The Libertarian Party and the CIA

It would be difficult to find a better example of the outsized influence that the right-wing has had on the Libertarian Party than the party’s position toward the Central Intelligence Agency, which, without a doubt, has to be the most evil agency in U.S. history. 

Of course, that’s not how the American right-wing feels about it. Republicans and conservatives have cherished the CIA since its inception in 1947 as part of the conversion of the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state. As far as Republicans are concerned, the CIA is a wonderful agency that is protecting “national security” by doing the dirty work involved in keeping us safe from the communists, the terrorists, the Muslims, Russia, China, Cuba, the drug dealers, the illegal immigrants, and so many more “enemies,” “adversaries,” “opponents,” and “rivals” of the United States.

The problem is that when disgruntled Republicans began flooding into the Libertarian Party, they brought their pro-CIA baggage with them. Over the years, they convinced L.P. members to abandon their long-time opposition to this evil agency. 

In my September 5 Substack article, “The Party of Principle?” I detailed how I came to join the L.P. In 1990 I received a call from an L.P. activist from California asking me if I would serve on the L.P.’s Platform Committee. At first I said no because I assumed that the L.P. was just an ad-hoc collection of compromised positions that was designed to get votes. Once I read the 1990 platform, however, I realized how wrong I was and I readily agreed to serve on the Committee. I ended up serving three terms on the Platform Committee.

This is what that 1990 L.P. Platform said about the CIA: “We seek the abolition of the Central intelligence Agency.”

This is what the current L.P. Platform says about the CIA: “Intelligence agencies that legitimately seek to preserve the security of the nation must be subject to oversight and transparency.”

Notice any difference? No longer is there any call for the abolition of this evil agency. Instead, the implication is that the CIA is an agency that “legitimately seeks to preserve the security of the nation” and simply “must be subject to oversight and transparency.”

I will guarantee you that the day the provision calling for abolishing the CIA was eliminated from the L.P. Platform was a day when the champagne corks popped at CIA headquarters. The CIA knew that the three largest political parties in America were now on board with the CIA being a permanent part of America’s federal governmental structure. No longer was there a major political party that caused people to think about why this evil agency was incompatible with a genuinely free society. 

In the 1960s, the CIA was infiltrating leftist organizations with the aim of destroying them. They never had to infiltrate the Libertarian Party to get the CIA-abolition provision deleted from the L.P. platform because they had loyal, patriotic, right-wing, Republican-lite, reform-oriented Libertarians doing their work for them. 

Thus it is that one will search in vain for L.P. candidates on the national level who openly call for the abolition of the CIA on their campaign websites or, for that matter, make it a major position in their campaigns. That is how powerful the influence of the right-wing has been on the Libertarian Party. Is it any surprise that the L.P. continues to be referred to in the mainstream press as a “right-wing” political party?

There is another factor to consider: the fact that abolishing the CIA is considered by pragmatic Libertarians to be an unpopular position among the American electorate. Thus, calling for the abolition of the CIA, it is believed, would cost an L.P. candidate for national office votes, especially if the candidate is a reform-oriented, Republican-lite L.P. candidate who is targeting the Republican Party for votes. Calling for the abolition of the CIA is not considered by L.P. pragmatists to be a “credible” or “reputable” position for L.P. candidates to take.

Thus, in national campaigns the CIA now gets a pass from national candidates in all three major political parties. It’s not surprising, of course, that Democrats and Republicans would remain silent about the CIA’s evil conduct. But it is a horrible shame that L.P. candidates also fail to call out the CIA for its evil conduct. 

But the CIA needs to be called out for its evil conduct. And it needs to be done by L.P. candidates because the L.P. provides the only hope for ridding our society of this evil entity.

The CIA needs to be called out for its infamous MKULTRA program, its program of state-sponsored assassinations, its secret hiring of Nazi officials, its torture program (and intentional destruction of torture tapes), its drone assassinations, its coups, its secret prison camps, its torture and prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, and its many deadly and destructive regime-change operations. 

In fact, when was the last time you saw an L.P. candidate on the national level calling out the CIA and the military for the regime-change operation they carried out against President Kennedy in November 1963? I’d say hardly ever, if ever. Yet, thanks to the work of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s, it was definitely established beyond any reasonable doubt that the U.S. military conducted a fraudulent autopsy on the president’s body on the very evening of the assassination. There is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. It necessarily equates to criminal culpability in the assassination itself. (See my three books The Kennedy Autopsy, The Kennedy Autopsy 2, and An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story) and JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne, who served on the staff of the ARRB.)

Yet, the fear of being called a “conspiracy theorist” and losing votes has paralyzed L.P candidates into remaining silent on the Kennedy assassination. But the CIA and the military need to be called out on the campaign trail on that particular regime-change operation, along with others, such as their assassination of Congo leader Patrice Lumumba and Chilean military General Rene Schneider. The CIA needs to be openly condemned for being a “damned Murder, Inc.,” as even Lyndon Johnson termed it. The American people, including the mainstream press, need to hear L.P. candidates condemning the CIA for its deadly and destructive regime-change operations in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere. They need need to hear L.P. candidates condemning the CIA’s participation in Operation Condor, the biggest kidnapping/assassination/torture program in history.

The Libertarian Party is the only entity in the political arena that can lead America out of the statist morass into which Republicans and Democrats have plunged our nation. Remaining silent on the evil of the CIA is not an option. To achieve a genuinely free society, it is necessary to rid our nation of this evil agency. The Libertarian Party must lead the way by rejecting oversight and reform of this evil agency and instead by calling, once again, for the abolition of the CIA.