VIRTUAL TRUTH COMMISSION

Virtual Truth Commission

1947

small clause allowed operatives to subvert constitutional law to conduct covert operations in the interest of national security.

1947 U. S. Military Interventions: URUGUAY/1947/Nuclear threat/Bombers deployed as show of strength. GREECE/1947-49/Command operation/U.S. directs extreme-right in civil war. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1948 U. S. Military Interventiosn: GERMANY/1948/Nuclear threat/Atomic-capable bombers guard Berlin Airlift. PHILIPPINES/1948-54/Command operation/CIA directs war against Huk Rebellion. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1950 U. S. Military Interventions: PUERTO RICO/1950/Command operation/Independence rebellion crushed in Ponce. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1950'S.

George McT Kahin & Audrey R. Kahin, Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia, New York: The New Press, 1995; 318 pages. Reviewed in U. S. Policy / Indonesia. "George Kahin was personally acquainted with most of the key players in Indonesian politics during the 1950s, and he...exposes the covert policy of Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers in Indonesia during the 1950s.

1951 U. S. Military Interventions: KOREA/1951-53(-?)/Troops, naval, bombing, nuclear threats/U.S.& South Korea fight China & North Korea to stalemate; A-bomb threat in 1950, and against China in 1953; four million Koreans killed; still have bases. IRAN/1953/Command operation/CIA overthrows democracy, installs Shah. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

July 26-29, 1950. 300-400 Korean refugees were massacred under a railroad underpass at No Gun Ri by American soldiers of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, following orders from Division Headquarters that "No refugees to cross the front line. Fire everyone trying to cross lines. Use discretion in case of women and children." The order reflected a belief that North Korean troops were seeking to infiltrate through American lines disguised as civilians refugees. Sang-Hun Choe, Charles J. Hanley and Martha Mendoza, Associated Press Writers, with AP Investigative Researcher Randy Herschaft, "Ex-GIs Tell AP of Korea Killing, in Horace Coleman, A Korean War My Lai, Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, September 29, 1999

1953
1953, CIA in Iran overthrew Mossadegh government and created SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, which tortured and murdered thousands of his opponents. Iran-Contra and Consistent Themes During the Cold War

1954
In 1954, a CIA-orchestrated coup ended what Guatemalans call the "Ten Years of Spring," which began with the bloodless overthrow of military dictator Jorge Ubico in 1944. During this period, two democratically-elected civilian presidents governed Guatemala, trying to provide opportunities and raise the standard of living. Jacobo Arbenz, elected in 1950, began to push agrarian reforms more seriously than his predecessor. The United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) (UFCo) protested when unused portions of its vast holdings were expropriated and distributed to land-less peasants. The Guatemalan government paid the US company the tax-declared value of the land, but UFCo protested to the highest levels of the US government. Two UFCo stockholders at the time were the Dulles brothers, Secretary of State and head of the CIA in the Eisenhower administration. © 1998, Piet van Lear, A War Called Peace

1957-1986 Support for Duvalier Regimes in Haiti. The U. S. considered the regime of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier a bulwark against communisim and supported it generously. Haiti: a history of foreign intervention. During this period the U. S. trained and armed Haiti's counter-insurgency forces, although most American military aid was covertly channeled through Israel to spare Washington embarassing questions about supporting brutal governments. William Blum, Haiti 1986-1994: Who Will Rid Me of this Turbulent Priest?" excerpted from the book, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.
1954 U. S. Military Interventions: VIETNAM/1954/Nuclear threat/Bombs offered to French to use against siege. GUATEMALA/1954-?/Command operation, bombing, nuclear threat/CIA directs exile invasion and coup d'Etat after newly elected government nationalizes unused U.S.'s United Fruit Company lands; bombers based in Nicaragua; long-term result: 200,000 murdered. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1954, Paraguay. "The archives here [in Paraquay] show that a United States military official, Col. Robert Thierry, apparently helped draw up the apparatus of the police state as he trained police officers for the Technical Section soon after General Stroessner seized power here in 1954. A relative, Margaret Van Skike, located in Galveston, Tex., said that Colonel Thierry died several years ago." NY Times August 11, 1999 "CONDOR Archives Unearthed in Paraguay Expose U.S. Allies' Abuses"

1956 U. S. Military Interventions: EGYPT/1956/Nuclear threat/Soviets told to keep out of Suez crisis. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1958 U. S. Military Interventions: LEBANON/1958/Troops, naval/Marine occupation against rebels. IRAQ/1958/Nuclear threat/Iraq warned against invading Kuwait. CHINA/1958/Nuclear threat/China told not to move on Taiwan isles. PANAMA/1958/Troops/Flag protests erupt into conftontation. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1960'S.

