Within the “military” aspect of “military-industrial complex”, “intelligence” must also be included. Eisenhower did not name it in his farewell speech, but when he left, he complained to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles, “The structure of our intelligence organization is faulty. I have suffered an eight-year defeat on this. Nothing has changed since Pearl Harbor. I leave a ‘legacy of ashes’ to my successor”.

The CIA is one of the essential weapons endowed to the National Security State since its creation in 1947. Its primary mission is to centralize information for use by the President, but it is also the heir to the Office of Strategic Services created during the war, and would integrate the Office of Special Operations during the Korean War in 1952, under the name Directorate of Plans. Known within the Agency as the Department of Dirty Tricks, this service controls more than half the CIA’s budget.The directive NSC-10/2 of theNational Security Council defines “covert operations”, the specialty of the Directorate of Plans, as any activities “which are conducted or sponsored by this Government against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and executed that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them”. Designed to absolve the President of all illegal actions in the case of public disclosure, the principle of “plausible deniability” gives the CIA almost complete autonomy, since, in fact, it is not required to reveal its operations to the President, while still allowing for Presidential protection in the event of failure. To remain unseen, covert operations (black-ops) will sometimes have to be funded through independent means, resulting in an involvement with arms and drug trafficking. Finally, to maintain secrecy, CIA agents often operate outside of payroll: meaning an agent fired or retired has not necessarily ceased all Agency cooperation. By the same logic of “plausible deniability”, the CIA has made a habit of calling on professional criminals to carry out its dirty work on American soil, and further upon paramilitary groups to instigate destabilization campaigns abroad, under the guise of civil war. For all these reasons, General George Marshall, former Secretary of State to Truman, saw the birth of something sinister: “The powers of the proposed agency seem almost unlimited and need clarification”. George Kennan, who prepared the document NSC-10/2, saw it as “the greatest mistake [he] ever made”.

One of the inherent problems with the CIA was its leadership. Among the seven founding directors of the CIA, only one was not a banker or lawyer on Wall Street. The role of Director was ultimately awarded to Allen Dulles, who with his brother John Foster, soon to be Secretary of State under Eisenhower, worked for one of the largest firms on Wall Street, Sullivan & Cromwell, before entering politics — hence the CIA was said to be directed from New York rather than from Washington. In this context, national interest merged with the private interests of large industrial groups. Although created under the National Security Act in 1947, and thus dedicated to the struggle against the communist threat, the CIA would prioritize the interests of global financial stakeholders. Designed in theory to inform the President, in practice the CIA acted as a medium and means through which the financial class could stir U.S. foreign policy to its own profit.

On three continents, the CIA overthrew democratically elected governments and replaced them with dictatorships under U.S. tutelage. Its first major success was the 1953 coup against the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeh who was about to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AOIC, renamed British Petroleum in 1954). The AOIC was British and not American, but the Dulles brothers happened to have served as its legal counsels and had developed vested interests in the company. After the fall of Mossadeh, the CIA flew the Shah Mohammad Pahlavi in a clearly marked plane, and proceeded to train his dreaded secret police, the SAVAK— including in methods of torture. In the late Eisenhower years, the CIA oversaw the assassination of the first elected president of the Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, and transferred power to the bloodthirsty Mobutu who terrorized the country (renamed Zaire) for 32 years. That Lumumba was assassinated three days before Kennedy's inauguration can probably be explained by worries within the National Security State about the incoming President’s anti-colonialist stances, and speaks volumes to the CIA’s disregard for the elected government.

In Central America, CIA began harassing President of Guatemala Jacobo Arbenz, elected in 1951. By his plan to redistribute of a portion of land to 100,000 poor farmers, Arbenz threatened the interests of the multinational United Fruit Company, the giant banana plantation that held more than 90% of the land. The Dulles were shareholders of United Fruit, for whom their lawyer’s office wrote capital contracts in the '30s - John Foster even sat on its board of directors. Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers orchestrated, financed and armed the coup against Arbenz by a military junta responsible for more than 200,000 civilian deaths from 1954 to 1996, especially among the Mayan population. A CIA manual entitled A Study of Assassination, written in 1953 and declassified in 1997, contains detailed instructions on the various methods of murder by weapons, bombs or simulated accidents. In some cases, it is recommended that assassins be “clandestine agents or members of criminal organizations”. Always in keeping with the principle of plausible deniability, “it is desirable that the assassin be transient in the area. He should have an absolute minimum of contact with the rest of the organization and his instructions should be given orally by one person only”.

What makes the CIA particularly effective as an arm of the Empire is its relative invisibility, that it can act behind a curtain, and when possible, even don the mask of its enemies in order to blame them for its own acts of terror. It is necessary that its covert wars in foreign lands remain hidden to the American public, who might object. This is why in the 50s the CIA initiated a massive propaganda operation, orchestrated from the Directorate of Plans under the codename Mockingbird. The operation *allowed the collusion of dozens of respectable directors and journalists from CBS, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post and twenty other institutions, by providing them with classified information and sometimes ready-made releases, while sanctioning independent investigators. According to Alex Constantine, author of Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA, in the ‘50s, “some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts”. It was revealed in 1977 that one of the journalists “owned” by the CIA was Joseph Alsop, whose foreign policy articles appeared in 300 different newspapers. Manipulation of public opinion with operation Mockingbird, and its immediate corollary the surveillance operation Chaos, are means by which, in violation of statutes that prohibit domestic spying, the CIA can actively monitor those who know too much, and silence them if necessary.

