In Pisces Moon: The Dark Arts of Empire, Douglas Valentine descends into some of the most sinister aspects of US foreign policy. These include drug running, illegal arms sales, bribery, human and artifact trafficking, far right coups, assassinations, agitprop and disinformation, as well as fiefdoms set up by former CIA and their assets that are […]
Michael Swanson, the author of The War State, joins me for an in-depth discussion of the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick Vietnam documentary series. I begin the conversation by discussing my own fascination with the Vietnam War. I talk about the influence my father has had on my understanding of the war, touching on his experiences with the army when he was drafted in 1969. Michael and I then dive into the film itself. We look at some of the serious flaws and aspects that the we felt were left out with the film including the CIA and drug trafficking.
Hugo Turner of Anti-Imperialist-U for an in depth discussion of Ted Shackley and his infamous career in the CIA. We focus on Hugo’s articles chronicling Ted Shackley as well as the Iran Contra Scandal. We begin by taking a look at Shackley’s beginnings in military intelligence recruiting Nazi’s, and his later recruitment into the CIA during the Korean War. Hugo paints us a picture of the man that Shackley would become: obsessively driven and cutthroat. We touch on some of Shackley’s early mentors such as William Harvey who introduced Shackley to the Cuban exile committee.
The outlawing of narcotic drugs at the start of the Twentieth Century, the turning of the matter from public health to social control, coincided with American’s imperial Open Door policy and the belief that the government had an obligation to American industrialists to create markets in every nation in the world, whether those nations liked it or not.
