Time to clean house at the CIA

a good agency gutted with laywers and time

from JoeUser Forums
We all know recently that the CIA Director Goss has recently stepped down from his post. Why?

As a child in the early 70s I loved to play the brave CIA agent. The man who walked in the shadows to gather information or the operative that would strike a quick blow for the free world. While at the time I thought the stories of James Bond to be nothing more then fiction; I would watch the Bond movies over and over. It would be mean years later that I learned that much of the earlier movies were based off of true stories.

William Casey would reinforce my notion about the CIA in his book recounting the days of William J. Donovan and others periods. An interesting read for anyone looking into the first days of the agency.

But what went wrong? How could the hard charging and dedicated people that kept an eye on the Soviet Union for 40 years, forced the USSR out of Afghanistan, cornered communism in Central America, and generally used what ever it took to be the eyes of the most powerful government on earth, fail? Fail so bad that they could not see the collapse of the USSR, see Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, utterly fail to rescue the Iranian hostages, find Osama (convince a President to take him when offered), or see 9/11 coming.

The agency is now full of Intelligence Bureaucrats that is to scared of lawyers or has been recruited from a pool of weak knead 70s peace nicks looking to reform the what they viewed as the icon of "evil government agencies". The last great days of the agency were under Bush senior 1975-77. Everything began to get weak with the villainization of the agency by the press, movies and Congress whose members were born out of the peace movement of the 60s. The Rockefeller Commission, Church Committee and Iran Contra investigations would create a witch-hunt for anyone that would even consider a covert operation and prosecute those who did. No longer did it take a hand full of men to tie up a whole nation or division. Now the agency was regulated (hands tied) to spending billion and using leagues of bureaucrat "Analyst" to sift through grainy satellite photos 3000 miles away from the target.

See you can’t be fired or demoted if you get your real info from the FBI or Israel. But wait even the FBI would be off limits after Jamie S. Gorelick built a wall between the two agencies. A little ironic that she also was a member of the 911 commission looking into the failures of the CIA. When the CIA director was questioned by the 911 commission about the CIA’s failure to communicate with the FBI and he relied; that it would be more appropriate to ask one of their own committee members that question. He was right. As for the Israeli information, that would be very suspect too. After so many years of the US friendly to Arafat, I would think Israel would not be so willing to provide accurate info. Not only to the US, but especially European countries where our analyst gathered most of the human info from.

In recent years leaks have sprung, personnel political missions created and multiple "analyst" speaking out about the agency are plaguing the agency. These are the neutered career bureaucrats hired in the 80-90s now fighting to keep their safe little world together. Porter Goss was to reform the agency into one of action again. Unfortunately he was unable to do the changes to make the agency relevant or effective.

I just hope General Hayden can do what Goss couldn’t. But already the old bureaucratic analyst and their allies are lining up against him. They now claim that a military man should not be in charge of the civilian agency, when many CIA Directors have been military men. The very first CIA Director was an active duty Admiral. It is time to bring order to chaos and a meat cleaver to a rotting limb of Government, before another 911 happens. Let the wagging tongues fly as those needing to get fired do. This will show the true character of those analyst. When people like Kennedy and Kerry was able get true agents canned in the 80-90s during their political witch-hunts; those agents did not talk. Now lets see if these analyst can keep their traps shut like loyal spooks. Sadly I’ll bet you ten to one that it will not happen.
politics
10,024 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
How could the hard charging and dedicated people that kept an eye on the Soviet Union for 40 years, forced the USSR out of Afghanistan, cornered communism in Central America, and generally used what ever it took to be the eyes of the most powerful government on earth, fail? Fail so bad that they could not see the collapse of the USSR, see Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, utterly fail to rescue the Iranian hostages, find Osama (convince a President to take him when offered), or see 9/11 coming.

The agency is now full of Intelligence Bureaucrats that is to scared of lawyers or has been recruited from a pool of weak knead 70s peace nicks looking to reform the what they viewed as the icon of "evil government agencies". The last great days of the agency were under Bush senior 1975-77. Everything began to get weak with the villainization of the agency by the press, movies and Congress whose members were born out of the peace movement of the 60s.


if you're able to do so, imagine for a few you aren't an american citizen (or a citizen of any other country) and reconsider your opinion of the cia.

start by taking a sheet of paper, drawing a line down the center and then list all the undisputed successful agency operations you can think of on the right side and all the undisputed failures on the left.

on the right side of my list there would only be one entry: supporting the mujahideen in their war against the ussr.

it would be offset on the left by abandoning afghanistan almost immediately after the last soviet tank left--an inexcusable failure of huge proportions considering the consequences.

pretty much everything else the cia has attempted since it came into being would follow. destabilizing iran to put the shah on the peacock throne...its maxwell smart campaign against castro...the tragedy of laos...the bay of pigs...drug running in southeast asia come to mind immediately. as do efforts to sabotage democtratic regimes in central america and propping up tyrants like marcos in the philippines.

outside of afghanistan, the cia's greatest successes have been operations in which the ratio of accomplishment to failure came close to being a wash.

incidentally, ghwb--rather than weak-kneeded peaceniks or gutless bureaucrats--is directly responsible for much of what's wrong with the cia today. he developed and implemented the b-team concept; it was the b-team members who tossed out accurate cia data about the ussr's impending deterioration in favor of their own overestimates of its power. not surprisingly, b-team members like perle, did the same thing to falsely portray iraq as an immediate threat to the us in 2003.

if you're not familiar with the b-team thing, please be my guest:

Link
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
Kingbee

I knew this would bring you out of hiding. Nice to talk with you again.

