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Bumbling CIA's Failures Hurt America
'The structure of our intelligence organization is faulty. It makes no sense. It has to be reorganized and we should have done it long ago. Nothing has changed since Pearl Harbor. I have suffered an eight-year defeat on this. . . . I will leave a legacy of ashes. . . .''
Those words were spoken by a president of the United States, though not the present incumbent. It was Dwight Eisenhower. Legacy of Ashes is the title of Tim Weiner's history of the CIA. The thesis of the book is that this country has never had a functioning espionage agency. Its leaders either were incompetent or, like Allen Dulles and William Casey, over-the-top and round-the-bend rogues who lied to presidents and told them only what they wanted to hear. Its covert operations, like the Bay of Pigs, usually failed (Dulles lied in telling JFK that Eisenhower had approved the plan). Its intelligence analyses missed the invasion of Korea by China, the economic decline of Russia, the absence of a Stalin plan for war, the missiles in Cuba, the building of the Berlin Wall and its subsequent fall, the actual state of weapons in Iraq, the rise of the ayatollahs in Iran and the importance of religious conflicts in Iraq.
Its rare successes -- support for the Baath Party in Iraq and the defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan -- prepared the way for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Despite the many brave and intelligent people who have worked there, the CIA turns out to be a dysfunctional secret bureaucracy that, as one of its former agents says, produces $40 billion worth of crap every year. After reading Weiner's book, one is forced to conclude that the country would have been better off without the CIA.
One also concludes that the United States is not the great superpower that many of its leaders think it is. The CIA cannot collect good intelligence. It cannot provide adequate information to the White House, but usually gives a president the information he wants to hear and not what he needs to hear -- even to this day. It never figured out what was going on in Russia, and it still does not understand Islam.
Similarly, and despite the experience of the Philippines insurrection and the Korean and Vietnamese wars, the nation's military has never learned how to fight a small guerrilla war. Rather, it charges into battle with "shock and awe," just as George S. Patton's Third Army swept across Europe.
Nor has the political leadership learned how to mobilize national support for these small wars despite ever-increasing casualties. The populace supports the little war for awhile and then changes its mind and demands, ''Bring the troops home!''
Almost 800 English soldiers died in the Northern Island "Troubles,'' and the English government did not have to worry about public pressure of that sort. England is an old hand at imperialism. Still, after a hundred years, the United States should be able to play the game better than it has. Perhaps it never will.
When, then, will our leaders learn that, despite previous exercises into imperialism -- Mexico, the Indian Wars, Spain -- this country is doomed to fail when it tries to play the game, no matter how much hubris, arrogance and phony toughness ("Bring them on!") the leadership musters? This would be a great blessing.
Andrew Greeley is a priest in good standing of the Archdiocese of Chicago. for 52 years, a columnist for 40 years, a sociologist for 45 years, a novelist for 28 years, distinguished lecturer at the University of Arizona for 28 , research associate at National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago for 46 years.
© 2007 The Chicago Sun Times
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11 Comments so far
Show All"Andrew Greeley is a priest in good standing of the Archdiocese of Chicago. for 52 years, a columnist for 40 years, a sociologist for 45 years, a novelist for 28 years, distinguished lecturer at the University of Arizona for 28 , research associate at National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago for 46 years."
The point is? I wish Common Dreams would stop posting this fool's drivel. Under those Catholic robes I bet you'd find a Swastika.
greeley only points out one side of weiner's thesis: massive incompetence. the other side is equally massive brutality. the cia has been very successful at getting innumerable people killed all over the world. why does greeley ignore this?
the cia has been wrong wrong wrong about a lot of stuff, but it would be foolish to think they haven't been "successful."
as a sidenote, these "free market" conservatives all profess to believe that if a gov't agency/project doesn't "work", don't fund it.
when it comes to military/"intelligence"/security, the opposite is true. you could write the same story of incompetence, brutality, corruption, etc., etc. 10 times as large for the DOD. but no matter how screwed up they are, they will always get more money.
Fr. Greeley has consistently been a principle democratic opponent of the ecclesial authoritarianism & obfuscation in the church, insisting that the laity are not mere choirs of parrots for whatever theological pronouncements emerge from the Vatican congregations.
Despite all the attempts to stifle democratic voices in Catholicism, most American Catholics remain indifferent to the attempts to interpret conscience to suit hierarchical dictates. No swastikas in Fr. Greeley's vicinity.
We must shut down the CIA and the rest of our "intelligence" agencies. They tempt even our honorable presidents to use them to "secretly" change the world. Retire all present employees at full pay with life in prison without parole if they try to work for anyone else.
