Why is it that the CIA and NSA get scorn; are they less human than our other troops?

[Jeffersons Ghost]

A while back I went to see a dear old friend that retired 0-6, which represents colonel pay-grade in other branches of military service. 0-6 in his particular line of duty wears no eagles, no uniforms and receives no recognition. All these diligent defenders of democracy get is great chances to die while protecting Lady Liberty. Plenty here at DU bash the CIA but not me after talking to my old friend. Still, I’ve ripped away at the NSA without ever stopping to realize that they’re not there for our entertainment. They live looking over their shoulder while other soldiers sleep. For my part in throwing crap at eagles, I hope they can hear this apology in prose:

Once upon a dream; some words awoke my sleeping.
No soul serving Lady Liberty wants to hear her weeping
No soldier loves an enemy that wants to take her life
Those who serve in silence deserve no words of strife.
Good solders follow orders, no matter what they are
Unsung heroes serve in silence while shining like a star.

Once upon a nightmare, wicked words were sent to sting...
daring eagles that really care, as they fly on silent wing
Day or night they sail in flight from sea to shining sea
Even as we curse them, they’re protecting you and me
Maybe words are empty but some sure warrant keeping.
Words can hurt a friend that protects us as we’re sleeping

Did I hurt a heart last week with stupid words of hate?
Maybe nothing hurts them but why can’t our lips wait?
Can we wait for subtle whispers sailing across the breeze?
Why curse silent soldiers that are human not some disease
Listen to the wind while its whispering softly in your ear
They can’t live free like me when death is lurking near.

Did I hear them whisper during dreams or was it only you?
I guess no one cares but would it matter if it’s true?
Nothing matters more than troops tossed in the wind
Nothing hurts us worse than turning out a friend
When silent friends are dying, who will hear their cry?
Though they can’t live like us, they’re good enough to die

Once upon the world, there came a long hard hell
No soldier likes to kill, they all hear Donne’s dark bell
Silent soldiers sure get scorn but who cares to change their tune
Do you think their hearts are darker than the dark side of the moon?
Don’t you know that they cry too when others scream in pain?
Don’t you dare to laugh at them they wish this world was sane

If they had the power, they’d bring our troops back home
They never sent them there to die where devils dare not roam
Do you care about supporting silent souls sailing in the wind?
Do they need to wear a uniform to prove that they’re your friend?
Next time I hear Gandhi ring through potent words by Dr. King
I want those words to bring soldiers stuck in secrecy underneath my wing

[Rosemary2205]

1. Very few gov't employees get to pick their battles.

and your point is an important one. Appointees deserve a kick in the pants when things go wrong, but the career people in the trenches aren't responsible for the whims of the neocons.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

2. yeah while we all got off bashing bush and cheney over "outing" Valarie Plume...

Who bothered to worry about her life or how she'll have to hide deeper than hell for the rest of it?

[cgrindley]

67. Who cares about her? It's pretty easy to hate both Bush *and* the CIA...

No one needs either of them. Valerie Palme in working for the CIA supported a patently evil institution and should be ashamed of herself. It's a good thing she was outed. I wish that all of them were. That people in the Bush government did it only makes the entire situation all the better. Two birds with one stone.

[bananarepublican]

85. CIA = Criminals In Action! n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

111. "It's a good thing she was outed?" n/t

[cgrindley]

121. Yes, one fewer spy, and Republicans in court

The only way it could get better is if it leads to Cheney's resignation.

[otherlander]

130. Yeah, the bastards entirely ruined her career.

She was going to be making some pretty good money on a book deal but that didn't go through because it was censored.

[mmonk]

5. Everybody that "goes along" shares responsibility.

The people involved in slave and death camps in world war II thought of themselves as basically just doing their jobs (bureaucrats if you will).

[Jeffersons Ghost]

15. the truth about who "goes along"...

Is that the list of people that stood trial at Nuremberg should have been much longer... The truth is that people in villages surrounding Auschwitz were forced to tour those death camps for a reason. The truth is that things like that can't happen without a broad base of support. A few leaders can't make hate happen. The truth is that every member of the NSA and CIA act out of love and the Nazis in the Gestapo acted out of hate.

The truth is that when we want to really fight oppression we'll get up off our asses and do more than bitch online:

[EFerrari]

19. So, George Tenet acted out of love when he colluded to lie us into this war?

Did you forget the sarcasm smiley?

:shrug:

And, btw, lots of DUers are able to multi task, spending some time on our @sses and some time off of them and in the face of the Bush misAdministration. :)

[mmonk]

45. Are you serious?

[mmonk]

47. First off, I'm not anti-CIA nor anti-NSA. I'm anti war crimes

and I'm against those acting in contravention of our constitution. Anyone who follows orders of torturing people without regard to anything other than an illegal order is no way in hell acting out of love. They may be convinced falsely that maybe they are. Those convinced thus are just going along as I described. I will add I have known people in the CIA and was taught higher level spanish by someone that was CIA. I also have known someone in the secret service.

[bananarepublican]

136. mmonk, just remember once in the agency, always....

Is that the courageous and gorgeous Sibyl E. in your post?

[mmonk]

144. Yes it is. Glad you noticed.

Whistleblower from an agency and a cause of truth for whistleblowers and their right not to be silenced. (I put her in my sig line as a constant reminder for all who read my posts)

[rman]

58. "every member of the NSA and CIA act out of love" - You got to be f'n kidding

[EST]

3. One of the biggest reasons to view the CIA with disgust and scorn

is that they are absolutely NOT there to defend liberty or democracy. As is slowly coming out, the CIA is there to implement the policies of the ruling junta and that junta is nearly always composed of partisans who view their jobs as supporting and protecting the business and investment class, to the anguish, death, destruction and disenfranchisement of the "other" classes of people both here and world wide.

If the CIA were actually primarily involved in the acquisition and analysis of intelligence, as their name implies, the world would be a different place. As we have discovered and history now discloses, the CIA is not very good at its supposed job and has developed its expertise in entirely a different direction--that of supplying shock troops at the behest af the administration.

Of course, any individual member of that organization is free to and is likely to view his or her own job as essential to the maintenance of liberty or democratic principles. People go into the service of country with high minded ideals (or most of them do) and are handed that kind of sunshine pumping throughout their careers. There is no way that an individual "in the ranks" is likely to be able to accurately evaluate the overall goals and direction of the agency: as a matter of fact, it is severely frowned upon.

The jobs of policy, direction and sunshine pumping belong to management types, political employees and toadies of the administration and generally are occupied by those who have no compunction about destroying anyone who gets in their way in their own careers.

In sum, it is appropriate to honor those who have labored to advance their own notions of integrity and selflessness, even though myopic, but to remain skeptical of assuming anything at all about the organization they serve and whether or not it actually performs the services that we assume it is supposed to.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

4. you better believe "the world would be a different place" but would you really like it?

Admittedly we've lost some liberty but would living under Chinese or Soviet rule feel better?

Here's one for forgotten troops that do exactly the same thing all our "honored" troops do, which is follow orders under tough conditions. Do you think Marines toss out flowers and shoot peace signs when the hit a beach? All our troops have specialized jobs to do and when it comes to intelligence; I'm glad to have the best because no matter what Bush says about his "bad intelligence"...

Nobody Does It Better
By: Carly Simon

Nobody does it better
Makes me feel sad for the rest
Nobody does it half as good as you
Baby, you're the best

I wasn't looking but somehow you found me
I tried to hide from your love light
But like heaven above me the spy who loved me
Is keepin' all my secrets safe tonight

And nobody does it better
Though sometimes I wish someone could
Nobody does it quite the way you do
Why'd you have to be so good?

The way that you hold me, whenever you hold me
There's some kind of magic inside you
That keeps me from runnin', but just keep it comin'
How'd you learn to do the things you do?

And nobody does it better
Makes me feel sad for the rest
Nobody does it half as good as you
Baby, baby, darlin' you're the best
Baby you're the best
Baby you're the best
Baby you're the best
Darlin' you're the best
Darlin' you're the best
Baby you're the best
Baby you're the best

[rman]

29. Would you not like a world where the CIA would not prop up RW military dictators,

under the pretext of fighting communism?