As for some of your failures that you want to place on the left, you need to look at when and why they were. The Bay of Pigs failed not because of the CIA but due to two main reasons. A President withheld the vital US navy/air support planned into the original mission and leaks from within the Cuban exiles themselves that compound the missing air support. I would not place the failure on the CIA, for a State Department’s and the President's cold feet at the last minute.

Leaving Afghanistan in a wreck was another one you point out (as did I), but this would happen after the CIA was gutted and most of those operatives for that mission was forcibly retired upon request to continue operations within the country.

You seem to ignore some basic facts behind the South America situation. Most of the countries that the US did installed/support dictators were on the brink of Communist takeovers. What is better, a capitalist dictatorship friendly to the US that can be returned to a Democracy or a Communist Dictatorship that will most likely see one of the famed industrial revolutions that would see millions starved to death at a net progress of nothing. Many of the operatives organizing the South American operations did so with investigation committee breathing down their necks that forced them to only start the process, then get fired before they could effectively complete the mission. Without the CIA to control those strong men employed to fight Communism, things went astray. So the investigations that was said to control the CIA’s involvement, really removed any US supervision in the area. Thus causing the uncontrolled Chaos that followed. It would even require Bush senior to invade Panama, something that did not need to happen if the CIA would have been allowed (or had the guts) by this time to do it’s job. But in the end, there is no Communist countries in Central America and Democracy has also returned (this is without the help of the new kinder CIA).

As for Iran, those problems were multiplied after the Rockefeller commission and during the Church committee. Let alone three years of Carter’s hands off policies that allowed the radical clerics return to Iran in order to promote Carter’s Mid-East peace. The chances to gag the Clerics were no longer allowed under the new reforms and the opportunity to prevent the future nightmare would pass.

As for the rest, not everything goes perfect and mistakes will always be magnified. Most successful victories will never be known and those victories made possible by human operative like: receiving detailed shipping manifest and literally receive inside the Kremlin information during the Cuban missile crises are seldomly openly known.

Having humans gather info would have prevented the missile attacks on baby milk factories or my favorite Chinese embassies. But as long as the bureaucratic analyst continues to rule in the CIA nothing will change.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
Kingbee

I knew this would bring you out of hiding. Nice to talk with you again.

As for some of your failures that you want to place on the left, you need to look at when and why they were. The Bay of Pigs failed not because of the CIA but due to two main reasons. A President withheld the vital US navy/air support planned into the original mission and leaks from within the Cuban exiles themselves that compound the missing air support. I would not place the failure on the CIA, for a State Department’s and the President's cold feet at the last minute.

Leaving Afghanistan in a wreck was another one you point out (as did I), but this would happen after the CIA was gutted and most of those operatives for that mission was forcibly retired upon request to continue operations within the country.

You seem to ignore some basic facts behind the South America situation. Most of the countries that the US did installed/support dictators were on the brink of Communist takeovers. What is better, a capitalist dictatorship friendly to the US that can be returned to a Democracy or a Communist Dictatorship that will most likely see one of the famed industrial revolutions that would see millions starved to death at a net progress of nothing. Many of the operatives organizing the South American operations did so with investigation committee breathing down their necks that forced them to only start the process, then get fired before they could effectively complete the mission. Without the CIA to control those strong men employed to fight Communism, things went astray. So the investigations that was said to control the CIA’s involvement, really removed any US supervision in the area. Thus causing the uncontrolled Chaos that followed. It would even require Bush senior to invade Panama, something that did not need to happen if the CIA would have been allowed (or had the guts) by this time to do it’s job. But in the end, there is no Communist countries in Central America and Democracy has also returned (this is without the help of the new kinder CIA).

As for Iran, those problems were multiplied after the Rockefeller commission and during the Church committee. Let alone three years of Carter’s hands off policies that allowed the radical clerics return to Iran in order to promote Carter’s Mid-East peace. The chances to gag the Clerics were no longer allowed under the new reforms and the opportunity to prevent the future nightmare would pass.

As for the rest, not everything goes perfect and mistakes will always be magnified. Most successful victories will never be known and those victories made possible by human operative like: receiving detailed shipping manifest and literally receive inside the Kremlin information during the Cuban missile crises are seldomly openly known.

