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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
“In the police you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos.” - George Orwell, Shooting An Elephant and Other Essays.
1 See Martha K. Huggins, Political Policing: The United States in Latin America. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998, Michael T. Klare, War Without End: American Planning for the Next Vietnams. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972; A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors: The Truth about U.S. Police Operations in Latin America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978, 120.
2 In Klare, War Without End, 243.
3 Robert W. Komer to McGeorge Bundy, Maxwell Taylor “Cutbacks in Police Programs Overseas” May 5, 1962, JFK Library, Boston, MA, National Security Council, box 332, folder Counter-Insurgency Police Programs.
4 See Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas. Durham. N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004, for a parallel.
5 Johnson builds on a corpus of previous work, including the seminal contributions of the so-called Wisconsin school, political scientist Michael Klare, linguist Noam Chomsky and historian Alfred W. McCoy, among others. See Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of the American Empire. New York: Owl Books, 2000; Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic. New York: Metropolitan Books 2004; Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. New York: Metropolitan, 2008.
6 Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, The Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009.
7 William Cameron Forbes, Journals, vol. I, January 31, 1905, WCF, Houghton Library Harvard University.
8 “Henry Allen to William H. Taft,” October 1, 1902, HTA, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 7. For a profile of Allen, see McCoy, Policing America's Empire, 86-91.
9 John R. White, Bullets and Bolos: Fifteen Years in the Philippines Islands. New York: The Century Company, 1928, 106.
10 Emily Greene Balch, “Public Order,” in Occupied Haiti: The Report of a Committee of Six disinterested Americans representing organizations exclusively American, who, having personally studied conditions in Haiti in 1926, favor the restoration of the Independence of the Negro Republic, ed. Emily Balch. New York: The Writers Publishing Co., 1927, 134.
11 “Report of the President's Commission for the Study and Review of Conditions in the Republic of Haiti,” March 26, 1930, Government Printing Office, 1930, 4; John H. Craige, Black Baghdad: The Arabian Nights Adventures of a Marine Captain in Haiti. New York and Chicago: A. L. Burt & Co., 1933, 161.
12 Samuel Inman, Through Santo Domingo and Haiti: A Cruise With the Marines. New York: Committee on Cooperation in Latin America, 1919, 68; Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1971, 90.
13 Harry A. Franck, Roaming Through the West Indies. New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1920, 149; James H. McCrocklin, Garde D'Haiti, 1915-1934: Twenty Years of Organization and Training by the U.S. Marine Corps, Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1956, 175.
14 Lester Langley, The Banana Wars: An Inner History of American Empire, 1900-1934. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983, 159; Faustin Wirkus and Taney Dudley, The White King of La Gonave. Garden City, NJ: Garden City Publishers, 1931, 66-68; Frederick M. Wise, Knights of the Cockpit: A Romantic Epic of Flying Marines in Haiti. New York: The Dial Press, 1931, 66.
15 See Marvin Goldwert, The Constabulary in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua: Progeny and Legacy of U.S. Intervention. Gainseville: University of Florida Press, 1962.
16 See Philip E. Catton, Diem's Final Failure: Prelude to America's War in Vietnam. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2002.
17 The Open Door policy was inaugurated by Secretary of State John Hay in the late 1890s and designed to promote free-trade and capitalism, allowing U.S. commercial interests access to the fabled China market.
18 See for example Seth Jacobs, Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and The Origins of the America's War in Vietnam. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006.
19 Ralph H. Smuckler and Members of the Police Team, Report on the Police of Vietnam, Michigan State University, Vietnam Technical Assistance Project, December 1, 1955, Jack Ryan, Study of the VBI in the Field, Can Tho Province (Saigon, April 19, 1956), Second Report of the Michigan State University Advisory Team in Public Administration to the Government of Vietnam, Submitted to Edward W. Weidner (Saigon, December 31, 1955), Texas Tech University, Vietnam Center, Virtual Archive, www.ttu.edu.
20 The Rehabilitation System of Vietnam, A Report Prepared by Public Safety Division, United States, Operations Mission to Vietnam, Saigon, October 1, 1963, 16, Ngo Vinh Long and Noam Chomsky, “30 Year Retrospective on the Fall of Saigon” Public Forum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 30, 2005.
