

old-money business Republicans, you know, and this kind of thing, like. There's all of… you can start to trace all these things back, which is a lot of work, and we should be paying more people to do it, but, you know, the rich people aren't gonna pay for that, so… It's kind of like… it's… elite theory doesn't say that there's no role for the people, but it does say that, like, the people's belief that they're, like, the ultimate or deciding factor, or that they're sort of in the driver's seat, is illusory.

And that… Things change because elites want them to change, and the key is that these groups are always sort of competing with each other, with their contradictory interests. They're always trying to find a consensus. Or they're trying… one's advocating for themselves to the detriment of the other, and the society we end up with moment by moment is a result of the… The powerful people… Negotiating amongst themselves, whether by force, or through consensus, about the kind of world that we're gonna have to live in.

That was awesome, man. Thank you. We're about to close out. I want to encourage everyone to check out Against Elite Theory by Benjamin Studebaker, and be thinking about it in the context of this. And then I want to say, what is the single most important, or top 3 most important books that you'd recommend, that I just… that this lecture was kind of on the basis of… I know you referenced a couple authors and text, so I want to make sure we highlight those on the layout.

Yeah, so the lecture itself was based on Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes, the history of the CIA, also… on, Peter Del Scott's American War Machine, which was really important. And then basically, like, I've kind of got that narrative in my head, and then I just kind of, like, go, I'm like, oh, I don't remember the exact detail there, and then I go look up those details and kind of, like, fill it back in again.

because I've, like, I've listened to so many books on this… on these topics, that it all just kind of, like, it all kind of washes into you, and then you've got kind of, like, the narrative structure, but then you're like, I need to go, like, get the details right exactly, because I didn't… it was all kind of washing over me, you know? And the more you… the more it washes over you, the more the structure emerges, but then you have to go in and make sure that you get the details right, so… I've also got, yeah, the Jakarta Method is gonna be more next week.

So I would say Legacy of Ashes and American War Machine were pretty big for today's lecture. There's also, CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. is, an older book that I think I mentioned was censored by the CIA, and they, like, included the censorship in the published text. So that's by, Marchetti and Marx. So that's an interesting book as well, because it's sort of like, It's actually… Like, an intro to the, like, the bureaucratic structure.

of… the CIA of, like, How is… how were their agencies laid out, and who ran what, and… what were these businesses that they owned, and all that kind of stuff, so it's actually, like, a lot of the, like, nitty-gritty operational details that's pretty interesting. Although it's not quite as exciting as the spy narratives and all that kind of thing, so…

And so next week, you said that we're gonna be getting… a bit more into the Jakarta method, What would you say is the sort of broad… headers of Week 1, Week 2, and now upcoming week 3.

Yeah, so week one was, like… Theory and context for the national security state. And week 2 is sort of, like, the early years of the CIA. Week 3 is gonna be looking at… the CIA's ongoing operations in the Cold War. As, kind of, like, leadership started to change. It wasn't the first generation anymore, and in fact, there were fewer OSS veterans in the leadership at this time, but the agency was more… a little bit more mature, you know, it was, like, kind of its teenager sort of stage.

So, we'll be looking at things like we'll be looking at, kind of, the JFK-LBJ presidencies more, so Bay of Pigs and that kind of thing. And then the final lecture, I'm just gonna try to kind of clean up with things that I think are interesting. like, iran-Contra affair. various illegal activities engaged in Afghanistan, and then, we'll kind of wrap up with some comments about the war on terror and continuity of operations.

or Continuity of government, COG. That Peter Dale Scott talks about some. That's pretty recent, so we're gonna be sparse on the details there, but it's interesting to know, because it is stuff that happened in our lifetime. For most of us who are kind of, like, millennials, basically. And… It involves, you know, it involves people like Dick Cheney and things like that. So, that stuff's kind of interesting from a theoretical standpoint of thinking about sovereignty and the exception.

Awesome, man, looking forward to it. Thank you. Looking forward to seeing you next week. Alright, everybody, take care.

Bye, everyone. See you next week.