Aug 24 2006
Why Should America Trust The CIA?
In this interesting American Thinker article Rick Moran (home site here) notes that there is a lack of mutual respect and trust between the policy makers and the administration and the CIA – which has had its wings rightfully clipped for their failures in intel and failure to accept our democratic process. Rick tends to spread the blame around a bit, but I see it differently.
The CIA failed to see the coming storm of 9-11. They failed to raise the alarm on Bin Laden and push for his capture, especially after the Embassy bombings in 1998. The CIA missed the threat from Atta and his band of terrorists in Hamburg, even though they were monitoring them with the German intelligence agency. The CIA “lost the trail” of the 9-1 highjackers as they made their way here to the US, even though the NSA was probably sending them intel that we had been invaded by cells ssociated with Bin Laden (which is all the NSA could do pre 9-11, since the FBI and FISA were off limits). The CIA dissed the Able Danger effort which simply supported their general concerns with hard connection collected at warp speed through data mining of public, commercial data.
The CIA missed all of this and they missed Pakistan’s nukes, North Korea’s nukes, Libya’s nukes etc. The Bush administration forced the issue by demanding the elimination of AQ Kahn’s nuclear technology black market ring. The CIA, under Clinton, GAVE Iran the keys to nuclear weapons by sending them designs on nuclear triggers in a disasterous campaign to trick Iran! We only ended up tricking ourselves into arming the most virulent Islamo Fascist state out there. There are indications the CIA assisted Al Qaeda during the Clinton years instead of trying to take them down.
But the worst was still to come. In the run up to Iraq the CIA held onto forged documents that supposedly illustrated purchase of uranium yellow cake by Iraq from Niger. They held these documents in their safe as the debate was raging in Congress and the UN, only releasing them at the optimal partisan time around the State of The Union when we made the case to take on Hussein. And then, from the same group that held back the documents for so long, came the husband of a CIA agent with uncommon knowledge of these forgeries (since he knew the people who supposedly signed the documents, and interacted with them in his first CIA supported trip to Niger) who claimed the administration knew these were forgeries and lied to the American people. The CIA group this man’s wife worked for knew about the documents and apparently leaked them to the IAEA to make a big oolitical splash. But the administration had relied on other intelligence – and never once mentioned Niger.
The CIA leaked the prison stories from their office of professional conduct – the Office of Inspector General. And the NSA leaks and the SWIFT leaks, etc. There is a reason the CIA has no credibility – they earned it. They couldn’t abide by our democratic process and so they went on a covert effort to undermine our elections in three cycles now. Instead of worrying about Iran, Iraq and Bin Laden all the CIA’s energy seem focused on getting George Bush. So someone tell me, with a record like this, why America should trust the CIA? My guess is all the serious analysts and officers have been moved to the other, now elevated, intelligence groups while the CIA attempts to finish cleaning house and re-focusing their minds. But right now the CIA is on parole and needs to demonstrate they have any credibility left.
Makes me wonder what happened re: O’Malley. Dana Priest has been very silent also.
Good post! However you may have missed the most important aspect ot the CIA “incompetence”: Their continued inssitence that Iran is many YEARS away from a nuclear weapon. I hope I am wrong but, if I am not, this time such an “error” will be disastrous!
The CIA should be disbanded. They have been ineffective for decades. In fact, they have been a rogue organization doing whatever they pleased during this time, evidently without government approval. There has been a lot of jealously and non cooperation between the intelligent agencies and law enforcement. The CIA did not want any other agency to get any credit for anything the CIA were involved in. From what I have read the CIA were assigned to embassies all over the world , and all the spies of other countries knew who our agents were. There was no way these people could get information except by accident or if they were purposely fed same. But the worst thing they did was to try to undercut President Bush with all these leaks and misinformation. They definitely tried to discredit him and his administration. However, I don’t think they paid too much attention to Clinton either. Some people just get too self important in their own eyes and think mpre about their ideology and less about the good of the country.
AJ
Ya seem to have left out something that our CIA had as their Nuc weapons expert go to person being , ah dare I say Ms. Plame.
Man that ought to stoke sales for her book….ah whenever she gets around to scribbling it.
We had a salting of the governmental influence agencies by Clinton admin wasbeens and we got a less than acceptable result.
It would be just as justifiable to have appointed Robert Riche to the head of NASA.
Ducking under my desk to avoid the paperweights and any other ballistic objects withing reach of AJ in his rapid fire response!
