Posted by Greanville at July 28th, 2007

BY CHALMERS JOHNSON \ Tomdispatch.com
Posted on July 28, 2007, Printed on July 28, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/58164/

Late Chilean President Salvador Allende (r) and CIA/Pentagon man in Santiago, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, later dictator of Chile for 17 years with ample Washington support. Just one of numerous crimes in the agency’s sordid history in defense of capitalism, not freedom.

This essay is a review of Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner (Doubleday, 702 pp., $27.95).

The American people may not know it but they have some severe problems with one of their official governmental entities, the Central Intelligence Agency. Because of the almost total secrecy surrounding its activities and the lack of cost accounting on how it spends the money covertly appropriated for it within the defense budget, it is impossible for citizens to know what the CIA’s approximately 17,000 employees do with, or for, their share of the yearly $44 billion-$48 billion or more spent on “intelligence.” This inability to account for anything at the CIA is, however, only one problem with the Agency and hardly the most serious one either. (more…)