vault backup: 2026-09-22 15:25:26

60 - PLACES/REGIONS/Latin America.md

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+---
+category: "Region"
+tags:
+  - Place
+  - LatinAmerica
+  - Rockefeller
+  - CIA
+  - Contras
+summary: "The hemisphere south of the United States as the vault records it: Rockefeller's private diplomacy, the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division, labor fronts, bankers and the drug and arms traffic of the Contra years."
+
+created: 2026-09-22
+updated: 2026-09-22
+---
+
+Latin America, in the vault, is first the Rockefeller hemisphere. [[Nelson Rockefeller]], a director of Creole Petroleum in [[Venezuela]] from 1935, was named Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs in 1940 to "remove German and British commercial and cultural influence from Latin America and replace it with American hegemony"; his office "became the first official US government propaganda operation, producing radio programs broadcast throughout Latin America, subsidizing 1,200 newspaper publishers dependent on CIAA-controlled newsprint shipments," and "displacing German airlines from Colombia, Bolivia, and Brazil." At Chapultepec in 1945 he "assembled his 'Latin American Junta': [[Galo Plaza]] of Ecuador, [[Alberto Lleras Camargo]] of Colombia, and Mexico's Ezequiel Padilla," and the Act of Chapultepec "killed 180 Latin American resolutions promoting industrialization and protective tariffs, replacing them with an open-door policy for American corporate investment"; at San Francisco Plaza and Lleras Camargo delivered "the votes of the Latin American bloc." Afterward he "created two private vehicles for Latin American penetration," IBEC and the AIA, and in 1969 his mission for Nixon, "Quality of Life in the Americas," "recommended reversing recent trends to reduce security assistance to Latin American military governments." His brother [[David Rockefeller]] "built Chase Manhattan Bank into the dominant US financial institution in Latin America," founded the Council of the Americas in 1963 and the Business Group for Latin America "at the express request of President Kennedy," on whose executive committee sat [[Donald Kendall]] of PepsiCo; [[John McCone]] staffed Johnson's Latin America apparatus with men "attuned to the prerogatives of American business," and [[Dean Rusk]] "handled the diplomacy of the Cold War interventions."[^1]
+
+### The Agencies
+
+[[Adolf Berle]], assistant secretary of state from 1938, "had charge of intelligence coordination for the State Department, working with the FBI in Latin America," whose Special Intelligence Service placed "over 340 undercover agents across the region" as legal attachés by 1942; the overthrow of Vargas in 1945 is "characterized in Brazilian historical scholarship as Latin America's first Cold War coup." [[J.C. King]] was "chief of clandestine activities for the Western Hemisphere at the Central Intelligence Agency from 1947 through 1964," arguing of [[Cuba]] that "a far-left dictatorship, which if allowed to remain will encourage similar actions against U.S. holdings in other Latin American countries"; [[Tom Clines]] served under Shackley in the division from 1972 to 1976, "involved in operations in [[Chile]]"; [[Bruce Berckmans]] of Wackenhut offered the agency "many useful contacts especially in Latin America." [[Paul Helliwell]]'s Castle Bank "was the conduit for millions of dollars earmarked by the CIA for the funding of clandestine operations against Cuba and for other covert intelligence operations directed at countries in Latin America and the Far East." [[Sidney Gottlieb]]'s searches ran "through the jungles of Latin America for toxic leaves and barks." Ambassador [[Edward Korry]] called [[Salvador Allende]]'s copper policy "a conscious challenge to the tradition of US defense of its major business interests in Latin America," and [[Hal Hendrix]] and [[Robert Berrellez]], ITT's public relations men for the region, were both former Latin America correspondents. [[Jimmy Carter]]'s human rights policy "reportedly distanced the CIA under Stansfield Turner from any death-squad interdiction."[^2]
