Uncloaking the CIA: Ernest De Maio and John Marks (KPFA, 1975)

On April 5, 1975, a conference titled The Central Intelligence Agency and World Peace was held in New Haven, Connecticut, on the campus of Yale University. From the opening session of the conference, Ernest DeMaio spoke about CIA involvement with international labor, focusing on Chile. Mr. DeMaio is the representative from the World Federation of Trade Unions to the United Nations.

Ernest DeMaio:

“Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, CIA and FBI agents—I think it would be naive to assume that a gathering like this isn’t under surveillance. It would be interesting to know how many reports the FBI has filed that were generated by CIA activities.

If we are to understand the CIA, we must first examine the socio-economic system that spawned it. Our society is a social and economic system based on the exploitation of the many by the few who own and control the capital goods that produce the nation’s wealth, and the financial institutions that are its lifeblood. The powerful few, with their vast economic resources, control the political life of the nation. Unless some of you here think Ford is actually the president of this country and is running it, the reality is that these powerful few maintain a shadow government that makes the fundamental decisions relayed to the executive and legislative branches of the overt government through henchmen placed in strategic positions throughout the federal apparatus.

This is reflected in the interlocking relationships between major financial and industrial corporations and the government; Eisenhower called it the military-industrial complex. This is the main reason for corruption in government. The purpose of government, as conceived by the founding fathers, was to promote the general welfare. The shadow government has corrupted this into promoting the welfare of the generals: General Electric, General Dynamics, and the Pentagon brass.”

The voters are avoiding the polls like a plague. They have been the victims of presidential lies and deception. In shades of imperial Rome, they have seen the White House put on the auction block. CREEP was Nixon’s bagman. If you don’t know what CREEP was, you won’t know what a bagman is. It collected from the major corporations for presidential favors at the expense of the people.

None of this went unnoticed or unchallenged. Over the years, there were courageous men and women in the universities, the arts and sciences, and the trade unions. They spoke out, organized, and held meetings such as this. Their ranks were infiltrated by government agents, paid informers who fingered the brave and testified that they were subversive agents of a foreign power or something worse—part of a vague catch-all, the Communist conspiracy.

How many here recall that President Eisenhower was called a card-carrying communist? And the Supreme Court, part of the communist conspiracy? It all happened. The mass media turned the witch hunt into a Roman circus, while lives and careers were destroyed.

After over 40 years of surveillance and investigations by the FBI, I can’t get too excited about the fact that the CIA also got into the act. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not dismissing the CIA. I believe that neither the CIA, nor the FBI, the IRS, the Army, nor any other agency of government should do the dirty work of the transnational corporations who run the country.

If we are to remain a free people, the TNCs, as any Yale undergraduate can tell you, not only dominate the U.S. scene, but have also extended their tentacles throughout most of the world. The most important historical development in recent years is the rise of the once-colonial nations, which have cast off their imperialist oppressors. They have established political independence, but in many of these new nations, the old imperial masters still control the economy. Their raw materials, utilities, transport, and industries are controlled by transnational corporations based mainly in the United States.

Anyone familiar with the economic history of South America, its trade and payment patterns, knows that the major U.S. corporations have bled that continent white. Our government, fronting for these corporations, has used its military power to keep it that way for years. However, in these enlightened days, the U.S. government doesn’t necessarily resort to naked military power. Military intervention occurs only after other efforts have failed. There are other options.

We train their military officers, corrupt them, and then use them to overthrow the governments their people have elected to power.

Chile was something out of the ordinary. I went down there last year on the commission of inquiry. I don’t intend to go into it lengthily, but there are a few things I do want to say. Democracy was strongly entrenched in Chile, and the military tolerated civilian control. The Chileans tried something new: they sought to achieve control of their economic and political destinies by peaceful means through the electoral process. Despite considerable CIA interference, Salvador Allende, at the head of a Marxist coalition, won a plurality of votes in a tight three-way election. Nothing the CIA and the copper trust did could keep Allende out of the presidency. This experiment in peaceful change was aborted by the intervention of the U.S. government. The CIA was used to destabilize the Allende regime. Is that a honey of a word, destabilize?

The Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, adopted by the United Nations over U.S. objections, Chapter 2, Article 1, reads as follows: “Every state has the sovereign and inalienable right to choose its economic system as well as its political, social, and cultural systems in accordance with the will of its people, without outside interference, coercion, or threat in any form whatsoever.”

Article 2, Section 1 states: “Every state has and shall freely exercise full permanent sovereignty, including possession, use, and disposal over all its wealth, natural resources, and economic activities.”

Needless to say, these principles did not guide our government in Chile, where the imperial might of U.S. transnational corporations to exploit other peoples is involved. Our government will do whatever has to be done to preserve that dubious right.

The details of what the CIA did or let happen in Chile—the assassination of the generals who stood in the way, the bribing of others to carry out the coup, the slaughter, arrests, and torture of thousands—will be told by others. However, there are a few things I want to point out. After the coup, all political parties—right, center, and left—were banned. The congress building in Santiago now serves as the national headquarters of the military police. That’s appropriate for a military state. All opposition newspapers have been closed down. The universities are run by the military.

The Escudo, during the latter days of the Allende regime, exchanged at 500 to the U.S. dollar. On March 3rd, 1975, the New York Times reported that the Escudo had again been devalued to 2,900 to the dollar. This is an official devaluation for foreign exchange purposes of 580% in 18 months. When we think of the distress caused by 12% inflation in this country last year, we can only guess at the mass misery that prevails on the conditions of almost total impoverishment in Chile.

