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Covert operations, coups, and blowback

100 events 10 sources c. 1 January 1946 to 27 May 2016 created 19 Jul 2026, 08:27

The documented covert history that shaped the modern world: the Cold War coups, the paramilitary training and arming of proxies, Iran-Contra, Operation Condor, and the arming of the Afghan mujahideen whose blowback fed modern jihadism...

The documented covert history that shaped the modern world: the Cold War coups, the paramilitary training and arming of proxies, Iran-Contra, Operation Condor, and the arming of the Afghan mujahideen whose blowback fed modern jihadism. Documented operations stated as fact; the strongest 'CIA created every terror group' claims flagged as contested.

Figures Allen DullesAugusto PinochetChalmers JohnsonDwight D. EisenhowerFidel CastroGary WebbGeorge H. W. BushJacobo ArbenzJohn PoindexterKermit Roosevelt Jr.Manuel NoriegaMikhail Gorbachev

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part of this The pillars of modern power parallel this Free speech and how it is subverted parallel this The military-industrial complex and Pax Americana parallel this JFK: the presidency and the assassination parallel this The Cold War parallel this The Nazi bargains: Paperclip and the recruitment of the enemy parallel this The space race: rivalry, rendezvous, and spying parallel this The Russian oligarchs and the rise of Putin parallel this Agent provocateurs and false flags parallel this The Congo: from Leopold to the resource wars parallel this The resource curse: how the South fed the North part of this Client dictators: the strongmen the powers kept parallel this Banana republics: corporations and the coup parallel this The United Nations: peace, power, and its failures parallel this The Free World's clients: the West's unfree allies parallel this NGOs, foundations, and soft power parallel this Oil: the industry that fueled the modern world parallel this The global drug trade and how it ties to everything part of this Co-opt the moderate, bury the militant: the pattern of managed decolonization part of this The cultural Cold War: the CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom parallel this Democracy promotion: the soft-power apparatus parallel this The Project for a New American Century parallel this The murdered liberators: Africa's reformers removed parallel this Military and security

100 newly added in the last 14 days

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    School of the Americas is founded

    also in Military and security

    The US Army opened the School of the Americas to train Latin American soldiers, later moving it to Fort Benning, Georgia. Thousands of graduates went on to serve in militaries that carried out coups and human rights abuses.

    • The subjects in Sister Josephina's study were 900 students in grades five through eight drawn from nine parochial schools.
      Life in Classrooms
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    Operation Ajax overthrows Mossadegh

    The CIA and Britain's MI6 organized a coup that removed Iran's elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The operation restored the Shah's power and the CIA later acknowledged its role.

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    Uruguay's military dissolves parliament

    also in Military and security

    Backed by security forces trained in US counterinsurgency, Uruguay's president dissolved parliament and opened a 12-year dictatorship. The country jailed and tortured political prisoners at one of the highest per-capita rates in the world.

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    Operation Condor formally established

    also in Military and security

    Intelligence chiefs from Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil met in Santiago to coordinate against exiled opponents. The pact became Operation Condor, a network for cross-border surveillance and assassination.

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    Communist coup overthrows and kills Afghan President Daoud

    In April 1978 Mohammed Daoud arrested communist leaders in Kabul after they staged a protest. Soviet-backed officers planted inside the Afghan army shot him dead days later, launching the Marxist revolution that provoked the anticommunist revolt.

    • In April 1978, Daoud fell off his beam. He arrested communist leaders in Kabul after they staged a noisy protest. Soviet-backed conspirators seeded within the Afghan army shot him dead days later in a reception room of his tattered palace.
      Ghost Wars
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    Armed zealots seize Mecca's Grand Mosque

    In November 1979 followers of Juhayman al-Utaybi smuggled weapons into Mecca's Grand Mosque and proclaimed a Mahdi, seizing Islam's holiest site. Saudi troops and French commandos retook it after weeks of fighting, hardening the Saudi royal family's embrace of Wahhabi religious rule.

