By Jason Worth
We’ve all seen spy movies, especially those set behind the Iron Curtain. A star, Clint Eastwood or Matt Damon, perhaps, has the mission to infiltrate a country or organization, befriend someone with important information, find a weakness in that person, and then exploit that weakness with the goal of getting that foreigner to do something he wants him to do.
In the context of fictional novels or real-life patriotic situations, that mission is romanticized and respected. We’re “fighting the bad guys” and we need to “turn” people to “win the war.” When the ends justify the means in this dog-eat-dog world, there’s nothing too wrong with using prostitution, homosexual tendencies, pedophilia, threats to family, threats to self, drugs, alcohol, money, religion, guilt, shame, or a myriad of other things to “turn that asset.”
However, do you think this covert coercion starts at our border’s edge, only to be employed in foreign lands, for patriotic and nationalistic purposes? We live in the most prosperous country on the planet, and there are plenty of reasons anyone who can exert that kind of pressure abroad might do it within our own borders.
Who are we talking about? Who are they targeting? What is their goal?
“Who” are the people with money and power that are shrewd enough and greedy enough to use their wealth and power to gain more of the same. We, the public, don’t often know their names or faces, because they are typically more successful when they work from the position of darkness and anonymity. For sake of simplicity, let’s called these people “Mr. Global” and Mr. Global must employ people to do his bidding. It is these actors, Mr. Global’s hired hands, whom we might more readily identify because they must frequently operate in the public arena to accomplish their missions.
The hired hands that Mr. Global employs (or otherwise controls) are bodyguards, private investigators, attorneys, intelligence agencies, organized crime, government agencies, and military branches. For the low- level things, such as roughing up a potential whistle-blower or deterring a competitor, they’ll have a private investigator follow you and take compromising photos of something you’d find embarrassing (such as an affair), or they may have a lawyer send a cease-and-desist threat or claim patent infringement. The first round is usually a warning shot. Play ball, or else…. or else the wife learns about the affair, the photos leak to the press, your shareholders are told you are a fraud, etc.
If you don’t play ball after the warning shot, things might escalate. This is where the bodyguards, organized crime, and intelligence agencies come in. If the “target” is an individual (as opposed to a state or organization), this will subsequently take the form of physical harm. You’re beaten up in the alleyway behind the bar and left with cracked ribs and a bloody shirt. Maybe the brakes go out in your car, and you’re lucky you came away from the accident with only a gash on the forehead. Maybe strangers approach you in the street and randomly refer to your wife and children by their first names, with a malicious grin on their face. Play ball or someone gets hurt.
If the target is an organization or state, this can take the form of threats to individuals, or it might be more complicated. A president or prime minister might be asked to privatize a certain business or industry so that it can be acquired on the cheap, grant military basing rights to a foreign military, or contribute in some way to covert activities to be undertaken in his or her neighboring country. If they don’t immediately acquiesce, the threat can be personal, toward them. They or their family might come into harm, as in the prior example. Perhaps financial and operational support might be provided to a political opponent who will be more empowered to steal his or her position in the next election cycle, possibly even through via a violent or non-violent coup.
Sometimes it might require much more than one leader or ruling family’s commitment or action, in which case the threats can take on a much larger dimension. Here we get into false flags, terrorism, political machinations, and the like. A rebel army or insurgent group might be funded to usurp a political power’s authority, through a proxy army “cutout,” that distances the action from the true instigator. Or a terrorist organization stages a car bombing or similar domestic terror event to sway the public’s opinion to support a military incursion into the neighboring country. Perhaps a country is alleged to have weapons of mass destruction, in which case the U.S. and other Western militaries now assume the moral authority to launch cruise missiles or the like.
To be successful, these last few examples involve more serious, professional players, such as intelligence agencies like the CIA, MI-6 or Mossad, or military branches of governments. And this can explain why these control mechanisms are deployed domestically, as well as internationally. If Mr. Global is to be assured that the U.S. government will deploy its military or other capabilities in a way that benefits him, he must have the appropriate leverage or control. The Clint Eastwood or Matt Damon character who we initially saw turning an asset in Russia to divulge state secrets can just as effectively be deployed on Capitol Hill. They’ll get a congressperson or other government official invited to a posh party. Secretly recorded, that congressperson will be tempted with cocaine and/or an attractive woman or man. Eventually, that temptation may increase, and young adults or children could be proffered for sex. Whatever the weakness, they’ll try to exploit it, just like they would with a foreign target overseas. If your moral compass is strong enough, and you don’t fall for these vices of the flesh, they may tempt you with financial rewards. Invest in this opportunity and you’ll be wealthy, only to find it involved insider trading or collusion with unsavory types that would harm your career if disclosed.
Once you have been compromised, Mr. Global can essentially count on you to do his bidding. A benign request might be simply to propose or vote in favor of certain legislation that benefits Mr. Global’s business interests or friends. Perhaps you might be asked to support government intervention in a foreign country in which Mr. Global has, or wishes to have, increased business dealings, or you might be encouraged to issue a lucrative government contract that will benefit Mr. Global or his friends. Until the system collapses under its own weight, the government can practically print money at will, so being able to pull the strings of a government official or his department can be quite lucrative for Mr. Global.
It may be easy to assume that the CIA is behind all these actions, but it is more complicated than that. This ultimately brings us back to the question: “Who is ‘they’?” I think the answer is that there is a matrix, or network, of entities all working together toward mutual goals. Wealthy ruling families, with large established corporations and massive intergenerational wealth, may very likely be involved. To preserve or enhance their wealth and power, they often want to preserve the status quo, and they’ll use their money for lobbying, bribing, blackmailing, or crushing the competition to attain their goals. Sometimes they develop political ambitions and their lineage morphs into political players, too, like the Kennedy’s, the Bushes, and the Rockefellers. (After all, why be content to only blackmail political figures to do your bidding, when you can place your own flesh and blood into the office you wish to control.) And, once again, as exemplified by the Bushes, we have not only the crossover between wealthy families and political positions, but also to intelligence agencies.
And the real elbow grease gets employed in this equation when the intelligence agencies are involved. The NSA can eavesdrop on just about anyone today. The CIA can assassinate and blackmail at will. And who knows how many false flag or domestic terror events’ elements of the FBI have played some involvement in. And all of them can tap untold amounts of money via the government spigot, provided the right bureaucrats approve the funding. And whatever the government agencies can’t do, there’s organized crime to backfill.
We’ve covered the ‘who’. We have an understanding of their targets (which is anyone who can be of any importance or use to “them”.) But, why go to all the trouble to get a congressman on film having sex with a thirteen-year-old? It could be as simple as money. As previously mentioned, the ability to receive no-bid government contracts or to deploy the government’s military might in a country they’re hoping to fleece can lead to great additional wealth. This is no small thing, but I think it’s much more than this. We have seen blackmails and cons deployed in the past that are so elaborate, and took so many years to deploy, such as 9/11, that I think it is much more than money Mr. Global is looking for. I think it is more than power they want, too, for they already have plenty of that.
This is one of the most important unanswered questions before us: Why? Why does Mr. Global want such an extraordinary level of control?
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