Playing with Fire…
Yesterday a report was released by a Committee run by Rep. Pete Hoekstra that tore the IC a new butt. Basically it ripped our intelligence for it’s “Sweat Mint Tea” assessments of Iran.
Today the New York ‘Traitor’ Times …
AZ
Dana for one was a very prolific writer. Not right , but prolific.
Does the term “I’m gonna make em an offer they can’t refuse” come to mind.
Compare her column inches since this broke to prior to the story.
Persona Non Grata ranks right up their with being a pimpled zitface, only difference is if she is still drawing a payhcheck or starving due to lack of piece work?
Oh right she got a seperation agreement, kinda like a french kiss from your sister or you aunt.
But hey my aunt’s a hottie, what do I know.
Merlin, who is Dana Priest’s husband? Notice any interesting connections?
Remember that Larry C. Johnson made a claim in July 2001 that the terrorist threats had been declining? Unfortunately, he continues to believe his claim is right in spite of 9/11.
CIA (and UN, too) lost its credibility long time ago. I don’t have a whole lot of hope for them to rebuild its credibility, at least, not until we have a new democrat president. Then things will be rosy with them.
I doubt that there would be good relations between the Bush adm and CIA.
I’ll tell you what…THIS statement REALLY torques my jaws!!!
…..
From Macsmind –
At the same time, Mr. Fingar dismissed the notion that intelligence analysts should try merely to connect random intelligence findings. “As a 40-year analyst, I’m offended by the notion of ‘connecting dots,’ ’’he said. “If you had enough monkeys you could do that.â€
OFFENDED???? JEEZ!!! What an arrogant piece of garbage this guy is!! It was your JOB, jerk!! Time to put these people on the unemployment line and out of our government. PERIOD!
Carol
I am sorry if I offend any of the posters before me! But why do you live in the past?
I indicated that the CIA published analysis regarding Iran’s nuke development seems to be totally out of line with Israeli and even MSM projections. Why is this being ignored? Nothing can be done to remedy the past! What is being done to prevent a terrible future?
…
The article is painted with a very broad stroke, and does not take in very crucial factors. As far as human intelligence gathering goes, the CIA is the best there is, bar none. In all of history.
THAT said, so is about everything else from America, heh.
There is room for criticism, obviously. There have been severe intelligence failures. But, where is the real culprit here? The CIA? Or, is the more likely suspect among our diplomats, political officials, and lawyers?
Is the environment of the times to blame here?
Was it too difficult to shift from Communism as the central enemy to Islamism as the central enemy?
Why was that shift so difficult to take? Was that for political reasons? And were those political reasons really so biased by a minority few with overly great concerns for foreign Muslim interests?
Or, have we, as a people never defined extremist Islam as a verifiable, condemnable threat, an enemy to our country? Have we even refused to define Communism in these terms since the 50s?
Could that kind of thinking… where the line between partisan and patriotic becomes so fuzzy… have contributed to this mess?
All of these things said, we are left further with an unknown here. How do you prove an unknown? We can’t. We can only try to describe this unknown from a distance, using poor evidence.
It can be very hard for very large organizations to maneuver. I am sure there is room for improvement. This won’t come from meddling by the Left, who by any definition, consider our country not worth protecting and the capitalist swine of history. That is what caused most of these problems in the first place.
I think we need to define our goals better. Better define who it is we are fighting against and why. It isn’t like these guys work for money, after all. That is what they work for. The guys that count, anyway.
Bush’s recent disclosure of our enemies as “Islamo-Fascists” is a huge move in the right direction, by my book.
PC out the window. Facts in.
Barbara:
“From what I have read the CIA were assigned to embassies all over the world , and all the spies of other countries knew who our agents were. There was no way these people could get information except by accident or if they were purposely fed same. But the worst thing they did was to try to undercut President Bush with all these leaks and misinformation. ”
These partisan leaks have been despicable. They do, to an extent, speak to the agency as a whole. There is obviously a lot of Leftist corruption in there.
Some of that influence has come from the outside. We had Bill Clinton in office for eight years, of course. We had Jimmy Carter for four years. Who knows what kind of damage that did. Even our conservative Presidents have made some bad choices in these things. As much as I think Reagan was right on, he did have us pull out of Lebanon. That was on his watch, anyway.
From my understanding, these outside influences have completely traumitized the CIA. These outsiders have been able to hire and fire as they please, promote and demote as they wish. Really, what can that do to what should ultimately be a military like organization? I mean, literally, politicians have been defining the priorities and the identities of our enemies.
