The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World

The Central Intelligence Agency was formed in 1947 with intelligence collection as its stated purpose. Sixty-nine years later, the stories of this controversial agency have exposed much more. Douglas Valentine has previously touched on aspects of the Agency’s extralegal activities with respects to Vietnam and co-opting the War on Drugs with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, then BNDD, then DEA. Valentine’s introduction to the CIA’s dirty work began with former Director William Colby and the Phoenix Program of counterinsurgency. Valentine was given total cooperation, but once his book was released, the subjects retreated and denied his work. Parallels would be transparent between the attempts to cripple the Vietcong infrastructure and the War on Drugs and the Global War on Terror. Corruption, extortion, and torture emerge as pre-eminent with all three battles. Alliances are made with dictators, drug lords, and various sociopaths, all while the agency keeps the public in the dark, disingenuously emphasizing the greater good when light shines on the nefarious derring-do being conducted under the American flag.

Douglas Valentine’s work is a beacon of hope in the gray, murky mire that is the espionage world. The themes of the various essays and interviews are dark, but the courage of the author offers a silver lining. This is a work of pure journalistic talent.