    • Saudi Arabian soldiers and French commandos routed the armed attackers at the Grand Mosque on Saturday in a bloody gun battle.
      Ghost Wars
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    Carter signs the first covert-action finding to aid Afghan rebels

    also in Curriculum, programming, and propaganda

    On July 3, 1979, months before the Soviet invasion, President Carter signed a presidential finding authorizing the CIA to spend just over $500,000 on propaganda, radios, medical supplies, and cash for the anticommunist Afghan rebels, funneled through Pakistan.

    • On July 3, 1979, Carter scrawled his name on a presidential “finding” required under a recent law intended to ensure White House control over CIA operations.
      Ghost Wars
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    Herat revolt crushed with mass killing by the Afghan communist government

    The first major anticommunist mutiny erupted in Herat in March 1979 after Kabul's Marxists ordered girls taught to read. Soviet-trained pilots bombed the town in reprisal; by the regime's first anniversary the government had killed as many as twenty thousand people in Herat.

    • By the time the raids were finished, on the eve of its first anniversary in power, the Afghan communist government had killed as many as twenty thousand of its own citizenry in Herat alone.
      Ghost Wars
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    Mob sacks and burns the U.S. embassy in Islamabad

    On November 21, 1979, a mob of Pakistani students, inflamed by a false rumor that America had seized Mecca's Grand Mosque, overran the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. CIA officers and Marines sheltered in a vault as the compound burned; Marine Corporal Stephen Crowley and others died, and General Zia's forces took hours to respond.

    • All of the embassy compound’s six buildings, constructed at a cost of $20 million, had been torched beyond repair.
      Ghost Wars
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    Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

    also in The Cold War

    KGB paramilitaries chased Hafizullah Amin through his Kabul palace as Soviet tanks reached their staging areas during the December 1979 invasion.

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    Saudi intelligence agrees to match CIA funding for the Afghan jihad

    In July 1980 Prince Turki al-Faisal's General Intelligence Department reached a formal deal with the CIA to match, dollar for dollar, U.S. congressional funding for the mujahedin. Saudi money flowed through its Washington embassy into a CIA-controlled Swiss account used to buy weapons.

    • Turki reached a formal agreement with the CIA in July 1980 to match U.S. congressional funding for the Afghan rebels.
      Ghost Wars
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    Howard Hart takes over the CIA's Afghan arms program in Islamabad

    Howard Hart arrived in May 1981 as CIA station chief in Islamabad to run the clandestine program arming anti-Soviet guerrillas. His orders were essentially to hand over bags of money and weapons to Pakistan's ISI and let the mujahedin kill Soviets, ceding control of distribution to Pakistan.

    • Hart had arrived in Pakistan in May 1981 as the CIA’s chief of station. He ran the agency’s clandestine program to arm anti-Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan.
      Ghost Wars
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    Pakistan rejects Carter's aid, wins a $3.2 billion package from Reagan

    General Zia dismissed Carter's offer of $400 million as "peanuts" and secured a $3.2 billion aid deal from the Reagan administration, including permission to buy F-16 fighters previously reserved for NATO allies. In return the U.S. muted its objections to Pakistan's secret nuclear program.

    • He turned down Carter’s initial offer of $400 million in aid, dismissing it as “peanuts,” and was rewarded with a $3.2 billion proposal from the Reagan administration plus permission to buy F-16 fighter jets, previously available only to NATO allies and Japan.
      Ghost Wars
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    Casey tells Reagan the covert Afghan war is cost effective

    In January 1984 CIA director William Casey briefed Reagan that the mujahedin had killed or wounded about seventeen thousand Soviet soldiers and controlled 62 percent of the countryside. The war had cost Moscow roughly $12 billion, paid for with $200 million in U.S. money plus a matching $200 million from Saudi intelligence.

