The news sources used here are chosen conservatively.

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The news sources used here are chosen conservatively.

Nothing in the choice of news sources given in this book, or in the use of those sources, is intended to be controversial. Most of the sources are the most respected news agencies.

The information in the sources is used only in a generally accepted manner. For example, some news sources say that the CIA chose the Taliban as the present government of Afghanistan. Others say that the choice was made by the CIA and the ISI, a secret government agency of Pakistan. For an example of the general acceptance of this idea, see the August 31, 2000 ABC News article, Ghosts of the Past [abcnews.go.com]. While discussing something else, this article talks about a partnership between the CIA and the ISI:

... Abu Sayyaf had also established a "university", north of Peshawar, Pakistan, to train terrorists in the methods taught by the CIA and ISI.

The ABC News article calls the ISI "the CIA's powerful Pakistani partner".

For the purpose of illustrating problems caused by secret U.S. government agencies, it does not matter whether the CIA accomplished something alone, or had help from a secret government agency of another country. So, the discussion of the CIA in Afghanistan in this article is not controversial.

Another example about the use of sources may be helpful. The Hinchey Report [state.gov], an official U.S. government document, is mentioned later in this book. The report says that there is no evidence that the CIA killed the democratically elected leader of Chile, President Salvador Allende. However, the report implies that CIA encouragement influenced the people who did kill President Allende. The report says that the CIA supported the dictator General Augusto Pinochet in becoming president of Chile, and that General Pinochet became known for his human rights abuses. Note that the Hinchey Report is from a U.S. government web site.

The Hinchey Report is not used in a controversial way in this book, because it is not important to the reasoning here if the CIA killed a leader of another country, or only helped. What matters is that the Hinchey Report supports the idea developed in this book that secret government agencies corrupt democracy, especially if those who work for the agencies are allowed to break the law.

Readers who do not live in the U.S. may want to know that ABC, CBS, and NBC are the largest commercial TV networks in the United States.

The commercial TV networks in the U.S. stay away from controversy because they are money-making businesses that want to maximize their profits. They know that advertisers care only about the success of their advertising. Advertisers would not choose networks that show things some people don't like. Advertisers are afraid that prospective customers may feel negative about a product if it becomes associated with news content the customers dislike.

So, the commercial TV networks stay very close to generally accepted information and generally accepted interpretations.

If you don't live in the U.S., it may seem surprising that references to the CIA training terrorists are received without controversy or disagreement. Phrases like that quoted above from the ABC News article "train terrorists in the methods taught by the CIA" provoke little or no negative comment. After 54 years of constant repetition in news about secret agencies, it has somehow been established in the U.S. that, for some people in the U.S. government, laws and democracy don't apply.

It would certainly be logical to assume that people in the U.S. would begin to make connections. It is common in the U.S. that people on TV and in the printed news have concluded that the reason the destruction of the World Trade Center was successful was that the terrorists received very careful training of the type that could only be designed by a well-funded organization of educated people.

What is surprising is that apparently no one in a leadership position has concluded that the designer of the terrorist training could be the CIA.

Note that the suggestion that the training for terrorism might have been designed by the CIA is not equivalent to saying that the CIA might have been behind the terrorism. The quote above from the article Ghosts of the Past [abcnews.go.com] says that a man named Abu Sayyaf started a school to train people in methods originally learned from the CIA.

PBS is the Public Broadcasting System, the highly respected non-commercial U.S. TV network. BBC News, in England, is possibly the most respected news source in the world. CNN is Cable News Network, a worldwide news agency. The Atlantic Monthly is a respected general-interest magazine published in the United States. MSNBC is a joint effort by Microsoft and NBC.

Other sources used in this book are not well known. However, the author of this book began reading about the secret agencies and about global issues many years ago. The sources presented here convey the generally accepted understanding of the many TV programs he has seen, and the many books and articles he has read. Readers may verify this understanding by independent searches for information on the Internet and in libraries.

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