Having humans gather info would have prevented the missile attacks on baby milk factories or my favorite Chinese embassies. But as long as the bureaucratic analyst continues to rule in the CIA nothing will change.
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
Kingbee

I knew this would bring you out of hiding. Nice to talk with you again.

As for some of your failures that you want to place on the left, you need to look at when and why they were. The Bay of Pigs failed not because of the CIA but due to two main reasons. A President withheld the vital US navy/air support planned into the original mission and leaks from within the Cuban exiles themselves that compound the missing air support. I would not place the failure on the CIA, for a State Department’s and the President's cold feet at the last minute.

Leaving Afghanistan in a wreck was another one you point out (as did I), but this would happen after the CIA was gutted and most of those operatives for that mission was forcibly retired upon request to continue operations within the country.

You seem to ignore some basic facts behind the South America situation. Most of the countries that the US did installed/support dictators were on the brink of Communist takeovers. What is better, a capitalist dictatorship friendly to the US that can be returned to a Democracy or a Communist Dictatorship that will most likely see one of the famed industrial revolutions that would see millions starved to death at a net progress of nothing. Many of the operatives organizing the South American operations did so with investigation committee breathing down their necks that forced them to only start the process, then get fired before they could effectively complete the mission. Without the CIA to control those strong men employed to fight Communism, things went astray. So the investigations that was said to control the CIA’s involvement, really removed any US supervision in the area. Thus causing the uncontrolled Chaos that followed. It would even require Bush senior to invade Panama, something that did not need to happen if the CIA would have been allowed (or had the guts) by this time to do it’s job. But in the end, there is no Communist countries in Central America and Democracy has also returned (this is without the help of the new kinder CIA).

As for Iran, those problems were multiplied after the Rockefeller commission and during the Church committee. Let alone three years of Carter’s hands off policies that allowed the radical clerics return to Iran in order to promote Carter’s Mid-East peace. The chances to gag the Clerics were no longer allowed under the new reforms and the opportunity to prevent the future nightmare would pass.

As for the rest, not everything goes perfect and mistakes will always be magnified. Most successful victories will never be known and those victories made possible by human operative like: receiving detailed shipping manifest and literally receive inside the Kremlin information during the Cuban missile crises are seldomly openly known.

Having humans gather info would have prevented the missile attacks on baby milk factories or my favorite Chinese embassies. But as long as the bureaucratic analyst continues to rule in the CIA nothing will change.
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
What is better, a capitalist dictatorship friendly to the US that can be returned to a Democracy or a Communist Dictatorship that will most likely see one of the famed industrial revolutions that would see millions starved to death at a net progress of nothing.

Well a no-brainer really. However, more realistically (remember we're talking about Latin America here, not Cambodia) what is better a capitalist dictatorship friendly to the US that can - after a lot of killing, torture and imprisonment without trial - be returned to a Democracy, or a Communist Dictatorship like the ones in Eastern Europe which - after a lot of killing, torture and imprisonment without trial - be returned to a Democracy. Take out the parts of the equation that cancel each other out and you're left with...

..."friendly to the US". And you wonder why so much of the world distrusts your high minded motives.
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top
or a Communist Dictatorship like the ones in Eastern Europe which


Hind sight is 20/20. At the time (if you want Kingbee's conspiracy theory about B-team) we didn't know that communism in Eastern Europe would safely fall like it did.

..."friendly to the US". And you wonder why so much of the world distrusts your high minded motives.


I like how you think. But what do you expect us to do, install one friendly to France? The US is even now being criticized from the left for not installing one in Iraq friendlier to the US ideals and values.
Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
At the time (if you want Kingbee's conspiracy theory about B-team) we didn't know that communism in Eastern Europe would safely fall like it did.


based on this statement, i'm thinking you misunderstood the purpose of b-team as well as its consequences.

b-team came into being because gerald ford (who was then president) wasn't doing well in the 1976 primaries and needed to project a tougher-guy image as well as to chop the legs off claims data provided by the cia were innacurate. inaccurate, in this case, = information that didn't support hardliners whose constant demands for more and bigger nuclear weapons depended on the ussr being much stronger than it really was.

essentially b-team members were empowered to revise cia intel whenever it didn't fit hardliners' preconceived assumptions.

even if all of those congressional investigations and weak-kneed peacenik cia bureaucrats you'd like to blame had actually done everything you allege, they woulda had to have put a lot more work into damaging the cia--and then i'd be surprised if they coulda done it half as badly--as the b-team inquisitors.

after 12+ years of b-team oversight and rejection of real intel in favor of preferred intel, it's not surprising the agency caved, is it? deplorable but not surprising.

when bush and cheney wanted 'facts' to justify invading iraq, the cia was all prepped and conditioned to tell em whatever they wanted to hear.

what's really sad about the whole b-team thing is realizing it's pretty much the way stalin dealt with intel with which he disagreed.