Author does not fully address that the CIA effectively funds and directs the rest of the IC. They gate all infrastructure - from networks to satellites to drones. When Congress tried to limit their operations with heavy oversight, they spun out a brand new intelligence agency, classified its very existence, and spun out operations on that side for years before CBO caught on.
yep!! people tend to overlook how powerful the CIA is. it's probably the only gvt agency which can fully fund itself, answers to no one. can probably take down the president, or the whole congress and judges.
what has saved americans is the CIA has been focused on foreign issues. once that might is turned internally there's hell to pay.
It doesn't work that way, there is a pretty clear separation between civilian and military intelligence. For example, CIA and FBI are civilian, NSA and DIA are military. This separation is both legal and practical.
Some agencies are more influential than others but that waxes and wanes over time. There is always some agency in ascendency and another in decline. I've seen the centers of influence shift between agencies more than once.
"they spun out a brand new intelligence agency, classified its very existence, and spun out operations on that side for years before CBO caught on."
- Do you have any details on this? Super interested in this.
Is this a defense of the CIA? The first half of the article catalogs decades of failures ranging from comical to catastrophic.
"There was a time when the C.I.A.’s existential fear was of losing its adversary. In Al Qaeda, it found a new one; in Iraq, it created others. In Trump, it faces an adversary of a different kind."
Further, calling the Commander in Chief its "adversary" is terrible framing.. if they're working against the elected leadership of the US, who are they working FOR?
Isn't the point of the previous examples that every organisation ultimately works for its own survival/growth?
The cia was basically pointless when the ussr fell (I'm not sure I agree but that's the logic). It needed a reason to exist and Al Qaeda provided that. When that wore thin, it manufactured its own reason in Iraq, a country that had no wdm and was no threat. And so on.
I'm not saying I agree but that is the logic I believe
Regardless of how you feel about the US IC, I think the systematic dismantling of the national infrastructure and capacity to govern is, to put it mildly, a serious problem.
How big is "big enough"? All aspects of the US Federal Government have grown enormously within my lifetime, and there have been very few cutbacks. Often times, an organization is less effective when it is bigger. You have the "too many cooks" issue, and the "need for consensus" issue, both of which become more of a problem with growth.
I'm sure the "all conspiracies are without basis / nothing ever happens / I'm not organized so no one else is" crowd is pretending Iran Contra never happened as they downvote you.
The great problem of intelligence is that collection will tell you capability but not intent. During a war, capabilities tend to be used. Finding out that the enemy has massed forces somewhere or has a new weapon indicates something is about to happen.
During peacetime, there's mostly unused capability, and preparations take place that don't result in actual conflict. Military assets are built and trained, but not being used.
Intent may exist only in the mind of the leader and may change rapidly.
This often frustrates decision-makers, who want intelligence to tell them what's going to happen.
> great problem of intelligence is that collection will tell you capability but not intent
We had a pretty clear picture of intent in the build-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Different countries have historically been skillful in different elements of intelligence. American geospatial and signals intelligence is renowned. Our human intellignece, on the other hand, has been crap in the modern era. I would be wary about projecting the strengths and weaknesses of the American IC to intelligence as a whole.
Always interesting to read these highly-selective histories of the CIA, where the most powerful clandestine organization in the world is presented as largely above-board and under-resourced.
Apparently the CIA was struggling to find a place in the early 90s while its former director was the sitting POTUS and the USA was renewing its grand campaign to covertly and overtly reshape the Middle East. Sure buddy, totally believable.
And no mention of the CIA's protection of 9/11 attackers from FBI persecution prior to the attacks.
A good article that is critical of the previous book by Weiner ("Legacy of Ashes") is this article[0].
Here is a quote from it:
"A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist has distorted what was said, why it was said, when it was said, and the circumstances under which it was said—all to support his thesis that CIA has been a continuous failure from 1947 up to the present. Weiner’s use of the plural 'final gatherings' in the excerpt from his account suggests he knows what he is doing."
"If a genuine emergency were to take place, and Trump tried to use the occasion to cancel elections or declare martial law, who would be able to stop him?"
The military industrial complex lies in ruins, the west is in full retreat while other empires expand in another great game and the CIA conspiracy theories where revealed as just left racism dogwhistles. Because of course , non-white people can not be bad acteurs , creating their own destiny and pursuit the original sin that is imperialism, racism and genocide. They are noble savages.
Meanwhile , the agents of centralized incompetence aggregated, rainmade the public behind this conspiracy facade, by hijacking the stories of local developments.
So tirrd of all this hyperbiased nonsense, that then turns out to be the narratives pushed by the working secret service of hostile nations.
If you willingly turn yourself into a propaganda asset of a hostile foreign power, you should leave the democracy you reside in .