Project X begun in Army's Foreign Intelligence Assistance program. Included training material prepared by officers connected to Phoenix Program in Vietnam. Robert Parry, "Lost History: 'Project X' and School of Assassins. The Consortium (a paid subscriber service)

Plot to kill Castro. Summary: With the attention, the CIA was identified with covert action," a tool of an imperial president in imperiled times. President Lyndon B. Johnson never got over discovering the Kennedy-CIA-Mafia plot to kill Castro. Lexington Herald-Leader -- July 27, 1997

CIA support for opium-growing Chinese nationalists in the Golden Triangle set the secne for the 60s heroin plague in the U. S. As far back as the 50s the CIA had found it expedient to ally with the Corsican syndicates smuggling drugs through Marseilles who were able to break the power of the communist dockworkers there. Untitled material on Drug-running and Arkansas Site 1 or Site 2

1961 September 17, 1961. U. N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold dies in airplane crash. In 1998, the [South African] Truth Commission stumbled across documents linking South African agents to the airline death of UN chief Dag Hammarskjvld, also revealing that the project was hatched at the highest levels of the CIA and MI5. The alleged plot to assassinate United Nations secretary general Dag Hammarskjvld 37 years ago was the brainchild of at least two British security agencies - MI5 and the Special Operations Executive - and the CIA, top-secret documents show. Marlene Burger, "CIA and MI5 linked to Death of UN Sec. General",Electronic Mail & Guardian , Johannesburg, August 28, 1998, reprinted at South Movement, September 4, 1998

1960 U. S. Military Interventions: VIETNAM/1960-75/Troops, naval, bombing, nuclear threats/ Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam; five million killed in longest U.S. war; atomic bomb threats in 1968 and 1969. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1961 U. S. Military Interventions: LAOS/1961/Command operation/Military buildup during guerrilla war. CUBA/1961/Command operation/CIA-directed exile invasion fails. GERMANY/1961/Nuclear threat/Alert during Berlin Wall crisis. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1962 U. S. Military Interventions: CUBA/1962/Nuclear threat, naval/Blockade during missile crisis; near-war with Soviet Union. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1964

By the mid-1960s, some of the U.S. counterinsurgency lessons had reached Indonesia, too. The U.S. military training was surreptitious because Washington viewed the country's neutralist leader Sukarno as politically suspect. The training was permitted only to give the United States influence within the Indonesian military which was considered more reliable. A secret memo to President Johnson dated July 17, 1964, spelled out the political motive. "Our aid to Indonesia ... we are satisfied ... is not helping Indonesia militarily," a State Department memo informed Johnson. "It is, however, permitting us to maintain some contact with key elements in Indonesia which are interested in and capable of resisting Communist takeover. We think this is of vital importance to the entire Free World." [DOS Memo for President, July 17, 1964] Peter Dale Scott, "Two Indonesias, Two Americas", June 9, 1998, site 1 or site 2 The Consortium for Independent Journalism, a paid subscription service.

1964 U. S. Military Interventions: PANAMA/1964/Troops/Panamanians shot for urging canal's return. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1965

Indonesia

Martens, Robert J., formerly a political officer in the U. S. Embassy, referring to 1965 coup events. "I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment." Martens described how U. S. diplomats and CIA officers provided up to 5000 names to Indonesian Army death squads in 1965, and checked them off as they were killed or captured. Kathy Kadane, reporter who interviewed Martens; article was in San Francisco Examiner (5/20/90) and Washington Post (5/21/90). Michael Wines of the New York Times did a damage control effort (7/12/90) which caused this story to die down. U. S. Policy / Indonesia. This is one of 90 files from Public Information Research, non-profit publisher of NameBase that are organized by subject category.
The events of 1965-1966, dismissed at the time by the world's media as an 'abortive Communist coup,' are still hotly disputed, and appear suspicious by any reasonable standard -- the whole thing could have been set up by the CIA. U. S. Policy / Indonesia
The coup of 1965 was described in a CIA study: "In terms of the numbers killed the anti-PKI massacres in Indonesia rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murd3ers during the Second World War, and teh Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s." U. S. Policy / Indonesia
Kadane's story provoked a telling response from Washington Post senior editorial writer Stephen S. Rosenfeld. He accepted the fact that American officials had assisted "this fearsome slaughter," but then justified the killings. Rosenfeld argued that the massacre "was and still is widely regarded as the grim but earned fate of a conspiratorial revolutionary party that represented the same communist juggernaut that was on the march in Vietnam." In a column entitled, "Indonesia 1965: The Year of Living Cynically?" Rosenfeld reasoned that "either the army would get the communists or the communists would get the army, it was thought: Indonesia was a domino, and the PKI's demise kept it standing in the free world. ... Though the means were grievously tainted, we -- the fastidious among us as well as the hard-headed and cynical -- can be said to have enjoyed the fruits in the geopolitical stability of that important part of Asia, in the revolution that never happened." [WP, July 13, 1990] Peter Dale Scott, "Two Indonesias, Two Americas", June 9, 1998, site 1 or site 2 The Consortium for Independent Journalism, a paid subscription service.
1965 U. S. Military Interventions: INDONESIA/1965/Command operation/Million killed in CIA- assisted army coup. DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/1965-66/Troops, bombing/ Marines land during election campaign. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

In order to assure support from the American public, the CIA decided to sponsor more academic conferences and bring scholars to Langley and expand the officer-in-residence program which then had 13 CIA officers at universities. CIA officers around the nation were tasked to by UDAC to keep track of reporters who obtained news stories through leaks. Mackenzie, A. Secrets: The CIA's War At Home, Berkeley, CA, 1997

1966

1966 U. S. Military Interventions: GUATEMALA/1966-67/Command operation/Green Berets intervene against rebels. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1967

1967 U. S. Military Interventions: DETROIT/1967/Troops/Army battles Blacks, 43 killed. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1968

1968, March 16: My Lai Massacre. The My Lai Commemoration Campaignis committed to achieving official recognition for the 30th anniversary of the My Lai massacre on March 16, 1998

1968, Aprili 4: Memphis, TN. Martin Luther King, Jr. is killed in Memphis, Tennessee. 1999 Court Case reveals apparent complicity of Memphis Police Department, FBI, 111th Military Intelligence Group, and 20th Special Forces.

