"To the people who work for it, the CIA is known as The Company. The Big Business mentality pervades everything. Agents, for instance, are called assets. The man in charge of the United Kingdom desk is said to have the ˜U.K. account.'"
American multinational corporations have built up colossal interests all over the world, and you can bet your ass that wherever you find U.S. business interests, you will also find the CIA. The multinational corporations want a peaceful status quo in countries where they have investments, because that gives them undisturbed access to cheap raw materials, cheap labor and stable markets for their finished goods. The status quo suits bankers, because their money remains secure, and multiplies. And, of course, the status quo suits the small ruling groups the CIA supports abroad, because all they want is to keep themselves on top of the socioeconomic pyramid and the majority of their people on the bottom. But do you realize what being on the bottom means in most parts of the world? Ignorance, poverty, often early death by starvation or disease"
Remember, the CIA is an instrument of the President; it only carries out policy. And, like everyone else, the President has to respond to forces in the society he's trying to lead? In America, the most powerful force is Big Business, and American Big Business has a vested interest in the Cold War. 6
Domestic Recruitment
The CIA had no trouble recruiting the sons and daughters of the elites who sought a more exciting life. Between 1948 and 1959, more than 40,000 American individuals and companies acted as sources for the U.S. intelligence community.7Let's look at each area of recruitment, and see how they enabled the CIA to conduct its crimes:
Big Business and the CIA
The CIA co-opted big business right from the start, beginning with the most famous billionaire of the time, Howard Hughes. Hughes had inherited his father's million-dollar tool and die company at age 19. Anxious to expand his fortune, he made a conscientious decision "to go where the money is" " namely, government. With a few well-placed bribes, Hughes secured defense contracts to build military planes. The result was the Hughes Aircraft company. By 1940, he had also acquired a controlling interest in Trans World Airlines. His government connections and international airline soon caught the attention of the CIA, and the two began a lifelong relationship. Hughes, whom the CIA dubbed "The Stockbroker," became the agency's largest contractor. Not only did he let the CIA use his business firms as fronts, but he also funded countless CIA operations. Perhaps the most notorious was Operation Jennifer, an allegedly failed attempt to recover nuclear codes from a sunken Soviet submarine. Hughes' right-hand security man, Robert Maheu, was a CIA agent who at one time represented the CIA in negotiations with the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro.
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