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Break the CIA in Two
After the CIA-led fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, President John Kennedy was quoted as saying he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds." I can understand his anger, but a thousand is probably too many.
Better is a Solomon solution; divide the CIA in two. That way we can throw out the bath water and keep the baby.
Covert action and analysis do not belong together in the same agency—never have, never will. That these two very different tasks were thrown together is an accident of history, one that it is high time to acknowledge and to fix.
The effects of this structural fault became clear to President Harry Truman as he watched the agency at work in its first decade and a half. He was aghast.
Like oil on water, covert action fouls the wellspring of objective analysis—the main task for which Truman and the Congress established the CIA in 1947. The operational tail started wagging the substantive tail almost right away. It has done so ever since—with very unfortunate consequences.
An accident of history? How so?
Covert action practitioners, many of whom showed great courage and imagination in the European and Far Eastern theaters of World War II arrived home wondering whether there was still a call for their expertise. With the Soviet Union taking over large chunks of Europe and the KGB plying its covert-action wares worldwide, the question answered itself; a counter capability was needed.
The big mistake was shoehorning it into an agency being created to fulfill an entirely different mission. As former CIA senior analyst Mel Goodman points out in his most recent book, Failure of Intelligence, there was uncertainty and confusion over where to place responsibility for this capability.
The term "covert action" is a euphemism covering the broad genus of dirty tricks, from overthrowing governments (we now blithely call that particular species "regime change") to open but nonattributable broadcasting into denied areas.
Secretary of Defense James Forrestal didn't want the Pentagon to be responsible for covert action in peacetime. And, to their credit, neither did senior leaders of the fledgling CIA. They were no neophytes, and could see that covert operations might easily end up tainting the intelligence product if one Director were responsible for the two incompatible activities.
The experience of the past 62 years has showed, time and time again, that their concern was well founded, as the covert action side has not only polluted substantive analysis but also expanded into high-tech warfare.
Predators
Trying to overthrow governments via covert action is one thing. Flying Predator drones with Hellfire missiles is quite another. There would be real hellfire on that from Harry Truman, were he still with us.
Even former CIA Director George Tenet of flexible conscience had second thoughts about the CIA assuming responsibility for flying the Predator and firing Hellfires. In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, he writes that there was a "legitimate question about whether aircraft firing missiles...should be the function of the military or CIA." Resorting to the all-purpose catch-all (and excuse-all), Tenet adds, "But that was before 9/11."
Of equal importance is the kind of question to which Tenet normally paid little heed; namely, what would flying Predators do to CIA credibility.
Think about it for a minute. You are ordered and given funding to conduct Predator attacks on "suspected al-Qaeda bases" in Pakistan. (Our armed forces cannot do it since the Pentagon is not supposed to be striking countries with whom we are not at war.) You salute, find some contractors to help, and conduct those attacks.
The President then asks his CIA morning briefer about the effectiveness of the drone attacks, including the longer-term political as well as military effects. When the briefer checks with the substantive analysts watching Pakistan, he learns that the attacks are very effective—indeed, the very best recruitment tool Osama bin Laden and the Taliban could imagine. Jihadists are flocking to Pakistan and Afghanistan like moths to a light blub.
Problem. Do you think mealy-mouthed CIA Director Leon Panetta will have the courage to whisper that unwelcome finding to the President? Suppose Gen. David Petraeus or Gen. Stanley McChrystal found out.
No NIE on Af-Pak
The proof is in the pudding. Were not Panetta a self-described "creature of the Congress" (be wise, compromise), he would have long since ordered up a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on prospects for Afghanistan AND—far more important—Pakistan.
Would you believe that at this stage there is still no such NIE?
And the reason Panetta and his managers are keeping their heads way down is the same reason former CIA Director George Tenet for years shied away from doing an NIE on whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The findings would smell like skunks at a picnic.
It was only after Sen. Bob Graham, then-Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the White House in September 2002, "No National Intelligence Estimate, no congressional vote on war with Iraq," that Tenet was ordered by the White House to commission an NIE with pre-ordained conclusions.
That NIE was to be completed in record time (less than three weeks), in order to emerge several weeks before the mid-term elections and it was to reflect the alarmist views expressed by Vice President Dick Cheney in a major speech on August 26, 2002.
In Tenet's memoir he admits that Cheney "went well beyond what our analysis could support." But never mind; Tenet and his lieutenants had become quite accomplished in cooking intelligence to order. And so they did.
Like Cheney's speech, the Estimate was wrong on every major count—deliberately so. At the conclusion of an exhaustive investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Chair from 2007 to 2009, bemoaned the fact that the Bush/Cheney administration "presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent."
Non-existent? You mean fabricated or forged? With the advent of the George W. Bush administration we had learned about "faith-based intelligence," but the mind boggles at the use of "non-existent" intelligence.
What Harry Would Did Say
For those of you who may have forgotten, today (Dec. 22nd) is the 46th anniversary of the most important op-ed of all the 381,659 written about the CIA since its founding. Do not feel bad if you missed it; the op-ed garnered little attention—either at the time or subsequently.
The draft came from Independence, Missouri and was published in the Washington Post early edition on Dec. 22, 1963. (http://tinyurl.com/ycffs3x ) The first and the last two sentences of Harry Truman's unusual contribution bear repeating:
"I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency....