    • Mujahedin warriors had killed or wounded about seventeen thousand Soviet soldiers to date, by the CIA’s classified estimate. They controlled 62 percent of the countryside and had become so effective that the Soviets would have to triple or quadruple their deployments in Afghanistan to put the rebellion down.
      Ghost Wars
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    Congress triples the CIA's Afghan budget to $250 million

    Spurred by Representative Charlie Wilson, Congress in late 1984 shoveled leftover Pentagon money into the Afghan program, raising its 1985 budget to $250 million, as much as all prior years combined. With the Saudi match, the CIA could spend roughly $500 million arming the mujahedin.

    • Congress that month shoveled another enormous injection of leftover Pentagon money to the CIA for use in support of the mujahedin, bringing the total Afghan program budget for 1985 up to $250 million, about as much as all the previous years combined.
      Ghost Wars
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    Reagan signs NSDD-166 to escalate the Afghan covert war

    In March 1985 President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166, shifting U.S. policy from merely harassing Soviet forces to driving them out. It authorized satellite intelligence, secure communications, advanced weapons, and CIA unilateral agents for the mujahedin.

    • President Reagan signed the classified NSDD-166, titled “Expanded U.S. Aid to Afghan Guerrillas,” in March 1985, formally anointing its confrontational language as covert U.S. policy in Afghanistan.
      Ghost Wars
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    The Iran-Contra affair begins

    also in Military and security

    US officials secretly sold weapons to Iran, then under an arms embargo, and diverted the proceeds to fund the Contras. The scheme broke US law and became the biggest scandal of the Reagan years.

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    CIA establishes its Counterterrorist Center

    On February 1, 1986, the CIA created its Counterterrorist Center at Langley, with Duane Clarridge as first director. It grew from Casey's push for an aggressive response to the Middle East hostage crises but soon shifted toward analysis after the Iran-Contra scandal.

    • The CIA’s Counterterrorist Center was born on February 1, 1986. Clarridge was named its first director.
      Ghost Wars
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    Gorbachev calls Afghanistan a 'bleeding wound'

    Early in 1986 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev publicly called the Afghan war a bleeding wound, and by that November he had privately set a goal of withdrawing Soviet troops within one or two years while leaving a friendly, neutral Afghanistan behind.

    • He publicly referred to the war as a “bleeding wound” early in 1986.
      Ghost Wars
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    Mujahedin fire the first Stinger missiles, downing Soviet helicopters

    On September 26, 1986, near Jalalabad, a rebel team led by Engineer Ghaffar fired the CIA's newly supplied Stinger missiles and destroyed three Soviet helicopter gunships. The shoulder-fired heat-seeking weapon soon became the war's most significant battlefield development, forcing Soviet aircraft to fly higher.

    • another flashed across the plain and smashed into a helicopter, destroying it in a fireball. More missiles flew in rapid succession, and two other helicopters fell, killing their Russian crews.
      Ghost Wars
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    Battle of Jaji makes bin Laden's name among Arab jihadists

    On April 17, 1987, Soviet forces attacked Osama bin Laden's fortified compound at Jaji near the Pakistani border. Bin Laden and about fifty Arab volunteers held out for days, and the fight, chronicled by Arab journalists, launched his public reputation as a warrior and his global media campaign.

    • On April 17, 1987, Soviet helicopters and bomber jets hit Osama bin Laden’s new fortified compound at Jaji, an assemblage of small crevices and caves dug into rocky hills above the border village.
      Ghost Wars
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    Geneva Accords set the terms of the Soviet withdrawal

    On April 14, 1988, Afghanistan's communist government, Pakistan, the U.S., and the Soviet Union signed the Geneva Accords formalizing the Soviet pullout. The mujahedin were excluded, and under a formula called "positive symmetry" the CIA kept arming them as long as Moscow supplied Kabul.

