THE HISTORY OF THE CIA: The Real Cold War and the Creation of CIA [pt. 4]

what if I told you that the history of the Cold War we are taught in school is inherently dishonest beneath the surface of the decades long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was a drawn out hot war between the western capitalist elite class and the poor peasant masses of the post colonial world as a Second World War came to an end millions of former colonial subjects fought for their right to autonomy prosperity and independence from their previous imperial overlords this clash between the landless masses of the global south and the bourgeois

elites in Washington DC, New York, London and Paris was fought sometimes overtly but often in the shadows throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the present day while the USSR in the United States pointed increasingly large nuclear weapons at each other and shot rockets into space a different, yet intrinsically linked war for the hearts and minds of the colonial world was at play however the United States and its western allies had a secret weapon in this fight that they would continue to improve and hone throughout the struggle that being the Central Intelligence

Agency folks, welcome to the Cold War and welcome back to the history of the CIA if this is your first time joining us on this series I want to welcome you I make all my videos as standalone products as a new viewer, I recommend you watch this part first especially as we are entering a new chapter of our series if you enjoy the video and how I present information the previous parts will always be there and will hopefully be equally as enjoyable today we are starting a new chapter in our story with the creation of

the Central Intelligence Agency in the previous three parts we covered the history of the wartime predecessor to the CIA the office of Strategic Services their collaboration with Nazis in Europe organized crime in China and Harlem and the beginning of Operation Gladio the future plans for a shadow anti communist army in Western Europe as always in every video I cite all my sources when a number pops up at the top of the screen like this you can find a matching bibliographic citation in the description I have a lot to cover today as we look at the

global cultural environment that LED to the birth of the CIA and how the Central Intelligence Agency was finally created with little regard for its troubling future let's begin I will do my level best to stand up for freedom and democracy around the world by keeping the United States of America strong and by keeping our eyes wide open as we welcome change in the world by keeping our eyes wide open since the majority of our series will be taking place during the Cold War the years roughly between 1947 and 1991 I want to use today's video

to outline some fundamental dynamics of the Cold War and cover a few misconceptions about this often misunderstood and misrepresented period at least where I am from we are taught in high school and in most establishment documentary sources that the Cold War was essentially an era of long troubled peace between the two global superpowers the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union very little attention is given to the constant state of active conflict throughout the rest of the world this series will take a very different approach from this traditional narrative by looking through the lens

of the CIA's activities from the 1940s to the 1990s a different picture emerges this period of relative peace between great powers becomes an era of innumerable bloodshed and struggle between the western capitalists and the emerging countries of the developing world I believe that learning the history of the Cold War through this viewpoint helped me better understand the world we live in today I hope that this will do the same for you as well at the end of the Second World War the globe could be broadly divided into three major camps the first camp or the

First World as it was known at the time was made up of the capitalist Western European countries and their settler colonial states in North America specifically, Canada and the United States by the 1950s, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea would all join this arrangement as well this grouping of states had gotten exceedingly rich through global colonialism over the previous four centuries extracting the wealth from their global empires be it minerals, cash crops such as tea and tobacco or as discussed in the last part opium, as well as lumber, rubber slaves, and most recently, oil these commodities

were then shipped to the colonial homelands where the industrial capabilities to transform these resources were established this practice created a clear division between the poor exploited colonial residents that work to extract raw materials almost solely to the benefit of their colonial rulers then, the slightly less poor and more comfortable western working class that work to transform the colonial resources into consumer goods and finally, the western capitalist elite the business owners, lawyers, stock traders, shipping magnets and power brokers that owned the productive capabilities and profited massively from this whole system as we've made clear in past

episodes most of the early CIA men were from this upper crust of the First World throughout the CIA's history its directors and agents would continue to be pulled from Wall Street elite law firms, and multinational corporations that benefited massively from the open door system left behind by global colonialism take for example Allen Dulles who worked at his brother John Foster Dulles's elite Wall Street law firm Sullivan & Cromwell Sullivan & Cromwell represented such clients as United Fruit and the Anglo Iranian Oil Company unsurprisingly these conflicts of interest would manifest themselves in covert operations and illegal

meddling abroad at the behest of these massive companies the CIA would be lobbied by United Fruit to overthrow the left wing government of Guatemalan President Yacobo Arbens in 1954 Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA under Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state in the same administration worked to overthrow the democratically elected government of Arbenz and replaced him with a brutal western friendly dictator this was one year after the CIA toppled the democratically elected government of Muhammad Mozadek in Iran at the request of the British government and Anglo Iranian Oil Company once again,