"We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it."
Truman began by describing what he saw as CIA's raison d'être, emphasizing that a President needs "the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots."
He stressed that he wanted to create a "special kind of an intelligence facility" charged with the collection of "all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have these reports reach me as President without ‘treatment' or interpretations" by departments that have their own agendas.
A Warning
The "most important thing," he said, "was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions." It is a safe bet that Truman had uppermost in mind how senior CIA officials tried to mousetrap President John Kennedy into committing U.S. armed forces to attack Cuba, rather than to sit by and let Fidel Castro's troops kill or capture the rag-tag band of CIA-trained invaders at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.
The operation was a disaster, pure and simple. Truman was no doubt aware of how Kennedy initially gave the go-ahead to a CIA plan that had been approved by President Dwight Eisenhower; how the new President belatedly saw the trap; and how he had the courage to face down the tricksters and then take responsibility for the consequences that came of having trusted them.
Still, Kennedy did not feel he could follow his instinct to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds." Instead, he fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, a quintessential Establishment figure—something one does at one's peril. Allen Dulles later played a key role in selecting those who were allowed to testify before the Warren Commission on the JFK assassination, and in shaping its highly questionable findings. In JFK and the Unspeakable, author James Douglass adduces persuasive evidence that some of Dulles' old buddies were involved in the murder of President Kennedy.
It may be just coincidence that President Truman chose to publish his CIA op-ed exactly one month after Kennedy was killed, but it seems equally possible that he deliberately chose that first monthiversary.
"Disturbed" at CIA Operational Role
In his Dec. 22, 1963 op-ed, Truman addresses the structural fault alluded to above:
"For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment [collection, analysis, and reporting]. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas....
"Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue..."
"The last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people."
Think Iran. In early 1963 when I began work at the CIA it had been almost a decade since the overthrow of the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddeq in August 1953. The joint CIA and British intelligence "Operation Ajax" was cited proudly as a singularly successful covert action operation.
Just before electing Mosaddeq in 1951, the Iranian Parliament had nationalized Iran's oil industry, which until then had been controlled exclusively by the British government-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company—Britain's largest overseas investment at the time.
Unfortunately for Britain, there were upstarts in Iran ("militants," in today's parlance) who made bold to think that Iranians should be able to profit from the vast oil reserves in Iran. Winston Churchill asked Truman to order the fledgling CIA to join the British service, MI-6, in arranging a coup. Truman said No. (I can imagine him saying, Hell, No!)
Truman's successor, Dwight Eisenhower, however, said Yes. And the coup that Eisenhower approved goes a long way toward explaining why the Iranians don't much like us. After throwing out Mosaddeq and bringing in the Shah, the Iranian people suffered untold horrors at the hands of SAVAK, the Shah's notorious secret police.
Every Iranian knew/knows that the CIA and MI-6 did what the British would call a "brilliant" job training SAVAK. Many students of Iran believe that it was SAVAK's widespread and widely known torture, as much as Ayatollah Khomeini's charisma, that brought revolution and dumped the Shah in 1979.
And the Oil?
And who got control of the oil? That seems always to be the question, doesn't it?
The Shah let the US and UK split 80 percent of control, with the rest going to French and Dutch interests. The Shah got 50 percent of the revenues. When the Shah and SAVAK became history, the new Iranian government took control of the oil. Today, there is scant applause among thinking people for the "singularly successful" U.S.-U.K.-sponsored coup in Iran.
The same goes for the CIA-run coup in Guatemala the following year. American media initially sold both operations as victories over leftist leaning governments vulnerable to Communist blandishments.
It was about really oil in Iran, as it was about land claimed by the United Fruit Company in Guatemala. But the kind of suffering in store for the people of both countries was the same.
Having learned from the British how this kind of thing is done, CIA operatives were ready to try out their newly acquired skills and succeeded in overthrowing the government or Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, who had been elected President in 1950 with 65 percent of the vote.
His offense was giving land to the peasants—unfarmed land that private corporations earlier had set aside for themselves. The United Fruit Company was allergic to real land reform in Guatemala and lobbied hard for Washington to remove Arbenz.
The Dulles brothers, Allen and John Foster, who happened to be shareholders of the United Fruit Company, took the line that Arbenz' actions smacked of "Communism." Then-CIA Director Allen Dulles stoked fears by describing Guatemala as a "Soviet beachhead in the Western hemisphere."
The overthrow of Arbenz in 1954 made Guatemala safe for United Fruit, but not for democracy. The coup ended a hopeful decade-long experiment with representative democracy known as the "Ten Years of Spring." The outcome's implications for democracy in Central American were immense.
Other examples could be adduced, but let us stop here with the two with which Harry Truman would have been most familiar—from a statecraft point of view. (I doubt that he held stock in either Big Oil or United Fruit.)
At the end of his op-ed, Truman puts his conclusion right out there with characteristic straightforwardness:
"I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President...and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere."
Media Un-Reaction
A blockbuster op-ed, no?
Well, no. Investigator Raymond Marcus is among those struck by the curious lack of response—one might say embargo—regarding Truman's Washington Post article. Marcus has written:
"According to my information, it was not carried in later editions that day, nor commented on editorially, nor picked up by any other major newspaper, or mentioned in any national radio or TV broadcast."
