An Open Letter to the Good Guys in the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc

...you might want to actually think a little bit, too.

What? Oh, of course, you're "just doing your jobs" and "following orders" right? Well, if any of you is like a man named John Stockwell at all, there may be hope for all of us. Stockwell is like you. He trusted in the ideals of this country and was misled, and had to resign from his career based on his increasing awareness of the actual record of our nation's sustained criminality, especially in foreign affairs.

John Stockwell, who received the Medal of Merit (the c.i.a's highest award, apparently) "did 13 years in the CIA altogether. I sat on a subcommittee of the NSC, so I was like a chief of staff, with the GS-18s (like 3-star generals)
Henry Kissinger, Bill Colby (the CIA director), the GS-18s and the CIA, making the important decisions and my job was to put it all together and make it happen and run it"...

Stockwell is a graduate of West Point. Basically he joined the military and then the c.i.a. believing in this country and its stated ideals. Over time, and first-hand knowledge, he quit and decided to go public with his understanding. Here are some quotes from the link below:

"I testified for days before the Congress, giving them chapter and verse, date and detail, proving specific lies..."

"I'm going to try to explain to you the other side of terrorism..."

"Everything I'm going to talk to you about is represented, one way or another, already in the public records. You can dig it all out for yourselves, without coming to hear me if you so chose. Books, based on information gotten out of the CIA under the freedom of information act, testimony
before the Congress, hearings before the Senate Church committee, research by scholars, witness of people throughout the world who have been to these target areas that we'll be talking about. I want to emphasize that my own background is profoundly conservative. We come from South
Texas, East Texas....

"I was conditioned by my training, my marine corps training, and my background, to believe in everything they were saying about the cold war, and I took the job with great enthusiasm (in the CIA) to join the best and the brightest of the CIA, of our foreign service, to go out into the world, to join the struggle, to project American values and save the world for our brand of democracy. And I believed this. I went out and
worked hard...."

(...)
"I testified to the Congress and then I began my education in earnest, after having been taught to fight communists all my life. I went to see what
communists were all about. I went to Cuba to see if they do in fact eat babies for breakfast. And I found they don't. I went to Budapest, a country
that even national geographic admits is working nicely. I went to Jamaica to talk to Michael Manley about his theories of social democracy.

"I went to Grenada and established a dialogue with Maurice Bishop and Bernard Cord and Phyllis Cord, to see - these were all educated people, and experienced people - and they had a theory, they had something they wanted to do, they had rationales and explanations - and I went repeatedly to hear them. And then of course I saw the U.S., the CIA mounting a covert action against them, I saw us orchestrating our plan to invade the country. 19 days before he was killed, I was in Grenada talking to Maurice Bishop about these things, these indicators, the statements in the press by Ronald Reagan, and he and I were both acknowledging that it was almost certain that the U.S. would invade Grenada in the near
future.

"I read as many books as I could find on the subject - book after book after book. I've got several hundred books on the shelf over my desk on the subject of U.S. national security interests. And by the way, I urge you to read. In television you get capsules of news that someone else puts together what they want you to hear about the news. In newspapers you get what the editors select to put in the newspaper. If you want to know about the world and understand, to educate yourself, you have to get out and dig, dig up books and articles for yourself. Read, and find out for yourselves. As you'll see, the issues are very, very important."
(...)
"There's a lesson in all of this. And the lesson is that it isn't only Gestapo maniacs, or KGB maniacs, that do inhuman things to other people, it's people that do inhuman things to other people. And we are responsible for doing these things, on a massive basis, to people of the world today.
And we do it in a way that gives us this plausible denial to our own consciences; we create a CIA, a secret police, we give them a vast budget, and we let them go and run these programs in our name, and we pretend like we don't know it's going on, although the information is there for us to
know; and we pretend like it's ok because we're fighting some vague communist threat. And we're just as responsible for these 1 to 3 million people we've slaughtered and for all the people we've tortured and made miserable, as the Gestapo was the people that they've slaughtered and killed. Genocide is genocide!"

Skeptical? Good.

"I urge you not to take my word for anything. I'm going to stand here and tell you and give you examples of how our leaders lie. Obviously I could be lying. The only way you can figure it out for yourself is to educate yourselves. The French have a saying, `them that don't do politics will be done'. If you don't fill your mind eagerly with the truth, dig it out from the records, go and see for yourself, then your mind remains blank and your adrenaline pumps, and you can be mobilized and excited to do things that are not in your interest to do...."

That help? This country surely needs more in positions of power whom can allow themselves to scrutinize these issues.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Stockwell/StockwellCIA87_1.html