Reply #37: CIA plays tiddly-winks

[Bucky]

They're political players like any other bureaucrats, sure. But they couldn't do all this. The Rush business isn't part of it at all.

It's common fallacy that the CIA can run things in this country the way secret police do in less democratic societies. Whenever the CIA has been involved with scandals in the past, it has always been at the behest of administration policies. Contra-drugs, domestic spying, dirty deeds overseas, the Chilean coup... CIA misdeeds are always about carrying out policy. They are not chessmasters at this level.

I'm willing to be proved wrong on this point, but I just don't buy into double-bank-shot conspiracies as a default. (c.f., Ocam's razor).