+
+### Labor, Church and Money
+
+[[Serafino Romualdi]], "the AFL-CIO's Inter-American representative for over two decades," built the [[American Institute for Free Labor Development|AIFLD]] "into the CIA's principal labor-movement instrument in Latin America," Philip Agee naming him "the principal CIA agent for labor operations in Latin America"; [[Andrew McLellan]], its vice president, organized Brazilian labor operatives before the 1964 coup and travelled with Rockefeller's 1969 mission to "nineteen Latin American countries"; [[Berent Friele]] formed "the operational core of Rockefeller's wartime and postwar Latin American strategy." [[William Cameron Townsend]]'s [[Summer Institute of Linguistics]] was helped into South America by Plaza and Lleras Camargo, and [[Pope John Paul II]] mounted "active resistance to liberation theology in Latin America." [[Amjad Awan]] was BCCI's "marketing manager for Latin America and the Caribbean" and Noriega's banker; [[Roberto Calvi]]'s Banco Ambrosiano "had subsidiaries and affiliates across Latin America"; [[Jes Staley]] "spent the 1980s in the bank's Latin America division" at Morgan; [[Jim Himes]] studied Latin America at Oxford and worked it at Goldman Sachs. [[Thomas Dowling]]'s Latin America Strategic Studies Institute was funded through the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America, "later described by congressional investigators as an illegal CIA-run domestic propaganda mill." [[Che Guevara]] concluded from his journeys "that the United States would never permit peaceful reformist change in Latin America that threatened American corporate or strategic interests"; [[Jonathan Kwitny]] argued from his reporting that "the logic of anti-Communist intervention had systematically damaged American interests." [[Angela Dellafiora]] was "a civilian analyst on Latin America at INSCOM" before joining the remote-viewing unit.[^3]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: As cited on the linked pages: Colby, Gerard, and Charlotte Dennett, *Thy Will Be Done,* HarperCollins, 1995, chs. 5-8, 12-13, 27-28; Rockefeller, Nelson A., *Quality of Life in the Americas,* 1969; Rockefeller Archive Center biographical summary; Hersh, Seymour M., *The Price of Power,* Summit, 1983; U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, "David Dean Rusk."
+[^2]: Berle, Adolf A., *Navigating the Rapids,* 1973, and JFK Library oral history, July 6, 1967; Colby and Dennett, ch. 13; Corn, David, and Jeff Goldberg, "The Old Boy Network," *Mother Jones,* October 1994; CIA Domestic Contact Service case file 65805; Drinkhall, Jim, "IRS vs. CIA," *Wall Street Journal,* April 18, 1980; Marks, John D., *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate,* ch. 1; Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations, *Multinational Corporations and United States Foreign Policy,* 1973; Seymour, Cheri, *The Last Circle.*
+[^3]: Agee, Philip, *Inside the Company,* Stonehill, 1975; Mader, Julius, *Who's Who in the CIA,* 1968; Kurzman, Dan, "Lovestone's Cold War," *New Republic,* June 25, 1966; NACLA, "Rockefeller's Entourage," 1969; Colby and Dennett, chs. 6, 20, 45; Weigel, George, *Witness to Hope,* 1999; Beaty and Gwynne, *The Outlaw Bank,* 1993; Bank Policy Institute and Barclays on Staley; himes.house.gov; Webb, Gary, *Dark Alliance,* ch. 9; Anderson, Jon Lee, *Che Guevara,* Grove, 1997; Kwitny, Jonathan, *Endless Enemies,* 1984; Nickell, Joe, "Remotely Viewed? The Charlie Jordan Case."

60 - PLACES/REGIONS/Middle East.md

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+---
+category: "Region"
+tags:
+  - Place
+  - MiddleEast
+  - Israel
+  - Iran
+  - ArmsTrade
+alias:
+  - Near East
+  - Mideast
+summary: "The region from Egypt to Iran as it appears in the vault: the object of American nuclear intelligence, arms and hostage dealing, covert liaison clubs, and, latterly, of sovereign-wealth money for the well connected."
