A few weeks ago, I asked “Was Modern Art a CIA Psy-Op?” It wasn’t an idle question. The influence of secret intelligence agencies on culture is more complex than you think. Now New Yorker investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe is asking, “Did the CIA write Scorpions’ hit song Wind of Change? The Scorpions are a German rock band....
Category: CIA
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Did the CIA’s Notorious Mind Control Program Create an Infamous Killer?
One of the best books about the world of secret intelligence in the past year is Stephen Kinzer’s Poisoner in Chief, a biography of Sidney Gottlieb, the countercultural chemist who ran the CIA’s notorious MKULTRA program that experimented on unwitting subjects in search of ways to manipulate human behavior. Kinzer recently spoke to Michael Isikoff...
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Was Modern Art a CIA Psy-Op?
Not quite. But the CIA used modern art as Cold War propaganda against the Soviet Union in ways that were not visible to the public. The school of painting known as Abstract Expressionism served as an expression of American soft power. From JSTOR Daily (“where news meets its scholarly match”) The preeminent Cultural Cold Warrior,...
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U.S. Indicts for Maduro Leading a Fictional ‘Cartel of the Suns’
The U.S. government has a long history of manipulating drug trafficking charges to advance geopolitical agenda. From 1975 to the late 1980s, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was on the CIA payroll. U.S. intelligence knew that Noriega permitted the Colombian cartels to ship cocaine through his country in return for huge cash payments. His drug activities...
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Why Did the CIA Wiretap My Father, Journalist Paul Scott?
This true story comes from the Annapolis (Md.) Gazette. My father Paul Scott was a nationally syndicated reporter whose column appeared in 300 newspapers from the 1950s-1970s. He and his partner Robert Allen were illegally wiretapped by the CIA for three months in 1963. The CIA acknowledged this activity in the publication of its Family...