(4) How U.S. Support for Sociopathic Dictators -- BACKFIRED "CIA Personality Studies"
This three part series will explore America’s attempts to build up and rely on sociopaths to protect U.S. strategic interests abroad. This policy assumed that the single-minded, conscienceless vigor such psychopathic dictators displayed in pursuing their own interests, would work for ours as well. But alas, that tactic backfired – big time. It precipitated the World Trade Center bombings, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now America's public embarrassment at having stifled rather than supported the push towards democracy in Egypt and other Arab countries.
(1) How U.S. Support for Sociopathic Dictators BACKFIRED
(2) How U.S. Support for Sociopathic Dictators BACKFIRED "The Root Doctrine"
(3) How U.S. Support for Sociopathic Dictators BACKFIRED "Torture & the Shah"
(4) CIA Personality Studies In the late 1950s, the CIA began producing secret personality reports on world leaders.
According to Dominique Lapierre in A Thousand Suns, these profiles of men like Castro, Nasser, de Gaulle, Khruschev, Brezhnev, Mao Tse-Tung, the Shah of Iran were supposed to “shed light on the most intimate details of the personality and character of a number of international political leaders in order to anticipate their reactions in event of a crisis or conflict.” Lapierre added:
“Specialists had traveled all over the world to verify a detail or explore a character facet. Did so-and-so masturbate? Did he drink? Did he like pepper on his food? Did he go to church? How did he react in periods of stress? Was he suffering from an Oedipus complex? Did he like boys? Girls? Both? What were his sexual fantasies? How big was his penis? Did he have sadistic or masochistic tendencies? A CIA agent had even gone into Cuba clandestinely to question a prostitute with whom Castro had relations when he was a student.”[7]
No matter how much the U.S. intelligence agency invested in the acquisition of such information, the results were a waste of time and money. Studies detailing personality aberrations of America’s allies remained locked away in the CIA’s information vaults, while those of its enemies, circulated more freely. Thus the American public was spared details of the shah’s predilection for snuff films, produced by professional cameramen employed by SAVAK. Likewise, stories of masquerade balls given by the Shah’s sister, in which the monarch, disguised in a dog costume, proceeded to bite the guests on the ankles and buttocks were certain never to reach Americans’ delicate ears. Reza Baraheni, an Iranian novelist and poet, who was nearly tortured to death by SAVAK, described wrangling an invitation to a royal party out of curiosity, and regretting it ever since:
“. . . when the animals are already at each other’s crotches. . . Then they move out into the field around the building. The smell from the newly mown grass reaches their nostrils. Soon the fresh grass will be trampled under their naked bodies. Beasts copulating in the open. I walk to the car and sit down with the mask [from the masquerade ball] on my face.”[8]
Jesse Leaf, the chief CIA analyst for Iran from 1968 to 1973, described in a 1979 interview with Seymour Hersh of the New York Times that reports of the Shah’s sadism and megalomania were suppressed even within the intelligence agency “as being contrary to official U.S. policy.”
TO BE CONTINUED. . .
(5) How U.S. Support for Sociopathic Dictators BACKFIRED “Blowback Iran”
(1) How U.S. Support for Sociopathic Dictators BACKFIRED
(2) How U.S. Support for Sociopathic Dictators BACKFIRED "The Root Doctrine"
(3) How U.S. Support for Sociopathic Dictators BACKFIRED "Torture & the Shah"
(4) CIA Personality Studies In the late 1950s, the CIA began producing secret personality reports on world leaders.
According to Dominique Lapierre in A Thousand Suns, these profiles of men like Castro, Nasser, de Gaulle, Khruschev, Brezhnev, Mao Tse-Tung, the Shah of Iran were supposed to “shed light on the most intimate details of the personality and character of a number of international political leaders in order to anticipate their reactions in event of a crisis or conflict.” Lapierre added:
“Specialists had traveled all over the world to verify a detail or explore a character facet. Did so-and-so masturbate? Did he drink? Did he like pepper on his food? Did he go to church? How did he react in periods of stress? Was he suffering from an Oedipus complex? Did he like boys? Girls? Both? What were his sexual fantasies? How big was his penis? Did he have sadistic or masochistic tendencies? A CIA agent had even gone into Cuba clandestinely to question a prostitute with whom Castro had relations when he was a student.”[7]
No matter how much the U.S. intelligence agency invested in the acquisition of such information, the results were a waste of time and money. Studies detailing personality aberrations of America’s allies remained locked away in the CIA’s information vaults, while those of its enemies, circulated more freely. Thus the American public was spared details of the shah’s predilection for snuff films, produced by professional cameramen employed by SAVAK. Likewise, stories of masquerade balls given by the Shah’s sister, in which the monarch, disguised in a dog costume, proceeded to bite the guests on the ankles and buttocks were certain never to reach Americans’ delicate ears. Reza Baraheni, an Iranian novelist and poet, who was nearly tortured to death by SAVAK, described wrangling an invitation to a royal party out of curiosity, and regretting it ever since:
“. . . when the animals are already at each other’s crotches. . . Then they move out into the field around the building. The smell from the newly mown grass reaches their nostrils. Soon the fresh grass will be trampled under their naked bodies. Beasts copulating in the open. I walk to the car and sit down with the mask [from the masquerade ball] on my face.”[8]
Jesse Leaf, the chief CIA analyst for Iran from 1968 to 1973, described in a 1979 interview with Seymour Hersh of the New York Times that reports of the Shah’s sadism and megalomania were suppressed even within the intelligence agency “as being contrary to official U.S. policy.”
TO BE CONTINUED. . .
(5) How U.S. Support for Sociopathic Dictators BACKFIRED “Blowback Iran”
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