Hi folks. Someone I know recently got a job working as an intelligence officer with the CIA. If she wasn’t a good friend of my true blave’s, I wouldn’t let her in the house anymore. To me, she might as well be working for the KGB or the Stassi. But, of course, that is only an opinion, and that is why I am here.
Ever try and look up things about the CIA on the net? Yikes. Jillions of hits, but so much crap wading through them is akin to checking your watch at the bottom of a sludge pot. I don’t think they arranged a hit on Kennedy, but I do think they were responsible for the mucking up of Iran. I don’t really believe they’re responsible for crack making its way into LA, but I am pretty sure that congress had to pass a law to stop them from assassinating people.
So here I am in GQ hoping for a doper to point me to a respectable web page or two, or to a book that gives a good history of the CIA. Mind you, I am not looking for alt.Art.Bell or alt.socialist.weakly or anything of the ilk. Though I believe (for now, I am here looking for sources) that the majority of their work is antithetical to most of the values and ideals we hold as Americans, I don’t think they are responsible for every tragedy published by the Weekly World News. Where can I find a credible critique of the CIA’s role in world affairs? Thanks.
I suggest “Inside the Cia/Revealing the Secrets of the World’s Most Powerful Spy Agency” by Ronald Kessler. It’s a fairly straightforward report by a journalist. It’s not exactly exciting reading but I think you will find it interesting, accurate, unbiased, and inexpensive (less than $7 in paperback).
You have to remember that everything the CIA does wrong (which is evidently a lot) gets publicized, analyzed, dissected, and discussed until we are all blue in the face but when the CIA gets it right (which is, I hope, most of the time), we don’t hear a word about it.
There are a few good books on the subject. One that I’ve read (which was kinda boring, but lots of good info) is The Unknown CIA which was written by a former high ranking CIA guy, and details the evolution of the CIA from ONI, OSS and DIA. What you find out is that 99% of what the CIA does is rather mundane, sifting, sorting, and analyzing information, most of which goes on to the various agencies to which it pertains, like the Army, Marines, certain Senate committees, etc.
Another good book is The Book of Honor, which is about several CIA agents who have died in the line of duty. I haven’t finished it yet, but you find that most of what thhey were doing was quite noble and patriotic.
Also, the CIA has a pretty bad rep about major screwups. Consider that most of their successful operations, you never hear about.
Even if we were to assume the CIA is responsible for many wrongdoings, wouldn’t being critical of someone taking a mundane job with them be essentially the same as being critical of someone who joined the Air Force? The Air Force has killed a lot more innocent people than the CIA has.
Partly because CIA does its job you can post here. With KGB or Stasi we probably would never see your name here, from now on. Try to find anything about KGB or Stasi, on the Internet. Even now. How much do you know about Iranian couterintelligence (CIA counterparts)? No matter what jounalists manage to find out about CIA, gets ririculed, criticized, etc.
In general, CIA business is a “dirty business”, but somebody has to do it. Whatever info you’ll find will be incomplete due to the nature of the subject. Try to analyse this info in perspective.
And finally: almost in any other country you’d never know who she works for.
Here’s the Agency’s own website, if it helps. They haven’t been in the hit business since Carter (IIRC) was president. Now they hire “independent contractors” to do the “wet work”.
The CIA has admitted to plotting several assassination attempts on Castro in hearings. Yep, killing Castro. I’m sure it’s necessary to the survival of our country, eh, Peace?
They’ve definately been involved in undermining democratically elected governments. Check out this recent story:
Killing Kennedy? I don’t think so. But don’t be so quick to discount the crack/CIA connection. There’s no doubt that Oliver North knew and turned a blind eye to Contra drug flights into the US (North’s diary mentions of a Contra drug plane). The CIA must also know about this sort of thing, but they also turn a blind eye to it. I don’t know enough to say if they helped or not, but I wouldn’t put it past them…
They’ve also admitted in hearings to killing innocent civilians (whoops!). Yes, the Air Force does this too, but the CIA is not bombing anyone - if they kill someone, it’s probably because a CIA operative wanted to kill this specific person. Blaming the whole CIA organization on what it claims are overzealous and inappropriate actions by it’s agents may be inappropriate, however.
And don’t forget MK Ultra, where the CIA dosed unsuspecting civilians with LSD in investigations of the drug as a mind-control agent. Eventually one person committed suicide. I have no idea what the evidence for this is, so take that with a grain of salt. However, it is widely believed, even by major news media.
At any rate, of course much of what the CIA does it fairly mundane. Monitoring other countries, looking for troop movements, etc. All necessary, I’m sure. But as far as their record on intervention… well it ain’t pretty.
The CIA does it’s fair share of incredibly stupid things like any organization composed of human beings but they also serve to prevent lots of bad stuff from happening that the public is by and large oblivious to.
What would Rhythmdvl have replace the critical (and sometimes unpalatable) functions of the CIA in the nasty real world where terrorists plot and plan to wreak destruction on American targets of opportunity both inside and outside the US?
Americans are allowed the luxury of taking freedoms and ideals seriously because there are “bad guys” like the CIA
in the shadows, de-lousing the place.
I really can’t recomend this book enough. It specificly deals with the CIA and it’s rold in the drug trade. It’s by one of America’s best investigative reporters, and damn is it funny and scary at the same time. It also goes into depth on the relationship between the CIA and the media.
