Transcripts For CSPAN2 Annie Jacobsen Surprise Kill Vanish 2

CSPAN2 Annie Jacobsen Surprise Kill Vanish July 14, 2024

The government investigations into the extra Sensory Perception and psychokinesis and surprise till vanish. Please help me welcome Annie Jacobsen to politics and prose. [applause] politics and prose, thank you for having me. It is always wonderful to be here. Thank you everybody for coming. I am here tonight to talk to you about surprise, kill, vanish and its about the cia paramilitary capacity, which is something that many people are not even aware exist. Im often asked how to get the idea from ibooks and this one began for me ten years ago in 2009 so i had a source visiting me at my house. On the other side of said u. S. Department of state. And my source has nothing to do diplomacy. He is weapons trained so i had an idea while he couldnt say what he was doing in the middle east, it was clear to me that it was some kind of an intelligent organization. They said listen, if its okay with your mom and dad i will show you a weapon. Now i know he is a safety instructor, so i said that was fine. And he opened up this case and in spite of that he puts together this rifle with a scope and i was up in hollywood in a canyon and he set it up in a dining room table and through that, i could see across the canyon and i could see the veins on a leash and i thought now i know what he does in afghanist afghanistan. The balloons went off and there was another case. I was very curious about it. I am a journalist. So when we were alone i said what is in that case. Sometimes a job requires quiet. Why i wanted to write this book is not as much with operators do overseas, but as much about my reaction to it. In other words, i could accept anyone with this clinical idea that the idea of using a knife slitting someones throat or sticking it in their ribs gave me pause and i was interested in the idea. Why do we as citizens differentiate between. A very specialized wing of the cias special Activities Division which is called grand branch, and almost no one knows about it for talks about it and it took me a long time as a journalist to find the sources that were willing to speak with me about grand branch and the special Activities Division. Since world war ii, the motto, which is the precursor organization to the cia was surprised, kill, vanish. They would land on the ground and team up with indigenous force partners so they work in france and would team up with their partners and surprise their way in. They would kill nazis with a knife. He had a specialized knife to do so. And then they would vanish. So that became their motto. This became interesting to me. But the book ithe book is abouts ththat mortgage encomiums game. If one must do the dirty as they call it in world war ii the most dastardly things possible. We find it easier to imagine for splitting because they are nazis but if you move forward to today, we asked ourselves why is it that we are making those judgments. There was a guy called billy ball an and he is the longestserving cia operative in its history that is known, so there may be someone that is longer but we dont know about it. And this story is interesting because he was a young soldier in the korean war, and he will send infantrymen and was dreadfully boring. And then after that, he learned about the secret unit inside of the army that was being started and that would become the green berets. Throw through this story most of the operators in this world they are called operators, not soldiers. They are military trained, so they become what are called tier one operators, green beret and they retire and go over it worked for the agency. So, many of the individuals that work in this world are older and i found that very interesting, and im jumping ahead to the end of the book because i write history, i write chronology so i take in the different wars and transformations of the Paramilitary Army, but when i landed in the present day i found it fascinating, and i want you to think about this particularly when we have a discussion about this in the second half, which is the most coming ive also interviewed soldiers who are working for the military, and they are much younger and so there is the idea that when it comes to morality and what is at stake and why we are doing what we are doing i was constantly confronted with the idea that young soldiers are getting into waheading into warn not knowing what they are in for. The operators at the agency were working for the special Activities Division are veterans of decades and they are the ones who are saying in essence, send me. And they are willing to surprise, killing and vanish. What we are talking about with this the military capacity means third option. Up until after world war ii, the president had two options, there was diplomacy as the first option trying to work things out with our foreign partners or adversaries from a diplomatic standpoint, and the second option is when that doesnt work, war. So the third option is to cia. And that idea is once diplomacy has failed, you rely upon the third option. Its also called the presidency to enhance. Everything that is done by the cia paramilitary is meant to be plausibly denied. It is also called covert action. For this reason, we asked the citizenry learned a lot about the cia mistakes because they become public. And so, one of the extraordinary things for me as a journalist and as an author is piecing together what is on the record. For example, many people in this room may know about guatemala and iran and the bay of pigs and operation, but what you dont know is the obligations that were successful because they were meant to be plausibly denied. I write about those operations in public as i weave together this story of how and why the president s of guerrilla warfare came to be. A fascinating thing happen during vietnam. And that is the pentagon operates under title x and there are rules of engagement for soldiers must adhere to. The cia operates under title 50. Both of these are elements of the National Security code that came