Spying on Americans: US Intelligence, Race Protests, and Dissident Movements

Protests against racism erupt in cities across America. A White House, under siege, believes a vast conspiracy is at work, and, to uncover it, instigates a policy to spy on Americans. This is not the United States in 2020, but half a century earlier. Using a wealth of declassified records, this article explores a domestic intelligence collection program (CHAOS) instigated by two successive US administrations and conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By studying this historical chapter, we observe how quickly an agency, equipped with intrusive powers, can infringe on Americans’ civil liberties when tasked by a US president. Applying this case to our contemporary context, this article argues that robust whistleblower procedures, as well as informal oversight, are powerful defenses against such abuses. Understanding why CHAOS occurred is an essential public policy first step to prevent similar abuses happening again.

Dr. Radan Angelov Sarafov and his sacrifice for democracy

Dr. Radan Sarafov (1908-1968) lived actively but his life is still relatively unknown to the Bulgarian academic and public audience. He was a strong character with an ulti-mate and conscious commitment to democratic Bulgaria. Dr. Sarafov was chosen by IMRO (Inner Macedonian Revolutionary Organization) to represent the idea of coop-eration with Anglo-American politics prior to the Second World War. Dr. Sarafov studied medicine in France, specialized in the Sorbonne, and was recruited by Colonel Ross for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), remaining undisclosed after the with-drawal of the British legation in 1941. After World War II, he continued to work for foreign intelligence and expanded the spectrum of cooperation with both France and the United States. After WWII, Sarafov could not conform to the reign of the communist regime in Bulgaria. He made a connection with the Anglo-American intelligence ser-vices and was cooperating with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for more than a decade. Sarafov was caught in 1968 and convicted by the Committee for State Securi-ty (CSS) in Bulgaria. The detailed review of the past events and processes through personal drama and commitment reveals the disastrous core of the communist regime. The acknowledgment of the people who sacrificed their lives in the name of democrat-ic values is always beneficial for understanding the division and contradictions from the time of the Cold War.

A Nuclear Generator of Clouds: Accidents and Radioactive Contamination Identified on Declassified Satellite Photographs in the Mayak Chemical Combine, Southern Urals

The Mayak Chemical Combine was one of the most secretive places in the Soviet Union. It was built in the southern Urals, close to Kyshtym. The facility produced weapons-grade plutonium and other radioactive isotopes for the Soviet nuclear military programme. Fugitives from behind the Iron Curtain mentioned the site, usually due to accidents and peculiar, unexplained observations. Such reports were often treated in the West as exaggerated or fictional, as they spoke of large-scale disasters, deportations and vast landscape transformations. This paper aims to present the research potential of declassified Cold War intelligence records for archaeological landscape studies of off-limits military sites. To outline a somewhat broader perspective, I will combine those sources with contemporary historical knowledge and modern remote sensing data. The analysis will be focused on the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] satellite imagery (CORONA and GAMBIT) from the 1960s to the beginning of the 1970s. The discussed sources recorded outcomes of nuclear disasters, hundreds of square kilometres of uninhabited wasteland, abandoned villages, disappearing lakes, dying forests, diverted rivers, and other features related to this clandestine plutonium facility.

ROLUL SERVICIILOR DE INTELLIGENCE ÎN POLITICA EXTERNĂ AMERICANĂ.

Această lucrare prezintă rolul serviciilor de intelligence în politica externă americană, utilizând ca studiu de caz conflictul din Afganistan din perioada 1979-1989. Astfel, lucrarea are în vedere acțiunile (și inacțiunile) serviciilor de intelligence americane, scoțând în evidență limitările serviciilor în acea perioadă. Pentru acestea, este important de prezentat atât contextul declanșării invaziei din Afganistan, cât și cele două perspective (americană și sovietică) asupra acestui conflict. Am considerat necesară și o analiză a perspectivei sovietice asupra conflictului și, mai ales, asupra intervenției americane în Afganistan, pentru a prezenta cât mai obiectiv contextul și desfășurarea evenimentelor. Folosind documente relevante, dar și poziții și mărturii ale unor oficiali care au lucrat în CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), în perioada conflictului din Afganistan, lucrarea arată modul în care deciziile de politică externă au fost luate de către administrațiile de la Washington, care s-au succedat în perioada 1979-1989, dar și modul în care serviciile de intelligence americane au influențat procesul decizional și, în mod evident, evoluția conflictului.