A reliable yardstick to measure the degree of democracy that exists in any society is the existence of trade unions which effectively defend and advance the interests and welfare of the workers and the people generally. We now know that the CIA did some of its most destructive work in the Chilean trade unions. They corrupted the leaders and financed strikes against the Allende government. Their objective was not to make political unions under the aegis of the American Institute of Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the infamous industry and CIA-financed CIO front for the building of class-collaborationist unions in South America. Their purpose, aided, abetted, and financed by the CIO, was to wreck a friendly government. The consequences to the workers have been an unrelieved disaster. The honest trade union leaders have been arrested, tortured, or murdered. Others have been driven underground or into exile. Union headquarters have been padlocked. The unions cannot function.

The corrupt CIA-supported unionists who struck against Allende are not leading strikes today against far worse conditions. The hunter has tried to set up a labor front with them without success. There have been several CIA-engineered counter-revolutions in Latin America, but none have been as savage as the Chilean hunt.

It seems that we are engaged in the reprehensible business of trying to drown revolutionary ideas in blood. It hasn’t worked in Southeast Asia, it didn’t work in Greece or Portugal, it isn’t working in Spain, and it won’t work in Chile. What is happening in the world today is not the dominoes falling. It is the growing resentment and reactions of the peoples of the world against our transnational corporation-run government.

I don’t need to add much. He’s basically talking about the same thing I’m trying to express. He doesn’t mention the Mafia or crime syndicates, but no material can cover everything, and no person can know it all. We’re discussing something that was hidden from us on purpose, so we can only scratch the surface of the horrible things that really happened.

15:55

When we go after the CIA, we are taking on the strong-arm agency of the power structure. In this continuing endeavor, we shall have to control and curb the monopolies and their transnational operations. They have the power of the government; we have the potential support of the people. It is an unequal contest, with history and the people on our side. We cannot lose.

In this disparate struggle, the monopolies have already lost the battle for the minds of the people. This is why they resort to infiltration, entrapment, disruption, provocation, and terror, no matter how real or psychological the terror may be. These are the weapons of the defeated. They cannot win. We cannot lose.

It has been said that the long journey begins with a single step, and that step was taken a long time ago. We make our contribution when we dedicate ourselves to mobilizing the democratic forces of the people. Together, we can bring back to America what Lincoln talked about—government of, by, and for the people. In the lively pursuit of this objective, we shall establish the basic prerequisites of enduring peace.

Thank you.

I wish I were so optimistic. I said before that at first, COVID broke me. The blind obedience to authority was terrifying, but then, thanks to COVID, people like Jimmy Dore woke up to the real world. I also hope—and wrote—that the Nord Stream lie will help break the 9/11 lie, which could unravel the whole web of lies. Just like Jimmy woke up after seeing through the COVID lies, he asks himself, “What else did they lie about?” For me, this moment happened around 2004/5 during the Iraq War. I saw through their lies then, and I asked myself, “What else have they lied about?” I started with the reasons for the Iraq War, which led me to 9/11. I read and heard so many people back then writing and saying that our enemies can’t keep it up and that we are winning. Here you have in 1978, it was “They cannot win. We cannot lose.” Now we have 2024, where is that “we cannot lose”? So look how much people knew back then, and how little people know now? Before, you had books; now you have Google. I had people literally saying that if Google doesn’t show it on the first page, it must be a lie. I have a good friend at work who is a historian by education, but his mind is brainwashed. I like him, and he is smart, but he spews that America is great, the free market is great, and other Western propaganda. I’m trying to make him think and see through it, but if I can’t digest it in 10 minutes, in his mind, it must be a lie. He literally told me, “If you can’t explain something in a few words, you are lying.” When I look at the younger generation, I can’t convince them to watch documentaries longer than 15 minutes. I think it’s not an accident and they try to reduce our attention span. I often catch myself seeing something and thinking to myself that it is too long. With every generation, it gets worse.

“A great point is sometimes made of the fact that modern man no longer sees above his head a revolving dome with fixed stars…True enough, but he sees something similar when he looks at his daily newspaper…The newspaper is a man-made cosmos of the world of events around us at the time. For the average reader it is a construct with a set of significances which he no more thinks of examining than did his pious forebear of the thirteenth century…think of questioning the cosmology.” -Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences

“The tyranny exercised unconsciously on men’s minds is the only real tyranny, because it cannot be fought against.”(The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind – Gustave Le Bon)

I never wanted just to know things; I wanted to understand them. In what I write, I don’t try to tell you what is true but to help you understand the truth of what is happening and how it works, so you will be able to understand it yourself. We are not taught in school to think and understand but simply to learn and know. People don’t understand much, but they know almost everything. They think to themselves that, since someone smarter or in authority said it, and most people repeat it, it must be true.

“The majority of men, especially among the masses, do not possess clear and reasoned ideas on any subject whatever outside their own specialty. The leader serves them as a guide.”

— The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind – Gustave Le Bon

I want to inform and help people understand, while simultaneously learning more myself! If you understand and don’t just know, then you don’t need to be led.

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow.

Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead.

Walk beside me… just be my friend.”

— Albert Camus

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”

— Albert Einstein

Do you know what is happening, or do you understand what is happening?