out of the creation of the pentagon and the National Security apparatus in 1947. The title 50 and title x are very, very different. And what i learned looking through the archives was not the bay of pigs impacted the president so gracefully, greate was humiliated his first 100 days as president after having one of election on a very specific position that, you know, communism must be defeated in for cuba and vietnam were at the top of his target list. To have that failure at the bay of pigs infuriated president kennedy. And he did something, which in my opinion hasnt really been looked at or reported before. And what he did was he switched the authority of the covert operations from the cia working under title 5 52 Defense Department working under title x. And it got very messy in terms of these covert paramilitary operations that were happening in the very early days of the vietnam long before the war was declared by president johnson i will say do you see that same thing today, and of course i let the readers decide when i try to let the readers decide who comes to their own conclusions about these sweeping issues that affect all of us as citizens to. After the vietnam war, any kind of force was so looked down upon the special forces was gutted, the cia paramilitary was reduced, the Church Committee took the cia almost down, and the idea was no one wants anything to do with guerrilla warfare, paramilitary, it is dark, ugly, it isnt a gentlemans game. And the citizens of the united d states didnt want anything to do with the war, period but it was important in the cia history because you have a whole bunch of operators without work and i write about tha that end up in s moment where they are not needed and there is this wall in the activity until reagan takes office. Im going to interrupt myself for a minute to tell you you often hear the expression the tip of the spear, while the tip of the spear is the ultimate guerrilla warfare capacity that the cia has, and it has existed since 1947. Lots of mythology around it. I explained very clearly through declassified documents and first interviews with sources about how this has evolved over time, but to give you an indication of how specific it is, president eisenhower called his assassination capacity but health Alteration Committee. Ive located documents in the archives that refer to the mission for the Alteration Committee. President kennedy called executive action. Jumping forward to reagan, he called it preemptive neutralization. Bush called it illegal direct action, and obama called it targeted killing. So, going back now to after the vietnam war, you had president reagan developing a capacity for the preemptive neutralization, and this is because we saw the rise of terrorism. What i also found interesting, i interviewed a gentleman named lewis for this book and he was a 19th director of the secret service. Its kind of the flip sid flipse quakes of the executive capacity or neutralization capacity if you will and then as Richard Helms so famously said if you have the capacity to take out someone elses leaders, why wouldnt they take out yours. You begin to understand how serious this. President s reagan develops the neutralization. You have individuals running the show, not the cia in particular as an organization run by individuals as opposed to the pentagon as an organization that functions like a bureaucracy. We explain in this book a very interesting and largely unreported Organization Called the Counter Assault team. What i found fascinating about this largely on known is that starting after president reagan was told by a killed by an assan 1981, the team began to shatter the president 24 7 and they still do. All of those operators are tier one trained so they would go over to the military and like billy wall, he was a green beret in vietnam and went on to work to protect the president and the wall moving forward working with the offensive operations for the cia. The period of time i also found interesting as citizens we tend to think that republican president s act one way and democratic president s act another way, and i found in reporting this book but that was not true. The cia Paramilitary Army worked at the president s behest, so there is no such thing as a rogue cia operation as far as i know they are directed. Thertheres one exception and tt this presidenwas president cline executive action. Whenever they would request that an individual be preemptively neutralize them it would go up the chain of command for the president and president clinton did a good reject that. Why i found this interesting is ones own morality going back to the initial spark that made me want to write this book because my main character was targeting for the cia and was Osama Bin Laden and this was in 1992 and theres a couple different versions that i report in the book. I took the very first surveillance photographs of bin laden and requested this went to the chain of command to clinton who was against preemptive neutralization. It makes you really think about these different consequences that come out of this shadow world of hidden hand operation. In conclusion, sort of as i get to the end of the book, what really sets things off into a completely different direction knowing this history after 9 11, the military capacity of the cia had been reduced dramatically in the clinton era and in the Bush Administration on september 17 there was a famous memorandum, parts of which are now declassified. I spoke to the lawyer that wrote the memorandum, and it gave the cia capacity like it never had before. And this is where we are now. The special Activities Division has transformed from a smaller element of the agency with a lot of people who they themselves called knuckle draggers to now what is being called a special l Activity Center which is an interdisciplinary center, and its bigger than it has ever been. We operate as far as i understand the cia paramilitary capacity operates in 134 countries around the globe. The hallmark of that guerrilla warfare capacity is the ability to work with the indigenous force