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News > U.S.

‘We Lied, Cheated and Stole’: Pompeo Comes Clean About CIA

  • Mike Pompeo was a former CIA director and now Secretary of State.

    Mike Pompeo was a former CIA director and now Secretary of State. | Photo: Reuters

Published 24 April 2019
Opinion

Covert operations, ousting democratically elected governments, inciting revolts and supporting transnational companies are run of the mill actions for the CIA.

United States Secretary of State and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director (2017 - 2018), Mike Pompeo, admitted to an audience from Texas A&M University on April 15, that the agency especially trains employees to “lie, cheat and steal.” 

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“When I was a cadet, what’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment,” Pompeo boasted as the audience laughed and celebrated the statement. 

It was a rather honest yet disconcerting thing to say, three days after (April 12) a new batch of declassified information from the U.S. government shows the extent of the 1970s ‘Operation Condor,’ in which South American dictators systematically tortured and killed dissidents in the region. 

An estimated 60,000 people were killed by the Latin American states in the clandestine operation, 30,000 in Argentina alone. Another 30,000 were disappeared and 400,000 imprisoned during the Operation. It is now known that the CIA was a guiding hand throughout the whole process, by training and helping military and civilian personnel. 

“Diplomacy and military strength go hand in hand. They are indeed intimately related. Each relies on the other,” Pompeo also admitted during the conference called “Why Diplomacy Matters.”

Covert operations, ousting democratically elected governments, inciting revolts and supporting transnational companies are run of the mill actions for the CIA, all justified as part of the fight against those who question U.S.’ interests. Actions that continue until this day.

In 2018, one of its offshoots, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) channeled over US$23 million to meddle in the internal affairs of key Latin American countries, under the flagship of “human rights” or “democracy,” which represent a real menace for national sovereignty and the continuity of progressive governments in the region and the world. 

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