+
+created: 2026-09-22
+updated: 2026-09-22
+---
+
+The Middle East enters the vault first as an intelligence target. U-2 flights "continued to monitor sensitive areas, including the Middle East, and by 1958, CIA photo interpreters observed significant activity at an Israeli Air Force practice bombing range south of Beersheba, which turned out to be the early signs of the [[Dimona]] nuclear reactor"; [[Christian A. Herter]]'s farewell briefing to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 6, 1961, discussed "the 'disturbing' new element in the Middle East related to Dimona," and [[Carl E. Duckett]]'s work at the CIA "centered on assessing [[Israel]]'s nuclear capabilities and the potential for nuclear proliferation in the Middle East." In the Kennedy White House [[Myer Feldman]] "was authorized to monitor all State Department and [[White House]] cable traffic on the Middle East," to [[McGeorge Bundy]]'s dismay; [[Roswell L. Gilpatric]]'s committee urged "nuclear-free zones in [[Latin America]], Africa, and the Middle East, including Israel and [[Egypt]]"; and [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] became "the first American President to supply Israel with offensive weapons." The [[Committee for the Denuclearization of the Middle East]], Israeli scholars who went public in April 1962, urged United Nations intervention. [[Nikolai Bulganin]] during Suez and [[Leonid Brezhnev]] during the [[Yom Kippur War]] threatened Soviet intervention; the [[USS Liberty Incident|USS Liberty]] "had been monitoring Middle East communications traffic in international waters off the coast of Israel."[^1]
+
+### Liaison and Clubs
+
+The [[Office of Strategic Services]] "conducted covert operations, resistance support, and psychological warfare across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia"; [[MI6]] "maintained liaison relationships with intelligence services across the Middle East"; the [[SAVAK]]-[[Mossad]] relationship "was one of the most productive liaison partnerships in the Middle East during the Cold War." The [[Safari Club]] of [[Alexandre de Marenches]] existed "to continue covert anti-Soviet operations in Africa and the Middle East that CIA was temporarily unable to conduct openly under congressional scrutiny," with the Egyptian [[Mukhabarat]] supplying Soviet-compatible weapons. Between 1967 and 1968 the [[NSC Special Group|303 Committee]] "considered 23 projects for Africa, 33 for Latin America, 15 for Europe, 14 for Asia, and 2 for the Middle East." [[Kamal Adham]] "was considered one of the true inside power players of the Middle East"; [[Bruce Berckmans]] of Wackenhut offered the CIA's domestic contacts "many useful contacts especially in Latin America and soon in the Middle East."[^2]
+
+### Arms, Hostages and Software
+
+[[Arif Durrani]] "admitted to supplying Iran with arms and stated that he was part of a joint operation conducted by the United States and Israel to release American hostages in the Middle East," and met [[Oliver North]] for HAWK parts; [[Monzer Al-Kassar]] "developed relationships with Western intelligence services beginning in the 1970s, providing information and facilitating contacts in the Middle East arms and narcotics markets," and the Interfor report on [[Pan Am Flight 103]] alleged "a CIA-protected narcotics pipeline out of the Middle East." Two members of the [[Middle East Collection 10]] cell in Cyprus and Beirut, [[Matthew Kevin Gannon]] and [[Charles Dennis McKee]], died on that flight; [[Lester Coleman]] of the same unit swore that the DEA "was using its proprietary company, [[Euramae Trading Company]], to sell [[PROMIS]] software to drug abuse control agencies in various Middle Eastern countries," with money from the [[United Nations Fund for Drug Abuse Control]], and a Justice Department document of May 14, 1985, placed [[Khalid bin Mahfouz]] beside Ghorbanifar and Khashoggi in "a covert plan to distribute espionage-modified PROMIS software in the Middle East." The [[Cabazon Arms]] venture of [[Wackenhut Corporation]] sought export markets in "the Contras in Nicaragua and nations in the Middle East." In the [[October Surprise]] story, [[Gary Sick]] built his case on "three years of interviews conducted in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East," and [[Ben Barnes]] said in 2023 that he had accompanied [[John Connally]] on a 1980 Middle East tour carrying the message that "Iran would receive a better deal from Reagan than from Carter."[^3]
+
+### Money
+
+"The Middle Eastern investors are in control of Financial General Bankshares," a court of appeals noted in 1982, as [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]] bought through [[Stephens Inc.]] "for four Middle Eastern clients"; Talat Othman of [[Harken Energy]] "attended three White House meetings on the Middle East." [[Jared Kushner]]'s White House portfolio "covered the Middle East policy that produced the Abraham Accords," and his Affinity Partners grew by 2026 "to approximately 6 billion dollars under management, nearly all of it from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth," Bloomberg reporting his "dual role" as fund manager and peace envoy. [[Palantir Technologies]]' chief told CNBC its technology "is being used in the Middle East war."[^4]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: As cited on the linked pages: Hersh, Seymour M., *The Samson Option,* Random House, 1991; Ben-Menashe, Ari, *Profits of War,* TrineDay, 1992.
