Here is a very informative Slate article on how certain establishment insiders made a fortune from prior knowledge concerning early CIA covert actions. And here is the more detailed scholarly study in forensic economics which provided the basis for this article.
It all goes to show that the essential predatory essence of the state has not changed for millennia. George Washington Plunkitt would be proud of his protégées in public plunder. Plunkitt, who became a millionaire due to his career in Tammany Hall politics, is famous for making the distinction between “honest graft” and “dishonest graft.” “I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em.”
In his brilliant book, American War Machine, (see page 26 following) researcher Peter Dale Scott points out that from the beginning of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) or the OPC (Office of Policy Coordination), these entities were dominated and staffed at the highest levels by former Wall Street investment bankers and lawyers, men well regarded by their elite peers in NYC Social Register circles.
This elite has always run intelligence. This is something that the anti-TARP tea parties or anti-corporatist Occupy groups seldom acknowledge.
These Machiavellian efforts, much like the evolution of the Fed, grew out of a hybrid symbiotic relationship.
These mercenary entities were no more “private” initiatives than earlier similar collaborative efforts such as the Bank of England, the British East India Company (the major player in much of early Indian and colonial American history, e.g., the Boston Tea Party), or The World Commerce Corporation (see pages 70 following in Peter Dale Scott’s American War Machine).
The common denominator among all these entities was narcotics. It all comes back to “the Narcosaurus,” lurking in the Wall Street bank board room, the TV network news room, or the covert-ops division in the intelligence services.
9:52 pm on December 5, 2011