21 Thomas L. Ahern, Jr., The CIA and the House of Ngo: Covert Action in South Vietnam, 1954-1963, Washington, D.C.: CIA, 1999, 100. Available online here; Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1991. New York: Harperperennial, 1991, 347; Joseph Buttinger, Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled, Vol. 2. New York: Frederick Praeger, 1967, 976, George McT. Kahin, Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam. New York: Knopf, 1986, 155.
22 Truong Nhu Tang (with David Chanoff and Doan Van Toai), A Vietcong Memoir. New York: Vintage Books, 1985, 70.
23 “The Role of Public Safety in Support of the National Police of Vietnam,” Office of Public Safety, United States Agency for International Development, Department of State, April 1, 1969, Ngo Vinh Long, “The CIA and the Vietnam Debacle” In Uncloaking the CIA, ed. Howard Frazier. New York: The Free Press, 1978, 71
24 “Resources Control by the National Police of Vietnam,” Office of Public Safety, USAID, Vietnam, July 1966.
25 See Orrin DeForest, with David Chanoff, Slow Burn: The Rise and Fall of American Intelligence in Vietnam, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990; Don Bordenkircher, as told to S.A. Bordenkircher, Tiger Cage: An Untold Story. Cameron, West Virginia: Abby Publishing, 1998, 54; “Frank Walton to Arthur Z. Gardiner, MAAG Coastal Surveillance Concept,” USAID, OPS East Asia Branch, Vietnam, National Archives, College Park Maryland (hereafter NA) box 278, folder 2.
26 See Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Rev ed. New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 2003, 209-222.
27 “National Identity Registration Project: ID Card, Public Safety Division, Office of Civil Operation,” June 8, 1966, OPS Thailand, NA, box 11, folder 4; “Resources Control, National Police of Vietnam,” March 1965, PSD, USOM, Saigon, 23; “E. H. Adkins, Jr., The Police and Resource Control in Counter-Insurgency,” January 1964, PSD, USOM, Saigon, 76. The OPS would try to replicate this system in the Philippines.
28 Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Political Economy of Human Rights: The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, vol. 1. Boston, Mass.: South End Press, 1979, 384; Tang, A Vietcong Memoir, 81, 102-16.
29 Douglas Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Performance. New York: Free Press, 1977, 216.
30 “Visit to Kien Tung Provincial Rehabilitation Center,” Moc Hoa, February 19, 1962; “William C. Benson to Frank E. Walton,” PSD, OPS East Asia, NA, box 287, folder 1 Penology.
31 “D. E. Bordenkircher to Randolph Berkeley, An Xuyen Prison,” November 11, 1968, RAFSEA, HQ MACV, RG 472, CORDS, Public Safety Directorate, Field Operations, Director General, NA, box 2, folder Correctional Centers. In 2006, the Department of Justice gave Bordenkircher the job of trying to repair the public relations damage bred by the Abu Ghraib scandal and improve conditions for the 80,000 civilian prisoners in Iraqi correctional facilities overseen by the United States – a similar task for which he had been assigned in South Vietnam after the revelation that prisoners had been shackled to the floor in “Tiger Cages” at the Con Son facility.
32 Bordenkircher had previously served as a warden of the penitentiary at Moundsville which was characterized by a Chicago based prison reform association as among the worst facilities in the country, owing to infestation with roaches, lice and fleas, having a terrible stench from a lack of proper plumbing and the leaking of raw sewage, having cells that were less than half the size recommended by the American Correctional Association, and having no rehabilitation programs.
33 Holmes Brown and Don Luce, Hostages of War: Saigon's Political Prisoners. Indochina Mobile Project, 1973, 14, 36; “The Rehabilitation System of Vietnam,” PSD, USOM to Vietnam, Foreword by Frank Walton, January 1961, 29, PSD, OPS East Asia, NA, box 287, folder 1 Penology; Sylvan Fox, “4 South Vietnamese Describe Torture in Prison ‘Tiger Cages’,” New York Times, March 3, 1973, 7; Bordenkircher, Tiger Cage, 180.
34 Richard A. Hunt, Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam's Hearts and Minds. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995, 239.
