Everyone KNOWS that the CIA is full of tree-hugging commie pinko faggot libruls. Just look at American Dad!
-Joe
The CIA and the Intelligence Community are not congruent sets. The CIA has a hard-on for Beltway politics, and there are so many layers of management that a President who doesn’t ask for dissenting views won’t ever see them. The CIA also has the President’s Daily Briefing, which they lord over the rest of the community: “Get me X, and I need it in an hour, 'cause it’s for THE PREZ” (because if you don’t jump when I say jump the President will never see your work again). I knew a few folks there who were straight shooters, but the vast majority of reliable folks I worked with were NSA, DIA, and technical analysts from the various services.
A good analogy would be the Catholic Church. You, the taxpayer, are a child of the church. The nuns and monks are the various small, highly-skilled intelligence agencies who perform good works on a daily basis, using your donations; they live simply so as not to fritter away your hard-earned donations. The CIA is the College of Cardinals and Vatican City, and the President is God (next time I put those last four words together during this administration, someone shoot me). The worker bees are doing a great job, and most of their superiors are fair-minded idealists who want the word to get out. But at some point near the top of the pyramid, political concerns take over, and you get a Pope in a marble palace who rejects the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa, because he thinks that’s what God wants to hear.
With that distinction in mind, the following statements are both true:
- America has one of the finest intelligence services in the world.
- The CIA tries too hard to be an expert on every subject, and every time they lose political clout our nation’s ability to get good intelligence to the President increases.
I suspect that the allegations in the OP’s document are true. I seem to remember the President getting a second daily briefing from a Pentagon office – Office of Special Plans, or somesuch – that was weighted equally with the CIA view. OSP were a bunch of neo-con hacks with a serious agenda who made the CIA look about as efficient and neutral as Switzerland. I can imagine the CIA being pissed off enough about this (and about losing clout) that they would do a “first strike” and ensure that they didn’t end up taking the fall for the administration’s Iraq policies.
But for the love of God, don’t bash “the intel community” when you just mean “the CIA.” They’re hardworking patriots who put up with the bizarre inconveniences of cleared work, and they work their ass off to accomplish the mission.
The CIA and the Intelligence Community are not congruent sets. The CIA has a hard-on for Beltway politics, and there are so many layers of management that a President who doesn’t ask for dissenting views won’t ever see them. The CIA also has the President’s Daily Briefing, which they lord over the rest of the community: “Get me X, and I need it in an hour, 'cause it’s for THE PREZ” (because if you don’t jump when I say jump the President will never see your work again). I knew a few folks there who were straight shooters, but the vast majority of reliable folks I worked with were NSA, DIA, and technical analysts from the various services.
A good analogy would be the Catholic Church. You, the taxpayer, are a child of the church. The nuns and monks are the various small, highly-skilled intelligence agencies who perform good works on a daily basis, using your donations; they live simply so as not to fritter away your hard-earned donations. The CIA is the College of Cardinals and Vatican City, and the President is God (next time I put those last four words together during this administration, someone shoot me). The worker bees are doing a great job, and most of their superiors are fair-minded idealists who want the word to get out. But at some point near the top of the pyramid, political concerns take over, and you get a Pope in a marble palace who rejects the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa, because he thinks that’s what God wants to hear.
With that distinction in mind, the following statements are both true:
- America has one of the finest intelligence services in the world.
- The CIA spends far too much time trying to justify its lofty position as the “one stop shop” for all intelligence needs, and as a consequence, is not very good at doing its actual job.
I suspect that the allegations in the OP’s document are true. I seem to remember the President getting a second daily briefing from a Pentagon office – Office of Special Plans, or somesuch – that was weighted equally with the CIA view. OSP were a bunch of neo-con hacks with a serious agenda who made the CIA look about as efficient and neutral as Switzerland. I can imagine the CIA being pissed off enough about this (and about losing clout) that they would do a “first strike” and ensure that they didn’t end up taking the fall for the administration’s Iraq policies.
But for the love of God, don’t bash “the intel community” when you just mean “the CIA.” Most members of the community are hardworking patriots who put up with the bizarre inconveniences of cleared work, and they work their ass off to accomplish the mission.
The OSP was the so-called “Iraq desk” in the Pentagon. Lt Col (rretired) Kwiatkowski had a LOT to say about them. Their only purpose seemed to be to further the Neocon philosophy and look for ways to get the Iraq war started.
For some further reading, look at the Huffington Post today. Bush is now blaming the whole war on Cheney and Rumsfeld. While telling all of us to stay the course, after telling us all lies, while accusing the whole country of “treason”, while continuing to piss away soldiers’ lives, he still thinks no one will blame him if he lies enough times.