1968 U. S. Military Interventions: UNITED STATES/1968/Troops/After Martin Luther King is shot; over 21,000 soldiers in cities. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995

1968, October 2: Mexico. A watershed of Mexico's tragedy was the Tlatelolco massacre which unfolded on the night of October 2, 1968, when a student demonstration ended in a storm of bullets in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas at Tlatelolco, Mexico City. The extent of the violence stunned the country. When the shooting stopped, hundreds of people lay dead or wounded, as Army and police forces seized surviving protesters and dragged them away. Although months of nation-wide student strikes had prompted an increasingly hard-line response from the Diaz Ordaz regime, no one was prepared for the bloodbath that Tlatelolco became. Eye-witnesses to the killings pointed to the President's "security" forces, who entered the plaza bristling with weapons, backed by armored vehicles. But the government...claimed that extremists and Communist agitators had initiated the violence...It is Mexico's Tiananmen Square, Mexico's Kent State: when the pact between the government and the people began to come apart and Mexico's extended political crisis began." Kate Doyle, Director, Mexico Documentation Project, TLATELOLCO MASSACRE: DECLASSIFIED U.S. DOCUMENTS ON MEXICO AND THE EVENTS OF 1968 National Security Archive, George Washington University.

1969

1969 U. S. Military Interventions: CAMBODIA/l969-75/Bombing, troops, naval/Up to 2 million killed in decade of bombing, starvation, and political chaos. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1970

1970's. In Latin America alone, U. S. funded 14 governments that used torture on an administrative basis to the tune of $1.831 billion. Iran-Contra and Consistent Themes During the Cold War
1970 U. S. Military Interventions: OMAN/1970/Command operation/U.S. directs Iranian marine invasion. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1971 U. S. Military Interventions: LAOS/1971-73/Command operation, bombing/U.S. directs South Vietnamese invasion; "carpet-bombs" countryside. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1972

1972 listing of lesson plans included aerial surveillance, elextronic eavesdropping, interrogation, counter-sabotage measures, counter-intelligence, handling of informants, break-ins and censorship. Robert Parry, "Lost History: 'Project X' and School of Assassins. The Consortium (a paid subscriber service)

In the 1970s, the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and School moved to Fort Huachuca in Arizona and began exporting Project X material to U.S. military assistance groups working with "friendly foreign countries." By the mid-1970s, the Project X material was going to armies all over the world. [In its 1992 review, the Pentagon acknowledged that Project X was the source for some of the "objectionable" lessons at the School of the Americas where Latin American officers were trained in blackmail, kidnapping, murder and spying on non-violent political opponents. But disclosure of the full story was blocked near the end of the Bush administration when senior Pentagon officials ordered the destruction of most Project X records. -- See Robert Parry's Lost History: Contras, Cocaine & Other Crimes, and Washington Post, Feb. 22, 1997] Peter Dale Scott, "Two Indonesias, Two Americas", June 9, 1998, site 1 or site 2 The Consortium for Independent Journalism, a paid subscription service.

1973

September 1973. Coup in Chile replaces President Allende with Pinochet. Lucy Komisar, "Operation Condor and Pinochet", Los Angeles Times, Commentary, November 1, 1998.

November 1973. Chilean Col. Manuel Contreras sets up Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA), the secret police. Lucy Komisar, "Operation Condor and Pinochet", Los Angeles Times, Commentary, November 1, 1998.

1973 U. S. Military Interventions: DAKOTA/1973/Command operation/Army directs Wounded Knee siege of Lakotas. MIDEAST/1973/Nuclear threat/World-wide alert during Mideast War. . CHILE/1973/Command operation/CIA-backed coup ousts democratically elected Marxist president. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1974

May 1974 Stuart Burton arrives in Santiago, Chile as CIA station chief and establishes close relationship with Col. Manuel Contreras of DINA, the secret police. Lucy Komisar, "Operation Condor and Pinochet", Los Angeles Times, Commentary, November 1, 1998.

1975

August 1975, Chilean Col. Manual Contreras meets with CIA Deputy Director Vernon A. Walters. One month later, Contreras seeks funds for Operation Condor terror network. Lucy Komisar, "Operation Condor and Pinochet", Los Angeles Times, Commentary, November 1, 1998.
1975 U. S. Miltiary Interventions: CAMBODIA/1975/Troops, bombing/Gas captured ship, 28 die in copter crash. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

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