What are we to make of this? Was/is it the case, as former CIA Director William Colby is quoted as saying in a different connection, that the CIA "owns everyone of any significance in the major media?" Or at least that it did in the Sixties? How much truth lies beneath Colby's hyperbole?
Did the CIA and its White House patrons put out the word to squelch a former President's op-ed already published in an early edition of the Post? Or is there a simpler explanation. Do any of you readers perhaps know?
The tradecraft term of art for a "cooperating" journalist, businessperson, or academic is "agent of influence." Some housebroken journalists have previously worked for the CIA. Some take such scrupulous notes that they end up sounding dangerously close to their confidential government sources.
Think back, for example, to those vengeful days in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and the macho approach being modeled by President Bush and aped down the line by CIA operatives and their "agents of influence."
CIA operative Gary Schroen told National Public Radio that, just days after 9/11, counterterrorism chief Cofer Black sent him to Afghanistan with orders to "Capture bin Laden, kill him, and bring his head back in a box on dry ice." As for other al Qaeda leaders, Black reportedly said, "I want their heads up on pikes."
This quaint tone—and language—reverberated among Bush-friendly pundits. One consummate insider, Washington Post veteran Jim Hoagland went a bit overboard in publishing a letter to President Bush on Oct. 31, 2001. It was no Halloween prank. Rather, Hoagland strongly endorsed what he termed the "wish" for "Osama bin Laden's head on a pike," which he claimed was the objective of Bush's "generals and diplomats."
At the same time, there are dangers in sharing too much information with pet insider/outsiders. In his open letter to Bush, Hoagland lifted the curtain on the actual neoconservative game plan by giving Bush the following ordering of priorities.
"The need to deal with Iraq's continuing accumulation of biological and chemical weapons and the technology to build a nuclear bomb can in no way be lessened by the demands of the Afghan campaign. You must conduct that campaign so that you can pivot quickly from it to end the threat Saddam Hussein's regime poses."
Thus, Hoagland surfaced the "pivot" plan three weeks before Donald Rumsfeld called Gen. Tommy Franks to tell him the President wanted him to shift focus to Iraq. Franks and his senor aides had been working on plans for attacks on Tora Bora where bin Laden was believed to be hiding, but attention, planning, and resources were abruptly diverted toward Iraq. And Osama bin Laden walked out of Tora Bora through the mountain passes to Pakistan, according to a recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee report.
The point here is that some media favorites are extremely well briefed partly because they are careful not bite the hands that feed them by criticizing the CIA. Still less are they inclined to point out basic structural faults—not to mention the crimes of recent years. So it is up to those of us who know something about intelligence and how structural faults, above-the-law mentality, and flexible consciences can spell disaster.
Split Up the Agency
Here's what should be done.
Expunge the one sentence in the National Security Act of 1947 that gives a President wide latitude to direct the CIA to perform "other such functions and duties related to intelligence." Make it crystal clear that the sense conveyed by that sentence, whether the sentence itself stays in or is deleted, cannot authorize activities that violate international or U.S. criminal law—crimes like kidnapping and torture.
"Other such functions and duties?" What was meant by this wording were activities additional to what President Truman describes in his op-ed as the "original assignment" of the CIA—a central place with access to all collection that enables analysts to advise the President with candor, without department "treatment" or interpretations, and not sparing him "unpleasant facts" so as not to "upset" him.
As Truman himself suggests, terminate "other such functions and duties" or put those operations elsewhere.
And imagine into existence different, effective ways to exercise oversight, not totally dependent on the highly politicized "overlook" committees of the Congress.
That done, there will still be a baby NOT to be thrown out with the bath water.
The good news is that there remains a core of analysts willing and able to seek truth and speak truth to power. This was shown in 2007, when Tom Fingar, a senior analyst with integrity and courage, led to conclusion a National Intelligence Estimate that helped prevent the attack that Dick Cheney, the neoconservatives, and Israel were planning on Iran.
That NIE assessed with high confidence that Iran had ceased working on the warhead-related part of its nuclear program in the fall of 2003—a judgment that holds to this day, however unpopular and unwelcome it may be among those who would have the President give Israel carte blanche to strike Iran's nuclear facilities.
That is the capability Truman wanted—the baby that must be rescued and reared. But the baby is still in danger.
With Tom Fingar now retired, the absence of an NIE on Afghanistan/Pakistan speaks volumes about the timidity that persists within the hierarchy of the CIA and the intelligence community. It boggles the mind that, amid all the assessment and reassessment prior to the President's decision to escalate by sending 30,000 more troops, no policy maker or congressional leader wanted to know what the 16 agencies of the intelligence community were thinking. Or did the White House make it clear to those interested that it would be better not to ask?
Gloom Avoidance
Gen. Petraeus and Gen. McChrystal are not interested in CIA analysis, just CIA drones (the aircraft). Sources inside the intelligence community tell us that they assess the prospects for success of the generals' approach as very low, but that this word does not seem to be getting to the President.
It is not entirely clear whether it is a case of Panetta being reluctant to relay to Obama the kind of "unpleasant facts" or "bad news" that Truman wanted the CIA to give him in a straightforward way, or that Obama himself has discouraged such truth seeking/telling lest the abysmal prognosis of the analysts leak and complicate his Faustian bargain with the top brass—and cause even more political damage in his dissatisfied Democratic "base."
