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Toby Rogers's avatar

When the Khmer Rouge overthrew the government of Cambodia in 1975, one of the great mysteries was figuring out who was actually running the show. Officially the leadership called itself “Angkar” — “The Organization.” But no one knew who was in it. Two years after taking power, Pol Pot finally revealed the existence of the Communist Party of Kampuchea and his role in leading it. It feels like we are dealing with a modern global equivalent of Angkar today -- a sort of high tech Khmer Rouge that kills through public health rather than overwork.

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Mathew Crawford's avatar

It's a long argument that I'm making through many articles that will take many months due to a long priority list, but all roads lead to the DoD.

The intelligence apparatus was consolidated under the DNI starting in 2004, which is to say that the civilian and military intelligence agencies were merged and directed. Further power consolidation took place in 2008. It's a well kept secret that the DoD's propaganda programs dwarf the rest of the world's combined. Much of that is operated out of Fort Bragg, which is where Major General Stubblebine operated in the early 1980s when he reorganized the military intelligence community at the behest of the TLC directors who came in with Carter and stayed with Reagan. This laid the groundwork for off the books funding through the NIH and other sources, and eventually "plug and play" control through the DNI (whether or not that person is truly an independent actor from the DoD, which they're not). This is where a lot of psychological torture programs were developed, including the playing of music (like Barnie the Dinosaur) 24/7 at prisoners in the Middle East---supposedly by the CIA, but the research was all DoD (Jim Channing).

I should stop now because any ten paragraphs I write will need citation and could move toward a hundred threads.

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