Skeptics Stack Exchange
Skeptics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [cia]

The Central Intelligence Agency is an official United States government organization concerned with matters of national security and intelligence. It is known widely in popular culture as an enigmatic, powerful entity, often theorized to have a hand in a wide variety of suspicious events and phenomena.

A complete history of the CIA and its current mission can be found here: about the CIA at CIA.gov.

22 questions
59
votes
2 answers

Did the CIA blow up the Nordstream 1 pipeline, using BALTOPS 22 as cover?

In September 2022, the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines off the coast of Denmark were sabotaged Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist, recently published a blog post, How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline…
seldon
  • 709
  • 1
  • 5
  • 6
55
votes
1 answer

Did the CIA blow up a Siberian pipeline in 1982?

The Telegraph claimed in 2004 that the CIA blew up a Russian gas pipeline in Siberia, by tricking the operator into installing booby-trapped software. Thomas Reed, a former US Air Force secretary who was in Ronald Reagan's National Security…
dont_shog_me_bro
  • 3,131
  • 2
  • 20
  • 31
53
votes
2 answers

Did the CIA sell drugs in the US?

According to Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Gary Webb in his controversial article series The Dark Alliance For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of…
Mark Rogers
  • 11,324
  • 11
  • 55
  • 71
43
votes
4 answers

Does the owner of the Washington Post have a deal with the CIA worth 600 million dollars?

Jimmy Dore says in this video, Their owner has a 600 million dollar deal with the CIA. Six hundred million dollars, how much is that Jimmy? That's three times what the Washington Post is fucking worth. He has a deal with the CIA, and they never put…
Evan Carroll
  • 28,401
  • 42
  • 129
  • 239
26
votes
1 answer

Was there a large, illegal CIA project called "MKULTRA"?

Was there an illegal CIA project called MKULTRA, and if-so what did it involve and when did it end? Did it involve, as suggested in a quote from Ted Kennedy, a massive conspiracy involving dozens of universities and institutions to perform tests…
Brian M. Hunt
  • 17,999
  • 13
  • 99
  • 176
21
votes
0 answers

Were three journalists (Bob Simon, Ned Colt and David Carr) investigating a plausible relation between the CIA and 9/11?

Apparently these three journalists all died within a couple days of each other (Feb. 11 to 12, 2015). The implication of some rumours going around is that these folks were killed because they have evidence showing that the CIA had some involvement…
Brian M. Hunt
  • 17,999
  • 13
  • 99
  • 176
20
votes
2 answers

Did CIA fund abstract artists to take attention from Social Realism?

(Source: cracked.com) In the 50s and 60s, the CIA secretly funded abstract artists such as Jackson Pollock, in part to draw attention away from Social Realism, a style which focused on societal issues and societal ills. There are two parts to the…
user5341
  • 31,075
  • 8
  • 130
  • 178
19
votes
1 answer

Did the CIA feed false information to McCarthy to discredit his true claims that they were infiltrated by Soviet agents?

In Legacy of Ashes (which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction), Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Tim Weiner, claims that: McCarthy's file grew thick with allegations that "the CIA had unwittingly hired a large number of double…
Jayson Virissimo
  • 3,155
  • 3
  • 20
  • 27
16
votes
0 answers

Is the US Army Field Manual 30-31B a forgery?

Wikipedia describes content of the US Army Field Manual 30-31B: It identifies a strategy of tension involving violent attacks which are then blamed on radical left-wing groups in order to convince allied governments of the need for…
Christian
  • 33,271
  • 15
  • 112
  • 266
15
votes
1 answer

Is the phrase "Al Qaeda" a made up term?

Is the term "Al Qaeda" made up by the CIA or the FBI? (Tweet of a colleague, citing Adam Curtis' documentary "The Power of Nightmares") Even OBL hadn't heard the name "Al Qaeda" until the FBI/CIA decided it needed a name. Alternatively, I've heard…
Andrew Grimm
  • 38,859
  • 36
  • 141
  • 342
12
votes
1 answer

Did the CIA hire mobsters to stage riots in Iran during 1953 coup d'etat?

In the Wikipedia article 1953 Iranian coup d'état it claims: According to the CIA's declassified documents and records, some of the most feared mobsters in Tehran were hired by the CIA to stage pro-Shah riots on 19 August But it has no…
LGBTQIAxyz
  • 121
  • 3
12
votes
1 answer

Did the US Government try to use EMF rays to remotely affect the mental functions of their targets between 1978-1986?

In the book Triumph of Evil1, Austin Murphy describes a US Government project to remotely affect the mental functions of people in enemy countries. (My emphasis and footnotes added) ... Keeler (1989) reports that the CIA had an Operation Pique that…
Dan
  • 491
  • 4
  • 12
10
votes
0 answers

Did the CIA sell illegal drugs in the US in order to fund anti-communist Dictators in South America?

Possible Duplicate: Did the CIA sell drugs in the US? I've heard this many times from various sources. I've heard it referenced to the crack epidemic in the 80s. I've heard it mentioned in connection with a news story that got buried about it…
Daniel Bingham
  • 201
  • 1
  • 4
9
votes
1 answer

Did the CIA conclude that Uri Geller had psychic powers?

Did the CIA conclude that Uri Geller was able to use psychic powers such as remote viewing or telepathy or something as claimed by the Telegraph or Times of Israel? In the newly released documents there was no mention of Geller being asked to…
Quora Feans
  • 2,637
  • 1
  • 19
  • 29
8
votes
2 answers

Was the term "conspiracy theorist" made popular by the CIA?

I have seen the following infographic on facebook recently. The text reads: Did you know... The term "conspiracy theorist" was a term made popular by the CIA to stop critical thinkers from asking questions about the JFK assassination? In a memo…
user11643
1
2