+[^2]: Troy, Thomas F., *Donovan and the CIA,* CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence; Trento, Joseph, *Prelude to Terror,* Carroll and Graf, 2005; Risen, James, *State of War,* Free Press, 2006; NSAM 303 and discoverlbj.org; Beaty, Jonathan, and S. C. Gwynne, *The Outlaw Bank,* Random House, 1993; CIA Domestic Contact Service case file 65805 (NARA 104-10291-10016/10017).
+[^3]: Beaty and Gwynne, *The Outlaw Bank;* Farah, Douglas, and Stephen Braun, *Merchant of Death,* Wiley, 2007; Henderson, Ian, *The Lockerbie Trial,* Palgrave, 2001; Seymour, Cheri, *The Last Circle,* TrineDay; House Judiciary Committee, *The INSLAW Affair,* H. Rept. 102-857; Webb, Gary, *Dark Alliance,* Seven Stories, 1998; Sick, Gary, *October Surprise,* Times Books, 1991; Unger, Craig, *Den of Spies,* Dutton, 2024; Barnes, Ben, interview, *New York Times,* March 18, 2023.
+[^4]: *Financial General Bankshares, Inc. v. Metzger,* 680 F.2d 768 (D.C. Cir. 1982); Truell, Peter, and Larry Gurwin, *False Profits,* Houghton Mifflin, 1992; Petzinger, Truell and Abramson, *Wall Street Journal,* December 6, 1991; "Kushner Disappoints Mideast Clients," *Bloomberg,* May 14, 2026; Senate Finance Committee inquiry into Affinity Partners; "Palantir, Israel Agree Strategic Partnership for Battle Tech," *Bloomberg,* January 12, 2024.

60 - PLACES/REGIONS/Silicon Valley.md

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+---
+category: "Region"
+tags:
+  - Place
+  - SiliconValley
+  - Technologists
+  - PayPalMafia
+  - VentureCapital
+alias:
+  - the Valley
+summary: "The technology district of the southern San Francisco Bay, in the vault the home ground of the PayPal Mafia, the Thiel network's courtship of the Pentagon and the presidency, and the money behind rationalism, longevity and accelerationism."
+location: "California"
+created: 2026-09-22
+updated: 2026-09-22
+---
+
+Silicon Valley, the technology industry of the Santa Clara valley and the southern [[San Francisco]] Bay, is where the vault's technologists cluster. [[Stewart Brand]], "Merry Prankster, and organizer of Ken Kesey's Trips Festival, is the figure most often credited with carrying the values of the 1960s San Francisco counterculture... into the personal-computer and internet culture of Silicon Valley"; [[Max More]]'s Extropianism "shaped the technological optimism of Silicon Valley's elite"; the [[Esalen Institute]] later marketed "its programs on personal transformation to a Silicon Valley clientele anxious about the social effects of the products it was shipping." In 1999 "a small team of agency staff, a consulting firm, and the law firm Arnold and Porter spent four months visiting Silicon Valley" to set up the CIA's [[In-Q-Tel]].[^1]
+
+### The PayPal Network
+
+[[Peter Thiel]] is "the central figure of the [[PayPal Mafia]], the informal network of founders and early executives of PayPal who went on to found or lead much of the subsequent generation of Silicon Valley companies"; his student paper, the [[Stanford Review]], was described as "one of the surest paths to success in Silicon Valley," and [[Blake Masters]]'s notes of his Stanford course "circulated widely in the Silicon Valley founder community." [[Elon Musk]], [[Reid Hoffman]] (a Greylock partner from 2009), [[Roelof Botha]] at Sequoia, "the firm historically dominant in Silicon Valley venture investing," and [[David Sacks]] came out of the same company; [[Sam Altman]]'s "career runs through the same Silicon Valley founder network as Peter Thiel, who was a part-time partner at Y Combinator during Altman's presidency," and [[Worldcoin]] "sits alongside Palantir Technologies, Clearview AI, Carbyne, and SafeGraph as privately held mass-data infrastructure in the Silicon Valley network." Thiel and [[Auren Hoffman]] founded [[Dialog]] in 2006, "an invitation-only retreat convening U.S. officials, foreign government figures, and Silicon Valley executives under off-the-record rules," whose 2026 registrants leaked to WIRED. Thiel declined a post in 2017, saying he wanted to "stay involved in Silicon Valley," while [[Donald Trump]]'s administrations were "the political vehicle" through which the Thiel network (Palantir, Clearview, Founders Fund) "exercised documented federal power." A 2015 dinner arranged by [[Jeffrey Epstein]] "places five PayPal Mafia and Silicon Valley principals at the same table as the registered sex offender," and Thiel bought "a 193-hectare estate near Lake Wanaka" in "a documented pattern of Silicon Valley billionaire property acquisition in [[New Zealand]]."[^2]
