Friday, July 3, 2009

"If You Go Back To The CIA's Origins … He Explained, 'The Whole OSS Was Really Nothing But Wall Street Bankers …'"


You've probably heard that the CIA is looking to hire laid-off bankers.

This is nothing new.

The long-time former executive director of the CIA - Buzzy Krongard - is a former investment banker.

As Krongard told the Washington Post in March 2001:

If you go back to the CIA's origins during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services, he explained, "the whole OSS was really nothing but Wall Street bankers and lawyers."
The CIA sometimes funds certain groups or political parties. For example, former CIA director William Colby (a lawyer, not a banker) helped to arrange the secret subsidization of political parties in Rome in the 1950's to prevent communist electoral victoriess.

And the CIA has certainly funded various projects (like this one).

And people have made allegations about the CIA funding of the Contras with cocaine sales , involvement in BCCI, and other unsavory deals.

Personally, I don't know much about much about it. But I do know that the CIA has had a continuous connection with bankers from day one.
Print this post
at

1 comment:

  1. AnonymousJuly 6, 2009 at 9:27 AM

    Please read Jim Hougan's "Spooks: The Haunting of America: The Private Use of Secret Agents." It was incredibly prescient for 1978, and disturbing for the eavesdropping capabilities available to government, business, and other elements even back then (and prior).

    ReplyDelete

→ Thank you for contributing to the conversation by commenting. We try to read all of the comments (but don't always have the time).

→ If you write a long comment, please use paragraph breaks. Otherwise, no one will read it. Many people still won't read it, so shorter is usually better (but it's your choice).

→ The following types of comments will be deleted if we happen to see them:

-- Comments that criticize any class of people as a whole, especially when based on an attribute they don't have control over

-- Comments that explicitly call for violence

→ Because we do not read all of the comments, I am not responsible for any unlawful or distasteful comments.