35 “Phung Hoang, Monthly Report,” April 29, 1971, RAFSEA, MACV, RG 472, CORDS, Public Safety Directorate, Field Operations, General Records, NA, box 1; Tang, A Vietcong Memoir, 210; Ahern Jr., The CIA and Rural Pacification, 309; Michael T. Klare, “Operation Phoenix and the Failure of Pacification in South Vietnam,” Liberation 17, no. 9 (May 1973): 21-27.
36 “Monthly report,” June 2, 1971, RAFSEA, HQ MACV, National Archives, College Park Maryland, RG 472, CORDS, Public Safety Directorate, Field Operations, General Records, NA, box 10; “Martin E. Pierce, Consolidated VCI Infrastructure Neutralization Report,” April 1-30, 1969, RAFSEA, HQ MACV, RG 472, CORDS, NA, box 4.
37 “Minutes of Phung Hoang Advisor's Monthly Confirmation,” December 10, 1971, RAFSEA, HQ MACV, RG 472, CORDS, Public Safety Directorate, Field Operations, National Archives, General Records, NA, box 10; “Evan Parker Jr. to Tucker Gougleman, VCI Neutralizations,” January 18, 1969, RAFSEA, HQ MACV, RG 472, CORDS, Phung Hoang Division, NA, box 1; “Phung Hoang Herbicide Operation,” June 17, 1972, RAFSEA, HQ MACV, RG 472, CORDS, NA, box 6; Iver Peterson, “Vietnam: This Phoenix is a Bird of Death” New York Times, July 25, 1971, E2.
38 Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program. New York: William & Morrow, 1991, 192; Bernd Greiner, War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, 62.
39 See James Glanz, “The Reach of War: U.S. Report Finds Dismal Training of Afghan Police,” New York Times, March 30, 2006; Ahmed Rashid, Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, New York: Viking, 2008, 204-5; Pratap Chatterjee, “Afghan Police Still Out of Step,” Asia Times, March 2, 2010, link; Seth G. Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan. New York: Norton, 2009, 172.
40 See D. Gareth Porter, “A Bigger Problem Than the Taliban? Afghanistan's U.S.-Backed Child Raping Police,” Counterpunch, July 30, 2009; Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 172; Marc Herold, “Afghanistan: Terror U.S. Style,” Frontline, March 11, 2009, link.
41 William Fischer, “Rights: Afghan Prison Looks Like Another Guantanamo,” IPS News, January 15, 2008, also available online here; Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2009, 317.
42 Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazetti and James Risen, “Brother of Afghan Leader Said to be Paid by CIA,” The New York Times, October 27, 2009; Malalai Joya with Derrick O'Keefe, A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of An Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice. New York: Scribner, 2009, 204.
43 Fitzgerald and Gould, Invisible History, 284.
44 McCoy, The Politics of Heroin; Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil and War: The United States in Indochina, Colombia and Afghanistan. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003.
45 Dana Lewis, “Dangerous Ride–Training Afghanistan's Police,” Fox News, October 14, 2008, also available online here; Rashid, Descent Into Chaos, 326-7; Carlotta Gall, “Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan,” New York Times, September 3, 2006, A1; Patrick Cockburn, “Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You,” Counterpunch, May 6, 2009, available online here; “Interview with Nir Rosen,” Democracy Now, September 1, 2009; The Kandahar strike force headed by Ahmed Wali Karzai has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government. It also helped to rig the 2009 election in favor of Hamid Karzai.
46 Barnett R. Rubin, Road to Ruin: Afghanistan's Booming Opium Industry. Washington, D.C.: Center for American Progress, 2004; Rashid, Descent Into Chaos, 329; Patrick Cockburn, “Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You,” Counterpunch, May 6, 2009, available online here; Rashid, Descent Into Chaos, 326-7.
47 Bob Woodward, “McChrystal: More Forces or Mission Failure,” The Washington Post, September 21, 2009.
48 C. Christine Fair and Peter Chalk, eds. Fortifying Pakistan: The Role of U.S. Internal Security Assistance. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute for Peace Press, 2006, 51; Jeremy Scahill, “The Secret U.S. War in Pakistan,” The Nation, December 21/28, 2009, 11; Mike Whitney, “From My-Lai to Bala Baluk,” Counterpunch, May 15, 2009, available online here.
