Operation Paperclip
In the fall of 1944, the U.S. launched a secret mission to secure German weapons, including biological and chemical agents, as well as recruit top Nazi doctors, physicists, and chemists. “Roughly 1,600 of these German scientists (along with their families) were brought to the United States to work on America’s behalf during the Cold War.” President Truman had banned recruiting any Nazi members or active Nazi supporters, but U.S. Government agents “bypassed this directive by eliminating or whitewashing incriminating evidence of possible war crimes from the scientists’ records.”
Operation Mockingbird
The CIA ran Operation Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic American media, by placing CIA operatives within news organizations and cultivating relationships with prominent journalists. Overseen by CIA Director Dulles, Mockingbird had a major influence in over 25 newspapers and wire agencies, including CBS, Time and Life Magazines, the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the New York Post, and the Washington Post, and Hollywood film companies. The Church Committee identified over 50 U.S. journalists who were employed directly by the Agency, and claimed many more enjoyed a very close relationship with the CIA, who were “being paid regularly for their services [or provided] occasional gifts and reimbursements from the CIA.” Although Mockingbird officially ended in 1976, in 1996 Congressional testimony, Ted Koppel, ABC News Anchor, said “the Agency has ... broken American laws in the past, and I have no doubt that it will continue....”
Operation Bloodstone (1948-??)
This covert operation sought out Nazis and collaborators living in Soviet-controlled areas to work undercover for U.S. intelligence. “In reality, many of Bloodstone’s recruits had once been Nazi collaborators who were now being brought to the United States for use as intelligence and covert operations experts.” The Bloodstone recruits were not low-level Nazis, but leaders, intelligence specialists, and scholars who had been key to the Nazi cause. “Some of them eventually became U.S. agent spotters for sabotage and assassination missions.” State Department official George F. Kennan testified many years later, “it did not work out at all the way I had conceived it.” Documents about this project were released in April 2021.
Operation Aerodynamic / PdDynamic (1949-91)
The CIA has long been involved in directing events in Ukraine. Project Aerodynamic, renewed as PdDynamic, continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. A CIA document declassified in 2007 states: “The purpose of Project AERODYNAMIC is to [support] the Anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance movement for cold war and hot war purposes.” Going back decades, the CIA has trained Ukrainian intelligence units to try and shore up an independent Kyiv. Then, current “CIA training of Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel” in the U.S. and Ukraine has been ongoing since 2015, and a former CIA official said “The United States is training an insurgency ... to kill Russians.”
Operation Ajax (1953)
The CIA planned and supported the coup against Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The effort was led by senior officer Kermit Roosevelt Jr., the grandson of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. “Over the course of four days in August 1953, Roosevelt would orchestrate not one, but two attempts to destabilize the government of Iran, forever changing the relationship between the country and the U.S.” The U.S. government long denied involvement in the coup, which installed the brutal Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahiavi, but eventually admitted CIA’s role in the coup.
In only a month we will begin to learn whether President Trump’s swearing in will result in a major change in the mission and activities of the CIA.
@NoAgendaLara
🛢 How Long Can Demand Destruction Keep a Lid on Oil Prices?
In a somewhat puzzling market development, oil prices haven't spiked yet to record highs amid the worst supply disruption in history.
That's because the market still hopes for a quick resolution to the Strait of Hormuz crisis (for more than three months now), global inventories have offered a supply buffer, the world's top crude importer, China, is staying away from spot purchases, and last but not least, demand destruction is accelerating amid the high prices.
The oversupply with which the market faced the beginning of the Iran war has helped to ease the upward pressure on oil prices as the conflict enters its fourth month. But global stocks, except in China, are being depleted at a record pace, suggesting that the buffer is stretching thin and the true magnitude of the supply loss will hit the market very soon.
Excluding China, which has accumulated large buffer stocks of more than 1.2 billion barrels over the past year, the rest of the ...
🇺🇸🚜🛢 Biggest Diesel Shock Since 2022 Deals Another Blow to US Farmers
While US farmers brace for higher fertilizer and chemical bills tied to turmoil in the Middle East, another expense is already taking a bite out of razor-thin margins: diesel fuel.
Prices for the fuel that powers tractors, combines and grain trucks have surged as the war in Iran disrupted global oil flows, catching many producers who expected lower energy costs this year off guard. In Illinois, the top US soybean-producing state, farm diesel averaged a record $5.41 a gallon at the start of May, nearly double the price a year earlier.
Current costs, which have moderated some in recent weeks amid prospects for a US-Iran peace deal, still rival levels last seen in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, adding a fresh burden for farmers already facing weak crop prices and mounting financial pressure.
Marty Richardson, who grows corn and soybeans and raises cattle in Missouri, experienced the sticker shock ...