To the anti-communist fanatics who are responsible for such policies, anything that even remotely smells of welfare-state, public controlled or tax-funded, is communism.
Especially when it means that the wealth of certain nations does not benefit the US but instead the population of those nations.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

49. they did fight and in a great sense, DEFEAT communism and all we did was bash them...

Just like our next generation of fools will bash the NSA as these secret troops fly like eagles into fights average citizens will never hear about. Yep, while these wonders of humanity are flying out and protecting our grandchildren from unspeakable horrors that average folks will never know how much they really care. They'll criticize and hate them just like the current citizenry despises the CIA.

[EFerrari]

51. If you honestly believe communism was such a threat to this country

then I don't know how to talk to you.

Communism?

That's what they called labor unions and social programs and other things people needed.

:wtf:

[Jeffersons Ghost]

84. without people like my old friend, you'd truly know what threat it represented...

My ignorance is indeed bliss and so is yours. For that perfect mental state we can thank our secret troops.

[EFerrari]

88. A load of cr@p.

Danger to whom? To IBM? To US Steel? To GE?

Secret troops, my @ss. Do you know how many families I know who have lost someone one to your sentimentalized, brutal as hell "secret troops"?

Do you think this is a game or a novel or what?

Get a clue. "Terra" is the new "Communism".

[mmonk]

152. Indeed, we do need those who fight

the secret little wars. My posts deal with the current situation whereby the agency is steered away from secret wars that keep us safer to the political manifestations of men who seek war for less than honorable reasons such as profit or new ideology and engage in purging and silencing agency operatives to meet their agendas.

[rman]

53. Fine, don't answer my question -

The CIA defeated a lot of popular democratic leaders who did not have US interests at heart.

CIA and hard-line RW-ers called that "communism", even though it had nothing to do with Stalinism and Maoims.

You're not defending the atrocities committed by the CIA in Latin America, are you?

[EFerrari]

63. Are you kidding? Every time a nascent democracy in Latin America

tried to spread its wings -- and rid itself of American exploitation, there was CIA and shortly after, there were the Marines.


And in Southeast Asia. And in Africa. And in God knows how many places.

Our CIA patriots have loved up a bunch of people right off of life on Earth.

Edit: But they were murdering and sabatoging for our "national security" so, that's okay!

[rman]

71. I suppose you take issue with my saying

"defeated a lot of popular democratic leaders" - that's it's actually every popular democratic leader.

Fair enough - there's only like, one exception. And even that's disputed.

[EFerrari]

72. No, you are right, rman. Completely right. n/t

[Solon]

68. OK, name ONE place where they DEFEATED Communism...

Just one, that is ALL I ask.

[EFerrari]

70. Hollywood?

:rofl:

[rman]

73. According to the CIA,

just about everywhere.
But opinions differ as to what exactly is "communism".

[EFerrari]

78. Communism is what ever hinders Beltway cronies.

I thought that was a given. :)

[rman]

80. that much has been confirmed, almost literally

From a debate between Noam Chomsky and Richard Perle at The Ohio State University in 1988
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=8409

Quoting Chomsky, referring to declassified State Department documents from 1948:

"Prime concern is the protection of our raw materials. We have 50% of the worlds wealth but only 6% of its population, we must maintain this disparity to the extent possible, by force if necessary, putting aside vague and idealistic slogans such as human rights, raising of living standards, democratization, preferring police states if needed over democracies that might be to liberal and to indulgent to communists, the latter has lost any substantial meaning in US political rhetoric, referring simply to anyone who stands in our way."

"The primary threat to the US in Latin America is the trend towards nationalistic regimes that respond to popular demand for improvement in low living standards and production for domestic needs. That's not acceptable because the US is committed to encouraging a climate inductive to private investment, in particular guaranties for opportunity to earn and in the case of foreign capital to repatriate a reasonable return."

[EFerrari]

86. I wanna see that!

:rofl:

[bananarepublican]

137. Are you saying JFK was a communist? n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

147. If you believe that, you really need to do a lot more reading

on the subject.

Start with The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, written by Victor Marchetti, a former CIA officer, and then move on to Endless Enemies, by Jonanthan Kwitny, a former Wall Street Journal reporter. Then read about Senator Frank Church's hearings.

Then ask the people of Guatemala, Iran, and Chile about the CIA, since all three countries had democratically elected governments overthrown at CIA instigation. (This came out in the Church Committee hearings.)

[mainegreen]

153. The soviet union defeated themselves. nt

[EFerrari]

36. What evidence do you have that China or Russia have the slightest

interest in "ruling" you?

That sounds a lot like rhetoric from our former War on Terra, the Cold War.

[Solon]

56. The CIA is only under the oversight of the President, there is no check on their power...

In the past, they would circumvent Constitutional requirements to report activities to Congress, lied to them numerous times, and when Congress tried to clamp down, it was largely ineffective. The CIA lost some funding, and then made up for the loss through outright illegal activities.

[bananarepublican]

145. ".. oversight of the President..." 'Bush-oversight' comes down to W clearing scrub on his ranch! n/t

[Jeffersons Ghost]

7. actually if you missed the lead, my OP is primarily dedicated to the NSA

but my old pal deserves a break too.

[Leopolds Ghost]

110. Fellow Ghost, surely you agree that the NSA

Has been data-mining everyone's phone calls ever since Echelon kicked off in when was it -- the Mid-80s? It is their primary reason for being now -- a high crime and misdemeanor, the one people cite Bush for. The reason he seems so Teflon-esque on the issue is that he's merely the first president to publically acknowledge and attempt to provide (false) legal justification for data mining of all phone calls and e-mails.

As for the CIA, of the 2% involved in clandestine operations, the old
leftie Sovietologists who spent their time playing chess with the KGB
are gone and have been replaced by the drug-runners Reagan brought in.

But that could potentially change because Bush has eviscerated the CIA
and only about 2% of them are covert anyhow, and most of the hard core
evil shit which past presidents ordered the CIA to do is now done by
Bush's black ops buddies in god knows what private contractor or security agency. Most CIA employees are intelligence gatherers who have no interest in involving themselves in illegal activities.

The reality is that the CIA tortures people because the American public
tacitly wish them to torture people, finance operations thru drug running, etc. So they get permission. It's not like most people with a say in the matter care about the third world or inner cities. They DON'T. They are RACIST or ignorant.

Bush is hoping to follow in Ollie North's footsteps by creating more reliable agencies and groupings that are willing to do things illegally with or without permission. The sort of "state within a state" people talk about when referring to Iran.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

25. and has been directly involved in the largest

and nastiest foreign affair SNAFUs throughout their history. Greece, Cuba, Argentina, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Italy, - hell, just about every part of the globe has gone from bad to worse when the CIA has been involved. And when it came to accurately reporting on important world events, doing their jobs and using the best and brightest to figure out the future threats, they:

a) missed the break up of USSR completely.
b) missed India's bomb
c) missed Pakistan's bomb
d) missed the Kurds' rising anger at Turkey
e) missed China's growing militarism and space weapons
f) missed North Korea's nuke tests
g) missed Brazil's energy independence

and that is just in 15 years. With successes like this, why do we even have a CIA? It is neither central to our safety, they seem to lack intelligence, and as an agency, their history of failures and fuckups have been spectacular and constant.

[Leopolds Ghost]

109. Congrats, you passed HS History class -- but yes, I disagree with fellow Ghost when it comes to

Saying that the CIA prevented Stalin from taking over the world.

As I said in another post, there were quite a few anti-stalinist leftists working for the old CIA. They were essential -- otherwise we would have had no Sovietologists at all. After Stalin died, and the Cuban missile crisis, nobody wanted to kill each other off. It became all about economic warfare. Economic warfare in which our elected officials do not and did not give a shit about the rights of people in the Third World to own their own countries, because we depend on cheap access to other people's resources for our overheated economy.

[leveymg]

6. Since Plamegate broke, some CIA, FBI and military people have become heroes here.

There's remarkably little bashing of the intelligence community at DU, and among progressives in general these days. We've seen real fascists in the White House, and understand that the career military and intel people are, by and large, doing what they can to push-back and restore the Constitution.

