Alex Constantine - March 1, 2011
“ ... In Laos the program I was attached to carried out a systematic assassination of people who were identified as not loyal to U.S. goals. It was called the Phoenix program and eliminated an estimated 60,000 people across Indochina. ... ”
Ex-CIA blamed US for Mideast revolutions
PressTV | March 1, 2011
A former CIA operative says secret missions carried out by the agency across the world have contributed to the buildup of public anger against US backed regimes and the revolutions in Middle East.
His comments came after Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor charged with double murder after shooting dead two men in Pakistan, refused to sign a charge sheet in court, insisting he had diplomatic immunity. AFP
HIGHLIGHTS
“The story of Raymond Allen Davis is one familiar to me and I wish our government would quit doing these things -- they cost us credibility," wrote Robert Anderson, a demolitions technician with the Air Force who was reassigned to work with the CIA’s Air America operation in Laos, in an article published in Counterpunch.
“You can understand why foreign countries no longer trust us and people are rising up across the Middle East against the Great Satan,” he added.
Anderson went on to explain that during the Vietnam War, Laos held a geo-strategic position, as Pakistan does to Afghanistan today and in Laos just like Pakistan, Washington conducted covert military operations against a sovereign people, using the CIA.
“I was a demolitions technician with the Air Force who was reassigned to work with the CIA's Air America operation in Laos. We turned in our military ID cards and uniforms and were issued a State Department ID card and dressed in blue jeans. We were told if captured we were to ask for diplomatic immunity, if alive. We carried out military missions on a daily basis all across the countries of Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.”
“In Laos the program I was attached to carried out a systematic assassination of people who were identified as not loyal to U.S. goals. It was called the Phoenix program and eliminated an estimated 60,000 people across Indochina,” the former CIA agent concluded.
FACTS & FIGURES
The United States government has been involved in and assisted in regime changes throughout the world without the overt use of U.S. military force. Often such operations are tasked to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Many of the governments targeted by the U.S. have been democratically elected and in many cases the governments toppled were replaced by dictatorships, sometimes installed with the U.S. assistance.
In 1967, the CIA helped South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in South Vietnamese villages. According to a 1971 congressional report, Operation Pheonix killed about 20,000 “Viet Cong.”
The largest and most complicated coup effort, approved at White House level, was the Bay of Pigs operation. CIA-trained anti-communist Cuban exiles and refugees landed in Cuba and attempted to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro.
The CIA overthrew the democratically elected Sukarno through a military coup. The CIA had been trying to eliminate Sukarno since 1957.
The CIA overthrew and assassinated Salvador Allende, Latin America's first democratically-elected socialist leader. The CIA replaced Allende with General Augusto Pinochet, who tortured and murdered thousands of his own countrymen in a crackdown on labor leaders and the political left.
The CIA is believed to have made a secret effort to topple the socialist Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia during and after the events of the Kosovo War. The 5 October Revolution removed Milosevic and installed a pro-western government which permitted the extradition of Milosevic and other war crime suspects.
In 2002, Washington is claimed to have approved and supported a coup against the Venezuelan government, acting through senior officials of the U.S. government, including Special Envoy to Latin America Otto Reich.
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