We Spend $68 Billion a Year on Intelligence Agencies—and They Don’t Really Work

[eridani]

http://www.thenation.com/article/181792/we-spend-68-billion-year-intelligence-agencies-and-they-dont-really-work?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_nation&utm_campaign=Email%20Nation%20%28NEW%29%20-%20Most%20Recent%20Content%20Feed%2020140930&newsletter=email_nation

Let’s focus for a moment, however, on a case where more is known. I’m thinking of the development that only recently riveted the Obama administration and sent it tumbling into America’s third Iraq war, causing literal hysteria in Washington. Since June, the most successful terror group in history has emerged full blown in Syria and Iraq, amid a surge in jihadi recruitment across the Greater Middle East and Africa. The Islamic State (IS), an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which sprang to life during the US occupation of that country, has set up a mini-state, a “caliphate,” in the heart of the Middle East. Part of the territory it captured was, of course, in the very country the United States garrisoned and occupied for eight years, in which it had assumedly developed countless sources of information and recruited agents of all sorts. And yet, by all accounts, when IS’s militants suddenly swept across northern Iraq, the CIA in particular found itself high and dry.

The IC seems not to have predicted the group’s rapid growth or spread; nor, though there was at least some prior knowledge of the decline of the Iraqi army, did anyone imagine that such an American-created, -trained and -armed force would so summarily collapse. Unforeseen was the way its officers would desert their troops who would, in turn, shed their uniforms and flee Iraq’s major northern cities, abandoning all their American equipment to Islamic State militants.

Nor could the intelligence community even settle on a basic figure for how many of those militants there were. In fact, in part because IS assiduously uses couriers for its messaging instead of cell phones and emails, until a chance arrest of a key militant in June, the CIA and the rest of the IC evidently knew next to nothing about the group or its leadership, had no serious assessment of its strength and goals, nor any expectation that it would sweep through and take most of Sunni Iraq. And that should be passing strange. After all, it now turns out that much of the future leadership of IS had spent time together in the US military’s Camp Bucca prison just years earlier.

All you have to do is follow the surprised comments of various top administration officials, including the president, as ISIS made its mark and declared its caliphate, to grasp just how ill-prepared seventeen agencies and $68 billion can leave you when your world turns upside down.

[leftstreet]

1. DURec

[CJCRANE]

2. They work.

They get lots of work.

[nationalize the fed]

3. And the people at the top are above the law

James Clapper should be
1. In jail
2. On parole
3. On the job

Didn't the President refer to this professional liar in the last few days?

What would happen to you if you lied to the Federal Government under oath? Maybe the Feds wouldn't care, like most of the people seem not to care what Clapper did.

"A Republic, if you can keep it"- Ben Franklin

[tomp]

4. unless it's intentional

problem #1- the u.s. intelligence community, like every other aspect of gov't, serves the rich.

problem #2- it is well known that our gov't lies to us.

corollaries: -secrecy serves a purpose contrary to the interests of the people.
-believing the u.s. gov't is illogical.
-never believe you actually know for certain what is going on because they are trying to fool you, and have proved, in
general to be very good at it.

[Demeter]

5. the best "Intelligence Agency" in the world is useless IF

the people who get the information are idiots or have a hidden agenda that does not conform to the public desire.

The US govt. intelligence agencies have several apparent purposes:

1. information about the US population (for what purpose: suppression of dissent and terrorizing those likely to complain)

2. information about technology, domestic and foreign (industrial espionage)

3. information about political leanings of our allies (because we don't have any real allies, and cannot trust the ones that say we are allies in public) real spying, in other words

4. information about any dissent OUTSIDE the US borders (because such dissent might shave corporate profits, or divert resources that the US feels entitled to)

5. and lastly, intel on foreigners planning to attack US citizens, corporations, or property.

It is #5 that gets the least resources, and is the only justifiable purpose. Furthermore, would-be terrorists are least likely to be working out in the open and available to surveillance by computer, satellite, and telephone taps. To discover would-be terrorists, boots on the ground, trained, high-risk boots, are needed. This costs money, and personnel.

And the biggest threat to the current regime is domestic dissent. We all know it. We agitate for regime change, for an overriding policy change that makes the US much less aggressive globally. WE ARE THE ENEMY!

[Enthusiast]

6. Kicked and recommended!

[santroy79]

7. BS

we have no idea and neither does the person who wrote this how much they work. Its top secret for crying out loud.

[CJCRANE]

10. We have an idea about how effective they are

because we see the results.

[DonCoquixote]

8. Intelligence is only as smart as the Pols who run them

http://historum.com/european-history/60710-why-did-stalin-not-trust-his-own-intelligence-network.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/12/books/review/12FERGUSO.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


It is well known Stalin distrusted the KGB, which led to disaster. The current ones in charge,like Stalin, have blinders on, as they are not seeking information as much as a political point. The lives of Millions of Russians was lost due to his stubborn belief that Hitler wouyld not dare repeat the mistake of his idol, Napoleon, and take on Eastern and Western Europe at once. Granted, it is hard to believe Hitler was crazy enough to do many things he did, but the KGB agents found the evidence, for which many of them got a bullet to the head or a trip to Siberia.

It does not help that the CIA was founded is it was my politics rather than intellgence. Granted, they did have a good reason at the time, namely Washington was scared to death of what someome like J. Edgar Hoover would do with both domestic and foriegn intellgence under his iron thumb. It is not like researching "cointelpro" will not give any of us liberals shudders when we think of the crap Jed would have done with the CIA. However, the by product has been shown by folks the Poppy Bush and the rets of the "skull and bones" types, the CIA winds up being a haven for flunkies and creeps, many fo whome got their job by political connections, as opposed to skill.

[malaise]

9. But but but

some folks get very rich.

[eomer]

11. They do really work.

As part of the MIC they work exceptionally well at ensuring endless war and providing a way to deliver truckloads of money with no accountability or transparency.

That's really obvious, it's amazing that everyone doesn't already know it.