And, as your mopping your brow over that whopper, the Q/A continues with:
Asman: Final question, Mr. Clarridge. We're short on time, but is it conceivable that the Saudis may use these nuclear weapons if they have them to take out these positions in Iran before the Iranians get a bomb?
Clarridge: I cannot answer that question. But I think if you sit around some evening on your patio with a fine glass of vintage port and a fine cigar, you may be able to come up with the answer yourself.
Here's the interview:
"Dewey" Clarridge says the Bomb was a quid pro quo for the Saudis helping the Pakistanis to acquire a nuke to counter The Smiling Buddha -- what the Indians named their inaugural nuke. Happy Nirvana! If what Clarridge says about the Saudis owning a nuke has value, it changes everything about Middle East control.
And speaking of Iran, Clarridge has confirmed that Reagan did, indeed, conduct an "October Surprise" that saw the delay of Americans held hostage at the embassy until after the election. He told Newsweek,
The so-called October Surprise conspiracy--in which the incoming Reagan administration's advance team allegedly plotted to keep American hostages in Iran until after President Jimmy Carter left office--was real, he hinted.
The piece also references his handiwork in Nepal, India, Turkey and Italy. In addition, Clarridge is thought to have had some clandestine fun with South Africa.
Central Asia
"Dewey," presumably named after one of the 7 Dwarves, has also enforced American foreign policy in Central Asia, including India, where he started his career as an operative, pushing a Maoist newspaper in Madras to lean so far left that Indian authorities grew alarmed and shut the paper down. Clarridge died 5 years ago, but his last go at the violators of America's national security was, long after he left the CIA, as a private contractor in Afghanistan, where he was said to be affiliated with kill squads. According to one piece in the NYT, "Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants," he helped "track and kill suspected militants." It appears that Clarridge and company were part of a vanguard of a new, less accountable private-warrior program to replace regular soldiers. American troops have withdrawn from Afghanistan, but are to be replaced with small armies of mercenaries to continue to battle Islamic insurgents (that America helped create decades ago). But these Soldiers of Fortune are not new in any sense -- see South/Central -- but seemingly institutionalized, their atrocities, if any, may not always reach American citizens.
Getting back to the Kennedy speech to the Press in 1961, "we" have to wonder whether we haven't become the very forces of hidden darkness that JFK warned us about hadn't consumed "our" souls. We look back and listen to him describe the enemy he wanted the Press to help defend American from by more judicious reporting:
[Communism] is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned. No rumor is printed. No secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War in short with a wartime discipline. No democracy would ever hope or wish to match. Nevertheless, every democracy recognizes the necessary restraints of national security. And the question remains whether those restraints need to be more strictly observed.
Reading this 50 years later, one is reminded of the Nietzsche admonition: When you fight monsters, you must take care not to become a monster yourself. And when you look into the abyss, beware the abyss also looks into you.
Here's the Kennedy speech in its entirety:
(Article changed on Nov 07, 2021 at 11:49 PM EST)
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