As things get still worse in "Af-Pak"—and they will—it will be important for Obama to have a group of analysts able to give him an objective read on the quagmire into which his benighted policies have led, and how he might attempt to pull himself and U.S. troops out. Perhaps then he will ask.
So save that baby. Throw out the other one with the bathwater.
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61 Comments so far
Show AllI read the James Carroll book, JFK and the Unspeakable. Indeed, the evidence that the CIA was involved with JFK's murder is compelling.
No offense, Kay, but you've got your religious writers mixed up: the author of "JFK and the Unspeakable" is James Douglass.
It's an excellent book.
· Yr Obd't Servant
forgive me but abort both babies
try dealing openly and honestly with peoples of the world
try kindness, share food, share medicine
share the world
keeping McGovern's favorite child
is the same darkness
Empire's spawn
Dividing the CIA is a great idea. And other intelligence agencies as well.
Still, I'm not so hopeful the reform would change U.S. behavior in the world. The powers are willful. They are cunning and aware. They will not willingly relinquish power, and will not be easily fooled or tricked.
The elements that will restrain the U.S. government are outside it, not inside. Let us work to increase the vigor and scope of civil society, or at least, local government, not this out-of-control monstrosity in NY-WashDC.
Major General Smedley Butler put it well when he wrote that Big Boss Super nationalism uses its "muscle men" to enforce the power of huge corporations. The CIA is the fingermen of the cartel. It points out the targets from the population which are chosen to harm the interests of the United States.
Way back during the American-Spanish war, waterboarding was a standard procedure. The slogan for the campaign was, "civilize them with a Krag." The Krag Jorgenson rifle was standard issue then. Philipino victims were routinely tortured, in the case of female rebels (or at least whoever piqued their attention) rape was a standard tactic.
The CIA has intervened many times. Always, without regard from military forces and always to oppressing local peoples.
To sum it up, the system rewards rape and covering up the misdeeds of the few. It may be that the mercenaries that our government hires are rapists, murderers, and recreational killers. Certainly, the CIA knows the people that work for them and give them a "Get out of jail card" The CIA can't be allowed to cover-up the murder of civilians, rape of their own number, and free kill zones in a country who's our ally.
I can only say, "the CIA has no care for women, especially those who have no male protector."
“The good news is that there remains a core of analysts willing and able to seek truth and speak truth to power. This was shown in 2007, when Tom Fingar, a senior analyst with integrity and courage, led to conclusion a National Intelligence Estimate that helped prevent the attack that Dick Cheney, the neoconservatives, and Israel were planning on Iran.”
While I hope that Ray McGovern’s assertion above is in fact true it remains a fact that if Obama were to so much as hint that the U.S. was contemplating an attack on Iran the propaganda distribution system in the United States sometimes incorrectly referred to as “the press” would start to beat the war drums harder than a sex starved monkey wanking off in a mango tree.
The entire neoconservative agenda of the Bush Cheney administration depended on incorrect intelligence to launch illegal wars of aggression.
During the Bush administration there was a pattern of deliberately destroying intelligence gathering capabilities so bogus intelligence could be used to advance the political agenda of the neocons.
Most notable was the outing of Valerie Plame to discredit Joseph Wilson.
The Plame outing also compromised Brewster Jennings and Associates, a covert weapons of mass destruction intelligence gathering organization. No specific details have been released on the impact of destroying the covert cover operation but informed sources suggest that a very large and important intelligence gathering organization was destroyed and deaths of covert operatives or their contacts ensued in the aftermath of Robert Novak’s public disclosure.
The Valerie Plame-Brewster Jennings and Associates is but one of MANY EGERGIOUS BREACHES OF VITAL INTELLIGENCE GATHERING CAPABILITIES BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION THAT ALL FIT A VERY SIMILAR PATTERN.
In December of 2001 the Bush administration released a video tape of Osama bin Laden talking with a crippled Saudi Sheik about the attacks of 9/11/2001. The stated purpose of the release of the tape was to prove to the Islamic world that bin Laden was indeed responsible for the attacks. The tape had been filmed by a Saudi Arabian agent that was attempting to set up an operation to take out bin Laden. By releasing the tape the Bush administration tipped bin Laden of the Saudi operation causing bin Laden to change security methods preventing bringing bin Laden to justice.
Breach #2; The Plame outing.
Breach # 3; To justify a bogus amber terror alert* a few weeks before the 2004 elections National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice disclosed information on an arrest in Pakistan that lead to the disclosure in the press of the identity of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a Pakistani computer expert and communications agent for the highest levels of al Qaeda. After Khan’s arrest the Pakistanis had turned Khan into becoming a double agent, giving them a direct window into the inner workings of al Qaeda. Imagine had this source been allowed to come to fruition bin Laden’s location might well have been determined and the plans of al Qaeda could have been disrupted. *(The alert on financial centers in New Jersey and New York was based on information that was over two years old found on one of Khan’s captured computers.)
Breach #4: A drunken member of the Bush administration told NeoCon darling Ahmed Chalabi that the NSA had broken the Iranian diplomatic code and the code breakers at the NSA were reading the diplomatic dispatches to their embassies around the world. Chalabi, who sat with Laura Bush during the 2003 State of the Union address, promptly told the Iranians who then stopped using the system we’d compromised. I have little doubt that the combination of hardware, software and human input in cracking the Iranian diplomatic code cost the American taxpayers many BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
There is also no doubt that when news of the Iranian diplomatic code intercepts broke into the news every other nation on the planet also reviewed their communication and encryption systems.
