MintCast co-host Whitney Webb interviews author, investigative journalist and poet Doug Valentine about his extensive work on exposing the dark underbelly of the CIA and some of the agency’s most notorious covert programs. Webb and Valentine begin the interview discussing how Valentine’s journalistic work on the CIA led him to be spied on and even threatened by the agency and how being a dissident journalist in the 1990s compares to being one in the present. Valentine argues that, in the present, efforts to illegalize criticism of the state of Israel are like a gateway that will soon lead to the prohibition of criticism against the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies, the CIA among them.Valentine then touches on some of the themes covered in his book, The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World,  including his assertion that the CIA operates as “the organized crime branch of the U.S. government” and how its activities have been influenced by its decades-long relationships with organized crime networks in the United States and throughout the world.Lastly, Webb and Valentine discuss the CIA’s long-standing interest in manipulating the media and how those efforts also extend to alternative media, not just mainstream media outlets. Valentine discusses the methods the CIA uses to target alternative, independent media and how we are seeing their efforts take place in real time.Follow Doug Valentine on Twitter or visit his website to learn more about his work.MintPress donors and patrons: Stay tuned later this week for a patron-exclusive extension of this podcast with Doug Valentine, which will discuss his work on the War on Drugs and the Drug Enforcement Agency and how both are key to unconstitutional, covert CIA programs. You can become a patron via Patreon or through our website.Support the show (https://www.mintpressnews.com/donations/)