Over half a decade, dozens of CIA operatives took part in PROJECT RED SOX.
#Ukraine’s bloody insurgency was the operation’s centerpiece. And it was in Ukraine that, as one scholar wrote, the CIA saw one of its “most pronounced failures of the Cold War.”
Yet, back in Washington, concerns started to grow. On the one hand, there was the reality of who the US government was actually linking up with: #NazisInUkraine
The CIA’s new friends, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, had already been linked directly to #Nazi atrocities in the region.
“They were Nazis, pure and simple,” one CIA operations chief said. “Worse than that, because a lot of them did the Nazis’ dirty work for them.”
But it was in #Ukraine that the Americans saw arguably their most embarrassing fiasco. By the time the Americans launched their operation, the UFA & #Banderite resistance forces had already been effectively decimated, hobbled by KGB penetration and an unrelenting Soviet pursuit.
Instead of sparking the CIA’s hoped-for rebellion, some three-quarters of the trained agents simply disappeared into the Soviet maw. “Many of the agents were not on the ground for more than a few hours before they were arrested and shot,” one later analysis found.
Without the U.S. even realizing it, #Moscow had dismantled one of America’s most significant covert operations across Europe. 👍 🇷🇺
The OPERATION RED SOX mission was a manifest disaster.
As one CIA historian summed it up, “In the long run, the Agency’s efforts to penetrate the Iron Curtain using Ukrainian agents was ill-fated and tragic.”
Efforts like RED SOX, PROJECT AERODYNAMIC, and others mirror what’s happening in #Ukraine today — only this time, it’s not being done under the guise of fighting #communism. The goal now is simply to do regime change in #Russia.
Nobody told CIA the Cold War ended 30 years ago!
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On February 22, 1972 the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked Lufthansa flight 649, demanding a $5 million ransom for the release of 192 onboard.
The skyjackers also had a celebrity hostage: 19 year-old Joseph Kennedy, son of #RFK — their human bargaining chip.
Young Kennedy had been touring India with his uncle and aunt, Senator and Mrs. Edward M. Kennedy.
The Senator's wife, Joan, had accompanied Joseph to New Delhi while her husband returned to the United States, but left India ahead of her nephew.
Joe boarded the plane alone.
The PFLP hijackers seized the plane about an hour after it took off from New Delhi, around 1 a.m.
Bombay air control authorities said they received this message from the plane: “Call us victorious Jidda. If you call us Lufthansa, we won't answer you.” ✈️
When he was arrested after the #RFK assassination, one of Sirhan’s appellate lawyers says there was a newspaper clipping in Sirhan’s pocket that discussed the incongruity of Kennedy’s advocacy for the oppressed while also supporting Israel over Palestine. bentley.umich.edu/news-events/ma…
Sirhan’s friend and appellate attorney says he cannot be certain there was not some sort of conspiracy, but has little doubt Sirhan shot Kennedy. “Sirhan never said there was somebody else,” Jabara insists.
The official motive for Sirhan’s murder of #RFK was “anti-#Zionism.”
Sirhan blamed his murderous rage on trauma he had suffered as a child in Palestine.
At age 4 he witnessed the bombing of Damascus Gate, the death of his older brother, a man disemboweled by a bomb and the family was forced to relocate after Israel was created in 1948.
Nazi Germany waged an extensive propaganda campaign to spread Nazi ideology in the Arab world.
University of Maryland Prof. Jeffrey Herf and American University Prof. Richard Breitman discuss how Nazi ideology still lingers in the 21st Century.
Prof. Breitman served as director of historical research for the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group, which helped to bring about declassification of more than eight million pages of U.S. government records under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.
If some of these talking points sound familiar today, now you know where they originated…
According to an April 25, 1966 Tom Wicker article in the New York Times (“CIA: Maker of Policy, or Tool?), President #Kennedy vowed privately to an aide after the Bay of Pigs incident in Cuba, that he would “splinter the CIA in 1000 pieces and scatter it to the winds.”
#JFK didn’t complete his mission to fully destroy the CIA (some believe the Agency got him first) — but here’s what he DID do.
In June 1961, two months after the Bay of Pigs — he issued National Security Action Memos (NSAM) 55 and 57.
NSAM 55 called for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not the CIA, to be his primary military advisors.
NSAM 57 declared “any large paramilitary operation wholly or partly covert… is properly the primary responsibility of the Department of Defense with the CIA in a supporting role.”
#RFKJr grew up in a family that strongly supported #Israel. He says he was “shocked” when his kids came home from college with views of Israel as an evil, apartheid state.
No matter what side you take, I hope you’ll listen to RFK argue his position.
It is important to understand the history of why generations of Democrats (and Republicans) have supported Israel.
It all started in 1944, when both parties adopted planks in their platforms advocating for a Jewish state in Palestine.
A fascinating story that Benjamin Netanyahu’s father played a key role in. Read this thread 🧵…