Covert Program Research Articles

Strictly Confidential Anthropology

Anthropological interest in secrecy and silence – and related aspects such as lying, knowledge, memory, and forgetting – has been long and precarious. Through what may be called personal anthropology, in this article, I describe both private and professional anthropological experiences including family memories, fieldwork sites, and academic practices. By recalling state socialist ideology, censorship, and family secrets, I illustrate how citizens have relied on each other in order to counter state hegemony. I highlight how surveillance in Romania expressly encouraged my informants as well as the secret police to engage in mutual intelligence and observation tactics as evasive tactics. Building on these strategies, I argue that academic life is not immune to secrecy, silence and covert action. I introduce an anthropologist who worked for the Hungarian secret police, and consider how academic life continues to rely on covert programs and an institutionalized hierarchy to promote and maintain its structures and interests.

人間の脳と体に遠隔的・電磁的方法で影響を与えるCIA秘密プログラムの危険性 (An Existence of the Still Hidden CIA Program to Manipulate the Human Brain and Organism with Remote Electromagnetic Means)

The English version of this paper can be found at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3287484. Japanese Abstract:スターゲイトプログラムの開示情報の中に、依然として秘匿されているCIAプロジェクトが存在する証拠がある。それは人間の脳を遠隔的・電磁的に操作する技術開発に関するもので、スターゲイトプログラムとは違い、一般には公開されていない。CIAは1960年初頭のMKULTRAサブプロジェクト119以降、人間の脳を外部から読み取る技術や人間を電磁的に操作する方法に継続的な関心を示していた。その結果として、1970年代前半に実施されたSRIの遠隔的・電磁的感知能力の実験に当初から資金援助していたが、この補助金は数年で停止されている。SRIと米軍はこれらの実験の延長線上として遠隔透視能力の開発を20年以上に亘って続けたが、CIAはその能力開発よりも、人間の遠隔的・電磁的感知能力自体に関心を持っていた。それは彼らの活動領域の差から生み出されており、米軍が遠隔透視能力を通して戦場で敵の居場所を見付けたかったのに対して、CIAは電磁的感知能力自体を尋問や工作に利用したかった。彼らは1970年代中に人間を遠隔的・電磁的に操作する基礎技術の開発に成功したはずであり、その後の社会全体の技術発展と共に、現在では人類全体に脅威を与えるレベルにまで発展している。 English Abstract: There are letters disclosed under the STARGATE declassification, which indicated that the CIA had covert programs to manipulate the brain function interacted with the external electromagnetic stimuli, which is still hidden to the public eyes. The CIA has had an intention to read and activate the human being from the outside and paid attention to the related studies and developments since MKULTRA Subproject 119 in the early 1960s. They naturally supported the earlier experiments on the remote electromagnetic sensing conducted by SRI, Stanford Research Institute, though halting their subsidies within several years. The problem was SRI’s focus on the remote viewing, which was not necessarily the primary goal for the agency that would like to deploy the electromagnetic technologies into their information gathering to interrogate or manipulate their subjects. It is more or less the fact that the brain is synchronized to the external electromagnetic stimuli and the issue was to what extent the intelligence community has developed these methodologies. The CIA already acquired the basic technological foundation to manipulate the human brain electromagnetically in the 1970s, which has progressed to the critical level from then to now, considering the tremendous technological development of the overall society.

An Existence of the Still Hidden CIA Program to Manipulate the Human Brain and Organism With Remote Electromagnetic Means

この論文の日本語版は、:https://ssrn.com/abstract=3308226. There are letters disclosed under the STARGATE declassification, which indicated that the CIA had covert programs to manipulate the brain function interacted with the external electromagnetic stimuli, which is still hidden to the public eyes. The CIA has had an intention to read and activate the human being from the outside and paid attention to the related studies and developments since MKULTRA Subproject 119 in the early 1960s. They naturally supported the earlier experiments on the remote electromagnetic sensing conducted by SRI, Stanford Research Institute, though halting their subsidies within several years. The problem was SRI’s focus on the remote viewing, which was not necessarily the primary goal for the agency that would like to deploy the electromagnetic technologies into their information gathering to interrogate or manipulate their subjects. It is more or less the fact that the brain is synchronized to the external electromagnetic stimuli and the issue was to what extent the intelligence community has developed these methodologies. The CIA already acquired the basic technological foundation to manipulate the human brain electromagnetically in the 1970s, which has progressed to the critical level from then to now, considering the tremendous technological development of the overall society.

Distributive Justice and Treaty Efficiency: Impact of Dual-use Research Restrictions on bwc Implementation

This article evaluates the security value of controls over biotechnology transfers and of new restrictions on the spread of scientific results: to what extent do they improve the implementation of the Biological Weapons Convention (bwc)? Although the questions of justice that have plagued thebwcregime since its creation in 1972 have been analyzed extensively, the effects of current controls over dual-use research and the propagation of scientific results on the implementation of thebwchave not been fully addressed. It is argued that although controls over biotechnology transfers increase security because they delay covert programs by creating integration challenges, controls on the spread of scientific results have no security value. They instead may lead to a decreased implementation of thebwc.

