Spying and Covert Politics.

Everybody should think about spying and the secret services; it is one of the world’s great problems. Since WW2 it has been linked with internal repression, dirty tricks, international sabotage and the generation of war. The big spy agencies want work and they get it by promoting distrust. Their business comes from spreading fear, plots, arms threats and antagonistic international relationships. As a result, they have created a distrust industry which is taking over the world.

Distrust is self-validating. Once you create it, it can expand. Spying causes perhaps a quarter of the world’s international problems and wars. We distrust the new “enemies”, but never distrust the spy system. It remains invisible and beyond question.  World-wide, spying and so-called intelligence is damaging us. The spy people have learned to be well-paid and nearly invisible. Like James Bond, they defend us, so how could we even question their necessity.

In fact, the problem is ramping up. This massive distrust system is now invading all our lives in mass surveillance, because we have now been persuaded that none of us can be trusted. It has always been both spying and propaganda and covert politics.

The Scale of the Issue.

First, you would want some examples of the damage it does. Here are a dozen from different periods.

1. In 1924 it produced the forged Zinoviev letter just before the October election to help bring down the first Labour Government.
2. The Gestapo, the Nazi secret service run by Goring and Himmler, absorbed, controlled and ran the police and the armed forces. Secret power was the CENTRAL INSTITUTION in the Nazi state repressing opposition, doing international deals, working towards the World War and planning the Holocaust.
3. At the end of WW2 the US recruited about a thousand Nazi spies against the USSR under Reinhard Gehlen in 1945-6 to report on the USSR’s Communist menace and start the Cold War.
4. The US Secret service formed a plot with Belgium to assassinate Patrice Lamumba, the first independent democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congo to initiate 50 years of political chaos.
5. The CIA ran a three year destabilisation programme in Chile before the coup against the democratically elected Salvador Allende and colluded in the coup. His successor General Pinochet was a thug.
6. In the 1970s the CIA ran the Secret Service of the Shah of Persia which kept him in power and vast arms sales flowing in from the US, but provoked increasing resentment leading to the downfall of the Shah, the imprisonment of hostages and long-term hostility between Iran and the US.
7. The CIA attempted dozens of assassination attempts on Castro in Cuba, then arranged the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and helped set up the “Cuba Crisis”.
8. Most commentators are agreed that the Vietnam war was a mistake and unnecessary, can caused by the Gulf of Tonkin non-incident. The Wikipedia version is, “On 2 August 1964, USS Maddox, on an intelligence mission along North Vietnam’s coast, allegedly fired upon and damaged several torpedo boats that had been stalking it in the Gulf of Tonkin. A second attack was reported two days later on USS Turner Joy and Maddox in the same area. The circumstances of the attacks were murky. Lyndon Johnson commented to Undersecretary of State George Ball that “those sailors out there may have been shooting at flying fish.” An undated National Security Agency publication declassified in 2005 revealed that there was no attack on 4 August.”  Perhaps four million died in the War.
9. In the 1980s the CIA spent several billion dollars training and equipping the Afghan Muhajideen to fight against the USSR in Afghanistan. One of the training groups funded and supplied by them was Al Qaida and 9/11 followed and much Middle East terrorist activity.
10. The CIA and MI6 both conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, despite US inspectors, and helped start the second Iraq War. The conclusion was untrue and the War was illegal, based on a lie, and has destabilized much of the Middle East.
11. Putin’s background is spying and the SVR in Russia has begun widespread spying and disruption techniques. Nevertheless, for example, the Skripal murder was carried out because Skripal was acting as a double spy, a fact not reported in the western media.
12. The recent incident in the US/Iranian tension turns out to be shaped by US intelligence following the Iranian tanker Grace 1 and suggesting it was seized in the straits of Gibraltar, provoking later Iranian responses in the Strait of Hormuz.

This list is far from complete. Indeed, the spy communities would laugh, because of what it leaves out. Nevertheless, these are major destructive events across the world causing wars, promoting lies not truth, teaching destructive behaviour and undermining democracy.

The World-Wide System.

The United States has dominated this system since 1945. But other states have followed. Britain, France, the USSR had strong systems. Israel developed a vast system linked to the US, and now China runs a political and technological spy system. They were not just spying, but usually providing money and weapons to ferment the governments they wanted to be in charge.

The outcome of this process was anti-democratic. All over the globe militaristic and totalitarian or absolutist regimes are supported against democracy. We, the US and UK, said we were democratic, but a case could be made that  we were against democracy. In Egypt, before and after the Arab Spring, we armed the military governments. We supported the Shah in Iran and Saddam in Iraq. We killed the democrat, Lumumba in the Congo. Blair armed Gaddafi to attack his own people. The US supported Marcos and dozens of other military leaders who bought their weapons, and all the time the secret services were there, doing the needful, spreading weapons, lies, disinformation, propping up corrupt regimes, smoothing the way for US multinational to extract oil, minerals, metals and food from compliant nations. The words, “Banana Republic”, entered the language for a US food company and a CIA government in central America.

Now, of course, spying, propaganda, surveillance, covert operations and even war have entered the electronic phase. They promise to mushroom into a vast system of distrust and misinformation, swaying voters, obscuring the truth and always backed by big money, the money of the states and the super-rich who want to order everything their way. How can we stand against this?

The Bad and the Good – Jesus.

To see how bad the bad is, we need to see the good. So, finding out about countries is a good thing. You learn their language, meet them, understand the country and see their point of view. If nation shall speak peace unto nation, we must meet and learn about one another. Of course, most of this kind of understanding comes from learning their language, meeting them, reading their papers and literature. We watch their media, study their government and culture, observe their faith, economies, social relationships and cities. In Christian terms, we welcome the stranger and often we are the stranger on holiday or travelling abroad. Within this framework, there is no secrecy, or spying, because there is no need for secrecy. Evildoers act in secret, and where evil is not, things are out in the open.

Spies do secrecy and good societies do openness. Jesus did openness. Indeed, he had a principle of openness. Things will out and should be brought out. “What is done in the secret places will be shouted from the housetops.” But more than this, practicing openness is a principle. Jesus has been brought secretly before the High Priest, Annas, in a mock trial. It should have been public, and Jesus’ defence is the public nature of his teaching. “’I have spoken openly to the world,’ Jesus replied. ‘I always taught in synagogue or at the temple where all the Jews come together. I said nothing in secret. Why question me? Ask those who heard me. Surely, they know what I said.” (John 18 20-21) So none of his words were conspiracy, or plots or aimed against others in secret. Public evidence matters in opposing prejudice, malice, political intrigue, covert killing and imprisonment, secret evil and violence. Jesus’ trial is our legal system. But it is much wider than that.

The light has come into the world, but the powerful move in the dark, because their deeds are evil. Live in the light, says Jesus. Openness, transparency, doing what you say, freedom of information, not doing things behind people’s backs, no hidden democracy are right and good. The Christian principled opposition to spying, covert operations, manipulation behind the scenes and supporting dictators has hardly been heard; it is time to do Jesus’ principles. Unless, following Christ, we live in the light, we are but ants in an anthill. We are pawns of this principality and power.

Christianity is the Light set on a Hill.

So the challenge for two billion plus Christians worldwide is to be the light set of a hill, to live in the light, to be fearless against secrecy, to combat national spy and surveillance systems, to be uninfluenced by covert and illicit communication, not to be tossed about by waves of engineered public opinion, to both follow and witness to what is true and to defeat the world of spying, covert operations, political subversion and propaganda but demanding the different way of our politicians and standing truths in the public square. So, we’ve got work to do.