United Fruit and Anglo Iranian were both Sullivan & Cromwell clients the worlds of the western elite and the CIA were for the most of its history intrinsically linked with both parties pulling from each other's ranks George H W Bush, for example was the president of a global oil company called Zapata Oil among other business ties before he became director of CIA in the 1970s William Casey, director of CIA under Reagan was a partner at the elite corporate law firm Hall Casey Dickler and Howley, before his tenure this is but a very short list of the

deep ties between the CIA and the American elite business class the reason I put so much emphasis on this point is because this interplay between American capital and the Central Intelligence Agency let to countless illegal and undemocratic operations abroad largely in the developing world but also in Europe and even, as alleged by some, domestically in the United States throughout this series I will continue to point out the conflicts of interest and the business dealings of relevant CIA figures to continue to paint this picture of the true motives of America's spy agency The Second World on

the other hand in 1945 consisted of the Soviet Union and the new Eastern Bloc states that occupied in Eastern Europe following the fall of Nazi Germany as previously mentioned traditional histories of the Cold War focus almost entirely on the cold conflict between the USSR and NATO through nuclear posturing proxy wars and moments of diplomacy for the purposes of this series and as I will explain in depth throughout this part the competition between the first and Second World will not feature very prominently in this series at least not in the traditional sense the real point of

interest for the burgeoning CIA was the Third World the Third World was essentially every country that was still under colonial rule or had previously been under western colonial rule at the war's end this represented nearly two thirds of the globe's population in 1945 throughout the Cold War the colonized world would fight a bitter struggle against their former colonial overlords for autonomy and the right to choose their own destiny the right to control their natural resources and the choice on how to organise their society in 1945 however most of the Third World remained under direct European

or American control India, parts of the Middle East, and large swaths of Africa remained under the British Indochina, Syria and much of the rest of Africa was still French Indonesia remained in the control of the Dutch and the Philippines remained under American control this would not be a sustainable system however as colonial resentment, nationalism and Marxism spread throughout the global south furthermore, the Soviet Union and later Mao's China and Castro's Cuba were vocal supporters of the decolonization of the west's former colonies giving moral and at times material support to these causes these tensions between former

colonial overlords and the exploited peasantry of the Third World is where the Cold War became a hot war and where the CIA would be used as a tool of neo colonial subjugation and western capital during this period of colonial unease the rise of global socialism was the western elite class's worst nightmare Marxist rhetoric of class warfare and redistribution of wealth left serious anxiety with the rapacious global corporations that had been ruthlessly exploiting the postcolonial states for the past century the idea of forgoing these insane profits was untenable to the American, British and French ruling elites

Marxism was also a natural fit in the decolonized states as the people living under this arrangement were some of the most exploited people on the planet soon after the end of the Second World War, in 1949 Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army in China inspired countless colonial peasants across the globe as he armed farmers and laborers against the western backed nationalists of Shangkai Shek this peasant revolution rang alarm bells in the halls of power across the west as it made it clear how effective grassroots insurgencies could be at toppling unpopular western backed governments it is important

to note here a fact that is often overlooked in today's conversations about the Cold War communism as a global force was an idea that needed to be actively fought and destroyed by the western elite class as it posed an existential threat to their existence inherent in Marxism is the redistribution of wealth and most scary to the western capitalists, was land reform wherein the new nationalist or Marxist government seized all foreign owned land and redistributed to the people within that society essentially cutting off the western middleman this was a devastating prospect for the western oil firms

mining firms and agricultural corporations, such as United Fruit which ran their Central American and Caribbean plantations like feudal kingdoms communism was untenable for these corporations that had deep political power within the institutions of the west another ideology that was rising across the world, was nationalism contrary to popular depictions of the Cold War not all Third World revolutionary leaders were Marxists in the early Cold War actually quite the opposite these states, these national states were prominent throughout the Cold War embracing a third way outside of the communist-capitalist paradigm that was laid out by the superpowers these

states decided to work both sides and try to create their own destiny in the 1960s countries such as Egypt, Indonesia, India and the Democratic Republic of the Congo would form the Non Aligned Movement an anti colonial movement of states that work to maintain autonomy and remain neutral in the growing Cold War this however, was still untenable to the CIA and their elite benefactors as nationalists believed equally in the dreaded land reform that we mentioned earlier therefore a cycle began to form that would repeat again and again across the globe as we'll see in the series

where nationalist leaders will be pushed by the CIA to embrace Marxism due to harsh and often violent opposition from the west these states will be forced to gain support from communist states such as the Soviet Union and China to complete their revolution so in turn most of the CIA's activities throughout the Cold War were not directly aimed at the Soviet Union or undermining the activities of Communist China they were aimed at manipulating global circumstances to ensure that western capital remained in firm control of the Global South's wealth this is a bit of a spoiler to

the end of the Cold War here but they largely succeeded in this goal as you will see throughout this series the main battlefields of the Cold War were not Berlin or Moscow they were in the global south and this would be a dirty war full of trickery, crime and injustice so with all that laid out let's discuss the creation of the CIA and the passing of one of the most significant pieces of legislation in American history, the National Security Act of 1947 after Truman ordered the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in