We must close down all our overseas bases now.
We have over 700 - in 1939 we got along with one each in Cuba and the Phillipines and two in Panama.
We must cut the Department of Defense budge in half. Then cut it in half again. And cut in half again.
It has been authoritatively estimated by Earth Policy Institute that for an annual cost of $68 billion we could fund for the world: universal primary education; eradication of adult illiteracy; school lunch programs for 44 poorest countries; assistance to preschool children and pregnant women in 44 poorest countries; universal reproductive health and family planning; universal basic health care; and closing the condom gap.
And we would still have plenty of savings left over to reduce our social problems at home.
Let's do it!
The CIA has its place. There are two halves, the intelligence and the operations sections. I think we should do more intelligence and less operations. Intelligence recently has relied on technology instead of people in country. Operations has tried to overthrow governments by throwing monkey wrenches into the machinery, with mixed results.
On the other hand, the CIA has gotten fairly accurate with their Hellfire Missile Drones, and report that very soon, they will be able to exchange email with the FBI.
The U.S. should never even be fighting guerrilla wars, except on the side of the resistance, as in WWII.
Dichterfreund: fair criticism of my remark, and I realize it was over the top. I'm so frustrated that at this date, four years after the truth concerning the abuse of the intelligence community to make it appear that it was the intelligence community that got it wrong, that I make ill-considered statements.
It just seems to me, based on the Greely editorials posted here, that he is consistently behind the curve in understanding the duplicity and illegality of American policy. Again, this may be unfair to Mr. Greely, because all I know of him are the 1000 or so word editorials posted here. Your chastisement about the sentiments of ordinary Catholics was also deserved, as I know firsthand from being in the anti-war rally in Washington in January before the war that the majority of those there were true Christians (many Catholic,) opposed to this war for plunder. They were not confused or misled.
I am not a defender or a critic of the CIA. I don't read spy novels or the hundreds of expose's that have been written on the agency. What I object to is reaming the CIA for having the legitimacy of their "brand recognition" stolen by administration sycophants for a "product" that most of them knew was bogus. Seems to me the problem is not with the CIA but with the unfortunate and possibly inevitable relationship between political ideologues and intelligence sifters.
This most recent editorial would seem to perpetuate the fallacy that we got into Iraq because of faulty intelligence. The truth is Bush went into Iraq in spite of the actual intelligence, not because of it.
Dear Vince Lawrence, As a lifelong athiest, may I recommend that you read Father Greeley's publication, "Why Can't They Be More Like Us?", Institute of Human Relations Press 1969, a plea for humanist ethnic understanding that was assigned reading for me at Columbia University many years ago. Also, please try Googling the Catholic Worker Moverment. If you seek fascists, please scrutinize the government and the media.
Tony Vodvarka, Hartly DE
sjc_1,
"The CIA has its place."
--Absolutely-- and legal/strategic oversight is imperative. In this "age of terror," we have to know what is going on around the world. Often provoked by bad policy in the White House, people want to kill us. Recall, the CIA executes on behalf of the Executive.
"There are two halves, the intelligence and the operations sections."
--No. The the CIA is separated into about four basic sections: intelligence, operations "clandestine ops"(gathering intel. and special ops.), science and technology, and support (administration).
"I think we should do more intelligence and less operations."
--These are interconnected. Without (information gathering) "operations" (spying) there is little intel to analyze. Maybe you mean we should have less Executive approved special military operations? If that is the case, you may be on to something, in part.
Oh yeah, this article: Read the book and read the CIA's response!
In an evr shrinking world we should be the leaders in open policy and helping hands not bogus wars sponsered by the same blokes that make the weapons, this world is on a collision course with resoursce depletion and these so-called leaders want to waste what we have on war, is an attempt to (like the man dying of cancer-have one more cigarette) solve problems with the problem, we cannot afford to bring about a world that is decent for everyone with the (addiction Mentality) of antiquated, "I'm gettin' mine mentality",,, Gandi said "the world has enough for everyones needs, not enough for everyones greeds...," nevr will have and creating acovert spying network, to make sure the power and goods keep flowing to the same assholes is absurd. there is no room for secrets in a democracy, now. open the doors anything that secret is wrong, ie weapons, thievery, arms deals, corruption, thugs, dirty politicians, all in the open, we better start getting along or it will be to late, if it isn't already, fresh water depletion, fisheries depletion, oil manipulation, forest destruction, animal extiction, it is getting very late, and heading for the hills is not going to make it safe, as the world implodes, with its answer to problems-war