“El caso de Guatemala”: doctrina y praxis de la delegación guatemalteca en el I Congreso Anticomunista Latinoamericano

en mayo de 1954 se efectuó el I Congreso contra la Intervención Soviética en América Latina. El discurso anticomunista desplegado, manifiesto en su doctrina y praxis, fue el preámbulo de la invasión liberacionista que depuso al presidente de Guatemala Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. Estudio pionero en la temática, para este artículo se revisaron exhaustivamente los documentos de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia y los textos de autores que han estudiado el tema. Se privilegiatanto el ejercicio político de estos agentes como la consolidación de sus ideas y materiales en el devenir histórico de este país. Se concluye que su protagonismo se estableció como un hito en los entrecruces e interacciones con los sujetos y grupos latinoamericanos, afines a su ideología, en el periodo que se insertó la región en el conflicto ideológico global.Abstract: The article describes the participation of the Guatemalan delegation in the 1st Congress against Soviet Intervention in Latin America, held in May 1954. The objective is to articulate itsanti-communist discourse, manifested in its doctrine and praxis, as a preamble to the liberationist invasion that deposed to President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. As a pioneering study on the subject, the documents of the Central Intelligence Agency and the texts of authors who have approached the topic were exhaustively reviewed. As a result, the political exercise of these agents is accentuated, as well as the consolidation of their ideas and the materials in the historical development or theircountry. It is added that their protagonism was established as a milestone in the intercrossings and interactions with Latin America subjects and groups, related to its ideology, in the period was inserted into the global ideological conflict.Key words: Anticommunism; Guatemala; Representations; Anticommunist Congress.

HMONG. THE SECRET ARMY

This article aims to analyze the role of the Hmong population in the Indochina conflict. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower considered Laos a buffer state according to theDominion Theory and as such much more strategically important than Vietnam. To avoid the fall of Laos under communism and thus the spread of communism in the region, Eisenhower turned to the services of the C.I.A., because he could not intervene officially in Laos without violating the Geneva Convention.Keywords: Indochina; Laos; Vietnam; war; United States of America; Hmong, Central Intelligence Agency.

Research abuses against people of colour and other vulnerable groups in early psychedelic research

There is a growing resurgence in the study of psychedelic medicines for the treatment of mental health and substance use disorders. However, certain early investigations are marred by questionable research methods, abuses against research participants, and covert Central Intelligence Agency financial involvement. The purpose of this study was to understand how and to what extent people of colour and other vulnerable populations, specifically, individuals who were incarcerated or incapacitated due to mental health issues (inpatients with psychotic disorders), were exploited during the first wave of psychedelic research in the USA (1950–1980). To do so, we reviewed available empirical publications according to current ethical standards. Variables of interest included race and ethnicity of participants, population vulnerability, drug administration conditions, informed consent and undue influence. Our findings draw attention to the history of research abuses against people of colour in Western psychedelic research. In light of these findings, we urge a call-to-action to current psychedelic researchers to prioritise culturally inclusive and socially responsible research methods in current and future studies.

An Ode to ODA against all Odds? A Novel Game-Theoretical and Empirical Reappraisal of the Terrorism-Aid Nexus

The present inquiry revisits the influence of the fourth religious wave of modern terrorism on the allocation of official development assistance (ODA). The theoretical framework is predicated first on comprehensive review of the pertinent literature on the nexus between political instability and foreign aid, augmented by the assessment of Central Intelligence Agency declassified documents and Congressional Service Reports. Based on the systematic review of the sources, the study puts forward a novel dynamic differential game theory model, which enables derivation of the scenarios for foreign aid allocation. The study finds that despite dominance of geopolitical and/or commercial interests in the allocation of aid, high incidence of terrorist attacks does not lead to less development aid, but rather catalyzes it. Subsequent empirical analysis of a dataset with 121 developing and transition economies spanning between 1970 and 2016 reveals that terrorism incidents, level of political rights, and the War on Terror had a statistically significant positive long-run and negative short-run effect on the level of foreign aid commitment of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development member states. The growth rate of foreign aid in the developing countries with a predominantly Muslim population has been systematically 0.1 to 0.85 percent greater than in non-Muslim countries. Subsequent assessment of the security bias in the allocation of aid indicates that re-securitization of aid since 1998 has led to weak diversion of aid commitment from areas with fewer terrorism incidents to jurisdictions with a greater frequency of terrorist attacks.

An unfinished battle: George C. Marshall and intelligence in the early Cold War

This article deals with the influence of Gen. George C. Marshall on the foundation of the US intelligence community after the Second World War. It argues that his uneven achievements demonstrate how the ceaseless wrangling within the Truman administration undermined the crafting of a coherent intelligence policy. Despite his bureaucratic skills and prominent positions, Marshall struggled to achieve his ends on matters like signals intelligence, covert action, or relations between the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. Yet he crafted an enduring vision of how intelligence should supplement US national security policy that remained potent throughout the Cold War and beyond.

Program against Cancer in Sri Lanka

Worldwide, one in eight deaths is due to cancer. Projections based on the GLOBOCAN 2012 estimates predict a substantive increase new cancer cases per year by 2035 in developing countries if preventive measures are not widely applied. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), millions of lives could be saved each year if countries made use of existing knowledge and the best cost-effective methods to prevent and treat cancer. Therefore, the aim of this study is to estimate a provisional budget against cancer in low and middle incomes countries, according the GNI-PPP, the cancer incidence and the number of population. Economically country classification is determining with the Gross National Income (GNI), per capita, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), according the administrations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Cancer incidence data presented are based on the most recent data available at IARC. However, population compares estimates from the US Bureau of the Census. The provisional budget is establishing among the guidelines developed by WHO for regional and national cancer control programs according to national economic development. Provisional budget against cancer is estimated to 664,650.944 (thousands of U.S $) for a population of 22,409,381 persons in Sri Lanka.