Talk:CIA activities in the United States

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Relationship with US Freemasons

The CIA has often been accused of being associated with the US Freemasons. The article should consider either debunking this conspiracy theory or researching it with sources. ADM (talk) (talk) 12:13, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Operation Mockingbird

The entire section on Operation Mockingbird is problematic. The source used to claim that there was such a program is a pseudo-biography here. This webpage cites non-RS material such as Alex Constantine's books and Deborah Davis's biography of Katharine Graham, Katharine the Great.

In addition, except for the first paragraph, the rest of the section on MB is one long quote from Carl Bernstein's Rolling Stone article The CIA and the Media. Bernstein's article does not once mention an 'Operation Mockingbird' and therefore cannot serve as a source for information on such a program.

Since the article lacks any reliable sources for the existence of Operation Mockingbird, I've deleted the whole section.

This article was split off from the main CIA article many years ago for reasons that are unclear to me and in a very odd way. Most of its content is actually still in the CIA article and in individual topic articles. I would suggest either remerging the article with the main CIA article or doing something to justify its existence as a separate, independent page. Rgr09 (talk)

Section on National Student Association

The section on the National Student Association has been tagged for sources for over 10 years (!). Covert CIA funding of private voluntary organizations has been discussed in multiple places in Wikipedia, no need for a redundant, unsourced, inaccurate one sentence section in the article. Rgr09 (talk) 01:20, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Section on MK-Ultra

The article originally stated that "The circumstances leading up to Olson's fall remain unclear. A grand jury inquiry of Olson's death was approved on April 27, 1996 and on the same day former CIA chief William Colby disappeared and his remains were found in a lake."

The source for this is a 1998 newspaper article in the Daily Mail by Kevin Dowling and Phillip Knightley archived on the Wayback Machine, but the article does not support this claim, stating only that Colby's death occurred "after [Prosecutor Stephen] Saracco won the right to a grand jury hearing."

In fact, even the news article has errors, claiming for instance that Colby "vanished from his country retreat", which "looked as if he had left in a hurry." As the sources in the WP article on Colby make clear, Colby had gone to the country to do a solo canoe trip, and had a heart attack while canoeing on the Wicomico River (not a lake). He did not "vanish," though it took several days to find his body.

Dowling and Knightley are also incorrect on the actions and views of prosecutors. As stated in the Frank Olson article, Saracco and Daniel Bibb were members of the "cold case" unit in the office of the Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. They collected preliminary information but concluded that there was no compelling case to send to a grand jury.

All of these claims on Colby's death are simply more conspiracy mongering, and I've therefore deleted them. Rgr09 (talk) 17:23, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

CIA and UFOs

The article originally including the following sentence and references:

In 1997 the CIA came forward to admit its historical interest in UFOs.

This has nothing to do with the subject of the article. I have removed it.Rgr09 (talk) 13:06, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

References

Blakey on CIA actions in HSCA investigation

Under the 1977 section, the article originally said:

Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey, counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, states that the CIA withheld information from the Warren Commission and the Congressional Committee he represented.

This is out of sequence, since Blakey made the criticisms in 2003. More important, this is irrelevant to CIA activities in the USA. I have therefore removed it. Rgr09 (talk) 13:16, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

References

Revised MKULTRA description

The previous description of MKULTRA was:

Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, is perhaps the most famous of the CIA mind-control programs. Experiments were conducted on CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, prisoners, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public in order to study their reactions. Drugs were administered alone and in combination with other drugs and at varying doses and frequencies. The drugs included LSD, heroin, morphine, temazepam (used under code name MKSEARCH), mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, marijuana, alcohol, and sodium pentothal. In one case, LSD was given to subjects for 77 days straight. The project was later expanded to Canada, focusing on Nazi research and techniques for erasing memories and personalities.

None of this description was present in the Sunday Times article cited. I have deleted this unsourced material and added a description from the 1977 U.S. Senate hearing MKULTRA. Rgr09 (talk) 18:06, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

References

Robertson Panel (more CIA-UFO)

Under the section for 1952, the article originally stated:

The Robertson Panel was a committee commissioned by CIA in 1952 in response to widespread Unidentified Flying Object reports, especially in the Washington D.C. area. The panel was briefed on U.S. military activities and intelligence; hence the report was originally classified Secret. See article on Art Lundahl addressing discussions in 1967.

This has nothing to do with the subject of the article. I have removed it. Rgr09 (talk) 04:46, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:CIA activities in Iraq which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 01:36, 1 August 2021 (UTC)