CIA Officer Ralph McGehee Reveals How the Agency Deceived America

Recorded in March 1983 during the Vietnam War Reconsidered conference at the University of Southern California (USC) a few months after the 10th anniversary of the agreement to end the War. The interviews were conducted during the conference that attracted journalists, diplomats, former CIA officers, US military personnel and others who came to LA to discuss their experiences and assessments about the War.

Ralph Walter McGehee (born 1928) served for 25 years in American intelligence, being a former case officer of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). His assignments were in East Asia and Southeast Asia, from 1953 to 1972. Since leaving intelligence work in 1977, he has felt free to comment on ways that the CIA influenced public opinion in this country.

In McGehee's view: "The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the President's foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while reporting "intelligence" justifying those activities. It shapes its intelligence, even in such critical areas as Soviet nuclear weapon capability, to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target audience of its lies."

One instance of that was during the Vietnam war when the agency staged a phony enemy landing of a ship from North Vietnam laden with armaments. They brought out the press to see it and this provided the justification to launch operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign that lasted from March 2, 1965 to November 2, 1965. Just three days before Richard Nixon was elected President.