Give us a little credit for giving them credit, please.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

16. here's some even better news...

There will be even less bashing of our unsung heroes now that I've decided to stop doing it. How could I have embraced the people of Iraq (some of whom would kill me on sight, without trying to find common ground) as my brothers and sisters while truning my back on some troops that generally get nothing but bad press? Who loves you DU? think about it.

[Leopolds Ghost]

115. Ghost, this sounds a little strange = you no longer embrace the people of Iraq?

Most Iraqis nor Iranians would not kill you on sight, save for street thugs in the same proportion as you'd find in US cities. Most muslims
are peace-loving civilians like us who want to live in peace with American civilians, they just don't like being occupied by American soldiers and are willing to take up arms to do so (for one thing, folks in the Middle East are more willing to take up arms in general, hence the "only one AK-47 per household" rule that our troops are enforcing)

As for our troops and our spies, They are "ours" in the sense that they believe they are protecting America, they are not there to protect you and me personally, I imagine most are well-meaning Americans but they are often ordered to do evil things, such as quarter in Iraqi households, an unconstitutional act here in the US; and they are trained to follow orders. That's what you get when you turn a republic into an Empire.

[The2ndWheel]

8. The need for such agencies is sick and insane

Whether it's the CIA, NSA, KGB, MI6, it doesn't matter, they're all the same. They're all products of the same type of culture. That culture being one of expansion, empire, conquest, and ever increasing control.

I'd rather live in a world without any of those institutions, and I'll take my chances. Anyone who works for them is just as big a part of the problem as the rest of us.

[Wiley50]

9. If They Just Weren't So Damn Sneaky

Or, At Least, directed their sneakiness outward, toward other countries
instead of US citizens like us.

[EFerrari]

20. Yeah, like at that Chavez guy. I hear they're loving him up but good.

lol

[autorank]

10. K&R Great stuff. Here's my favorite

Did I hear them whisper during dreams or was it only you?
I guess no one cares but would it matter if it’s true?
Nothing matters more than troops tossed in the wind
Nothing hurts us worse than turning out a friend
When silent friends are dying, who will hear their cry?
Though they can’t live like us, they’re good enough to die


The situation is so dire and so completely unfair. Nobody signed up for this and nobody, well only a bunch of nobodies, would conceive of treating the troops this way.

Excellent.

[EFerrari]

41. Well, here, too, we disagree. This is the history of CIA.

This is the history of how American troops are treated. :shrug:

[KharmaTrain]

11. The CIA Has Been A Scapegoat All Along...

It all began when crashcart when running to Langley and threw a tantrum for the intel he wanted rather than what they had gathered...then intimidated the agency to cook the books or faith the wrath of Chenney. This regime knew it was gonna need a scapegoat if their war for profit didn't go well and the CIA is in a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation.

The CIA has always worked best when we know little of what they've done. Take a trip to the Spy Museum in Washington and see all the interesting things that were going on during the Cold War. While, like dancing with a cobra, one must always keep an eye on this agency, on the whole they've provided the intel and security that should be admired rather than scorned...and most definitely shouldn't be scapegoated like this regime has done.

I suspect that we'll witness another round of Church commission-type hearings examining the CIA's role in the Iraq mess, and that's where the agency may get its vindication. Actually I have a strong inkling the agency is already getting its revenge...who called for the Plamegate investigation and have leaked the most damaging truth about this regime? Who knows, in the end, we may be grateful to some inside "the agency" for being the few who threw roadblocks in this regime's grand plans and took them down.

[EFerrari]

40. Being scapegoated doesn't confer automatic innocence on CIA.

And I'm pretty sure that if you took a global poll, CIA were be rated closer to scum than defenders of freedom. :eyes:

[truedelphi]

44. In the new mindset it very well might n/t

[EFerrari]

46. Unfortunately, I think it's only new to US citizens. :-( n/t

[C_U_L8R]

12. Because "i was just doing my job"

is no excuse for betraying the nation

[rman]

13. First: CIA and NSA agents are not "troops"

Secondly, it's not a black-and-white issue. There are both good guys and bad guys everywhere in the government.


If you want to know why the CIA in particular should be looked at with suspicion, just look at the history of the covert role that the CIA has played (and still plays) in US foreign policy, in particular in the Middle East and Latin America. The overthrowing of foreign leaders who do not have US interests at heart, and propping up RW military dictators who do have US interests at heart is the rule rather than the exception.

[bananarepublican]

138. 'US interests'...? The pupeteers manipulating Uncle Sam's foreign policy...

... have THEIR interests in mind only. As soon as those interests diverge from 'the American people'... forget it buddy!!!

[rman]

141. Of course. But they could not get away with it

if they'd say it's about the interests of the big money powers behind the scenes.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

14. k and r

for the honest ones.


morning, JG. :loveya:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. Because they're a bunch of murderous thugs.

All one has to do is read the history of their involvement in sabotaging governments, assassinations, funding mercenaries, "renditions", running outlaw "prisons", propping up corrupt and brutal regimes, and a whole slew of other "patriotic" activities that have killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, people.

They are scum deserving trial and imprisonment.

[EFerrari]

21. Why do you have to be so negative?

:rofl:

[rman]

59. - which isn't so much "scorn" as it is "truth"

[Leopolds Ghost]

112. All of which was ordered and approved by our wonderful elected officials.

I will say this: going after the CIA in public and singling them out for
scorn is a masterful counterintelligence technique. Talk about creating
a tar baby for people to wrap their arms around.

Why not simply let the government's actions speak for themselves
and asked, who aided and abetted them. The answer is everyone
in power. The whole culture of government encouraged and demanded it.

To paraphrase Sun Tzu, The government as a whole is to blame for the actions of its lieutenants on the field. The government is primarily concerned with a monopoly on the use of force. Maybe that would not be true if we were more of a direct democracy, but look what happened to Athens. I'm not sure what the solution is.

Bottom line is, our government has been run by corporations since shortly after the Civil War, because the people running the corporations are extremely wealthy and the extremely wealthy, when and where they exist, have followed the "golden rule" throughout history. He who has the gold makes the rules.

Singling out the 2% of CIA agents who are actual spies is silly. Their entire JOB, as requested by our elected officials, is to spy on and, occasionally, kill people.

For one thing, most of the CIA assets BY DESIGN were always hard-core criminals, blackmailable or bribable officials. That's where human sources come from. You think the CIA goes around and just throws money at whoever wants to spy on the local government? If they do that, it certainly isn't the sign of an all-powerful, intelligent group of spies. No, they look for people with ulterior motives and pay THEM to collect information, the same way detectives use snitches.

And the assets are the ones who get their hands dirty -- while our elected officials look the other way and pretend they are "friends of America" and arrange to put them in power, even if they turn out to be Iranian double agents like Chalabi.

You think Hillary or any elected opposition leader attacked Chalabi when he was in favor with us? No, because they had inside info that he was a US agent and attacking him would be a political assault on the CIA's intelligence gathering techniques (and they knew all too well that the analysis side of the CIA thought he was full of shit, and sure enough, he turned out to be an Iranian double agent, didn't he?)

[NNN0LHI]

143. I think you may be on to something n/t

[EFerrari]

18. Because they are huge global violators of human and civil rights?

Because they serve power and not the Constitution?

How many answers do you need?

:(

You empathize with your friend and that's admirable. What about the innocent victims of these two agencies? Can you also empathize with them?

[Jeffersons Ghost]

23. it seems some people have gotten Patriots that can't defend themselves in a "free press"...

confused with the current administration... I understand though because at one time I made the same mistake until I saw a retired analyst make Rumsfeld look like the liar that he is during a live interview.

[EFerrari]

26. Sometimes the way we toss around the word "patriot" makes me

deeply uncomfortable.

Is it "patriotic" to work in a job that enables assassination, torture and false imprisonment?

The Bush Administration didn't invent these practices. Rather, the CIA and the NSA were invented to implement them.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

31. Do you mean jobs like the US Marines, Navy, Air Force or Army?

Which of these jobs does not enable current assassination, torture and false imprisonment?

