Covert ops

Four more ways the CIA has meddled in Africa

he US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a long history of involvement in African affairs, so Sunday's reports that the 1962 arrest of Nelson Mandela came following a CIA tip-off don't come as a huge surprise.

Most incidents came during the Cold War, when the US and the Soviet Union battled for influence across the continent.

CIA covert operations are by their very nature hard to prove definitively. But research into the agency's work, as well as revelations by former CIA employees, has thrown up several cases where the agency tried to influence events.

Covert ops

US Covert Ops Used to Create Excuses for Invasion - Daniel Ellsberg

In a series of interviews with MintPress News, Ellsberg describes how the United States used covert operations in both Vietnam and Cuba to "provoke a response."

"This was two years after the Cuban missile crisis, which is to say two years after the largest covert operation in CIA history against Cuba," he tells activist Arn Menconi. "These were the same people doing it, and pretty much for the same reason: to provoke a response by our adversaries that would give us an excuse to invade them."