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by sterlind 23 days ago
the CIA is literally tasked with breaking (other countries') laws. tradecraft is a very similar skillset to being an effective criminal.

think about it: shell companies, lockpicks, bribes, theft, blackmail, hacking, forgery. two kinds of people do those things: spooks, and the mob. the difference is why you're doing it and to whom.

also, if anything the CIA is far tamer today than it was in the '60s.
3 comments
MSFT_Edging 22 days ago
A lot of the really sketchy stuff the CIA used to do has been folded under special ops parts of the military. After the church committee, the CIA has to report to the senate intelligence committee. The military only really answers to the Commander in Chief(POTUS), and gets away with a lot more.

Check out the book "The Fort Bragg Cartel". Tl;Dr, the US military and special ops were holding up the poppy industry in Afghanistan, something like 80% of the world's supply of Heroin came out of US occupied Afghanistan. The DEA would look the other way on shipments intercepted over a certain size.

The special ops guys brought the drug trafficking home, now i95 through the southern states is a major drug trafficking route.

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rithdmc 23 days ago
I'd move that up a bit! Iran-Contra was around '85, and that involved trading cocaine, which ended up on the streets of the USA, for arms.

I think using the 60s as a comparison unfairly implies the CIA rehabilitated sooner than should be implied.

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thephyber 23 days ago
I suspect the 1960s was chosen because it was before the Church Committee. Back then, the CIA had fewer restrictions about working within the USA.
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rithdmc 22 days ago
Got it, thanks. The CIA's cocaine was still ending up on the streets of America during Iran-Contra, though, so I (in my very uninformed opinion!) don't feel like the CIA cared that much.
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thephyber 18 days ago
That’s debatable.

It’s likely the cocaine originating from Colombia was going to end up in the US with or without the CIA’s help.

Also, it’s worth reading about the journalist who broke the story about Contra-sourced cocaine making it to LA. That journalist is very often misquoted and when he was still alive he tried to fix the missing several times.

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etrautmann 23 days ago
MKUltra would have been a bizarre horror to experience
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