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
🛢 We Are 'Still' Going Full Speed Into The Wall
Product storage is about to get tighter unless China steps in and lifts the product export ban. If it does, expect a meaningful reversal in crude.
WTI is barely hanging on to $70 for its dear life, but please remember that consumers use petroleum products like gasoline and diesel; they don’t use crude oil. Refineries do, and this is why it was always important for us to pay attention to crack spreads along with crude timespreads.
Note: Please divide it by 3.
The fever in the market today is that crude is oversupplied, but products are undersupplied. How can this be possible?
Well, China’s June crude import data so far is -4.7 million b/d y-o-y, and teapot refineries are operating at 50% utilization. Compared to US refineries operating at 95% and PADD 2 refineries operating over 100%, you can see where the disconnect is.
But here’s the thing. If end-user demand isn’t down and you still have a production shut-in of ~8 million...
🇮🇷🚫🚢 Here's my analysis of the Strait of Hormuz situation for the last 24 hours.
As I noted yesterday, I was seeing a lot of vessels using the Oman route to exit. This was following the announcement by Oman and IMO. The IRGC retaliated today on a vessel, but even after the attack, I am still seeing transits. It's a lot less, but there are vessels willing to take the risk.
On the inbound front, the flow is still heavily restricted. Whatever outflow we are seeing today is unsustainable as there are not enough non-Iranian tankers going in. In particular, we need empty VLCCs going in to load up crude. This is just a trickle so far.
In my view, the traffic in the Oman lane will lead to more escalation by IRGC. Without throttling flows entirely in the Southern lane, IRGC will lose control of its leverage over the Strait. If they act, then it's a question of what the US does after.
I think this is only the beginning.
🔗 @HFI_Research