August 1945, Japan agreed to unconditional surrender and the world's six year long nightmare was over only two weeks after the wars end President Harry Truman ordered the OSS the USS wartime spy agency to largely disband, leaving only a few agents in key European locations Dulles, Donovan, Angleton and all the other OSS boys went back to their now seemingly boring desk jobs in the upper crust of American society Colonel William Donovan's days as the leader of American intelligence were over and this mostly marks his departure from our series although, as we will see Donovan remained intimately

connected to the future CIA through his help in creating shell companies to help funnel illegal funds to Gladio forces across Europe as I mentioned in previous parts CIA agents rarely retire from their intelligence roles they simply shift into other useful business for Wild Bill, this was the case but for now, we say goodbye to this character his influence in helping save Nazis from Nuremberg will be remembered between the dissolution of the OSS in 1945 and the creation of the CIA in 1947 there was a transition period President Truman was very reluctant to create a peace

time intelligence agency due in part to his Liberal leanings Truman feared that creating an operating agency that had unlimited power to conduct illegal operations across the globe was potentially dangerous to American and global democracy however pressure for the creation of a new spy agency came to him from all ends of the security state firstly the FBI proposed their bid to undertake the new spying functions of the US government abroad under their authoritarian director J Edgar Hoover the FBI had formed a strong domestic intelligence network in the United States spying on leftists and subverting political action

on American soil allegedly, Hoover forever cunning actively sabotage the creation of a civilian intelligence agency by doctoring a report that was delivered to Harry Truman outlining the OSS activities during the war as largely ineffective of course he wasn't wrong but he was clearly just trying to persuade the president to give him ultimate control of the agency so this isn't exactly a noble move on his part J Edgar Hoover will continue to have a mixed relationship with the future CIA as we will explore in the next parts when we uncover the shadowy blackmail network that tied

both agencies together but that's for another day The Joint Chiefs of staff at the Pentagon also argued that they should become the sole proprietor of American intelligence as they already had an international foothold and were already conducting global espionage under their military intelligence branch of the Pentagon an organization that will continue to rub shoulders of the CIA throughout its history ultimately the former OSS men won this arms race for the future of American intelligence after several meetings with former OSS agents on January 24th, 1946 Truman reluctantly created the Central Intelligence Group under the War Department

a very short lived agency with minor authority to conduct international activities apparently Truman created the CIG to simply provide him with a daily intelligence brief little did he know that he had opened the door for the development of the future CIA and all its ensuing operations The Central Intelligence Group attempted to leverage its limited powers to act against global communism but largely failed to make any real impact their first operation took place in Romania where they attempted to mobilize an irrelevant right wing party known as the National Peasant Party to resist the Soviet Union and

create a western aligned state in Romania the OSS had created a small network of anti communist allies in Romania during the war due to the efforts of Wild Bill Donovan and another important figure of the early CIA, Frank Wisner wizner or just Wiz for short was the charming son of a rich Mississippi landowner in the Jim Crow South he came from an incredibly privileged background as did many of his other colleagues but he allegedly didn't even dress himself as a child instead he would just lay on the bed and let a servant dress him for

him Wisner attended a prestigious private school and went to the university of Virginia where he was a part of the mysterious secret society of seven this society remains so secret the names of its members are only revealed upon their death secret societies will play a crucial role in future CIA operations as shadowy forums for backroom deals and liaisons between organized crime and legitimate figures of the security state Wiz graduated from college with a law degree and like so many other future CIA agents joined a white collared law firm on Wall Street Wisner was the OSS

station chief in Romania during the war where he helped organize a small community of German fascists into an anti Communist stay behind force to fight the future Soviet invasion Wizner's stay behind organization in Romania foreshadowed the future Operation Gladio that would place fascist paramilitary cells across Western Europe to fight communists despite his best efforts to combat Romanian communists wizarders networks were completely wasted by the Central Intelligence Group as once they were activated in Soviet occupied territory they were quickly rounded up by Russian intelligence agents and sent to the gulags to add to the failure the