49 On the long standing corruption of the ISI, see Lawrence Lifschultz, “Pakistan: The Empire of Heroin,” in War on Drugs: Studies in the Failure of U.S. Narcotics Policy, eds. Alfred W. McCoy and Alan A. Block, Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992, 319-52.
50 Kerik had previously been expelled from Saudi Arabia amid a government investigation into his surveillance of the medical staff at a hospital where he directed the security detail.
51 Jill Carroll, “Old Brutality Among New Iraqi Forces,” Christian Science Monitor, May 4, 2005; Nir Rosen, “The Myth of the Surge,” Rolling Stone, March 6, 2008, available online here.
52 Spencer Ackerman, “Training Iraq's Death Squads,” The Nation, May 17, 2007; Ken Silverstein, “Jerry Burke on Iraq's Corrupt Police Force,” Harper's Magazine, September 11, 2007; Christopher Allbritton, “Why Iraq's police Are a Menace,” Time Magazine, March 20, 2006; Carroll, “Old Brutality Among New Iraqi Forces;” Patrick Cockburn, The Occupation. London: Verso, 2006, 123.
53 See Greg Grandin's outstanding book, Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the U.S. and the Rise of the New Imperialism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006; Robert Dreyfuss, “Phoenix Rising,” The American Prospect, January 1, 2004; Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. New York, Doubleday, 2008, 144; Shane Bauer, “Iraq's New Death Squads,” The Nation, June 22, 2009, 11-25.
54 Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. New York: The Nation Books, 2007, 354; David Corn, “From Iran-Contra to Iraq,” The Nation, May 7, 2005; Peter Maas, “The Salvadorization of Iraq: The Way of the Commandos,” The New York Times Magazine, May 1, 2005, 1;
55 Dahr Jamail, “Managing Escalation: Bush's New Iraq Team,” January 9, 2007, link. Steele was also implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal for lying to Congress about smuggling weapons alongside Oliver North and worked closely with right-wing Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carillas and with Panamanian security forces after the ouster of Manuel Noriega. One of Steele's counterparts, Steven Casteel, previously served with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the Andes in a likely cover for the CIA and trained the state security forces in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, which were notorious like their counterparts in Central America for torturing and “disappearing” trade union activists and peasant leaders, and for terrorizing civilians suspected of links to left-wing guerrillas, including the Fuerzas Armada Revolucionario de Colombia (FARC).
56 Maas, “The Salvadorization of Iraq,” 1; Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007, 371; Solomon Moore, “Killings Linked to Shiite Squads in Iraqi Police Force,” Los Angeles Times, November 29, 2005.
57 James A. Baker, III, and Lee H. Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute for Peace, 2006, 13.
58 Ahmed S. Hashim, Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006, 330; Carroll, “Old Brutality Among New Iraqi Forces;” Rod Nordland, “With Local Control, New Troubles in Iraq,” New York Times, March 16, 2009, A9.
59 Cockburn, The Occupation, 194; Robert Cole, Under the Gun in Iraq: My Year Training the Iraqi Police, as told to Jan Hogan, Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2007, 60-1.
60 Hashim, Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency, 25.
61 Cole, Under the Gun in Iraq, 60-1. See also Mark R. Depue, Patrolling Baghdad: A Military Police Company and the War in Iraq. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007.
62 A classic work on western counter-insurgency doctrine, recently reissued is David Galula, Counter-Insurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. New York: Hailer, 2005.
63 See Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008. New York: Penguin Press, 2009, 166.
64 See Allbritton, “Why Iraq's police Are a Menace.”
65 Nordland, “With Local Control, New Troubles in Iraq,” A9; Rosen, “The Myth of the Surge.”
66 Quoted in Solomon Moore, “U.S. Expands Training to Address Iraqi Police Woes,” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2006, available online here.
67 Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006, 6.
68 On this latter point, see Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Empire: The End of American Exceptionalism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008.
69 The author wishes to thank three distinguished scholars, Mark Selden, Alfred W. McCoy and Michael Schwartz, for their excellent suggestions for broadening the analysis of this article and for the care in which they put in reading it.
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