Editorial: CIA (Murder Inc.) downsizes

This article was reprinted from the March 8, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

Like a Fortune 500 corporation that decides on a mass layoff to improve the bottom line, the CIA is dropping more than 100 agents from its ranks because, according to reports, the information they provided did not "justify" their crimes of murder, terrorism and kidnapping or other human rights abuses.

This is not the first expose of CIA atrocities. But generally they have been dismissed as aberrations and soon disappear from the mass media. It's different this time.

Now we have CIA Director John Deutsch himself who is admitting to God and everybody that the CIA employs murderers, assassins, drug smugglers and other such vermin as part of its modus operandi. And this at the same time Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is trotting around the world carrying the torch of "human rights" to the far- flung corners of the globe.

And what of the thugs who are dropped from the CIA payroll - not because they are criminals but because their intelligence gathering was of no value? Does anyone think that they will ride off into the sunset, never to be heard from again? It's not likely. Like the Cuban Bay of Pigs exiles, the Afghanistan mujahedeen and the Laotian mercenaries, they will use their connections and training to become hired guns for drug smugglers, kidnappers - and yes some, once again, for the CIA.

The CIA is a cancer in the body politic. Its continued existence is a threat to the peace and national security of the U.S. and, indeed, of the world. Elimination of its $30 billion annual appropriation would not only free up those funds for the needs of the millions of Americans living in poverty, but it would also help restore some respect for the United States among the nations of the world.