Like in the Valerie Plame, Brewster Jennings breach, not one person has been disciplined for the breaches in the Khan case, the Chalabi case, or the bin Laden tape case. All of these breaches of national security advance the cause of Bush’s endless Global War on Terrorism, and all of these breaches have reduced America’s abilities to gather accurate and timely intelligence on America’s adversaries.
Advancing the NeoCon foreign policy agenda of regime change requires faulty intelligence that another nation presents a dire threat to America’s security. The Bush administration pattern of compromising America’s intelligence gathering capabilities to advance their un-American NeoCon agenda crossed the threshold of treason.
I have no doubt the Iran campaign of 2007 was thwarted. Don't you remember the MSM promoting it and the parallels with their promotion of the Iraq invasion?
I was certain it was going ahead and that it would be a joint Israeli/US operation, although it was not clear who would have the lead role in terms of number of aircraft. Bush even had bigger conventional bunker busters developed and there was talk of low yield tactical nukes.
Hey, Mad:
I believe you spell "breach" T-R-E-A-S-O-N.
I don't think there's much chance of substantive change or improvement in CIA ops or any of dozens of other areas of grievous wrong and injustice. However, I do appreciate the thoughtful analysts and truthtellers who inform us so we, being largely powerless so far, can at least know what the hell is going on.
This man's closeness to his subject is clouding his judgement.
The correct solution is to DISBAND the CIA and work towards an open world system with mutually agreed and operated policing functions through international structures such as the UN.
The CIA's missions are a facet of a competitive paradigm between the nation-states of the world. This entire paradigm needs changing.
-matti.
Well said, matti. I think it can even be objectively proved that that would be a much cheaper and more reliable and sustainable option to achieve the SAME objectives of national security. That is, assuming that national security can be clearly defined, and not conflated with empire-building and corporate interests.
What a long and wonderful piece on the CIA.....What Ray left out was the CIA's relationship with the 1st degree murder, I prefer the word murder, of John F Kennedy. (Read "JFK and the Unspeakable" by James W Douglass).....Within that book, Douglass mentions how the CIA had infiltrated different governmental agencies including the FBI.......By doing this the CIA could control the gathering and destruction of evidence and the entire investigation, or, even shut down an investigation.......
Now, you have John Perkins, who wrote books about "The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man".........He was hired by the NSA to work in a consultant company that was charged with inflating the costs of foreign projects, as part of a bigger NSA plot.
There is a pattern that was set up in the 60's and expanded through the 70's...Remember Iran/Contra.....CIA running drugs from Nicaragua and selling weapons to Iran.....Was there any real investigation? No! How many people were punished? One, and he bacame a Republican Heroe.....
Ray mentioned Cofer Black, but he failed to mention that Cofer moved to Vice Chairman of Blackwater and therefore Blackwater became a CIA "Off Book Operation"...
So, do you wonder why Blackwater was loading the drones and firing them into Pakistan? "Off Book" means that there is no Congressional oversight and you know what you are supposed to do......Do you wonder why Blackwater has yet to be punished criminally for any of its illegal activities?
Ray, The CIA went "Off Book" decades ago and they have had FBI cover for the same decades because their people were in the FBI......So, why wasn't there an investigation as to how 14 of the alleged terrorists had their visas issued in Riyadh by CIA personnel? (Read Philip Shenon's "The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Commission")
Sioux Rose
HERBERT/SOLOTOF: Excellent commentary.
Matti, those with the power to disband the CIA who move in that direction are destined to at least receive anthrax by mail.
Are you unaware that multinationals control things at the UN? Kissinger would love your proposal.
“Today America would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all people of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by the World Government.”
- Henry Kissinger, 1991 Bilderberg Conference.
Nation states beat global power any day where there is no representative anything. Who runs the UN and the WHO? The corporations, the bankers.
David Rockefeller would like the UN to run things because of his power there.
Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. -David Rockefeller
McGovern imposes a prolix exercise in liberal (reformist) illusion: Tweak the CIA law for a cleaner, more efficient empire. He quotes a noted Democratic war criminal, Harry Truman, in support of reform. (Presumably Truman displayed his superior "intelligence" gathering when he "asked Bess," his fundamentalist Christian wife, whether to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) How persuasive! --Believe it or not, Mr. McGovern, the real adults do not want a cleaner, more efficient empire; real adults prefer to do away with the empire altogether. Do away with the goal of "full spectrum dominance" of the world and the "intelligence" apparatus will fall away for want of purpose. And before you retort that bin Laden is trying to kill us, try to remember that such "terrorists" are spawn of empire; while the basal terrorists are to be found in the state apparatus of the empire that you want to reform.
matti - exactly my comment - thanks - DISBAND the CIA
I usually read McGovern as a fresh breath of air. This time he misses the obvious.
I guess if you wanted to make the law passed by Congress for regime change in Iran to have some teeth, than you may have more luck dividing the CIA in two or three.
When Truman's article came out LBJ already gave orders to the government to find Oswald the lone Killer with no confederates at large for "National Security".