When Kennedy succeeded Eisenhower in January 1961, the CIA had set a goal to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba. Castro’s socialist revolution, which replaced the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, in no way threatened the security of the United States but deeply conflicted with American economic interests by increasing the price of sugar and tobacco. With its success in Guatemala, Dulles had no doubt that with the same team he could overthrow Castro. From late 1959, an anti-Castro group was organized by the Deputy Director of Plans (Head of Directorate of Plans) Richard Bissell, which included: officers from the Guatemalan operation such as David Atlee Phillips and Howard Hunt; and opponents of Castro like Felix Rodriguez (a nephew of a minister of Batista), and Frank Sturgis (a former companion to Castro turned anti-communist). The group was named the Cuban Task Force, or Operation 40 (because it initially consisted of forty men). In Nicaragua were created paramilitary training camps composed mainly of Cubans who fled Castro's revolution. The plan was to land these supposedly autonomous Cuban counter-revolutionaries in Cuba, then send to their aid the American Air Force and Navy under the pretext of supporting a popular uprising, and thereby invade Cuba without observable ethical controversy — a method of disguising imperialist wars into civil wars, that today rings familiar. Simultaneously, the CIA began plans to make use of Mafia leaders interested in reclaiming control over their lucrative venues (such as Santo Trafficante), in assassination plots against Castro, a corollary method aimed to deprive the Cuban people and the army of leadership.

Eisenhower is less involved in these preparations than his Vice President Richard Nixon, a corporate lawyer like Dulles. It was he who, mandated by the businessmen robbed by Castro (including his client Pepsi Cola, who depended on Cuban sugar), coordinated the funding of Operation 40. However, in late 1960, Nixon was in line to become Eisenhower’s successor, and postponed the risky campaign until after the election, assuming a win. Kennedy, of course, would win with a narrow margin. Dulles did not waste any time in presenting the operation to the new President at the National Security Council meeting, leading him to believe that the invasion of Cuban exiles would be enough to trigger a popular uprising. Kennedy agreed, but warned clearly that he would not allow any participation of the U.S. Army – participation which would amount to an act of war. Dulles was convinced that once put before the impending crisis, the President would concede, and the operation was launched April 15, 1961: a contingent of 1,500 Cuban exiles boarded seven boats leaving from the Nicaraguan coast and landed in the Bahia del Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on the Zapata Peninsula of Cuba. They were quickly surrounded by Castro's army and, as expected, called the United States for help. Five U.S. destroyers and aircraft carrier Essex were just less than 2 miles from the Cuban coast. Kennedy understands that he has been deceived and refuses to engage his ships, personally telephoning the captain of the fleet stationed near Cuba to forbid any movement. About 200 Cuban rebels were killed and 1,300 captured by Castro's forces.

Kennedy was furious: “I want to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds” (reported by Mike Mansfield). An internal document at the CIA, dated the 15th of November 1960 and declassified in 2005, proves that Dulles lied to the President when he led him to believe that the operation was likely to succeed without direct U.S. intervention: “our concept […] to secure a beach with airstrip is now seen to be unachievable, except as joint Agency/DOD [CIA/Department of Defense] action”. Dulles himself explains in notes published posthumously: “We felt that when the chips were down — when the crisis arose in reality, any action required for success would be authorized rather than permit the enterprise to fail”. Kennedy understood, as was clear in a comment made to his aides Kenneth O'Donnell and David Powers: “They were sure I’d give in to them and send the go-ahead order to the Essex. They couldn’t believe that a new President like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong”. Kennedy fired the chief instigators of the operation, the Director Allen Dulles and his two Deputy Directors Charles Cabell and Richard Bissell.

But the CIA is a family more than an organization, united by a code of honor not unlike the Mafia. The remaining members of the management team, almost all recruited by Dulles, remained loyal to their former boss and took a violent resentment toward Kennedy, no longer seeking Presidential assent and effectively transforming the CIA into a parallel power. The grudge was even stronger among Cuban exiles, a diaspora of nearly one million people concentrated around Miami, mostly composed ofpolitical refugees that had fled Castro's revolution. The United States is for them a temporary haven and they are not concerned with its national or imperial interests, but primarily want to regain their rights and property in Cuba. These Cuban patriots are organized around the Cuban Revolutionary Council, which serves as umbrella organization for many militant groups. Although financed by American institutions to the tune of $ 2 million per year, the Council defines itself as the legitimate government to replace that of Castro, thus similar to an allied foreign power acting in concert with the United States against a common enemy, communism. From their point of view, the Council and other representative organizations of Cuban exiles are not involved in the Cold war as much as in a civil war. They need American support to get back their political and economic power, while the CIA uses them to restore an American protectorate. Since the botched operation, both have bred a fierce hatred against Kennedy. In April 1963, a leaflet circulated among Cuban exiles, with the message: “Only through one development will you Cuban patriots ever live again in your homeland as freemen : if an inspired Act of God should place in the White House within weeks a Texan known to be a friend of all Latin Americans”. It’s obvious that these Cuban patriots didn’t have the means to kill Kennedy with impunity, but it is no less obvious that anyone who wanted to assassinate Kennedy could find volunteers among them.