Four-and-a-Half Book Reviews

by Eric Chaet

Recently I read four books, hoping to gain knowledge enabling me to recover my status as a citizen, as opposed merely to "inhabitant of an occupied country paying taxes to the occupiers."

1

Perkins' Confessions of an Economic-Hit Man.

Easy to read and brief. A bright, young man, inclined to be seduced by the prospect of a glamorous life-style, is located, recruited and trained by a secret team to become an economic analyst and salesman, hyping figures, selling foreign USA-client-government leaders on using US dollars to buy big infrastructure projects that will supposedly pay for themselves in a few years. But they won't, and the nations will be more in USA's debt.

2

Prouty's Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World.

Prouty was a briefer, I gather a liaison between the CIA and the Secretary of Defense or the Joint Chiefs of Staff or both, for much of his 20-year military career. He retired as a colonel in the early '70s, during the later stages of the Vietnam War, which horrified him.

He describes how Allen Dulles, head of OSS during World War II, then of CIA under Eisenhower--while his brother John Foster Dulles was Secretary of State--then under Kennedy 'til Kennedy fired him--put people into place throughout the military and especially intelligence-gathering, who took over more and more of the decision-making that enabled the covert operations they wanted to perform, and had prepared themselves to perform, with permission and even in direct opposition to presidential orders to the contrary.

The Dulles Brothers emerged from Brown Brothers, Harriman, I believe, the law firm that managed the Rockefeller Standard Oil fortune, and were neocons well before there was a word for neocon--rabid anti-New Dealers.

Those put into place by Allen Dulles, and also those put into place by those Allen Dulles put into place, used interregnums between the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, and immediately after the Kennedy assassination, when the new presidents were incompletely aware of the situation and of what these people were secretly doing. The regime-change-intending, botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the Vietnam War were the main results of their work at the time of Prouty's writing. Though he describes many minor operations--e.g., the U-2 spy flight deep into Soviet territory, which, shot down, destroyed Eisenhower's big (and last and only) opportunity to engineer a lasting peace, as opposed to Cold War, with the Soviet Union. Some of these covert operations you'll immediately remember, if you attend to the news regularly--though you likely weren't aware that they were USA covert operations at the time. Some will be completely fresh "news" to you, no matter how closely you were attending when they occurred.

3

Bamford's Body of Secrets.

Bamford is a journalist, who hates not to repeat an anecdote, so the book is long relative to the length of life. Nevertheless, the anecdotes are revealing, and the book is full of details about how information is secretly gathered (up to 2001), and which information is of interest, to whom, and why. If you read it closely, you'll notice how--Prouty having spilled the CIA beans--a lot of the secret work has shifted out of the CIA, to NSA (National Security Agency)--and almost surely to other agencies and to no agency.

4

Tarpley's 9/11 Synthetic Terror.

I had to buy this one--not a copy in any of Wisconsin's libraries.

Thesis is that 9/11 was a job done by moles in the USA government--military, non-military, intelligence, non-intelligence--using patsies, the 19 supposed hijackers and Osama bin Laden, too. Cf. Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination. Once you've read Prouty, it's easy to believe it. The evidence given is quite compelling.

Has the virtue of not claiming to have proved what it only shows is far more likely than the official story almost universally believed. Makes a good case that the allergy against believing in conspiracy theories is highly convenient for those actually involved in perpetrating the conspiracies which can only explain a great deal of what happens. Notes that the signers of the Declaration of Independence were accusing George III of participating in a conspiracy to deprive them of their rights, and that Lincoln was elected on a platform accusing previous presidents and the chief justice of participating in a conspiracy to enable the slave-holding oligarchs of the South to control the government of the USA. Outlines a similar conspiracy, a network of moles in USA government, knowingly or unknowingly serving the "plutocrats"--determined that nothing anything like FDR's administration should ever happen again--who have captured the USA government.

4 1/2

I also read half of a fifth book, Singer's Corporate Warriors.

I only stopped because it was necessary to read less, and do more, lest I become merely a witness to the waste of my own life. It describes the various private military companies now available and widely used by governments all around the world--especially in Iraq, Africa, and former Yugoslavia, and especially by the government of the USA and governments wishing to be allied with the government of the USA--including Halliburton's KBR (mainly logistics) unit and MPRI (mainly strategy, tactics, and training).

In the classified section of my local weekly newspaper last week, was an ad recruiting employees for MPRI. They are particularly interested in veterans of the USA military forces--trained at taxpayer expense--and likely as dissatisfied as Rambo was on leaving the service, to discover that he was not to be trusted to manage important tasks with fabulous equipment, but was to work his way up from the menial bottom, if he could only find a menial opening.

We are in a period of reversion to a time previous to about 1700 in Europe, in this respect: battles then were fought among mercenary--i.e., non-official-government--troops, as opposed to citizen armies such as Napoleon fielded so triumphantly, almost. Com-pany, apparently, is a word meaning "with bread" -- con pane -- the main benefit of joining the military company during a time of scarcity.

It's nice not to be drafted (who knows how long 'til the neocon-dominated government feels the "need" to invade another country, and to reinstate the draft?)--but it's frightening that so many private armies are in operation, whose loyalty must be, primarily, to themselves. (As the neocons who dominate the government exhibit a loyalty to a group less inclusive than the population of the USA.)

All of which makes thinking about what is happening to the nation and world less nebulous--even if it is impossible to know precisely who is doing what. And even if it makes taking a responsible step no less daunting. Daunting or not, it's nice to be able to see the path and what's around it a bit clearer--moon-light, even if no sun-light--since you have to take a step now and then, in any case--unless, of course, you're terminal.

I'm not a sarcastic sort--sometimes I think I'm terminal, myself. But I prefer actionable intelligence, to make an informed decision, and, hopefully--hopefully!--to act advantageously. In the spirit of brother- and sister-hood, if possible.

Copyright © Eric Chaet 2006