József Horváth, senior security policy fellow at the Budapest-based right-wing think tank Center for Fundamental Rights, talked to the online version of the Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet on Thursday, 4 April about the nefarious ways the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) likes to operate. The basis of the discussion was the revelations made by former CIA officer John Stockwell.
Stockwell was a paramilitary intelligence case officer at the agency for 12 years, between 1964 and 1976. In December 1976, however, he resigned due to moral qualms over the CIA’s practices, and wrote a book, an exposé titled In Search of Enemies about the issue. He also testified in front of the US Congress multiple times.
In previous interviews,
he stated that the CIA’s main function is to spread propaganda and to control people’s minds.
They work with journalists, and feed them misinformation on purpose, intermingled with true facts, which is then reported on by the media. According to Stockwell, the CIA was closely working with around 400 journalists in the 1970s, including some of the biggest names in the American press.
The Center’s József Horváth, however, pointed out to Magyar Nemzet that these practices are not exclusive to the United States’ intelligence agencies. Agencies such as the Security Service of Ukraine, the Mossad in Israel, the Ministry of State Security in China, or the Foreign Intelligence Service in Russia also routinely use such methods.
Stockwell also revealed that the CIA was even leaking fake images to the press during the Cold War. For example, they even created a mock-up image of a Cuban official raping a woman, in order to drum up support against the Communist Caribbean nation.
According to the former agent, the CIA, synonymous with secrecy in the public’s mind, was working quite overtly at times. For example, in Vietnam during the war, CIA officers had uniform number plates on their vehicles (with yellow dots and the number 144, according to Stockwell). They also drove green trucks in most cases. This way, even local civilians could identify them, and could approach them if they wanted to relay some intelligence.
About this part of Stockwell’s tellings, however, Horváth is a bit sceptical.
‘In any service where people work, it is obvious that mistakes can be made out of laziness, carelessness, or incompetence. But for an intelligence officer to reveal himself in this way, especially during an operation in a foreign country, it is not typical,’ the security expert explained. ‘It may sound good in the media, but in reality, this is not how professional intelligence services work,’ he added.
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