partners. Its what we did as the as he tn the beginning we did with the oss in france and vietnam all over the globe. So, that is a primary driver working with partners and as i report in the book come into this is where it gets very dark and disturbing is the part is that we have in the current war in iraq and afghanistan are very difficult and troublesome partners. While i expected to see a lot of darkness and complexity in the early years where id really found it was in the latter because i really found a sense from some of these operators that are working multiple tours for the agency this sense that they almost no longer can work with their partners. I get into the details in the book but it has to do with fundamentally different ways of life and drug abuse by for example the afghan partners. This becomes incredibly complex for the cia paramilitary operators who are highly trained. One of the thing everyone i interviewed coming and i interviewed 24 guys for the special Activities Division who are working to prevent war and you know, one of the things they must do is take a polygraph test regularly. They cannot fly and they must maintain a physical capacity where they can do things like halo jump into behind enemy lines of the war theater, pay low being High Altitude low opening, thats the surprise. They must kill and then they must vanish, they must exfiltrate without being caught. The degree of training that they have up against the degree of training and the commitments that our indigenous force partners have is a great paradox and not even is a difficult conundrum. Im going to leave you with this last thought. The first time the source came to me in 2009 and basil thats nice to me this piece of and ice all that nice, it made me ask myself is this uncomfortable, do i think it is right or wrong. What if left me with is a desire to know is it necessary. And for that reason, i traveled with my main source who is throughout the whole narrative to the tune of the last communist countries of the world because this all began during the cold war. The president guerrilla warfare, but Paramilitary Army was created to beat back the russians and defend against communism so we traveled to cuba and the mom and the reason we went to both of those places was in cuba we met with the son of che guevara and i dont know if it is well known, but the cia it was the cia mission so it was the rangers actually killed him, but the officer on the ground, Felix Rodriguez i interviewed for the book and that was 1967, 50 years ago. So, there we were. Sitting in the club with photographs on the wall plotting the downfall of the united states, talking about the war, talking about guerrilla warfare, and it made me one for boss is it right or wrong, but is if necessary. And again i had tha the same feg when we traveled to vietnam to meet with the sun of general who was the commander of the north Vietnamese Army from so many people lost their lives and it was a turning point in American History and in the Paramilitary Army and there was billy and i meeting. We have been specifically designehad been specificallydesm the air that killed the general. They failed and he died a few years ago at the age of 103. We sat there, and then had been assigned to kill billy and his colleagues in the garden of this home owned by the general, and again i ask myself know if this is right or wrong, but is it necessary. So i will leave you with that thought and open up for questions and i look forward to what you have to say. You so much. [applause]. I read the entire book about air branch without even knowing it and without even know what it was called called area 51, the u2 and the oxcart. And i interviewed 75 men from the agency airport pilots, not knowing it was called air branch. So behind all of this is jealously guarded. I really look forward to the person who can write about maritime branch. Under the few operations that are just stunning that took place in the water, on the water and to answer your question, this book deals with ground branch, the guys on the ground. But there are other books to be written and i look forward to reading them. There something in the paper that you are going to be here and was taken back to the fact that were in the ways of court of law system wherefrom charged with a crime i get my day in court, a lawyer, im innocent until proven guilty. These people are outlaws. These people are criminals. They should bring in somebody who they think is the murder or the criminal and charge them. And on the other side in vietnam and cuba, indonesia they will put people like kinzinger on trial for crimes committed in the country. Some looking forward to reading your book but i still maintain that the outlaw are out of anybodys control and you might know about john the whistleblower for the cia spoke to us regionally about venezuela and he said the venezuela idea came up with one person who said we need to invade venezuela and go after the mineral and oil so they went to the department of justice and he signed off on it and now we have this one on im going to interrupt you and answer your question about the letter of the law. What i write in the book is every operation i write about, no matter how shocking is legal in the house sorry missed the beginning of the talk but has to do with the fact that the cia is working under title 50. That gives the cia the authority to do what it does. And while i think about the important, has to do with the real citizens. People often ask, how to get these guys to talk to you. And i work for the eyes and her principal and i talk about that with all my sources, it is wellknown that eisenhowers Farewell Speech he spoke of the militaryindustrial complex and he warned against it. But what is less well known, he also said the way to balance the militaryindustrial complex is an alert and knowledgeable citizen. I really believe the information is what we all need to be good citizens. And thats what ever the books that i write. So when me Annie Jacobsen, learns what i did writing this bo

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