An absolutely must see documentary on US foreign policy is "The War on Democracy." It streams instantly at Netflix but is also available on Youtube. Via Greenwald there's a few segments compiled of an interview with a CIA operative that quickly captures the essence of neocon thought.
6 comments:
I really wish they would have gotten a guy who atleast seemed credibly involved with the actual event. This guy didn't even remember Allende's name, for god's sake! Imagine Richard Clarke forgetting Saddam's name? It wouldn't have happened.
It seems like the directors intentionally fished for the first CIA hot head they could find - whether or not he was actually intimately involved seemed secondary.
Of course they did talk to people involved in the event as you know. They talked to people that were herded into the stadium and people that were raped but survived. The CIA wasn't necessarily in the stadium doing the killing. They do the planning. Clarridge knows Allende, he just couldn't find the name in his mind. But it illustrates the point. They don't really care his name. They're going to do what's in what they perceive to be the national interest. Who cares what his name was? Is what he's saying untrue?
It just seems obvious to me that Clarridge wasn't all that involved in the Chile affair. Seriously man, I dont care how little you "care" about Allende, you would remember his name - even first semester Chicano Studies students could name off more facts about Allende and Pinochet than this guy.
Which is why I think it makes more sense to think the name slipped his mind, not that he's unaware of it. It's like saying Obama really thinks there are 57 states. People can have brain farts.
It just doesn't look like a brain fart. It looks like clear ignorance. Clear lack of experience. He didn't misstate the name in a non-important fashion, he completely forgot the name in when it was the core topic of discussion.
This is what his Wiki page says:
He then rose through the ranks of the CIA in "a normal career pattern up to the late 70s", (as quoted in an interview he gave to CNN's Cold War Episodes program), being chief of the CIA station in Istanbul, where he maintained close contacts with the Counter-Guerrilla, the Turkish stay-behind anti-communist organization. He transferred to Rome before becoming chief of the Latin America division in 1981.
If you take into account that Allende was overthrown in the early 70's, you can see that the two time lines simply don't add up. Seems to greatly support my suspicions.
Which begs the question, why did the movie interview him then? Probably because they knew they would get the reaction they wanted. It's all a big facade.
The movie is not about Chile only. It's about subversion of democracy in Latin America. He's a perfect interview candidate. Happens they talked about Chile. They might have talked about anything. It's clearly worthy of air time.
Your speculations are speculative.
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