An Intelligent Approach to the Intelligence Community

[Jeffersons Ghost]

In a recent discussion, a friend who retired from the CIA showed a distinct leaning to the left, politically speaking. In fact, his views on the ineptitude of our current leadership were surprisingly in line with mine. He was highly critical of the president; especially regarding the massive loans from RED China. In conclusion, he said that although he totally disagreed with what happened in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he'd leave tomorrow, if the president ordered him there.

It is easy to criticize the CIA, NSA, FBI and Homeland Security. Criticizing those agencies in forums like DU is a popular position, which wins recommendations to places like the Greatest Page. It's more difficult to acknowledge the valuable jobs people in those groups do for us. Many of those agents feel their missions protect freedom in America. When they are successful there is little if any public recognition. When they fail, their shortcomings are shouted from the roof-tops of radio and TV. When it comes to news about the intelligence community, no news is good news. Even though our borders are for the most part wide open, no 9/11 type tragedies have occurred.

I am guilty of attacking people who were simply following orders. No one in those government agencies took away our Forth Amendment or voted for the USA Patriot Act. I am a Viet Nam Veteran and know how it feels to follow orders that are in conflict with personal views.

I offer these lyrics as an apology for my past attacks on some unsung heroes:

Waiting On The World To Change lyrics

John Mayer

me and all my friends
we're all misunderstood
they say we stand for nothing and
there's no way we ever could
now we see everything that's going wrong
with the world and those who lead it
we just feel like we don't have the means
to rise above and beat it

so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

it's hard to beat the system
when we're standing at a distance
so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change
now if we had the power
to bring our neighbors home from war
they would have never missed a Christmas
no more ribbons on their door
and when you trust your television
what you get is what you got
cause when they own the information, oh
they can bend it all they want

that's why we're waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

it's not that we don't care,
we just know that the fight ain't fair
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

and we're still waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting waiting on the world to change
one day our generation
is gonna rule the population
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

[Zorro]

1. Amen

Those in the intelligence agencies are patriots working to protect this country.

The policies they are instructed to follow are based on decisions from our elected politicians.

[arendt]

2. I respectfully disagree. The CIA is a known-corrupt organization, as has been since Allen Dulles...

or William Donovan - i.e., from before its foundation.

Anyone working for the CIA has to begin by pretending its not up to its eyeballs running drugs. (Air America, Iran Contra)

Anyone working for the CIA has to begin by pretending it hasn't a hideous record of overthrowing democracies and installing right-wing dictators. (Guatamala, Iran, Indonesia, Chile, and I can't name the rest in the proper order.) And an unerring tendency to show up in the middle of every political scandal in the U.S. (JFK, Watergate, October Surprise, Iran-Contra, GWOT).

That said, even some of these self-blinded "patriots" have finally woken up to the fact that they are being used by the Neocons. To that extent, they are worth supporting; but I am not certain that I have "good feelings" towards them. I guess I feel for them the same way I would feel for a gangster who has turned state's evidence - he has done something right, but he still has a debt to pay.

The CIA and its bad reputation have been around for over 50 years. People who joined it can hardly plead naivete.

arendt

[scarletwoman]

3. Amen. (nt)

[AnnieBW]

4. Two words

Valerie Plame.

[arendt]

5. And what do you and I TRULY know about her...

as with everything the CIA touches, the REAL truth never comes out. Maybe ten years after the fact, we get some "limited hangout". The point is. We only know what can be talked about without the talker getting disappeared to Gitmo or receiving a nice anthrax letter.

You may be correct about Ms. Plame; but given past track records of the CIA, I would suspect the story is hardly as black-and-white as you hope it would be.

First, given that Joe Wilson was POSTED TO IRAQ WHEN BUSH WAS V.P., I really, really have a hard time believing he is pure as the driven snow. He may have personal reasons for getting Bush, and that is fine. But, again, what do we really know?

The problem is, in case you missed it, no one is telling the American electorate anything anywhere near "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth".

So, I remain "from Missouri" on individual members of the CIA. As for the entire organization, it is one of the most corrupt bunch of gangsters to ever stride across the world stage.

arendt

[Jeffersons Ghost]

6. In summation:

Bush has been through more CIA directors than most presidents, which indicates that the agency leaders do not agree with his handling of international affairs. It was a CIA analyst that first attacked Rumsfeld publicly, showing him to be a liar. Like all of us, the CIA is capable of great evil and great good. No organization like the CIA can achieve its mission without doing some evil. It was wrong when Bush and Cheney revealed Plume's affiliation. That revelation put her whole network in jeopardy.

[arendt]

7. Given the highly compartmentalized nature of intelligence work, I am willing to...

believe that some networks in the CIA are not actively doing bad things, and might actually be doing good things.

But, when Bush appointed Porter Goss, who is in the infamous Mexico City photo of the Cuban-exile, Operation 40 assasination team, you knew that the policy of the Agency was going to get pretty ugly.

In my opinion, the CIA is like the Five Families. The fact that one of those families might not be as insane (i.e., might actually want to stop nuke proliferation) as another (the neocon family, aka the BFEE), does not make me want to run out and embrace that family.

After fifty years of intelligence agencies, American democracy is in the toilet - largely because the CIA has become a Praetorian Guard for the president. I disagree with your respect for the agency. We tried to get control of it in the late 1970s, with the Church and Pike investigations. The Agency simply went rogue/private, and started using its self-funding proprietaries on behalf of the gangsters who have eventually become the W Administration. That is, we lost control of the CIA thirty years ago. In that time, it has created an entire black infrastructure. If some of that infrastructure (i.e., Brewster-Jennings) happened to accidentally serve a useful purpose for the average American, that is no reason to pretend the CIA is on the side of the people.

arendt