    • SIGNED BY RANKING DIPLOMATS on April 14, 1988, the Geneva Accords ratified by treaty the formal terms of the Soviet withdrawal.
      Ghost Wars
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    President Zia and the U.S. ambassador die in a plane crash

    On August 17, 1988, Pakistani dictator Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq died when his C-130 crashed after a tank demonstration near Bhawalpur. Also killed were ISI chief General Akhtar, U.S. ambassador Arnold Raphel, and much of Pakistan's senior military brass; the cause was never established.

    • It was August 17, 1988. The embassy officer said they had a very garbled report that President Zia’s plane had gone down near Bhawalpur where Zia, General Akhtar, Arnold Raphel (the American ambassador to Pakistan), and other Pakistani and American military officers had been watching the demonstration of a new tank that the Americans wanted to sell.
      Ghost Wars
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    Al-Qaeda founded in the Afghan war's aftermath contested

    also in Military and security

    Osama bin Laden and associates founded al-Qaeda from networks built during the anti-Soviet war. The group grew out of the war's aftermath, though the claim that the CIA created or directly funded bin Laden is contested and not supported by the documented record.

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    Soviet Troops Withdraw from Afghanistan

    The last Soviet military units withdrew from Afghanistan on February 15, 1989, crossing back into Soviet territory after nearly a decade of occupation.

    • On February 15,1989, the last Red Army units crossed the Amu Darya back into Soviet territory.
      Overthrow - Americas century of regime change from Hawaii
    • On February 15, the day appointed by the Geneva Accords for the departure of the last Soviet troops, Gromov staged a ceremony for the international media on the Termez Bridge, still standing despite the multiple attempts by ISI to persuade Afghan commanders to knock it down.
      Ghost Wars
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    U.S. and Soviet Union agree to end arms supplies to Afghanistan

    On September 13, 1991, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Boris Pankin pledged a mutual cutoff of all arms to Najibullah and the Afghan rebels, effective January 1, 1992. The superpower agreement ended official support for both sides in the Afghan war.

    • On September 13, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Boris Pankin pledged a mutual cutoff of arms to Najibullah and the Afghan rebels as of January 1, 1992.
      Ghost Wars
    • On September 13, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Boris Pankin pledged a mutual cutoff of arms to Najibullah and the Afghan rebels as of January 1, 1992.
      Ghost Wars
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    Najibullah falls and Massoud takes Kabul as civil war begins

    In April 1992 the communist government of Najibullah collapsed. Ahmed Shah Massoud outmaneuvered his rival Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and entered Kabul, but the victory dissolved into a devastating civil war among the mujahedin factions that would wreck the capital.

    • Massoud entered Kabul triumphantly from the north on a tank strewn with flowers. That night hundreds of his mujahedin fired their assault rifles into the air in celebration, their tracer bullets lighting the sky like electric rain.
      Ghost Wars
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    Mir Amal Kasi shoots CIA employees outside Langley

    On January 25, 1993, Pakistani Mir Amal Kasi opened fire on CIA employees waiting at the entrance to the agency's Langley headquarters, killing two and wounding three, then fled to Pakistan. The CIA devoted much of its remaining Afghan network to hunting him.

    • these were dedicated to tracking down Mir Amal Kasi, a young and angry Pakistani who on January 25, 1993, had opened fire on CIA employees arriving at the agency’s Langley headquarters. Kasi had killed two and wounded three, and then fled to Pakistan.
      Ghost Wars
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    Ramzi Yousef bombs the World Trade Center

    On February 26, 1993, Ramzi Yousef, trained in Afghan jihadist camps, detonated a truck bomb beneath the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring about a thousand. His network of "ad hoc" mobile jihadists marked, to CIA analysts, a new kind of stateless terrorism.