The book is [url"=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859841392/ref=pd_sim_ftr/107-2083944-7156537"]Whiteout by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffery St. Clair.
You can see on Amazon that it has great reviews.
Some of the funny stuff is how the CIA goes around sabotaging the DEA in various countries. Some of the scary stuff is how the CIA supports Nazi’s and genocide in South America, and runs drugs into our country. Lovely.
I really can’t recomend this book enough. It specificly deals with the CIA and it’s rold in the drug trade. It’s by one of America’s best investigative reporters, and damn is it funny and scary at the same time. It also goes into depth on the relationship between the CIA and the media.
The book is Whiteout by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffery St. Clair.
You can see on Amazon that it has great reviews.
Some of the funny stuff is how the CIA goes around sabotaging the DEA in various countries. Some of the scary stuff is how the CIA supports Nazi’s and genocide in South America, and runs drugs into our country. Lovely.
Internal agencies with the power the CIA and NSA have are bound to abuse their power. Did anyone else see the TLC special on the CIA’s LSD testing? That episode actually made me laugh. They had bad luck testing on Berkely students so they started slipping it to coworkers to test its effect.
When I took poltical science back in the day, one of my professors had us study the Pike Report. The Pike report was an investigation of the CIA by the US Congress. Congress voted to keep this report classified but it was eventually leaked. A quick web search turned up a few references to it, but I couldn’t find the complete text.
Avu, CIA ain’t a church charity. Some mistakes, mishapes and blunders are unavoidable and even should be expected. CIA cannot finction like a well oiled mechanism considering the nature of dirty business they are in. You appear to be a balanced peson, but I hate this dirty-assed liberals who apply the same standards to CIA, etc. they grew up in their sterili kinderdartens in the suburbs with. CIA wanted to kill Castro not because they are bloody serial killers. But because it seemed the fast and efficient way to finish one of the most oppressive regimes on Earth. Or was it better to invade Cuba and loose thosands of American lives? Would you also be opposed to kiling Hitler? Cuba was small and inefficient. It still tried to cause turmoil around the world. Where would you be today if Cuba was like Germany? And are you sure that Castro never planned to kill an American president? Do you think that pauper USSR poured billions in Ciba only because of “fraternal internationalism”? Incredibly insightful YOU are absolutely right: Cuba never thteatened the existence of the U.S. It was (and is) more like a mouse gnawing at elephant’s feet. But it gladly offered its soil to deploy Soviet missles, intended to destroy this country.
Civilians are occasional CIA victims. I do not justify killing civilians. I do not think that CIA randomly kills cimilians, or the ones they do not like. I think the “civilians” were somehow involved. It’s not a direct analogy, but if the “civilians” who bombed the USS Cole were killed, 17 young Americans were alive today. Instesd, we wanted to appear “friendly” and “clean” and disarmed our sentries.
As I mentioned, the fact that you can post here anything you want, including CIA criticism, is partially due to the fact that CIA exist and, better or worse, do their job.
OLD:<< Some of the scary stuff is how the CIA supports Nazi’s and genocide in South America, and runs drugs into our country. Lovely>> I though that Nazis and CIA never existed simultaneously. I would also like to know which people was killed by CIA in South America, when, what for, etc.
CIA was not created to fight drug wars. But considering that its experience, tactics, methods could be very useful and that the agencies that were created to fight drug wars are not successful, why not let CIA help limit the exposure of young stupid people in this contry to harmful substances?
For an encyclopaedic treatment of the trade in general, I must recommend The Spy Book. It covers everything from Christopher Marlowe to Aldrich Ames.
When it was first published, it sold out in Northern Virginia and remained sold out for my entire career as a bookseller, so I imagine that it occupies a lot of shelf space in McLean. Some poor spook didn’t get his copy–I nicked it instead.
I don’t expect the CIA never to make mistakes. However, deliberating violating international law by assassination is another story.
This is not the reason that they were attempted to be overthrown. We supported, and still do support regimes that are equally and in fact more oppressive. The US do not do things because we are nice guys. We do things because it’s in our best interest.
At any rate, the US should not be assassinating world leaders. It’s not legal by international law, and it’s not ethical. This sort of thing also subverts democracy in our own country. We have no control over what the CIA does, it does it in secret, and we find out about much later, if at all. By the time the news gets out, it’s been so long ago that citizens can no longer do anything about it.
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Civilians are occasional CIA victims. I do not justify killing civilians. I do not think that CIA randomly kills cimilians, or the ones they do not like. I think the “civilians” were somehow involved.
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In the case I am thinking of, it is clear that the civilian was an innocent. No, the CIA don’t go around randomly killing people, though - the person was obviously involved in some situation. I’d love to give more info, but haven’t been able to find the article I recall reading about this…
it has a chapter on every CIA intervention performed since WWII. let’s just say there are a lot of chapters. and it does a really good job of showing how the CIA isn’t just limited to assassination and the like–they are really diversified. sometimes they just want to influence army generals into a coup with promises of support. often they want to fly under the radar and just influence elections (illegally) in countries we’re interested in.
the scary part is that he summarizes a bunch of information. and the book is still 400+ pages, with small print and tiny margins. beware, it’s a lot to get through, but it’ll give you plenty of ammunition to deal with your friend.
i’m a radical so sometimes i feel the same way when a friend of mine decides to work for a corporation…