[EFerrari]

35. That's a good question for anyone in today's armed forces. n/t

[Jeffersons Ghost]

62. which group being discussed isn't in "today's armed forces?"

CIA? NSA? Marines? Navy? Army? Air Force? we can extend this to Coast Guard and Reserves if you like... They're all armed and each branch has a specialized task in this war. Which one's are good enough to die for you, without being good enough to praise for their valor?

[EFerrari]

66. Wrong question. Which group are you willing to glorify while

they kill and maim innocent people and while they are killed and maimed for war profiteers?

Really, get a clue.

None of these people died for me or for you. They died for Bush cronies. Don't disrespect their memories by falsifying this situation.

On edit: 650,000 Iraqis. That would be, 650,000 Iraqis that survived our sanctions in which a million children died of starvation; that survived our illegal bombing. Now, we're just killing them outright.

Well done, PATRIOTS.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

27. all too rare, although I do appreciate those who stand up to lies and power

but, overall, remember that these organizations are now actively spying on you and yours. Despite what Bush and Gonzo said. Given their many previous lies, why would anyone believe them on this issue?

[rman]

30. I hope you realize not everyone in the CIA is like that analyst

or like the friend you mentioned in the OP.
In fact it very much looks like those people are quite rare.

[treestar]

22. Yes, we all are

Let's face it, we have allowed the warmongers to make a sacred cow out of "our troops."

[TomInTib]

24. Here's #5

And they are out there, right now.

All over the Planet.

Right now.

[IronLionZion]

28. Politicians put them in difficult situations and make them do terrible things

The politicians are worthy of scorn. Likewise the powerful special interests who influence politicians are equally worthy of scorn.

It sucks, but in Nuremberg they ruled that "following orders" doesn't excuse anyone, but it's very easy for me to sit here on my computer and judge whoever I want. I'm not sure what I would do if I were put in such a difficult position, but I sure as hell would NOT appreciate being judged for it.

[EFerrari]

34. The bigger picture is that the CIA was formed to protect

American corporate interests abroad, not to protect our "national security".

There is no "our national security" as Professor Zinn has observed. There is Halliburton's welfare and there is the people of New Orleans' welfare. We've seen these two are not the same thing. They may overlap at times but when they don't, CIA protects Halliburton and the powerful stakerholders of that entity.

[EFerrari]

32. CIA love in Guatemala: Death Squads trained by our patriots:

History of Guatemala's Death Squads
by Robert Parry
consortiumnews.com, 1/11/05

Though many Latin American governments have practiced the dark arts of "disappearances" and "death squads," the history of Guatemala's security operations is perhaps the best documented because the Clinton administration declassified scores of the secret U.S. documents in the late 1990s.
The original Guatemalan death squads took shape in the mid-1960s under anti-terrorist training provided by a U.S. public safety adviser named John Longon, according to the documents. In January 1966, Longon reported to his superiors about both overt and covert components of his anti-terrorist strategies.
On the covert side, Longon pressed

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Secrets_Lies/HxGuatemala_DeathSquads.html

[EFerrari]

37. TWT page on the NSA:

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/NSA/NSA_page.html

[donsu]

33. the CIA and NSA get my scorn - bunch of traitors

nt

[EVDebs]

38. All it takes is a few bad apples to spoil the bunch

PNACers in the OSP, E. Howeird Hunt, James Jesus Angleton, Wm Casey, want me to keep going ?

[rman]

61. and 50 years does a lot of spoiling

ok, make that 60 years

[EFerrari]

76. Backwards. The agency was set up to do illegal and immoral shit.

How could any good apple do well there?

:wtf:

[EVDebs]

91. Wrong, Truman set it up to only provide intelligence

Clark Clifford & co set into place the language giving the extracurricular activities and domestic ops BS

[EFerrari]

93. And how is that a discontinuity?

There never is just one hand in these piles. Or, maybe I'm misreading you. :shrug:

[EVDebs]

132. CIA was only for advise/intell not agents provacateurs etc.

National Security Act of '47
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_of_1947

"perform such other functions as the President or the National Security Council may direct."

The camel's nose under the tent...allowed for the covert fun and games Truman himself wishes didn't want the CIA to become (see Plain Speaking re CIA).

Certain domestic ops violate the CIA's charter
Operation CHAOS
http://www.serendipity.li/cia/lyon.html

[manic expression]

39. Because they are thugs, bullies, murderers and worse

They represent Bonapartism in its most disgusting form. They crush the futures of entire peoples, destroy the lives of innocents, kill those who want nothing more than to help their people, keep countries and continents under their iron thumb, defend profit at the expense of people and the list goes on and on and on.

If you are trying to justify the actions of the CIA, NSA or any other reactionary body that is responsible for imperialism and oppression, that is insane.

[NCarolinawoman]

42. I know someone who works for the NSA.

She is one of the finest people I have ever known. A person who has great compassion for people.

Her work will always go unheralded.

[EFerrari]

50. Maybe she should work for someone else. n/t

[nolabels]

146. I would second that motion

Like so much other wishful thinking. I just try to remember the few that ratted others out because of that little thing called a conscious. Really, you got to think how they are really just so caught up in their own units and the siege mentality. Think of all that organization and billions and billions that is spent off budget to support it for all those years. Hell, some of them folks are probably more afraid of themselves than most any of the other things, well at least for some things. The shadow government that only answers to itself because no one else is allowed to listen. Eventually something like that logically will eventually be eating itself in someway or another.

[The Backlash Cometh]

43. The CIA has two faces.

There are two competing philosophies in control of the CIA. One involves dirty tricks and assasinations which you don't want America to be associated with. THAT's the CIA that most of us are against.

[rman]

57. A crucial point

that has been made several times in this threat, but of which the OP seems to be oblivious.

[EFerrari]

77. And the other face is a PR front.

:shrug:

[The Backlash Cometh]

81. Actually, I think the CIA took a beating for some of the things it did in

the past so they did put in some people who might have tried to direct it in a positive direction, but, if Tenet is an example of such a person, I think your comment is well taken.

[EFerrari]

87. It was unfortunate for us all that Tenet was in a wrestling match

with the Rumsfeld/Cheney junta because he was going to lose and lose big. :(

[alfredo]

48. The intelligence community has been victimized by the bush junta.

Most of the guys I knew in the "green NSA" were geeks doing their jobs. They could be in Phu Bai, or like me, sitting on top of an extinct volcano. We are the eyes and ears of the military and government. We make no judgement on the data. What we pass on is raw info. It doesn't get perverted until the suits in Washington get their paws on it. We watch, we listen, we report. That's all. All we wanted was for those who form policy around what we report do so with honest intent. Most of all don't blame us for not twisting it to support your policy decisions.


USASA now INSCOM

[EFerrari]

52. This sounds a lot like "It's not my job."

This is not a perfect world and we need spies.

But we don't need spies who work for an institution that consistently supports money and power over the Constitution and the American people.

/s

[alfredo]

64. In my line of work, once I found out what I was going to do

it was too late to back out. To back out would mean an unwilling transfer to infantry and Vietnam without any combat training. If you went from intelligence to infantry it was known you were a bad seed.

Luckily my mission was against some bad people doing bad things to their own people.

[EFerrari]

69. Well, good for you for saving your life.

At one point, I translated for the DEA. You really don't know until you know and by then, your options have been limited.

[alfredo]

90. We sign a contract. There's no good way to get out of it.

I did my time and got out because I don't like to live by someone else's rule.

[EFerrari]

94. I translated for Kiki Camarena and when I found out how that went down,

I just couldn't any more. It wasn't good guys and bad guys, it was just guys.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrique_Camarena


Edit: Oh, and what this Wiki entry doesn't say is that we had CIA in there, watching him being tortured.

[alfredo]

95. Hell of a story. He must have suffered greatly.

[EFerrari]

97. They made him into hamburger. And this is the game as CIA, in part,

has set it up.