+
+### The Pentagon and the Right
+
+[[Eric Schmidt]] chaired the Defense Innovation Board from 2016 to 2020, "an advisory body bringing Silicon Valley figures to the Pentagon," and his [[Special Competitive Studies Project]] argues for "a tighter alliance between Silicon Valley and the government." [[Alex Karp]]'s book holds that Silicon Valley "lost its way" and that "the 'engineering elite' must rebuild its ties to government and the military"; [[Anduril Industries]] and [[Joe Lonsdale]] embody "the Thiel-network argument that the Pentagon should procure from Silicon Valley-style software firms rather than from the traditional defense primes." [[Marc Andreessen]] became "the most prominent financial and rhetorical patron of effective accelerationism and a central figure, alongside Peter Thiel, in the Silicon Valley technology elite's turn toward the political right," while the [[CCRU]]'s vocabulary "recycled a third time in the 'effective accelerationism' (e/acc) movement that circulated among Silicon Valley technologists from 2022 onward." [[Scott Alexander]]'s blog "carried an endorsement from Paul Graham of Y Combinator, was read by Patrick Collison of Stripe, and was followed by the venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz," and the New York Times profiled it as "Silicon Valley's Safe Space"; [[Nick Bostrom]]'s *Superintelligence* "hardened the AI-doom position across Silicon Valley." Senator [[Cory Booker]]'s career "has been entwined with Silicon Valley money since his Newark mayoralty," and [[Peter Attia]]'s longevity ventures "are financed by Silicon Valley investors." [[Thinking Machines Lab]]'s 2025 seed round was "among the largest seed rounds in Silicon Valley history."[^3]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: As cited on the linked pages: Turner, Fred, *From Counterculture to Cyberculture,* University of Chicago Press, 2006; Evans, Jules, on Max More and the extropians; Quartz on Esalen; Yannuzzi, Rick E., "In-Q-Tel: A New Partnership Between the CIA and the Private Sector," *Defense Intelligence Journal,* 2000.
+[^2]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova, "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society," *WIRED,* June 16, 2026; Soni, Jimmy, *The Founders,* Simon and Schuster, 2022; "The Stanford Review and the making of the PayPal Mafia," *Stanford Politics,* November 27, 2017; Thiel and Masters, *Zero to One,* 2014; "Disrupting the White House: Peter Thiel's Influence is Shaping the National Security Council," *Just Security;* *New York Times,* May 18, 2023, on Thiel and Epstein; Epstein Files Transparency Act documents EFTA00344556 and EFTA00344564; *The Guardian,* February 1, 2017, on the New Zealand citizenship; "US tech embraces Sam Altman's World iris-scan ID," *Rest of World,* 2026.
+[^3]: Tech Transparency Project, "Eric Schmidt's Unseen Influence Over US Defense Spending"; *Al Jazeera,* April 21, 2026, on Karp's *The Technological Republic;* *NBC New York/Bloomberg,* 2025, on Anduril's Founders Fund round; Andreessen, Marc, "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto," October 16, 2023; *Aeon* on Nick Land; Metz, Cade, "Silicon Valley's Safe Space," *New York Times,* February 13, 2021; Bostrom, Nick, *Superintelligence,* Oxford, 2014; "Examining Cory Booker's Tech Ties," *Inc.,* 2013; *TechCrunch,* July 15, 2025, on Thinking Machines.