    • On February 26, 1993, just a month after Kasi’s highly publicized attack at the CIA, Yousef led his confederates in a two-vehicle convoy from Brooklyn to the B-2 level of an underground garage at the World Trade Center.
      Ghost Wars
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    Taliban emerge in Kandahar under Mullah Omar

    The Taliban first surfaced as a small vigilante militia near Kandahar in the spring and summer of 1994, funded by about $250,000 from local businessmen and led by the one-eyed cleric Mullah Mohammed Omar. They promised to disarm the predatory warlords who had made the roads lawless.

    • They first surfaced as a small militia force operating near Kandahar city during the spring and summer of 1994, carrying out vigilante attacks against minor warlords, backed by a security fund of about $250,000 raised by local small businessmen.
      Ghost Wars
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    Taliban seize the city of Kandahar

    In November 1994, aided by a captured ISI weapons dump at Spin Boldak, the Taliban took the entire city of Kandahar in about a day. Mullah Omar occupied the governor's headquarters and the movement soon controlled the airport, tanks, and MiG fighters.

    • Suddenly, in just twenty-four hours, the Taliban moved into central Kandahar and captured the entire city.
      Ghost Wars
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    Riyadh bombing by bin Laden-inspired Afghan veterans

    In November 1995 a bombing in Riyadh, carried out by Afghan-war veterans inspired by bin Laden, caught Saudi intelligence by surprise. Prince Turki's service had been focused almost entirely on Iranian and Shiite threats, leaving the Sunni jihadist danger underestimated.

    • the Riyadh bombing in November by bin Laden–inspired Afghan veterans came “out of nowhere.”
      Ghost Wars
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    Taliban capture Herat and turn toward Kabul

    When Herat fell to the Taliban in September 1995, the movement controlled all of southern Afghanistan. Backed by Pakistani intelligence, weapons, and volunteers from border madrassas, Mullah Omar's militia then announced its intention to march on Kabul.

    • When Herat fell to the Taliban in September, the die was cast. Omar and his Durrani militia now controlled all of southern Afghanistan.
      Ghost Wars
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    Bin Laden issues his declaration of war on America

    In August 1996, from Afghanistan, bin Laden publicly issued his "Declaration of Jihad on the Americans Occupying the Country of the Two Sacred Places," targeting the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia and calling on followers to attack Americans and Israelis.

    • In August he issued an open call for war titled “The Declaration of Jihad on the Americans Occupying the Country of the Two Sacred Places,” meaning Saudi Arabia, where more than five thousand U.S. soldiers and airmen were based.
      Ghost Wars
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    Bin Laden returns to Afghanistan

    In May 1996, expelled from Sudan and stripped of Saudi citizenship, Osama bin Laden flew into Jalalabad on his own jet with scores of Arab radicals. Afghanistan's collapsed state gave him a sanctuary from which to organize violence against the United States.

    • FOUR MONTHS EARLIER, in May 1996, Osama bin Laden, the seventeenth son of a Saudi Arabian billionaire, had flown into Afghanistan on his own Ariana Afghan Airlines jet.
      Ghost Wars
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    Taliban Captures Kabul and Takes Control of Afghanistan

    Taliban forces entered Kabul on September 27, 1996, establishing control over Afghanistan with support from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Osama bin Laden.

    • On September 27, 1996, propelled by four powerful friends—Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United States, and bin Laden—Taliban forces rolled triumphantly into Kabul.
      Overthrow - Americas century of regime change from Hawaii
    • By nightfall the Taliban had conquered Kabul. A militia whose one-eyed emir believed that he had been selected by God to prepare pious Muslims for glory in the afterlife now controlled most of Afghanistan’s territory, most of its key cities, and its seat of government.
      Ghost Wars
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    Al Qaeda Bombs U.S. Embassies in East Africa

    On August 7, 1998, Al Qaeda operatives under Osama bin Laden's direction bombed the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing over 200 people.

