5 Dark CIA Operations Gone Awry

The CIA is surrounded by mystery. They have managed to capture and kill some high profile targets but their operations are not always successful...

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-- ready to put on your tinfoil hats, children. We're talking about the CIA! That's right, the U.S.'s line of defense against all those pesky spies sapping our government secrets (team fortress 2 ref.).

Operation Mongoose

Let's talk about the Bay of Pigs, the CIA's horrible failed attempt to seize control of Cuba in the 60's. The operation culminated in a beach invasion that was almost completely demolished, think Normandy if the Germans had had all of their military might on the beach, instead of diverted to another location...

Operation Mockingbird

With Trump talking about the crooked media all the time, it's really easy to just dismiss it all as the ramblings of an insane orange. But really, the CIA has totally controlled the media before, and may even still control it.... It's really not has hard as it sounds, money is an excellent motivator. During the '60s, the CIA began Project Mockingbird, with the sole objective of keeping the public bloodthirsty and willing to keep soldiers in Vietnam.

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Afghanistan was/is a confusing place anyway. The military were tracking down people who shared a belief. People who could blend in seamlessly with any crowd. Still, it was possible through enough data gathering and recon. Something that the CIA is kinda known for... so US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld figured that maybe throwing some Predator drones into the mix would make their jobs easier, right?

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So you remember how Project Mockingbird was a rather successful attempt to control the mainstream? Well, do you also remember what was huge in the '60s and '70s? That's right, HIPPIES! Hippies and young revolutionaries that weren't buying what the main stream was telling them, man. The CIA couldn't quite control these groups through bribes, so they dealt with them another way: Moles.

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Barrack Obama, love him or hate him, did at least one thing that even the most hardcore right-winger has to respect: he killed Osama bin Laden his first year in office. That is impressive. But how did Seal Team 6 know exactly where bin Laden was hiding? The CIA. The CIA using dubious methods that would eventually lead to a regress in the area away from proper medicine and the killings of a few doctors... Yeah. So here's how all that came about: the CIA enlisted the help of one of their informants, a Dr. Shakil Adridi to orchestrate a fake hepatitis-B treatment camp, the main purpose of which was to do DNA testing on the populace, seeing if anybody was related to bin Laden or any of his known officers. Turns out, they did find some children, who they then followed right to bin Laden's compound. Obviously, Seal Team 6 went in there, and took care of business... but the long term ramifications of tricking those people led to the locals totally distrusting immunization clinics, going so far as to kill some doctors.