š„ āThe historians [looking at the JFK files] were described as being shocked to their cores. āI didnāt think Iād live to see it,ā one told the Times.
āThis opens a door on a whole history of collaboration between the Vatican and the C.I.A., which, boy, would be explosive,ā another saidā¦
Calling the disclosures āremarkable,ā the Times described how, collectively, the newly unredacted documents described CIA malfeasance on a global scale, including coups and election interference.
For example, [a] now-unredacted 1967 report by the CIAās inspector general disclosed the agencyās 1961 assassination of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujilloāincluding the names of all the CIA agents involved in the plot.
Other documents revealed CIA efforts to interfere in elections in Finland, Peru and Somalia, which had previously been relegated to āconspiracy theoryā status, or were even entirely unknown before now.
There was also new information about CIAās involvement in failed and successful coups in a devilās inventory of countries, including Brazil, Haiti (!), and what is now Guyana.
The CIA has been meddling in the whole world.
Other now visible passages revealed, among other salacious details, that nearly half the political officers in American embassies worldwide were working for the CIA. āThatās ⦠astonishing,ā Dr. Logevall, a Harvard historian working on a multivolume Kennedy biography, lamely said, grasping for adequate words.
The 1973 memo that began the story warned Director Colby about Elderās āsinking feeling that discipline has broken down.ā Discipline has never recovered. Elderās memo listed too many examples to recount them all.
But my eye was drawn to this particularly shocking part of paragraph four, which described two operations, without stating whether the operations had only been planned or actually went forward (see image)
Those two astonishing sentences are unthinkably evil.
Letās start with the proposal for a paramilitary strike on the Chi-Com nuclear plants.
I need hardly emphasize that a paramilitary strike on a nuclear power plant is one of the most reckless and highest-risk actions imaginable, both strategically and environmentally.
Attacking a nuclear installation is an act of war on steroidsā far beyond bombing an enemyās military baseā¦
To cite a contemporary example, even amidst the hottest of wars, Russia has always assiduously avoided attacking Ukraineās nuclear power plants.
The victims of such an operation would not so much have been the enemy communist governments as their innocent civilians.
Striking a nuclear facility risks radiation leaks or even a Chernobyl-like meltdown, depending on the reactor type and how itās hit. Fallout could easily spread across borders, irradiating major water supplies and poisoning civilians and military personnel alikeā including even U.S. allies and neutral countries.
It is difficult to conceive how this could be spun as anything but madness..
But perhaps most ominous and least moral of all, this kind of attack on a nuclear facility could easily escalate into a full-out global thermonuclear war.
Itās like playing Russian roulette with civilization itself. At minimum, the Chinese would feel morally justified in conducting tit-for-tat covert counter-attacks against American nuclear plants, leading to an escalating conflict causing unimaginable suffering and long-term environmental destruction.
ļæ¼As for the proposed covert chemical weapons attacks against Cuban and North Korean rice fieldsā¦
ļæ¼Rice is a staple food. Targeting rice crops is an unthinkably cruel war crime. It would have led to mass hunger, malnutrition, and civilian deaths, disproportionately harming children and elderly folks.
The CIAās profoundly unethical plan would be inherently immoralā¦
The CIAās unmasking continues. Yesterday, the White House announced that around 16,000 morepages are waiting in the wings, to be digitized and posted online āin the coming days.ā
āJeff Childers