They Built America Like a Racket: The Secret History of Empire, Intelligence, and Organized Crime

They Built America Like a Racket

In a world where history is often sanitized for textbooks, this documentary rips the veil off America’s rise to global dominance—not as a beacon of democracy, but as a sprawling empire built on covert deals, criminal alliances, and shadow wars.

The Premise

“They Built America Like a Racket” argues that the U.S. didn’t just stumble into power—it was engineered through a web of intelligence agencies, mob bosses, corporate law firms, and banana republic coups. The film draws heavily on declassified documents, archival footage, and firsthand accounts to reveal how the CIA, Wall Street, and organized crime didn’t just intersect—they collaborated.

Key Themes & Revelations

• Operation Gladio: A post-WWII covert NATO operation that allegedly laid the blueprint for criminalized intelligence networks across Europe and the U.S.
• United Fruit Company: More than a banana empire—it was a front for regime change and corporate colonialism in Latin America.
• CIA & Mafia Ties: Far from enemies, the film claims they were strategic partners in global operations, from heroin trafficking to political assassinations.
• The Dulles Brothers & Sullivan & Cromwell: The law firm and its alumni (Allen and John Foster Dulles) are portrayed as architects of the modern American empire.
• JFK & Castro: The tangled web of Havana, Dallas, and the Bay of Pigs is explored as a prelude to the Kennedy assassination.

What You’ll Learn

• How covert operations shaped foreign policy more than diplomacy ever did.
• Why the term “banana republic” is more literal than metaphorical.
• That the American Century may have been less about liberty—and more about leverage.

Chapters Include:

🎯 Why It Matters

This isn’t just a documentary—it’s a challenge to the official narrative. It invites viewers to reconsider what they’ve been taught about American exceptionalism and to confront the uncomfortable truth that empire-building often looks more like racketeering than nation-building.

You can watch the full documentary on YouTube.