 Part 14,  LURE TO WAR: Bush Sucks Saddam Into Kuwait [Agee]
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  PRODUCING THE PROPER CRISIS
    a speech by former CIA official Philip Agee 
      transcribed from the Oct. 1990 issue of Z Magazine,

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Sooner or later it had to happen. The fundamental transformation
of U.S. military forces was really only a matter of time. 
Transformation, in this sense: from a national defense force to
an international mercenary army for hire. With a U.S. national
debt of $3 trillion, some $800 billion owned by foreigners, the
United States sooner or later would have to find or produce the
proper crisis -- one that would enable the President to hire out the
armed forces, like a national export, in order to avoid conversion
of the economy from military to civilian purposes. Iraq's invasion
of Kuwait, encouraged, it seems, by the Bush Administration, is the
necessary crisis. 

Not long after the invasion, I watched on Spanish television 
Bush's call to arms, when he said: "Our way of life is at stake."
For days afterwards I kept watching and reading for news of the
tens of millions of people in this country, who would take to the
streets in joy, in celebration that their days of poverty,
homelessness, illiteracy and uncared-for illness might soon end.
What I saw instead, like most of you, was the Bush "way of life"
-- fishing, boating and golfing on the coast of Maine like any
respectable member of the Eastern elite. Bush's military machismo
of recent weeks reminded me of what General Noriega said about
Bush a couple of years ago, before Bush decided to smash Panamanian
nationalism for the forseeable future. You remember? Noriega told
his deputy in the Panamanian Defense Forces, who later made it
public, he said, "I've got George Bush by the b*lls."

When I read that, I thought, how interesting -- one of those rare
statements that contains two revelations. Back in the 1970's,
when he was Director of the CIA, Bush tried to get a criminal
indictment against me for revelations I was making about CIA
operations and personnel. But he couldn't get it, I discovered
later in documents I received under the Freedom of Information
Act. The reason was that in the early 1970's, the CIA had committed
crimes against me while I was in Europe writing my first book.
If they indicted and prosecuted me, I would learn the details of
those crimes, whatever they were: conspiracy to assassination,
kidnapping, a drug plant. So they couldn't indict because the CIA
under Bush, and before him under William Colby, said the details
had to stay secret. So what did Bush do? He prevailed on President
Ford to send Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State, to Britain
where I was living, to get them to take action. A few weeks after
Kissinger's secret trip, a Cambridge policeman arrived at my door
with a deportation notice. After living in Britain nearly five
years, I had suddenly become a threat to the security of the realm.
During the next two years, I was not only expelled from Britain,
but also from France, Holland, West Germany and Italy -- all under
U.S. pressure. For two years I didn't know where I was living,
and my two sons, then teenagers, attended four different schools
in four different countries.

The latest is the Government's attempt to prevent me from speaking 
in the U.S. now. Where this will end, we still don't know.
                      (to be continued)
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        The American Public is evidently in dire need of the truth, 
        for when the plutocracy feeds us sweet lies instead of the 
        bitter truth that would evoke remedial action by the People,
        then we are in peril of sinking inextricably into despotism.

        So, please post the episodes of this ongoing series to 
        computer bulletin boards, and post hardcopies in public places,
        both on and off campus. The need for concerned people, alerting
        their neighbors to overshadowing dangers, still exists, as it 
        did in the era of Paul Revere. That need is as enduring as
        society itself.
      
             John DiNardo

The episodes of this and other series can be retrieved 
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Log in with name "anonymous" or "ftp" and supply your e-mail address 
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Instructions for ftp retrieval are dependent upon what sort of system the
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        Archivist: Paul Southworth,  pauls@css.itd.umich.edu