He was so good at what he did. When I first started translating tapes, I couldn't tell who was the drug lord and who was DEA -- lol, he really was that good. When he had to appear in court, he looked exactly like a Miami Vice extra. :)

When he was murdered and when I found out how it happened, that was it. The whole picture sort of came together for me. I, um, got out of government service.

We set the game rules. Can we live with them? Die with them? We do a good job of denying them.

[alfredo]

119. I got recruited when I got out of the ASA. They were very

nice to me, plied me with girls and good times, but I felt I was getting in way over my head. These people played rough and I just didn't want to play that game. It is a perfect job for a sociopath. I was burdened with a conscience.

[Solon]

54. The NSA is a, by and large, passive intelligence gathering agency...

except for abuses that have recently come to light in warrantless wiretapping, they have been, generally, clean. The CIA, however, is completely different, first, the Agency was started by outright FASCISTS, people who were sympathetic to Hitler, for crying out loud! Some helped finance his rise to power, some even materially supported him, etc. The Dulles brothers come to mind here.

Since the CIA's official inception, they have been involved in election interference(Italy), overthrowing of democratic governments(Iran, Greece, Chile), assassinations(numerous), death squads(Nicaragua), Drug Running(Air America, Colombia), etc.

[EFerrari]

60. Dulles (cough!) Dulles.

CIA's greatest feat may have been misleading the American people on their actual mission: shore up Wall Street at any cost.

I take no pleasure in saying this but at some point, we just need to grow the hell up.

[rman]

55. Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

Democracy Now
Friday, April 21st, 2006
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/21/132247

Author Stephen Kinzer discusses his new book, "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq." In it, he writes that the invasion of Iraq "was the culmination of a 110-year period during which Americans overthrew fourteen governments that displeased them for various ideological, political, and economic reasons." "The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not an isolated episode. It was the culmination of a 110-year period during which Americans overthrew fourteen governments that displeased them for various ideological, political, and economic reasons."

So writes author Stephen Kinzer in his new book "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq."

Kinzer writes that "The "regime change" in Iraq seemed for a time -- a very short time -- to have worked. It is now clear, however, that this operation has had terrible unintended consequences. So have most of the other coups, revolutions, and invasions that the United States has mounted to depose governments it feared or mistrusted."

* Stephen Kinzer, author of "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq." He is a former New York Times foreign correspondent and author of several books, including "All the Shah's Men" and "Bitter Fruit."


more...
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/21/132247

[cgrindley]

65. Anyone who works for the NSA or the CIA is an enemy to freedom

a traitor against every single concept of human liberty and the natural rights of our species. If you know someone who is in either of these institutions, advise them to quit or stop associating with them. There is no excuse at all for supporting either of those fascist institutions.

PS the poem's not serious, right? You are writing a parody?

[AnnieBW]

89. Even if they're Dems?

They're usually soccer moms and dads. You wouldn't know an NSA person if you passed him on or her on the street. Heck, some of them might even be members of DU. Every death that happens in battle, or that happened on 9/11, was a personal blow to these folks.

The NSA has two parts - the part that listens and the part that protects US military and government communications. Both of them have done good things and bad things. But mostly, it's a bunch of very dedicated people who are doing stuff to keep this country safe. They can't help it if their work gets twisted and their mission gets f*cked over by the Administration. Most of the NSA'ers I've met are pissed as HELL about it.

On behalf of the NSA people that do care, thank you.

[cgrindley]

104. No Dem works for the NSA

anyone who works for the NSA is a criminal. I don't care about them. I don't value their jobs, their dedication, or anything about them. They should quit their jobs.

[Leopolds Ghost]

114. "No true Dem"... Canadian Flag... No User Profile... hmm

You're either exceedingly silly to spout off rhetoric like this from up in Canada, or you're just being "disruptive" and trolling for responses for reasons I will not speculate. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and say the former, in which case a piece of advice. It's illogical to spout rhetoric of this sort on a message board if you are honest about your beliefs here.

[cgrindley]

116. I'm Canadian and I live in the US

In CT and I work in NYC. I've lived here since 2001 or so.

[Leopolds Ghost]

124. That's cool, I'm just saying

1. It's always more complicated than you think

2. These agencies are a system of control and like all systems of control they have to take ordinary Americans and get them to acquiesce to what they are doing, in part by denial and claiming our "friends" did it without our knowledge.

3. They don't control much. But they do know who holds the controls. Just look at the media we have in this country.

4. Most people working for these agencies are grunts who naively believe the government can do no wrong and that the people we are fighting are uniformly "bad guys" and that the Presidents private business cronies would never stoop so low as to mix business competitors in with the actual "bad guys" we are fighting. Just like the grunts in Iraq. Hell you got David Petraeus on the floor of the Senate saying (a) mercs are good and (b) the first mission in any confrontation with Iran is to "protect the flow of OIL from Iran" -- a soveriegn nation with its own energy policy.

The attitude of permissivity towards war crimes is pervasive. Aerial bombing of civilian populations used to be a war crime -- until the Allies started doing it, too. Thanks, Curtis LeMay.

[Book Lover]

74. delete

self-delete

[EFerrari]

75. I just reread the OP.

"Throwing crap at eagles"?

You have some research to do.

[rman]

79. Nazi spies and the creation of the CIA

The "Gehlen Organization"

from Steve Kangas' Timeline of CIA Atrocities
http://www.atrocities.net/
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html

Operation PAPERCLIP – While other American agencies are hunting down Nazi war criminals for arrest, the U.S. intelligence community is smuggling them into America, unpunished, for their use against the Soviets. The most important of these is Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s master spy who had built up an intelligence network in the Soviet Union. With full U.S. blessing, he creates the "Gehlen Organization," a band of refugee Nazi spies who reactivate their networks in Russia. These include SS intelligence officers Alfred Six and Emil Augsburg (who massacred Jews in the Holocaust), Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyon"), Otto von Bolschwing (the Holocaust mastermind who worked with Eichmann) and SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny (a personal friend of Hitler’s). The Gehlen Organization supplies the U.S. with its only intelligence on the Soviet Union for the next ten years, serving as a bridge between the abolishment of the OSS and the creation of the CIA.
However, much of the "intelligence" the former Nazis provide is bogus. Gehlen inflates Soviet military capabilities at a time when Russia is still rebuilding its devastated society, in order to inflate his own importance to the Americans (who might otherwise punish him). In 1948, Gehlen almost convinces the Americans that war is imminent, and the West should make a preemptive strike. In the 50s he produces a fictitious "missile gap." To make matters worse, the Russians have thoroughly penetrated the Gehlen Organization with double agents, undermining the very American security that Gehlen was supposed to protect.

[Madspirit]

82. Torture

What's that place? School of the Americas or whatever? The place the CIA trains despots from other countries to torture people. The CIA sucks.

Chili is a country that was fucked over by the CIA just btw.

It's true there are good people and evil people everywhere but as a general rule, these people are there to protect the ruling class' agenda and interests. Not the interests of the people. It's also true they have a history of dirty tricks. The torture itself, kind of does it for me. Not a big fan of that tactic.

You are emotional because it's someone you are friends with...someone you are invested in. Doesn't change the reality of the CIA or NSA as organizations.
Madspirit

[otherlander]

131. Everything changed after 9/11...

in 1973.

[The Flaming Red Head]

83. Because some of them

are so fucking evil and cruel.

[Rex]

92. One friend does not the CIA make.

nt

[Leopolds Ghost]

96. Living in the DC area, I've had friends with relatives/coworkers who were

CIA, Some of them quite senior. A lot of stories, the basic gist of whom was that the CIA is a government beuraucracy like any other.

And a small number of them (2%) risked their lives just like undercover police officers risk their lives.

With the average DUer's background and educational experience, it probably wouldn't be too difficult to respond to one of those "join the clandestine service" ads that occasionally runs on Air America radio. The trouble for me is (a) I'm bad at languages (b) Lefties and libertarians, many of whom founded the CIA before Russia became our enemy, have been purged from the ranks, and (c) they'd probably have people like me spy on other lefties here at home. well, OK, they supposedly don't do that anymore, they've farmed that out to security contractors, but the NSA DOES, so I'd reserve my ire for the NSA and the private "global security" firms (brownshirts).

The surveillance techniques used by the NSA, etc. are dangerous and will eventually lead to tyrrany in the industrialized countries, as global resources must be protected to preserve our "standard of living" here at home, against the enemies we've created by depriving entire continents of their own resources using market forces.

Most actual clandestine CIA agents do yeoman's work trying to keep other countries from planning bad things against us, but their bosses have traditionally given them assignments that have more to do with protecting US corporate interests abroad. Look at the history of which regimes we support vs. which regimes the CIA is ordered to spy on.

It was interesting to learn why Tysons Corner, Virginia, exists, though.

Anyone using the Internet should probably educate themselves on that.
They will be surprised at what they find out...

Also, find out about the annual SECURITY EXPO that happens every year in Dulles, VA.

[EFerrari]

98. Yeah, it's a bureaucracy that gets people killed all over the world.

Man. There is no fig leaf big enough for CIA. Except our irrational beliefs that somehow they "protect" us. Which is, of course, not true.

[Leopolds Ghost]

99. Many of the founders of the CIA were liberals and Trotskyites who participated in the war effort

And detested both Fascism and Stalinism.

Starting under Truman with general Curtis LeMay (the one who wanted to nuke the Soviet Union; also the man who ordered Mcnamara to bomb Dresden and Berlin; aerial bombing of civilian populations was previously done only by the Axis powers and considered a war crime) and Curtis LeMay also accused Treasury Secretary Morgenthau of having a "Jewish plan to punish Germany" (according to historian Michael Beschloss in his excellent book on Morgenthau's efforts to stop the Holocaust);

In short, right-wing hard-liners began to cotton up to former Nazi agents, and fought to remake the security forces of the US, including police in Democratic machine cities like Chicago, into something approaching the "total state" which many center-liberals and conservatives ADMIRED hitler for doing in the 1930s.

At one point, Hitler's "total state" policy was seen as saving Germany from the Depression and 20% of Americans thought we should enter the war on the side of the Nazis.

Only Roosevelt and his New York-based, Main Street liberals and leftist (Trotskyite, anti-Stalinist and anti-fascist) New Deal advocates were in the right time and the right place to save us from adopting the "total state" policies of Stalin and Hitler during the Depression.

Remember the Republican plans to depose FDR?

After the war, this pro-Nazi, anti-communist purge, which continued after Stalin's death, was done INSIDE the Democratic party (remember McCarthy? RFK was once a big friend of his) because the Republicans
were so weak. The only difference between the Dem and Repub anti-communists was the degree to which their fervor stemmed from liberal, guns and butter philosophy (Democrats) or ties to business and belief in a corporate state of the sort Hitler created (hardline Republicans). Don't forget that there were a lot of moderate, antiwar Republicans, and a lot of arch conservative Southern Dems.

The Dulles brothers and the Bush family, with their ties to groups doing business with the federal government such as the oil industry and the Cuban exiles (organized criminals have always served as intelligence assets, just as they do in undercover detective work; that's why police departments don't just "take down and roll up" gangs as soon as they hear about them.)

Dulles and Bush changed all that, purging the CIA of lefties starting in the 1960s and continuing into the 1990s and the Bush administrations.

Bush senior himself was a mild-mannered blue-blooded figurehead. His family connections, CIA business connections (i.e. the radical right-wing Cubans) and corporate connections were the real power behind the throne trying to turn the CIA from a neutral intelligence service into a tool of American corporations.

Also, as you well know, many Trotskyites BECAME neocons. The CIA analysis division is now mostly Mormons and ex-hippies. Guess which group supported the Iraq war? Hint: not the Mormons.

On Edit: I am not a leftist. I think Trotskyites are terribly mistaken
vanguardist conspiracy nuts for the most part. But that's why it's so
easy for them to become neocons later in life.

Many in the 60's antiwar movement were essentially Trotsky leftists who cheered the Prague and Hungarian uprisings because they envisioned some sort of global socialist anti-totalitarianism. When they realized that wasn't happening, they decided to re-make the Middle East instead. They were insensitive to people's national, cultural and religious beliefs.

[EFerrari]

100. Trying to turn CIA from a neutral intelligcence serivice?

lol

I'm sorry. CIA was never a "neutral intelligence serivice".

And, you mean to say that those damn hippies lied us into this war?

:rofl:

[Leopolds Ghost]

101. Do you know anyone who works in the gov't or has worked for the gov't?

I am a radical populist myself. My politics are more towards the modern equivalent of William Jennings Bryan or Thomas Jefferson.

As such, I'm not a big-government leftist, and I think the reflexive anti-Americanism of Chomsky is simply mistaken.

But growing up in the DC area, you can't avoid actually knowing people who work for the government. I have worked for the government. I have had friends who had family in the CIA or did contract work.

Much of the Beltway region job force consists of military or security industry, much of which has been privatized to fascist or corrupt private research companies -- the sort of folks who would have masterminded the Niger scam, or created the Metal Storm weaponry, or done any number of things to stymie our intelligence officers like Plame and fund the war effort which the CIA opposed -- the creation of this large, private government run by for-profit Bush cronies and staffed by non-unionized contractual employees is a fact which actual government employees, including CIA agents, HATE.

The government is not some all-powerful enemy. It is the IDEOLOGUES like Dulles and the Bush clan and the pro-Hitler Republicans who thought government could one day be used as a tool to actually control people.

The reality is once you create a bureaucracy you cannot control it, you can only direct it. And the bureuacrats themselves are mostly well-meaning, even idealistic.

They do what they're told, despite their political beliefs telling them that what their APPOINTED bosses want is fucked up.

Many of them are people like Valerie Plame.

HUD, for instance, has positively evil policies now,
thanks to DU idol BILL CLINTON and his HOPE VI policy.

But most of the people who work at HUD are harried and frankly elderly
civil servants (HUD has been starved of cash to hire federal employees
ever since Reagan defunded the Office of Personnel Management in an
effort to break the back of civil service unions, the most influential
unions in the US.)

Similarly, many people working in the research agencies of the Federal Government are idealistic, aging baby boomers who came in under Carter.

Their attempts to get their bosses to protect the environment and fund research are routinely overruled by political appointees (including center-left, politically motivated Clinton appointees whose overriding ambition is to keep their job.)

You are obviously unfamiliar with the fact that the CIA was once full of anti-Stalin leftists until the mid-60s and the beginnings of the neocon movement, which realigned the Democratic Party from a liberal party that opposed the New Left into a party that actively opposed the cold war.

It was interesting to see what many wise old heads in the "diplomatic
corps" and "Sovietologists" had to say about the break-up of the Soviet
Union in a recent retrospective that aired on CSPAN 3.

These are people who were not hard-line cold warriors. They were just doing their job, their job involved being educated and aware of all aspects of the political situation, and it involved actually knowing the people involved on the "other side". and 9 out of 10 considered the fall of Gorbachev's premiership and the ascension of the gangster capitalists to be an unmitigated disaster.

The Hard-liners under Bush and Dulles' men (who were one faction in the intelligence services, and they suffered an unmitigated disaster and were purged following the Bay of Pigs) were the ones who wanted to POLITICIZE intelligence and REMOVE any agents who actually had ties to liberal or old-left politics -- you know, the ones who could provide informed analysis of what the Soviets were doing, or provide first-hand knowledge of the difference between the CPUSA and related hard-core leftist groups (most of whom were Soviet or CIA agents keeping tabs on one another) and the New Left.

[EFerrari]

102. Yeah, me. And no, I'm not unfamiliar with the purges.

[Leopolds Ghost]

103. I'm simply trying to say that the CIA is not some monolithic evil entity

Many people don't think spying for one's country, at least in a defensive or analysis capacity, is immoral.

I personally don't feel it's particularly ethical, but when put up against a real evil guy like Hitler or Stalin, necessity is the mother of invention. That doesn't mean the result is a good thing. They told Truman that if he created the spy agencies he would never be able to control it.

The problem is that the EMPIRE which we've created, creates a need for foreign military and foreign intelligence that would not otherwise exist, and many Democrats do not oppose globalization policies which are basically trying to create a "New Athenian Empire" where all the trade terms benefit us and anyone who challenges us economically is our enemy.

The NSA, on the other hand, exercises a power that, once you begin to apply it to stuff like domestic wiretapping, is inherently immoral. They are basically seeking ultimate knowledge of all goings-on and as we know, knowledge=power. They can't even DO anything with all the g-ddamned data they are mining, certainly not protect anyone from harm. It only hurts people when the NSA ends up doing domestic surveillance and uses it to create a chilling atmosphere on dissent. There will always be people with skeletons in their closet and there will always be blackmailers like Karl Rove looking to get ahold of "National Intelligence" data.

[cgrindley]

105. Yes it is

The CIA is an unspeakable, ineffable evil. Spying for one's country is inherently immoral. Who gives a shit about spies? They deserve everything they get.

[Leopolds Ghost]

107. Look, I don't know where you are politically but you'd probably consider me well to the left of you

On everything except a few social issues.

This obsession with the CIA is just a bunch of happy horse-shit.
The GOVERNMENT and private industry makes the policy.

CIA guys, 90% of whom are in analysis here in the States and another 7% are official cover, 2% are what you would call clandestine operations and only 1% is technical. None of them do black ops any more, that has all been contracted out to other agencies. The CIA is a massive research and analysis hub now. No more or less "immoral" than CACI or BearingPoint or numerous other private Military-Industrial Complex agencies. You could say that the whole apparatus is immoral, but singling out the CIA because of the actions of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon (who ordered the CIA to do everything they did in the 1950s and 1960s) is silly.

What I would like to know is why the government maintains (because "they can" and because "they must" do everything in their "power" to protect us -- and as we all know, power is limitless) an electronic eavesdropping post attached to MAE-East.

That being said, I would bet you dollars to donuts (the key word here being "donuts") that if it is called a "FOREIGN" electronic surveillance post, it is exactly that, because the NSA took over domestic surveillance (data mining) YEARS ago, and we don't even know the name of the agencies (most of them probably private contractors) handling stuff like Total Information Awareness or domestic war propaganda, because those things (not to mention data mining) are supposed to be illegal.

This stuff was all made public decades ago, and the current villains are not so much CIA as NSA spying. Unless you want to get into torture and rendition of guerrillas and terror suspects, which is fully financed and supported by US elected officials. That's what you get in a republic. Most of what the CIA does these days is finance and provide covert assistance to non-controversial US allies like the Kurds.

The Administration bypassed the CIA years ago because they are (a) smart and (b) disinclined to engage in illegal activities unless the President tells them to. Which the President has and always will when it comes to small, third world countries, but not domestically.

Even Bill Clinton didn't give a shit about the territorial integrity of third world countries, he cared about maintaining US corporate trading privileges just like the rest of 'em. Hence US covert interference, torture and rendition, the whole lot.

[cgrindley]

123. If by the left of me, you mean akin to Beria, maybe you have a point

but human rights are measured in absolute terms and the CIA was, is, and always will be the absolute antithesis of an organization that respects human rights or protects anything other than wholescale soul crushing criminality. The CIA should be disbanded.

[Leopolds Ghost]

125. No, more of a populist.

There is plenty of soul-crushing criminality to go around in modern day.

Why disband the CIA when they are being destroyed by the Bush administration to make way for a dozen for-profit, Ollie North style operations that are harder for us citizens to keep track of? That's a big mistake. I believe in the virtue of forgiveness. We can't effect social change by making enemies out of the people who are still on the other side of the door blocking forward progress.

Look at all the soldiers who committed atrocities in the last war.
Who did more to bring them around and understand the wrongness of
the war -- John Kerry or Jane Fonda? SDS or the Weathermen?

You can't blow up a social system. You can't persuade people of the wrongness of their actions by exposing them to harm. There'd be tons
of Whistleblowers in the CIA if it weren't for the nature of the job.

[EFerrari]

117. The CIA has always been used in service of Empire and under cover

of "national security". Perhaps the NSA seems more immediately immoral to you because of its involvement with American citizens. I'm of Latin American extraction and the immorality of CIA disruption of democracy in that region makes it seem pretty immediately obvious to me. Not spying in and of itself, but the contravention of democracy with its attendant evils and crimes against bodies.

/oops

[Leopolds Ghost]

118. An acquaintance of mine was in El Salvador in the 1980s...

...with Archbishop Romero & co.

The pastor of my family's church worked with Salvadoran political refugees. I am aware of what the CIA did, although in reality several brances of the government were being ordered to participate, and pretty much every fan of "law and order" in and out of Government (all those Reaganites) had no problem with the death squads. The person I know, what he learned, however, was the virtue of forgiveness. The reality is that the CIA is a shadow of it's former self. I realize that covert agencies like you to believe that they are not as capable as they really are, but sometimes, what you see is what you get, and that is especially true with large government bureaucracies, as we saw in the wake of 9-11.

Most of the people in the CIA are/were intelligence analysts and had the same amount of knowledge about the death squads as your average Reagan supporter did. Which is to say, like many ordinary Americans, they assumed the death squads probably existed but the people being killed "had it coming" because they were terrorists and/or communists.

Sound familiar don't it? All you have to do is watch "24" to see Americans expressing similar attitudes by giving Fox their hard-earned advertising dollars.

Hell, the French government aided and abetted the Rwandan Hutus in their campaign of genocide (I was taking a course in African history at the time and was keenly aware and shocked at the Western reaction to the Tutsi holocaust in Rwanda). You can't get much worse than that.

For the record, I'm not an expert in any of this stuff. But growing up I had friends and family who worked for the government.

[EFerrari]

122. Wasn't Porter Goss sent to CIA to dismantle what was left of its spine?

That was the impression I got at the time. Remember that file footage of him saying he could never run CIA and laughing?

My grandfather presided over a kangaroo court in 1932 that resulted in the execution of Farabundo Marti. I'm studying the event and right now, I think in part Marti had been looking for this kind of conclusion to his career because coming from a family of privilige, he didn't tend to believe consequences applied to himself and didn't have a lot of empathy when they resulted for other people.

But also, the execution (of three people that day) was necessary to keep the Marines from landing. They were off shore. A demonstration of command and control was called for. So, they condemned these three and massacred thousands of indians to show the United States that the situation was in hand.

So, you are right as far as I know, that the US has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at Latin America -- not only CIA.

[Leopolds Ghost]

128. You would know more than I do, I bet. The person I know was there as a Catholic Worker

Like I said, most of my limited knowledge on the subject comes from acquaintances. I'll ask him or my former pastor for background info sometime.

I do exercise a degree of common sense tho. I maintain (and I think
many people agree) that many of these agencies can't be controlled,
not because they are run as a secret criminal enterprise of some sort,
but because they are vast bureaucracies with a lot of money being
thrown around ending up in all sorts of dark corners. Most people are spending most of their time trying to protect their fiefdom. The criminality comes from the top. If overthrowing dictator X and looking the other way as general Y massacres people (like Clinton did in Rwanda) if doing so allows them to protect their little fiefdom, then they will stamp the forms and proceed to do everything (or in the case of Rwanda, nothing) on a need-to-know basis. If one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing, then nobody sees the true magnitude of the evil, who is paying and motivating the "evildoers", in this case, the people doing the massacres. It all becomes so complicated that when muckraking journalists expose it, no one can understand it and no one gives a good god damn, it just gets blamed on "those people over there are like that". It's like the movie Darwin's Nightmare, a favorite of mine on the subject.

[EFerrari]

133. What I know fits on the head of a pin. And you are right insofar

as in these discussions, we tend to totalize, to generalize and to use shorthand, i.e., "CIA" for all the tools the U.S. has used to apply pressure in other governments.

I have to see that film. :)

[EVDebs]

135. Read about the SMOM, Knights of Malta

originally the Knights Hospitaler. SMOMers created the CIA. Donovan, Casey, Angleton, McCone, Dulles bros., the whole lot of them

Their Will Be Done, by Martin A. Lee is a great place to start
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1983/07/willbedone.html

follow this up with the Catholic Origins of Futurism and Preterism
http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/antichrist.htm

and you have a slam-bang head start on almost everyone else in understanding Bushco's interest in having a Third Temple built in Jerusalem, not that this won't piss off the Islamic world...but what do they care.

The fact that this war could end up costing the US taxpayer $1 to $2 TRILLION...that's just icing on the cake for these guys. The money goes to them and their buddies. Everyone else is cannonfodder. And this is a MILITARY organization mind you with a seat on the UN.

[rman]

139. It's not so much the spying that's the problem

It's other things they do besides spying that's the problem.
And although it's true that there are good guys in the agencies, they still do what their bosses tell them to do - at least initially. Some quit or try to blow the whistle when they find out what's going on.

[ima_sinnic]

106. Steve Kangas was suicided in 1999 for his exposes of the CIA

Origins of the Overclass details the role of the CIA in preserving the privileged positions of the wealthiest individuals and corporations.

He also compiled A Timeline of CIA Atrocities, a detailed, step-by-step, grisly accounting of their unconscienable, psychopathic, homocidal modus operandi in messing in the business of countries around the world where "we" wanted the politics and economics to be "our" way.

His courageous research and sacrifice, like those of Danny Casolaro, Mark Lombardi, Abby Hoffman, Jim Hatfield, John Olson, Gary Webb, Brian Downing Quig -- and how many others? -- should be honored by at least a brief reading.

The CIA is an EVIL organization that should be broken up and its assassins and operatives stoned to death while hog-tied after their eyes are poked out with red-hot sticks. It is nothing more than institutionalized lawlessness, meddling and murder, supported by the taxpayers as well as by illegal drug running and arms dealing. Yeah, there might be a reason they "live looking over their shoulder." boo hoo, but I guess that might go with their demented territory.

[Leopolds Ghost]

108. The CIA has done a lot of evil stuff, most of it authorized by Presidents.

I've even seen people here on DU -- special ops veterans -- defending CIA drug-running as necessary to maintain plausible deniability when it comes to funding insurgencies and the like.

The bottom line is that most of what the CIA does these days is hire intelligence gatherers to comb through intelligence, much of it public,
and come up with analysis, which is supposed to be unbiased.

Of the 2% of people they have overseas, most are official cover (diplomats) or non-official cover in the form of businessmen charged with developing US trade contacts on behalf of the President's buddies of the month, or working on counter-proliferation and the like.

Most of the actual spying is being done electronically, which is why the NSA has become so swollen and bloated.

[conscious evolution]

113. AllI know

Is I heard Bob Marley say
There aint no Rasta's in the CIA

http://www.archive.org/download/donna2005-04-23.fob.madtaper.flacf/donna2005-04-23d2t03_64kb.mp3

[ima_sinnic]

120. nice!

as a 60-year-old I've been out of touch with the music scene for years now, but lately looking around for something fresher than my worn-out Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, and Fleetwood Mac audiocassettes :D --

a little Dead-headish and a good start for my "music makeover"

[conscious evolution]

127. Donna the Buffalo

The best band out there in my opinion.They have taken many musical genre's and fused them into a new sound that is unlike anything out there.
Fiercely anti-war,anti-corporate, anti-the way things are done around here.A very socially progressive band.
Join the Herd!
http://www.donnathebuffalo.com/

[aikoaiko]

126. How I long for the days of the dirty little wars.....

[RegimeChange2008]

129. The CIA was founded by the Bush Crime Family and their associates.

Poppy Bush was involved at least as far back as 1959. The CIA has brought us drug trafficking, terrorism, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, and countless other evils which have turned around and bit this country in the ass.

About the only good thing I can say about the CIA is that one of their old school operatives, Miles Copeland, managed to produce two sons who did something good for the world. (That would be Miles Jr. who founded IRS records and Stewart, who founded - and recently reformed - The Police. Both ironic names, given dad's line of work... )

[Jeffersons Ghost]

134. that's interesting RC, thanks...

so how do you feel about the CIA's sister-agency the NSA?

[rman]

140. Isn't the NSA the agency that does the warrantless wiretapping

on US citizens?

[Leopolds Ghost]

150. The original CIA was not founded by the Bush clan.

The original OSS was founded by Wild Bill Donovan, a liberal, and
SPIED on the Nazi sympathizers. There were many anti-Soviet
leftists involved who initially cooperated with the Russians
during WWII, then became Sovietologists.

The decision to bring Nazis over and use them as assets was made
at the highest levels of government by everyone's favorite
centrist liberal, Truman (who also fired Treasury Secretary
Henry Morgenthau because he was "too harsh on Germany.")

The hard-line anticommunists didn't get involved until much later,
and their major escapade with the Cuban Mafia, Bay of Pigs, FAILED.

Bush's role was a contact with the Cuban Mafia, a fact which he
hasn't owned up to.

Democrats were FULLY supportive of efforts to
"save latin America from Communism" and protect United Fruit.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

This did not change until the remnants of the New Left
took the Democratic Party in 1972, and Nixon becan to turn
the CIA from an anti-communist organization run by
Democrats and ex-leftists, into a partisan organization
run by George HW Bush.

Bush Sr. did not begin the purge
of CIA liberals and leftists (many of them Sovietologists)
until the 1970s, which is why we had so little intelligence
on the Soviets in the 1980s.

[Vinca]

142. Maybe the image of the CIA would be better if they balked at the

thought of torture. There's a reason the Germans have warrants out. Maybe we'd like the NSA better if they didn't eavesdrop on us without the authorization of a court. I'm sure there are wonderful people working in both agencies . . . I wish they would come forward.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

148. Unlike the poor deluded youth who make up the military, the CIA types

are almost entirely well-educated and sophisticated. (The CIA recruits at conventions of the Association for Asian Studies, and in the 1970s, it was recruiting graduate students in Russian language and literature.) In other words, they KNOW what they're doing, and they don't care if it's immoral and causes misery to countless numbers of people.

The NSA is all right, as long as it sticks to monitoring other countries and breaking codes and keeps its electronic nose out of the private affairs of American citizens. (Disclaimer: I used to translate newspaper articles for them on a free-lance basis, but I eventually quit because their system for submitting files was antiquated--I had to modem them into a system that always screwed up my files somehow--and because their pay rates were half of what I could get for commercial translations. All the translations I did were publicly available mainstream newspaper stories about the actions and statements of Japanese government officials.)

[Leopolds Ghost]

149. The NSA is OK because you used to do contract work there -- proves my point

The NSA's primary duty these days is to data-mine ALL communications
within the US, regardless of source, for keywords in a picobyte-size
computer.

Bush is merely the first President to acknowledge it and
CLAIM its legal. This is what they mean by the inaccurate term
"warrantless wiretapping"

It is a data-mining program in place since the early 80s.
I'm sure you're aware of that, right?

[MadHound]

151. Perhaps you should have this discussion with the Hmong tribesmen in Cambodia

Or some of the fine folks in El Salvador, Uraguay, Panama, Guatemala, Cuba, and frankly most of Central and South America. Talk to people who survived the initial crack epedimic in South Central. Talk to victims of the Pinochet or Peron regime, or those who lost relatives to Klaus Barbie and other Nazis. Talk to the Polish people, any of them. And more people to numerous to mention.

Or maybe not, for if you brought up the CIA in the presence of these people, you would be killed, for you see, they don't view the CIA through the same rose colored glasses that you do. They remember how the CIA has killed innocents, started crack epidemics, ramped up the heroin production(by selling it to our own solidiers in Vietnam for God's sake!), overthrow honestly elected politicians, start wars for profit, kill people just to watch them die, and are an overall impediment to justice.

Sorry, but the CIA and the NSA, along with most of the rest of these alphabet agencies in the intelligence community are among the lowest of the low, and frankly I would like to see them all brought in to face justice for their crimes.

Yes, I agree that intelligence services are needed. But I don't wish them to invade the privacy of myself or my fellow innocent citizens. And I certainly don't want them to commit the heinous crimes that our intelligence agencies have committed and are stilling doing.

Frankly, I think that they're scum of the earth and are deserving of nobody's respect.