004: TOP TEN KOOKY CIA PLOTS

The CIA doesn't mind when their failures are publicized. In fact, they seem to push them on us. They plant images in the public mind of ridiculous plots straight out of spy B-movies, particularly those plots which sought to destroy Fidel Castro, from rigging exploding sea-shells on his private beach to dosing him with chemicals to make his beard fall out.

The CIA also insists that their attempts at mind control, under such code names as MK/ULTRA, failed utterly. (What, a crackpot like David Koresh can figure out how to brainwash people but the American government can't hack it?) This track record of silly experiments results in an image of the CIA as a bumbling-but-benign institution. They like us to think of them that way. It distracts us from their successes.

Here are some other stunts the CIA claims they pulled, which serve to reinforce their "kooky" public image:

10. Installing actual bananas as dictators of banana republics.

9. Broadcasting a numbers-station on short-wave, giggling every time the number "69" is recited.

8. Project Lavender Book, a cover-up disguised as an investigation to "prove" to the public that there are no gay UFOs.

7. A 1972 Weather Warfare plot involved the installation of rain-clouds to dump ninety staight days of rain on a major American city, rendering its citizens incapacitated and vulnerable due to Seasonal Affective Disorder. Unfortunately, the device was tested over Seattle, so results were inconclusive.

6. Trilateral Commisssion originally called Quadrilateral Commission, until it was discovered that the Fonz was not a real person, and anyway, should not be making decisions about multi-national consolidation of banking interests.

5. Attempting to pin the Watergate break-in on the Hamburglar.

4. All the mind control devices and beam warfare are just to control with this one guy named Bob, from Duluth. No one else has anything to worry about.

3. Using dartboard to determine which psychotic, genocidal dictators are our enemies, and which are our friends, this week.

2. Giving Paul Oakenfold the missing 18 minutes of the Nixon tapes so he can sample it.

1. Taking a Freemason oil baron, installing him as the head of the secret police, then making him leader of the free world, so that he might immediately launch a war, all the while proclaiming that this is the time for a "New World Order"...oh wait. THAT REALLY DID HAPPEN.