All CIA records that the Warren commission saw were first vetted by CIA counter intel, James Angelton, and then by Allan Dulles. FBI Hoover whose Counter Intel program was fighting for turf with the CIA from the very beginning in its inception 46-47 was in charge of making sure the truth about what he knew about the plot was hidden and witnesses intimidated, while he was compromised by the Mob and CIA about his acts and spying on the Kennedy's. Since they were all compromised, the Kennedys by the Marilyn Monroe mystery, LBJ by the Billy Sol Estes related murder case of an agriculture agent in Texas, it was easy to blame everything on the one lone Oswald, and it was necessary for the careers of the Bush Family too.
So the Commission was left in the dark about the CIA hits on Castro and the counter Intel false defector program that Oswald was operating under and his double, 2 inches taller who the FBI and State Dept. were investigating with no success because it was a counter intel operation of Alan Dulles and Angelton.
This is why it took so long to get Oswald back in the USA because the State Dept. was given orders to make sure it was the same Oswald as the one who defected.
2017 is a date where stuff not given to the Warren Commission may be declassified, but it could all be altered and destroyed already like JFK's brain and so many witnesses.
And then there is the first case of the the Bush jr. preemptive strike doctrine - the Kenney plane crash "accident" in 1999.
Of course Cheney and Bush would say it's just politics.
I'm glad I decided not to pursue a career in this insane field.
HaHaHaHaHa! Ray sez: "Break the CIA in Two". Like our two major political parties, or maybe like Mafiaco Inc, enforcement division, and Mafiaco Inc, accounting division, or maybe like Blackwater Goon Squads Inc. and Blackwater Elite Services Goon Squads Inc?
If you want to get a full appreciation of Ray McGovern's cite of Harry Truman's op-ed, read Jim Douglass' "JFK and the Unspeakable". Harry was pretty old by then but still smart enough to realize who had to have both arranged and then assisted in covering up the murder of President Kennedy that happened a month earlier.
JFK had the right idea--"tear the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind". May the smooth mouthpieces for this corrupt multinational criminal organization like Ray McGovern, perish with their current or former employer. It is the least the innocent victims of the violence of "the company" should expect.
Poet
the voice of Bureaucracy speaks,
it is not breaking the CIA in two that needs to happen but bringing all the intelligence agencies under one roof that needs to happen.
Do you know how many intelligence agencies the US has? I dont and I work with some of them.
They don't talk to each other, they keep information to themselves, they lose information. I could go on for pages.
There are lots of component people in the agencies, but they are stimed by bureaucracy, not being able to cross lines of authority and area of interest. again the list goes on
By all means, break the CIA in two -- and drown the operational puppy, but housebreak the intelligency gathering puppy.
"Some take such scrupulous notes that they end up sounding dangerously close to their confidential government sources."
Elementary, my dear Watson. CIA recruiting occurs in the journalism schools. It's really great to have two paychecks.
Philosophically and practicably, your suggestion to break the "wet work" away from the CIA has about as much chance of happening as Goldman Sachs splitting into 1,000 small banks. The most obvious reason (and there are many) is that if you KNOW what is going on somewhere AND you are a powerful country, you are ALWAYS going to want to DO SOMETHING about it to help your business friends and hurt your enemies. Your inability to voice the REAL reason the CIA exists (to protect corporate business interests in foreign countries), despite your examples about United Fruit and big oil, is the center of the problem.
McGovern, the CIA has NEVER been about national security. The CIA IS ABOUT MAKING MONEY FOR AMERICAN CORPORATE CROOKS.
At any rate, there are a host of alphabet agencies doing wet work now. You'd have to disband the NSA and all the special forces groups within the military, homeland security the FBI and even police departments in large US cities. As soon as you tried, they would start killing anyone in their way. We are a dictatorship. It's better for business if they can discredit or ignore you but they will kill you if there is a chance that you can convince congress to cut off their income (they'll kill every recalcitrant member of congress if they have to - they can always blame it on the arabs).
But there IS hope. The asians are making us irrelevant and draining our money. That's the only way our evil, greedy, killer agencies like the CIA will stop doing what they do.
Sioux Rose
AGG: Very well-written and incisive post. I also took pause at McGovern's analysis based only on THE agency itself, and what the PR world tells us its purpose is, as if the exposures of persons like J Perkins are meaningless, not the bulls-eyes (with respect to defining the trajectory of foreign "campaigns" of war).
100% agreement. Ray makes more positive noises than most, but he's stumping for his comrades in the field of his specialty. Of course he isn't going to admit that he chose a career doing something unnecessary and, in fact, served as no more than a foot soldier for global corporatism (fascism). But I still count him as more friend than foe in the struggle against the corruption whose stench is so fucking high right now that I don't know how anyone could stand it. But I'll say it again. I agree with you 100%. There has never been anything 'national' about the security the CIA (and of course all the other alphabet intel/covert agencies) is allegedly mandated to protect. Multinationals have no nation, except those they drive around in like stolen cars.
As a history major in college, I really liked McGovern's historical analysis. I am also reading the book he mentions at this very moment - "JFK and the Unspeakable". I cannot heap enough praise on this important book.
McGovern has some great ideas. Still, I agree with many of the posters before me. We should take JFK's idea and "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces."
