Prelude to Terror: The Rogue CIA and the Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network

There is one overwhelming problem with Joseph J. Trento's PRELUDE TO TERROR. After a number of fascinating chapters showing how the CIA has become an increasingly criminal institution, he stops short of drawing the obvious conclusion. In his final chapter he says that today's CIA has become "at best irrelevant and at worst a joke." Try telling that to the poor wretches it is torturing in prisons all over the world! In fact the CIA has had the most profound influence upon American political life, corrupting our entire government to the point where it is by now beyond hope of reform. Trento's focus upon George H.W. Bush is appropriate, for no one has had a greater influence on this process. The Bush presidency-- the first ever in which a former Director of the CIA held that office-- represents the "Rubicon moment" in American history, when the road to totalitarianism which is now reaching its climax was set in a manner which made it impossible to turn back. Bush moved quickly to end a Cold War which was becoming useless to the American intelligence elite, and initiate a confrontation with the Muslim Middle East. Yes, initiate, for it is abundantly clear that Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was no surprise to the Bush Administration but rather a set-up. After all, the Iraqi dictator had gone to Bush's ambassador to Iraq to sound her out on the possible reaction of the United States to such an invasion, and she had given him a green light. Saddam's response could not have been better suited to the interests of a military-industrial complex which was trembling at the prospect of peace breaking out. Most telling of all was something I heard a policy analyst say on what was then the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour: He said that Aemricans should expect terrorist attacks on their own soil. This scared the hell out of me, not because I thought that there was any prospect of such attacks occurring, but because I knew then that the Big Lie was being born, and that its purpose could only be to deprive us of our civil liberties. The first war against Iraq ended without any such incidents, but then, it takes a long time to get such things rolling, and maybe Bush was having a hard time convincing his friend Osama bin Laden to take the rap. Besides, he had a son who was very likely to run for president in his turn. What better legacy to pass on to him than 9/11? It is time for Americans to realize that they are being manipulated. Trento's title, "Prelude to Terror" is a good one, but the terror about to be unleashed on our society is the product of our own government.

This is not a perfect book. It has inconsistencies and errors but this book has helped connect many dots from the other 690+ books I have reviewed. I had no idea while I was at CIA as a clandestine officer that there are really multiple CIA's and that there are three *external* CIAS: the "Safari Club" led by Saudi Arabia, with France, Egypt, Morocco and Iran (during the Shah's time, not since); the murder network (South Africa, Israel, South Korea, and probably also Chile and Argentina during their worst years); and a privatized CIA running drugs and arms, laundering money, and generally doing things that were "off the books and out of control" as the author titles one of his chapters. According to the author, Allen Dulles has the first private intelligence service at 44 Wall Street, relying heavily on the recruitment of former Nazis. There is a direct path from the CIA's fascination with former Nazis to the presence of Karl Rove in the White House. The author draws on good sources to document the long-time relationship between Wall Street and certain companies such as the house of Morgan and Brown that leads us right up to when Buzzy Kronguard, formerly of Alex Brown, was executive director of the CIA at no salary. Prescott Bush, farther of the first President Bush, features heavily in the corrupt relations between CIA and the Wall Street mafia. These people financed the Nazis and weapons that killed Americans. Interestingly, the Dutch are known to have all the details on the Bush family ties to the Nazis, and I have personally heard from the Dutch that they also have full details from the Chinese on drunken teen-ager George W. Bush, of whom photos are said to exist while he is incoherent and perhaps posed in naked compromising positions with his male Chinese tennis teacher). All of this is inevitably going to be in the public consciousness--right now it falls into what one author calls "Fog Facts"--known openly but not "computed" by the public. This entire book is a tale of the corruption of intelligence, caused in part by the abysmal failure of US intelligence in the early years, ranging from failing to predict the Korean invasion to trying to assassinate Chinese premier Chou En Lai. The Viet-Nam era empowered people like Ted Shackley (who died in 2002 and whose memoirs are coming out shortly). CIA learned to run drugs and arms, launder money, start its own banks, and generally avoid Congressional funding limitations and Congressional oversight. Unfortunately, creating a rogue CIA further incapacitated "CIA proper" of which I was a part, and the author reasonably points out that the fall of the Shah of Iran, the failure to understand the 1975 concerns about Shiite terrorism training camps, the assassination of Sadat, the CIA coup plans that were pre-empted by Qadafi, the growth of Al Qaeda, the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban (which deprived Wall Street of its drug crops, now restored courtesy of the U.S. Army)--the list goes

First and foremost, I think the POV is the CIA's "intelligence" wing(s) vs. the "Ops" goons, a longstanding civil war in the CIA and the other clandestine services where Trento, who has covered intelligence for 35 years, clearly sources to the inteligence side of the battle. Those of us following scandals from Nixon's treason in 1968 as a private citizen who sabotaged Vietnam War peace negotiations, through Watergate, through Bush I's treason in Iran as a private citizen negotiating the continued retention of American Hostages, through Iran/Contra, through Bush II's treason as a private citizen interfering in Mideast peace negotiations, noticed the same small cabal involved in everything - Ted Shackley, Thomas Clines, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, John Singlaub, George Herbert Walker Bush, James Angleton, Chi Chi Quinterez, Ed Wilson - and at various times, people like Oliver North and even Zbiegniew Brzezhinski operating on their behalf on a regular basis. Two of these, Angleton and Clines, were interviewed by Trento. This book goes back to the days of Dulles and ahead to the present and shows how the CIA's old boy network can always bite back harder than it's bitten. It deals peripherally with things like BCCI and Nugan/Hand. It's much more critical of Stansfield Turner, whom I have met on a couple of occasions, than I would be, but it nicely fills in the back story on his period as director of the CIA. This book has nothing about Adnan Kashoggi but does talk about Sarkis Soghnalian, a Turkish/Armenian power broker. I think one of the weak links for the rogue operative network is in fact the information held by their non-American allies. It's possible the US or Israel will attack Iran, and if so, people should be educated enough to understand any revelations the Iranians might have for us in retaliation.