Seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Photo: IC

US intelligence agencies are largely held in esteem by the US media and some American people, despite their long history of serving the interests of elites at the expense of humanity. The US has 17 intelligence agencies of varying acronyms, which are designated to conduct the affairs of the state in secrecy. No other US intelligence agency is more recognized globally than the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The CIA was established soon after the conclusion of World War II and turned 75 this year. 

The US was at that point the world's biggest economy and military power, and the CIA's covert operations were tasked with helping the US maintain world superpower status amid the growth of socialist alternatives such as the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. 

The CIA has given the human race many reasons to desire its abolition. CIA operations across the world have sown chaos and destabilized entire regions. According to foreign policy critic and author William Blum, the CIA participated in the attempted overthrow of more than 40 governments around the world over the course of five decades. Some of the most well-known examples include helping facilitate the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Mohammad Mosaddegh  in Iran, Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Salvador Allende in Chile. 

The CIA's history is marked by a broad scope of powers and a lack of transparency. In 1975, the US Congress held hearings that detailed a number of CIA abuses, including Operation Mockingbird where the agency recruited, organized, and embedded itself in major media organizations to spread misinformation. 

The CIA also spearheaded the Board of Broadcasting Governors (BBG) (now rebranded as the US Agency for Global Media) which established entire media organizations such as Radio Free Asia dedicated to undermining communist-led governments around the world. 

In 1951, the CIA attempted to broadcast Radio Free Asia in China by air lifting radio devices on balloons from the island of Taiwan but abandoned the plan when the receivers were blown back by wind.

The CIA is no less dangerous now as it was then. Many of the CIA's operations have directly informed massive escalations in US wars and human rights abuses. Operation Cyclone funded armed groups in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. 

This policy created a template for the US foreign policy establishment to use in its ongoing campaign of arming and supporting regime change forces in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and elsewhere. The wanton torture of anti-colonial forces in Vietnam under Phoenix Program helped inform the torture campaign that the CIA employed during the War on Terror.

The CIA and the rest of the US intelligence community has led the way in fearmongering about China as part of the US' military strategy of "strategic competition" outlined by Joe Biden's administration. 

On October 7th 2021, CIA director William Burns called China the "most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century" and announced that mission centers would be established to focus more on China. 

In 2020, Chinese cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360 discovered a massive CIA hacking campaign that targeted China's aviation, technology, and energy sectors. Last month, China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center found that the NSA hacked into the servers of Northwestern Polytechnic University in attempt to steal the personal data of teachers and students. The CIA and other US intelligence agencies have spread Cold War-like propaganda while carrying out the very actions that they accuse of China.

The CIA is an extension of a broader "deep state," better termed the real state that drives US domestic and foreign policy. Journalists such as Julian Assange and nations such as China, Iran, and Russia are viewed as threats to be silenced by US elites seeking dominance and maximal profit for themselves. These narrow interests thrive in conditions of instability and war. The CIA is funded with an unknown amount of US dollars to help facilitate them. 

An end to the CIA would thus be a welcome development for the cause of peace, now and in the future.

The author is an independent journalist in the US, and co-editor of Friends of Socialist China as well as a founding member of the No Cold War international campaign. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn