The CIA should be abolished.

[Skidmore]

On Democracy Now, Amy Goodman is interviewing that guy who wrote the book on economic hitmen and the builing of American empire. Without a doubt, these people are dirty and creepy. He's talking about pimping women to Saudi potentates to curry economic advantage, assassination of elected heads of government who stood for their nations sovereignty, and on and on.

How does maintaining a bureau of thugs make our nation and we, as a people, better for it?

[Laughing Mirror]

1. Not just the CIA, the whole National Security State needs to be dismantled

It's always been worthless, extremely dangerous. Either we take it apart or let it collapse on it's own, which it seems to be doing all by itself, now that the money's run out and nobody's willing to bail it out anymore. Just a matter of time....

[Minstrel Boy]

3. The whole alphabet soup.

The CIA has a lot of blood on its hands, but because of its profile it also bears the rap for the crimes of the lesser-known, but some even more powerful, institutions of the National Security State.

[Skidmore]

6. These people clearly believe themselves to be above the law. I am so

disgusted by that man's narrative. It is like a brotherhood of sociopaths, by his description. I now know why there are so many believable conspiracy theories. I do think now that BOTH the LIHOP and MIHOP scenaries are plausible. They did 911 to America.

[InvisibleBallots]

2. The CIA has been corrupt since day one

The problem is the CIA is literally a good-old-boys network for the wealthy classes - notice that Yale (Bush, Kerry) is the breeding ground for the CIA.

The CIA doesn't work for the USA, it works for the Eastern Establishment. Besides, the real intelligence work is done by DIA, NSA, and the like. CIA is a bunch of rich businessmen around the world, pretending that people don't know they are "undercover" - this was widely realized right after 911, when surprise, surprise, our "intelligence" agencies hardly had any Arabic speakers.

[indigobusiness]

4. It has become the cloak of official dirty deeds...

much as J Edgar Hoover's FBI became an official organized crime mafia.

[bloom]

5. That was a great show today

everyone should try to catch it. Online or one of the later broadcasts.

It's really pretty amazing to have someone lay it all out - from an inside perspective. And of course - most people will never hear about it.

[ashmanonar]

7. for one

i don't think the cia itself is evil...is a hand evil bc the brain commands it to kill? the CIA itself, without corrupt leaders, wouldn't be corrupt itself...if they would put ethical, intelligent, and well-rounded people in control of it, it wouldn't be a strong-arm agency...

besides, the agency is more satellite recon now...they don't HAVE the resources for assassinations or humint...

[Skidmore]

8. BS

[ashmanonar]

12. thank you for providing a well-thought out response...

i appreciate the effort you put into writing this...(/sarcasm)

[K-W]

9. When exactly did this cleanup of the CIA happen?

I dont remember it personally.

[ashmanonar]

13. i couldn't tell you a year exactly

i'm not an employee of cia...:D...but i believe near the fall of the soviet union? when there were cuts of military and intelligence budgets, and they had to "cut out the fat"...unfortunately they cut out the sort of intelligence that could tell us something about the "terrorist" groups...

[bvar22]

16. Some of the 'clean up" happened under Carter.

Carter discovered that $Millions were being funneled to covert Humit (Human Intelligence)agents who were members of Terrorist organizations. In some cases, the USA, through these covert agents, was the primary funding source for these organizations. Naturally, these shady characters were not required to file expense accounts or provide receipts.

As a Christian, Carter could not sanction giving $Millions (Billions)of USTaxpayers' money to murderers, assassins, torturers, terrorists, slave traders, and pimps....so he cut their funding and ordered a reform of the CIA that included accountability and oversight.

1978 24 January President Carter signs Executive Order 12036, which reshapes the intelligence structure and provides explicit guidance on all facets of intelligence activities.

http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/fact97/keyevent.htm

Some have accused President Carter of destroying the usefulness of the CIA.
http://hnn.us/articles/380.html


I applaud President Carter for having the courage and moral integrity to Draw a Line.
It cost him his job.

[ashmanonar]

20. thankee

see, i knew somebody knew exacts...

[K-W]

10. Absolutely.

A true intelligence agency is fine. As long as it does nothing but collect intelligence and feed it to elected officials.

And if it is to exist it must be completely overseen by congress, no exceptions.

[TheKingfish]

14. Agree

Just make it strictly an intelligence gathering agency. Afterall the CIA did predict the Vietnam war was unwinnable in what 1966? Came pretty close to saying the same about Iraq in 2003.

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. Imagine what we could do with all the money we would save

We spend billions on folks like the CIA, NSA, etc and what do we have to show for it. Noreiga, bin Laden and Saddam?

If instead we took even half of that money and spent it on helping oppressed people and developing alternative energy sources we wouldn't have to worry about terrorists and nuclear war.

[Goathead]

15. The book I am reading right now addresses all these issues

American Dynasty:Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush
I am only forty pages into it and the book is already talking about the genesis of the National Security community in the United States after WW I. It was all these Yalies and their business friends. Essentially these bankers and investors were so knee deep in investment with the Nazis before WW II that rather than chastise them for trading with the enemy they rewarded them as being National Security assets and gave them high level positions within various cabinets and administrations following WW II. Thus the birth of the CIA, which the book describes as a college reunion for Yale alumni.

[catbert836]

17. I have to agree.

The CIA should have been disbanded long ago, and it was only saved by the Kennedy assassination. It's toppled governments because "we didn't like them" or "they wouldn't sell out to us". They even tried to make Fidel Castro's beard fall out, apparently convinced that would make him lose his status as dictator.

[ensemble]

18. JFK tried to abolish the CIA....

instead they abolished him. Carter may have cleaned up some of the CIA, but they still run the drug trade in the US.

[CHIMO]

19. Abolish the CIA!

Steve Coll ends his important book on Afghanistan by quoting Afghan President Hamid Karzai: "What an unlucky country." Americans might find this a convenient way to ignore what their government did in Afghanistan between 1979 and the present, but luck had nothing to do with it. Brutal, incompetent, secret operations of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, frequently manipulated by the military intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, caused the catastrophic devastation of this poor country. On the evidence contained in Coll's book Ghost Wars, neither the Americans nor their victims in numerous Muslim and Third World countries will ever know peace until the Central Intelligence Agency has been abolished.

It should by now be generally accepted that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979 was deliberately provoked by the United States. In his memoir published in 1996, the former CIA director Robert Gates made it clear that the American intelligence services began to aid the mujahidin guerrillas not after the Soviet invasion, but six months before it. In an interview two years later with Le Nouvel Observateur, President Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski proudly confirmed Gates' assertion. "According to the official version of history," Brzezinski said, "CIA aid to the mujahidin began during 1980, that's to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. But the reality, kept secret until now, is completely different: on 3 July 1979 President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained that in my opinion this aid would lead to a Soviet military intervention."

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1105-30.htm