Consider this: one day our enemies are the Communists. The next day, nobody. Almost literally. Then, whose our enemy? Yugoslavia. Islamists are our ally one day, our enemy the next. What is “American”? What is partisan and what is simply patriotic?
I think our enemies have been pretty clear cut all along. From time to time, we are forced to make some alliances with some enemies to tackle worse enemies. But that should not clear our overall judgement.
Regardless, there are many memoirs out there which do account success stories. There are many such open source sources. There are a lot of hard working men and women out there working for these guys who put their lives in danger. They work extraordinary hours and they are given in return small paychecks and serious problems for their families.
And the successful stories? You won’t here about most of these. The bad ones? Sure, we hear all about those.
We have many good systems in place at the CIA, in my opinion. Many good people.
But, you have to consider the environment in which they are working.
Overhaul? Yes. (One that works this time and sticks.) Dissolution? No. I would suggest.
Check CIA at Amazon, and personally, I have found the memoirs, autobiographies… to be the most revealing and persuasive.
Luc,
I get your point. I guess what I’m trying to say is that unless you can admit the failure of the past it makes it VERY hard to move ahead and stop future attacks. Simply reacting to attacks is unacceptable in the real world in which we now live. We have to anticipate what these terrorists will do in the future by “connecting the dots” and stopping them cold. Sorry, but Mr. Fingar (above in my comment) is a dangerously obtuse person in my view. People like him in the CIA (analysts) have gotten used to sitting on their butts at Langley and collecting a paycheck for what exactly? Connecting dots is beneath them…he says. That’s why I think its high time the CIA (if its going to save itself) realizes that they don’t need people like that. They NEVER needed someone like that…forty years or not. Maybe he thought after 40 years he was entitled. Time to retire if you think that way. He certainly didn’t do himself any favors by opening his mouth and inserting his foot.
Sorry, just makes me angry. These are the people who, first and foremost, should remember why they started working for the CIA to begin with…and it ain’t making statements like that. I am sure that there are people in the CIA who are incredibly good at what they do and who do their work out of the earshot of the media and never get credit for protecting us here at home. Its only the numbskulls like our friend here who get the attention. I only hope we can get rid of that sort or at least minimize their effect on the critical work of the field agents and the men and women who actually put themselves on the line every day.
Luc, I fear until we reform the CIA, we will not get anything useful and probably more of the same!!!
Carol
Carol, thank you for your reply.
I agree with your post to the point that, MAYBE tongue in cheek, I would recommend that the first target to nuke following a hit from Iran, should be CIA headquarters. Obviously hoping that Mr. Fingar and Mrs Plame are there at the time. 😉
Did the CIA know about Kahn or the Pakistani nuke program?
Terrye:
“Did the CIA know about Kahn or the Pakistani nuke program? ”
How would we know if they did or not?
Say a senior official says they did not. Okay. Seems likely true then. But, then say that some people there did. But, this was ignored or hushed up for political reasons. How would anyone know about that?
Above all, what do they do that is good and effective? Are those the kinds of things the public will hear about? But, they will hear about every mistake.
Take another “for instance”: They know about something but no action was done by other branches about anything. We never hear about that.
Then, there is the whole problem of proof. How do you prove something a source says is true? Or, say, of whistleblowing. A Case Officer gets an important tip and follows it up on his own. He presents credible evidence to his superiors. They do “nothing” (as far as he knows, anyway). What to do there? Was nothing really done at all? Or was his proof really substantial? Was it enough to investigate? Who knows. Everything is classified.
Granted, personally, I don’t think the job is getting done until we see a lot of terrorists get shot up. But, I know that would never fly in today’s political environment. Ultimately, whatever they do, they can do on the basis of the American political environment… and whatever their college educated guys and gals believe is right to do. Especially those burning patriots in the State Department. All two of em. (And, yeah, the CIA can’t do much of anything if the diplomats say the fall out might not be kosher, as far as I know, anyway.)
Luc,
I don’t know any thing else about him so I can only say Mr. Fingar is incredibly lazy after 40 years and has a big mouth! Ms. Plame/Wilson on the other hand was actively working for the failure of Bush’s foreign policy along with her ex-ambassador hubby, who should both share a jail cell as far as I’m concerned. We’re still waiting for the end of that travesty (Fitzmas nonsense). It’s just a shame it won’t be resolved until after the midterm elections, I think.
Carol