CIA = Caca In Action
Wherever there is trouble of the worst kind, look to the CIA to be doing the screwing up. Take them out of the way and, chances are, that the world could achieve peace
Back in the day there was a local band named CIA. It stood for Caught In the Act.
CIA = Cocaine Importers of America
Brilliant! I wonder if they're behind the current heroin epidemic in Appalachia as well, since no poppies are being farmed here.
Wonder if it was a CIA drone that hit the Pentagon?
Exactly.
It should be pointed out that Dov Zakheim, an Orthodox Jewish neoconservative war hawk, was the Comptroller of the Defense Department and the undersecretary of Defense under Rumsfeld when Rummy admitted prior to 9/11 that there was almost 3 trillion dollars missing and unaccounted for in the Defense budget.
Prior to his government job, Zakheim was CEO for SPC International, a subsidiary of System Planning Corporation.
One of the many arms-related projects of that company was drone aircraft.
"Break the CIA in Two"
Why stop there? I like Jack Kennedy's idea even better: "a thousand" pieces seems about right for one of the most evil organizations ever conceived in the mind of man.
abnsmith - said "the voice of Bureaucracy speaks,
it is not breaking the CIA in two that needs to happen but bringing all the intelligence agencies under one roof that needs to happen".
I totally disagree with bringing all of the intelligence agencies under one roof. One maniacal man could turn that into a monster. Don't break it up at all. Rewrite the CIA's mission as intelligence gathering only and let the military handle the rest. Allowing intelligence gathering and covert action to co-exist is a danger to our democracy stateside. The founding fathers were wrong about quite a few things, but they were right about the separation of powers.
Which is easier to say, "There is no Spoon" or "There are no Enemies".
"Of equal importance is the kind of question to which Tenet normally paid little heed; namely, what would flying Predators do to CIA credibility."
Ray? Credibility? From guys who don't just torture, these are guys who sodomize 14yo boys in front of their mothers - to SHAME THEM. These are not Humans. These are the men we HUNG at Nuremberg! Acting on orders and 'permission' they received from the White House.
You want to stop a war against an aggressor army? GREAT! Offer their soldiers full university training for themselves and their families at any of our Universities with fully funded stipends during their study...at the end free choice, leave or green card....I can hear the howls from coast to coast. "WE WON'T EVEN DO THAT FOR OUR OWN! AND YOU WANT TO DO THAT FOR FURRENERS!"
Guaranteed: It would be cheaper than bombs, nobody dies, and we'd have lots of allies who might be strong armed into making their contribution as well. Yes, it would work but then we'd probably have to take more Military money and do that for our own folks, you know, free university and family stipends... And wouldn't that be terrible.
No no, much better idea, TRY and split the CIA...HELL nobody even knows half the covert and intelligence ops being run right now. What are there, 170 different agencies or some such? Right. Augean Stables. Much mo betta, put a torch to it or maybe we could use one of those bunker busters, turn Langley and the Pentagon into museums and weekend Flea Markets - far more productive resource allocation.
Never forget, those "good" Intelligence operators provide all the material for the covert boys to do their stuff. That means, they are gathering info on the people around the globe that we've fucked who are "trying to get us" to get even for what we took from them in the name of our Empire. No?? What then is their job besides making sure less than 6% of the global population consumes 25-30% of the planet's resources?
Captain Jack Sparrow had it straight, "I just pretend it's all just a bad dream." Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't.
I don't know where McGovern has been hiding himself to, but doesn't anyone realize that the Counterterrorism Act of 2005 has already split the CIA in two effectively?
With the creation of the new intelligence overlord position of the Director of National Intelligence, this intelligence superstructure already removes huge parts of the CIA's old covert operations functions and puts it in a less visible place.
While the CIA may be letting Xe, or Triple Canopy, or whoever service and man the drones, there's very little covert action left in the old agency, and it appears to be devoting more time to intelligence analysis.
Hey Ray, don't you realize that JFK was a vicious bloodthirsty murdering cold-war imperialist butcher who was happily willing to plunge us into global thermonuclear war to destroy Castro and the USSR?
No?
Don't take my word for it, ask Chomsky or Cockburn. They'll set ya straight!
I think all this obsession over whether the CIA was involved in the death of one or more of the Kennedys to be highly diversionary and quite frankly racist.
The CIA has lots of PROVEN blood on its hands without getting into conspiracies. It has directly committed, or assisted and financed the killing and/or torture of hundreds of thousands of people in Greece, the Philippines, South Korea, Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, Cuba, Indonesia, Laos, South Vietnam, El Salvador, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Chile, Afghanistan, Mexico, and(probably) Honduras.
To many conspiracy theorists, it seems that because these are poor black and brown peasants instead of the great white liberal hope(s), their deaths are not a compelling indictment of the CIA.
Why? To protect 'American interests'- ie the 'interest' that the ruling class has in looting the Third World of its vast material wealth and dominating its markets. The CIA serves as the advanced shock troops of Empire, who are there to decapitate, demoralize and squelch any revolutionary or nationalist movement that might arise to challenge the status quo, destroying it preferably in infancy so that the Empire does not need to go through all the trouble of dispatching military forces to deal with the uppity natives.
Far from being 'incompetent' as many of the CIA's critics suggest, the CIA, in this purpose, is in fact extremely efficient.