Barriers to Bioweapons: Intangible Obstacles to Proliferation

Although the issue of knowledge diffusion has been at the heart of nonproliferation research and policies, no study in the political science field has thus far systematically identified the mechanisms that allow the acquisition and efficient use of specialized knowledge related to bioweapons. This analytical gap has led to the commonly held belief that bioweapons knowledge is easily transferable. Studies of past weapons programs, including the former U.S. and Soviet bioweapons programs, show that gathering the relevant information and expertise required to produce a weapon is not sufficient to guarantee success. The success of a bioweapons program is dependent on intangible factors, such as work organization, program management, structural organization, and social environment, which can enhance the advancement of a program or create obstacles to progress. When assessed within smaller state and terrorist bioweapons programs, such as those of South Africa and the terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo, these intangible factors produce the same constraining effects as in larger programs. More important, intangible factors have a significant effect on covert programs, because clandestinity imposes greater restrictions on knowledge diffusion. By taking into account these intangible factors, analysts and policymakers can improve their threat assessments and develop more effective nonproliferation and counterproliferation policies.

Doubting the Global War on Terror

Soon after Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the Bush Administration described its new grand strategy: the "Global War on Terror". This article examines the 'two-track' process that US neoconservatives and 'echo chamber' media used, to promote the GWOT grand strategy. It re-examines why many experts and institutions expressed doubt about specific claims the Bush Administration made to support the 2003 Iraq War. Historical counterfactuals suggest that the Bush Administration's Global War on Terror could have evolved very differently . . . or not occurred at all.

Executive secrets: covert action and the presidency

Borrowing the words of former Idaho senator Frank Church, one widespread notion of the Central Intelligence Agency is that it tends to behave like a rogue elephant rampaging out of control, initiating risky covert action programs without the sanction of either Congress or the White House. In Executive Secrets: Covert Action and the Presidency, William J. Daugherty, a seventeen-year veteran operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, addresses these and other perceptions about covert action that have seeped into the public consciousness. Daugherty cites congressional investigations, declassified documents, and his own experiences in covert action policy and oversight to show convincingly that the C.I.A.'s covert programs were conducted specifically at presidential behest from the Agency's founding in 1947. He provides an overview of the nature and proper use of covert action as a tool of presidential statecraft and discusses its role in transforming presidential foreign policy into reality. He concludes by detailing how each president conducted the approval, oversight and review processes for covert action while examining specific instances in which U.S. presidents have expressly directed C. I.A. covert action programs to suit their policy objectives. A former Marine Corps aviator with a combat tour in Vietnam, Daugherty's first tour with the C.I.A. was in Iran, where he was one of fifty-two Americans held hostage for 444 days during the Carter administration. Daugherty combines unique inside perspectives with sober objectivity in judging the true nature and scope of C.I.A. covert actions during the last half century.

Official Policies and Covert Programs: The U.S. State Department, the CIA, and the Tibetan Resistance

The U.S. government's involvement in Tibetan affairs began over a half-century ago with a series of commitments—both overt and covert—to support the Tibetans in their resistance to the Chinese occupation of their country. The motivation for undertaking these commitments and the scorecard on their fulfillment are mixed. When the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency abandoned any further efforts in Tibet in the mid-1970s, the Congress and private organizations took over the sponsorship of the Tibetan cause, helping to generate a worldwide movement. With this support and under the direction of Tibet's charismatic leader, the Dalai Lama, the status of Tibet became an internationally recognized human-rights issue and thereby survived the Cold War in which it was spawned.

The Secret War against Hanoi: Kennedy's and Johnson's Use of Spies, Saboteurs, and Covert Warriors in North Vietnam

From 1964 to 1972, the United States executed an extremely secret campaign of covert operations against North Vietnam. Controlled by the Pentagon's Special Operations Group, under the cover name Studies and Observation Group (SOG), it was the United States' largest and most complex covert operation since World War II. Because it was so highly classified and politically sensitive, once the war was over the story of SOG was buried deep in the vaults of the Pentagon--until Dr. Richard H. Shultz, Jr., one of the world's leading experts on SOG's activities in Southeast Asia, began his impressive investigative research and wide-ranging special interviews. The Secret War Against Hanoi is based on thousands of pages of recently declassified top-secret SOG documents, as well as interviews with sixty officers who ran SOG's covert programs and the senior officials who directed this secret war, including Robert McNamara, Walt Rostow, Richard Helms, William Colby, William Westmoreland, and Victor Krulak. It is the first-ever definitive and comprehensive account of the covert paramilitary and espionage campaign, with many eye-opening disclosures. Dr. Shultz reveals how in 1963, President Kennedy, dissatisfied with the CIA's ineffective guerrilla operations against North Vietnam, turned over operational control of the covert war to the Pentagon and demanded results. Despite Kennedy's strong directive, those results were slow in coming. United States policymakers and the senior military leadership had little interest in or understanding of special operations and resisted any expansion of the secret war. When SOG finally did get started in January 1964, under newly inaugurated President Johnson, it was constantly hobbled by the micro-management of the National Security Council, State Department, and Pentagon leadership. Despite these restraints, SOG conducted its intense secret war for eight years, through the Johnson and Nixon administrations, and managed to execute a range of operations, including the dispatch of numerous spies to North Vietnam and creation of a sophisticated triple-cross deception program: psychological warfare through a fabricated guerrilla movement, manipulation of North Vietnamese POWs and kidnapped citizens, and dirty tricks; commando raids against Hanoi's coast and navy; and operations on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to kill enemy soldiers and destroy supplies. Ultimately, the Pentagon's spies, saboteurs, and secret warriors would produce both spectacular and disastrous results. There are lessons to be learned from Washington's conduct of the secret war against Hanoi that will be valuable and valid for years to come for presidents who engage in covert special operations to meet twenty-first-century threats to vital U.S. interests.