    • On August 7, 1998, terror squads acting at his direction blew up the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than two hundred people.
      Overthrow - Americas century of regime change from Hawaii
    • Shortly before 10:30 A.M. on Friday, August 7, 1998, two teams of suicide bombers rolled through two sprawling African capital cities.
      Ghost Wars
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    U.S. launches cruise missile strikes against bin Laden

    On August 20, 1998, in retaliation for the embassy bombings, the U.S. fired seventy-five Tomahawk cruise missiles at bin Laden's Zawhar Kili camps in Afghanistan and thirteen more at the al Shifa plant in Sudan. At least twenty-one jihadists died, but bin Laden was not among them.

    • Seventy-five Tomahawk cruise missiles, each costing about $750,000, slammed into Zawhar Kili’s rock gorges at about 10 P.M. local time. At least twenty-one Pakistani jihadist volunteers died, and dozens more were wounded. Bin Laden was not among them.
      Ghost Wars
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    Pinochet arrested in London

    also in Military and security

    Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London on a Spanish warrant for human rights crimes, a landmark moment for international justice. He was later released on health grounds but faced charges in Chile.

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    USS Cole attacked by al Qaeda suicide bombers in Aden, Yemen

    On October 12, 2000, a small boat packed with explosives attacked the USS Cole, an American guided-missile destroyer docked in Aden, Yemen. The explosion killed 17 American sailors and wounded 30 more.

    • October 12, a small tender boat packed with explosives glided alongside a 505-foot, American Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer docked at Aden, Yemen.
      Ghost Wars
    • A month after Taloqan’s fall, on October 12, a small tender boat packed with explosives glided alongside a 505-foot, American Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer docked at Aden, Yemen.
      Ghost Wars
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    The concept of blowback enters public debate

    also in Military and security

    Scholar Chalmers Johnson popularized the term blowback, the CIA's own word for the unintended consequences of covert operations that come back to harm the country that launched them. His book argued US interventions were breeding future retaliation.

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    Al-Qaeda suicide bombers assassinate Ahmed Shah Massoud

    On September 9, 2001, two Arabs posing as television journalists detonated a bomb hidden in their camera while interviewing anti-Taliban commander Ahmed Shah Massoud in northern Afghanistan. The killing, two days before the 9/11 attacks, removed the Taliban's most formidable opponent.

    • The explosion ripped the cameraman’s body apart. It smashed the room’s windows, seared the walls in flame, and tore Massoud’s chest with shrapnel.
      Ghost Wars
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    Nineteen hijackers assemble in the United States for 9/11

    By mid-July 2001 all nineteen hijackers had entered the United States. Fifteen were Saudis, two Emiratis, one Egyptian, and one Lebanese; the trained pilots came from the Hamburg cell, and the "muscle" recruits arrived between April and June 2001 to await the signal, funded by al-Qaeda transfers from the Gulf.

    • All nineteen of the attackers had safely entered the United States by mid-July. Fifteen were Saudi Arabians, including al-Mihdhar and al-Hazma.
      Ghost Wars
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    The "CIA created al-Qaeda" claim is contested contested

    also in Military and security

    A popular claim holds that the CIA directly created Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda, but historians and declassified records do not support a direct link. The documented reality is blowback, US aid to Afghan factions that later fed movements it neither controlled nor intended.

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    Arming Syrian rebels rebounds

    also in Military and security

    US and allied programs to arm Syrian rebels saw weapons and fighters flow to hardline groups, and some materiel reached jihadist factions. Officials later acknowledged the effort had limited control over where support ended up.

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Further reading

Crosses paths with

  • Military and security shares 64 event(s): School of the Americas is founded, Operation Gladio and NATO's stay-behind networks, Kermit Roosevelt runs the Tehran coup on the ground
  • Curriculum, programming, and propaganda shares 3 event(s): Operation PBSuccess overthrows Arbenz in Guatemala, Carter signs the first covert-action finding to aid Afghan rebels, Manuel Noriega turns from asset to target
  • The Cold War shares 1 event(s): Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
  • The age of terror shares 1 event(s): 1993 World Trade Center bombing