Slingshot to the Juggernaut by Sander Hicks

Author:Sander Hicks
Language: ru
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Published: 2012-04-20T20:00:00+00:00

14

THE COMPANY OF DOGS: A PERSONAL LOOK AT THE CIA

Discussing the Catholic Church was personally difficult, but taking on the CIA also hits close to the bone. I grew up in the Washington, D.C., area. My father worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in Ghana, in the late ’60s. When other moms and dads were dropping acid, going to Woodstock, practicing Zen, or joining Maoist book clubs, my folks were in Accra, working on economic development for the U.S. government. My dad was a PhD economist, and my mom was a teacher.

There’s been much valid criticism of the Western attempt to use corporate capitalism and free markets to bring about real poverty reduction. But Ghana itself is quite a success story. The raging debate about international globalization has been a lifelong point of conflict around our family dinner table, but for now, let me just try to tell you the story from my parents’ perspective.

The year before they came, Ghana had deposed its first president, Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah was an independent Marxist and Pan-Africanist whose vision of socialism absorbed some of Africa’s precolonial tribal traditions. But Nkrumah’s administration devolved into authoritarianism. He eventually outlawed strikes and imprisoned his political enemies without trial. He was deposed in a military coup but is today revered as the father of Ghana.

There’s another perspective to all this, of course. Former CIA agent and author John Stockwell writes that The Company (the CIA’s little nickname for itself ) played a significant role when Nkrumah was deposed, in 1967.

I asked my father once about all the rumors and sources who say that the CIA regularly used the State Department’s USAID as cover in various countries. Was CIA working in Accra through USAID? Dad said something like, “Oh, we hear that all the time—it’s crazy . . . Well, there was one guy . . . ”

Dad and Mom eventually moved back to the D.C. suburbs. He got a job at the World Bank, through contacts he met in Accra. He worked on economic development issues in the Philippines and Latin America, and he became a specialist in poverty reduction. He traveled often. One time in an airport, confronting some “crazy” protestors who were picketing against IMF funding of a certain agricultural program, he inquired about their cause. A protestor turned on him and said, “What are you, from the CIA?” I guess he looked the part.

When I was growing up in D.C., a close friend of the family actually was in the CIA. I was raised to call him Uncle Lee, although we aren’t related. My folks first met Uncle Lee in Accra. When I was an antiglobalization activist, I caught hell at home for protesting the World Bank on the streets of D.C. The Battle of Seattle had just shut down the WTO meeting in Seattle in November 1999. It seemed like the movement in the streets had the upper hand, for a significant historical moment.

Looking back, I find it ironic, then,

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