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The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. Herman Goering at the Nuremberg Trial In 1953, the CIA conducted its first major covert operation — to overthrow Iran's legitimate president, Mohammed Mossadeq. Mr. Mossadeq had made the mistake other world leaders have paid dearly for: he decided to nationalize his country's oil industry, a resource controlled at the time by foreign companies. Enter the Dulles brothers — John and Allen. John Foster was the US Secretary of State, while Allen was, you guessed it, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It would be no exaggeration to say, the Dulles' were the founding architects of post-war US foreign policy. Eisenhower approved their plot to overthrow Iran's president by organizing mobs to attack the government, beginning a bloody war that finally toppled Mossadeq and allowed the installation of the Shah, who, big surprise, handed over half the country's oil fields to US oil mobsters. Over the next 20 years, the other arm of the US military-industrial oiligarchy dumped $18 billion worth of armaments into the country, and the CIA, through SAVAK — the Iranian secret police — launched a reign of terror on the civilian population. In 1976, Amnesty International said SAVAK had the worst human rights record on the planet, their CIA-textbook torture techniques were "beyond belief." In 1979, with nothing left to lose, the Iranian people rose up and overthrew the Shah. They got Ayatollah Khomeini, in exchange. And we know how much those events got Uncle Sam's red white and blue boxers in a twist. So the blundering CIA went to work again. This time backing the guy next door, Saddam Hussein. From its inception, the shadowy American "intelligence" network has shown up everywhere corporate profits, especially those of the powerful US oil barons, have been at risk, operating under the cloak of democracy but leaving fingerprints that match the bloody hands of the plutocrats. Right after WW II, as the Russians expanded their sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe, an elite group of industrialists and shadowy bureaucrats got together to influence the direction of US foreign policy. They hired out-of-work Nazis — people like Klaus Barbi, the Butcher of Leon — to form a subversive gang of spies and dirty operatives. In 1947, President Truman signed the National Security |