CIGS misstep LED to a quicker official integration of Romania into the Soviet Union by Stalin fearing more subversive activity in the territory The Central Intelligence Group did provide one important lesson to the future CIA there existed a massive gap in intelligence experience and capabilities between the Americans and the Soviets at this time especially given Stalins repressive and omnipresent reach throughout the USSR The Soviet Union had been running their secret agency Cheka the predecessor of the KGB since 1917 and had become masters at counter intelligence comparatively to the relatively new American intelligence apparatus that had only

been in effect since 1941 throughout the Cold War American covert operations behind the Iron Curtain would be mostly futile which LED the agency to fighting the advance of communism on other fronts around the world instead under the CIGS second director Air Marshal Hoyt Vandenberg the agency would be reformed into the CIA of today but not without the help of the venerable Allen Dulles while the CIG failed to subvert the Soviet Union in Europe our old pal Allen Dulles was working hard at his former law firm Sullivan & Cromwell on Wall Street although on paper Allen

Dulles was working as a lawyer during this period he did continue to liais with his former OSS colleagues to plot the course of the future CIA he and Wild Bill Donovan created a work plan for the future agency in the years of 1946 and 1947 he was also elected as the president of the council of Foreign Relations in 1945 a powerful think tank of former army men, business leaders and politicians that work to preserve American supremacy across the globe Dulles did not retire from spy craft after the war he was simply on a hiatus these

efforts to remain intimately connected to the post war security state paid off massively, when in 1947 Dulles was called forward by the Senate Armed Services Committee to lay out the architecture of the future CIA the outline he devised was largely based on Wild Bill Donovan's dreams a highly funded top secret unaccountable agency that could operate globally without any limitations the report was presented to Truman in 1947 and after years of constant lobbying by the FBI the Pentagon and former OSS agents he finally agreed to the proposal coincidentally or maybe not so coincidentally 1947 was also

the year that Truman declared his famous Truman Doctrine where he officially positioned the United States as an overt enemy of communism across the globe he stated to Congress in March 1947 while requesting military aid to anti communist forces in Greece quote I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure and with the utterance of these words the Cold War had begun Truman's words about freedom and fighting for the oppressed sounded really nice on the surface but as

we will see in the next part of the series these words would manifest themselves immediately in the support of fascist paramilitaries and a deeply unpopular monarchist government in post war Greece Truman could not simply create the Central Intelligence Agency out of thin air though, he needed congressional approval so in June 1947 a congressional committee was convened and Allen Dulles was brought into DC to present the proposal at this point with the rise of the Red Scare and the encroachment of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe the US government was looking for any way to subvert

the spread of socialism across the globe so in 1947 Truman signed the grotesque National Security Act which I consider to be up there with the Patriot Act as one of the most devastating pieces of legislation for American civil liberties The National Security Act of 1947, created firstly the National Security Council a new direct line between the White House and the Joint Chiefs of staff essentially further blurring the lines between the political arena and the military but also adding an extra layer of fog between military decision making furthermore, it also created the secretary of defence position

which unified all military branches under one civilian leader the act also created the US Air Force which had previously been under the army with good old General Vandenburg the leader of the Central Intelligence Group as its new leader and finally, the National Security Act included the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency an independent civilian intelligence agency with an operating budget a staff and a global reach and just like that, with the signing of one act President Truman created one of the most influential and damaging organizations in the modern world the CIA would be able to

conduct illegal regime change operations political assassinations, coups and all sorts of other immoral acts due to 11 words in the National Security Act nowhere does the OC prescribe the outright authority to conduct a ny of these operations but it does include 11 innocuous words that would define the CIA's mandate until the present day the act firstly allows the CIA to correlate evaluate and disseminate intelligence which is all very standard intelligence work but it's what comes next that is very problematic on top of those functions the National Security Act allows the CIA to perform quote other

functions and duties related to intelligence affecting national security these 11 words that do not define anything in particular would form the legal basis for all the activities we will be covering in this series all the illegal coups, assassinations drug smuggling, blackmail and extortion would be covered by this vague and unassuming passage and all this illegal activity started in Greece in 1947 where a brutal civil war was unfolding between communists and monarchists and this is where the CIA operated for the first time and we will cover this in the next part of this series and that's

all I've got for today folks so thank you so much for watching it the full way through if you made it this far and you enjoyed the content please give me a thumbs up leave any thought you have in the comments below I try to read every comment and respond in the best way I can so thank you so much as always you know subscribing goes a long way as well keeps you notified when new videos comes out and I try to upload I've been uploading every two weeks and I think that's been a pretty

good schedule for me so far as I previously mentioned we're gonna be covering the Greek civil war which is the first CIA operation that's officially on the books and we might also cover a bit more Gladio stuff I know I told you guys that I would cover some Vatican stuff in this part I just really didn't have the the time for it in this video I try not to exceed 30 minutes and that's really a big topic so if we have time next week with Greece I'll try to cover all the other sort of early

gladiovatic and stuff I promise um but I can't promise anything so we'll see um that being said thank you so much for watching this full way through and as always you know, this is the history of the CIA and remember to always keep your eyes wide open take care