The CIA has smeared its trail of blood all over the globe-it is truly an American Gestapo. The CIA doesn't need to be 'broken into two'. It needs to be abolished period so that it can never terrorize anyone ever again, serving as global capitalism's rent-a-thug.
Yeah. I want to know who killed Kennedy because I don't like brown people. That must be it. I'm sure it has nothing to do with being pissed that criminals could be in control of my government, and are using it to kill people of all colors anywhere in the world who dare open their mouths or actually do something to stop corporate empire.
Next you'll tell me that I'm an anti-Semite because I want to know who did 9/11 also, and I'm not buying that it was 15 coked out whore mongers who couldn't fly a Cessna that brought down three steel framed skyscrapers with two jets. I don't know who did it, but I do know who covered it up, and who profited in terms of power and gold, and they aren't all of Hebrew descent. I'm sure my curiosity has nothing to do with such lofty notions such as decency or justice, much less democracy.
And you're probably right. We should just move on and accept the certainty of uncertainty that gets shoved down our throats on a daily basis by our so-called media. Things are different now, right?
Well said, Kog.
Sorry Marxist, but my belief that the CIA had a hand in the assassinations of the Kennedys and the events of September 11, 2001, does NOT diminish my disgust of their despicable actions all over the world, as you suggest. Quite the opposite, in fact. All of it makes sense to me when taken as a whole. I condemn the CIA for all of it.
Decry us as "conspiracy theorists" all you want. That organization has all kinds of blood on its hands, blood that comes both from "poor black and brown peasants" as well as rich white people.
Namaste,
John
The thug elite keep the good and evil sides of the CIA together for a very specific reason: The good carries, camouflages, protects the evil. This is a familiar theme to anyone watching the elites at work. Wolves in sheep's clothing, them and their enterprises, every one of them. What's new? McGovern is careful to avoid focusing the people's attention on the generality, knowing this would empower the people, which would get him thrown out of the gilded cage.
Marxist Rebel
**The CIA has lots of PROVEN blood on its hands without getting into conspiracies. It has directly committed, or assisted and financed the killing and/or torture of hundreds of thousands of people in Greece, the Philippines, South Korea, Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, Cuba, Indonesia, Laos, South Vietnam, El Salvador, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Chile, Afghanistan, Mexico, and(probably) Honduras**
well said but.....
what about tibet, xinjiang, tam, flg etc etc......?
**when can China haul the United States before the UN Security Council or to take military actions in retaliation for this low-intensity war that has been waged upon them**
http://tinyurl.com/mumupz
The invasion of Iraq shows that a first rate intelligence gathering and analysis organization independent of the executive may prevent our country from going to war. The emphasis is on may because it all depends on what a sitting administration is willing to accept.
Mr. McGovern, your bio indicates you are a religious man, so perhaps you can answer this question: my understanding is that service in government currently includes a ceremony in which one swears an Oath to protect and defend the Constitution. If that's not good enough to hold a person to their word (and since non-Christians never get elected to office nor enter service of the nation in any way), the ceremony includes placing a hand on the Bible and swearing to God, correct? So if as you say in your article the CIA includes the creme-de-la-creme in regard to character and patriotism and so on, and since as you note under the Bush Administration it became "faith-based" (or THEIR faith, at least, never mind the First Amendment -- religion without representation perhaps? did this really happen as recently as the Bush Jr Cosa?) -- if that's the case, do they burn in hell for breaking that vow or is everyday a brand new day in which the consequences of one's actions are magically gone because ... because ... because why? In other words, was the message of Jesus that his torture and murder were enough, or, exactly when is enough enough by the religious creme-de-la-creme's faith-based line of thinking?
'
HOW MANY MORE POWERFUL AGENCIES and SECRET FORCES CAN THIS NATION support ???????????????
Will it be these powerful BARONS who destroy the UNITES STATES of AMERICA ?????????????
Are our children being sacrificed for these mad dreams of an American Empire ????????
.
"With the advent of the George W. Bush administration we had learned about "faith-based intelligence," ...
Roughly 77% of the American population is Christian (the number has fallen dramatically over the past two decades). Roughly 18% of those are born again. Roughly 7% of American Christians, or less then half of born again Christians, are Evangelical born again. The Bush organization favored Evangelical born again Christian "faith-based" intelligence. This cult is currently busy re-writing the Bible to remove forgiveness and other "liberal" biases so as to excuse and even encourage their own brand of hatred and violence. They have no concept of a monotheistic order in which God actually creates all things. To them, God is a gigantic buffoon who made billions of mistakes in the form of damned human beings. Forgive them their faith-based intelligence (or lack thereof), for they know not what they do. But someone better start helping these insane people get a clue or we're in for their brand of hubris, an "intelligent design" that hands down wins the Darwin Award.
"With the Soviet Union taking over large chunks of Europe and the KGB plying its covert-action wares worldwide, the question answered itself; a counter capability was needed."
Not to downplay the ugliness of the Stalin regime but... It has been confirmed that before WWII was finished, Allen Dulles & company had successfully acquired the services of Reinhard Gehlen- senior Nazi in charge of the Eastern front - and his network of fascist agitators spread across the territories. This fact had been strongly denied until just a few years ago, and effectively rewrites the history of the "Iron Curtain" in the immediate postwar years.
Allen Dulles is a sinister figure in American history.
You're all under surveillance