Yeah, this article hasn't aged well. It looks like a CIA briefing of a friendly journalist in advance of the Tulsi Gabbard releasing the evidence that the CIA colluded with Obama to lie about Trump/Russia collusion:
It's weird how accounts like this one forgets to mention how the CIA rebooted global heroin trade (as well as addiction at home) and gave it to italian mafia networks, and of course subsequent deep interfacing with such actors.
Especially since it mentions election interference in Italy through those same mob networks.
Perhaps it's easy to forget they early brought the fruits of their activities home and never stopped, or easy to believe that they only have effects abroad.
The article comes off as a laughable attempt to fire the arrow and then paint the target around it. For example the author claims about 9/11 that "the first attack had already achieved its aims: it dragged the U.S. into a protracted war in Afghanistan, pushed the country back into the moral swamp of torture, and, as a bonus, helped goad America into invading Iraq." Bin Laden was a fanatical mass murderer and his aim was to establish a caliphate. I highly, highly, highly doubt that he saw the attacks as an attempt to degrade the morals of the CIA (or any of the other outlandish claptrap that the author claims).
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 76.1 ms ] threadAuthor does not fully address that the CIA effectively funds and directs the rest of the IC. They gate all infrastructure - from networks to satellites to drones. When Congress tried to limit their operations with heavy oversight, they spun out a brand new intelligence agency, classified its very existence, and spun out operations on that side for years before CBO caught on.
what has saved americans is the CIA has been focused on foreign issues. once that might is turned internally there's hell to pay.
It is extremely likely but not proven that they have done so at least one time in the past.
Some agencies are more influential than others but that waxes and wanes over time. There is always some agency in ascendency and another in decline. I've seen the centers of influence shift between agencies more than once.
Your conspiracy theory is a bit overwrought.
"There was a time when the C.I.A.’s existential fear was of losing its adversary. In Al Qaeda, it found a new one; in Iraq, it created others. In Trump, it faces an adversary of a different kind."
Further, calling the Commander in Chief its "adversary" is terrible framing.. if they're working against the elected leadership of the US, who are they working FOR?
Legality doesn't matter as long as the money keeps flowing.
The cia was basically pointless when the ussr fell (I'm not sure I agree but that's the logic). It needed a reason to exist and Al Qaeda provided that. When that wore thin, it manufactured its own reason in Iraq, a country that had no wdm and was no threat. And so on.
I'm not saying I agree but that is the logic I believe
If CIA ends up hurting for money they can go back to using Israel to sell weapons to Iran and selling cocaine to intercity youth.
Like the good old days.
But I lack the basic sympathy for these organizations, if they were abolished the world would be a better place.
During peacetime, there's mostly unused capability, and preparations take place that don't result in actual conflict. Military assets are built and trained, but not being used. Intent may exist only in the mind of the leader and may change rapidly.
This often frustrates decision-makers, who want intelligence to tell them what's going to happen.
We had a pretty clear picture of intent in the build-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Different countries have historically been skillful in different elements of intelligence. American geospatial and signals intelligence is renowned. Our human intellignece, on the other hand, has been crap in the modern era. I would be wary about projecting the strengths and weaknesses of the American IC to intelligence as a whole.
There are a lot of great people who work there. And people who innovate, but that's in spite of.
It is the opposite of nimble, innovative, and adaptable.
Apparently the CIA was struggling to find a place in the early 90s while its former director was the sitting POTUS and the USA was renewing its grand campaign to covertly and overtly reshape the Middle East. Sure buddy, totally believable.
And no mention of the CIA's protection of 9/11 attackers from FBI persecution prior to the attacks.
"Not today, CIA" "Nice try, FBI" "Nice attempt at obscurity, Department of Homeland Security"
Here is a quote from it: "A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist has distorted what was said, why it was said, when it was said, and the circumstances under which it was said—all to support his thesis that CIA has been a continuous failure from 1947 up to the present. Weiner’s use of the plural 'final gatherings' in the excerpt from his account suggests he knows what he is doing."
[0]: https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blog/legacy-of-ashes.pdf
LOL
Author makes it sound like democratically legitimate oversight is bad
Meanwhile , the agents of centralized incompetence aggregated, rainmade the public behind this conspiracy facade, by hijacking the stories of local developments.
So tirrd of all this hyperbiased nonsense, that then turns out to be the narratives pushed by the working secret service of hostile nations.
If you willingly turn yourself into a propaganda asset of a hostile foreign power, you should leave the democracy you reside in .
Probably the same can be said of MI5.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-...
Especially since it mentions election interference in Italy through those same mob networks.
Perhaps it's easy to forget they early brought the fruits of their activities home and never stopped, or easy to believe that they only have effects abroad.
https://history.wisc.edu/publications/the-politics-of-heroin...
Democracy and politics are outside of the realm of the CIA and intelligence, because the CIA is under the command of the white house.
It's true that Putin found a big vulnerability in the US by abusing its democracy, it's difficult to deny it.