Customer Reviews

Inside the CIA On Company Business Part 1 - The History [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A bold and upfront explanation of the real aims of covert U.S. foreign policy since World War II. Directed by Allan Francovich, also director of Houses are Full of Smoke. After World War II, the CIA was established not so much to fight Communism, as was often stated, but rather to undermine or overthrow any government and foreign political movements that got in the way of U.S. business interests and U.S. access to these foreign countries' natural resources. Undermining economies, spreading propaganda, and intimidation through torture and assassination were our tactics. The `dirty work' was generally carried out by local criminals who had no idea why they were hired to do what they were doing. This way the CIA operatives kept their hands clean and were not the objects of retaliation. Although we were much kinder on our allies (most of Western Europe) we did try very hard to destroy the European left, which was very strong after WWII. For example, the CIA hired the Corsican mafia to break up labor unions in Southern Italy because we felt the unions were becoming too powerful. The documentary is essentially narrated by former CIA agents who tell their stories, many of whom have also written books about their experiences with the agency. The most controversial figure is Philip Agee who had his U.S. passport taken away for revealing the names of certain CIA agents (apparently this is an act of treason, although when the Bush administration did it to take revenge on Joe Wilson for telling the U.S. that Saddam Hussein was not a threat to U.S. security, it was ok). There is also an interview with a hired assassin, or mercenary, almost too strange to believe.

I give it four stars, rather than five, because of the editing. Sometimes it lacks some coherency (a narrator may have helped this) and the subtitles, when they appear, are often cut off at the bottom of the screen.

This review refers to all three volumes of this documentary.

I found this tape very informative with the first hand accounts of past agents. I wish there had been more investgative reporting on the ties the CIA has with world wide drug trafficing, and but it does show its close ties with world wide terrorists and terrorism.

"Inside the CIA: On Company Business" PARTS I, II & III (1980) is a gripping and penetrating look inside the world's most powerful secret institutionalized conspiracy organization. This rare, long suppressed, award-winning series by the late Great American Allan Francovich is an absolute must for anyone studying the truly loathsome and nauseating activities of the CIA 1950-1980. This Complete Series Includes: PART I: THE HISTORY; PART II: ASSASSINATION; PART III: SUBVERSION. Ex-CIA Spies Phillip Agee and John Stockwell risk all to expose the CIA Frankenstein in full relief, its perfidy and anti-democratic, anti-union methodologies. Understand how elite New York-London financiers were able to successfully subvert the American System by using the CIA as one in a bag of fascist, bloody tools to transform the USA into a tyrannical Empire the Founding Fathers flatly rejected. Don't expect any stands for human rights or one man one vote from these amoral operatives. See Richard Helms, William Colby, David Atlee Phillips, James Wilcott, Victor Marchetti, Joseph B. Smith, and other key players in a uniquely American tragedy of truly historic proportions. "Inside the CIA: On Company Business, one of the most important American films ever made, is a vital and dramatic examination of the CIA and US foreign policy." San Francisco Chronicle.