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I've always been stunned that the CIA is permitted to continue operation after their many catastrophic failures. I mean, failures on a scale that are just mind
by otakucode 7y ago
I've always been stunned that the CIA is permitted to continue operation after their many catastrophic failures. I mean, failures on a scale that are just mind-blowing and show their intense ineffectiveness. A couple weeks before the USSR collapsed, for instance, the CIA wrote a paper describing the USSR as a threat continuing to grow and the largest threat on the global stage. This isn't so much because they were incapable of seeing that the USSR was on the brink of collapse.... well, sort of I guess it was. What I mean is that they had the intelligence to know, but the concept was so dangerous for them to fathom organizationally that they couldn't admit it. The USSR was their bread and butter. They had more spies in Moscow than the KGB. We already knew the USSR wasn't doing great when Reagan was around. When he took office, the CIA was asked to do the standard thing and put together a bunch of briefings for the incoming president. The head of the USSR division at the time was Aldritch Aimes. He put together a paper saying the USSR was a paper tiger and running out of money. The director of the CIA threw the report away and told Aimes 'the president wants an enemy and we're going to give him one'. (that was one of the major things Aimes claimed made him jaded and led to him becoming a double agent for the KGB because he no longer viewed the CIA as doing serious work for good but just a group of opportunistic lackeys)
So they missed the USSR collapsing... and the fall of the Berlin wall... and the Arab Spring... basically every gigantic sociopolitical change for the past 70 years has caught the CIA by surprised and that not being the case is literally their only job.
- smsm42 7y ago> led to him becoming a double agent for the KGB So some spied did some efficient work, apparently, just not the CIA ones.
- Ascendency 7y agoActually, that story shows how the CIA did their job well...but politicians and President Reagan didn’t want to hear it and used their oversight role to force their intelligence experts to fit their narrative. For the last 40+ years, political forces in the US are increasingly trying to distort facts to fit narratives instead of accepting facts and then spinning / competing over what to do about it.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoSorry the USA did not have many spies in Moscow it was insanely difficult to run anyone. and quoting "Aldritch Aimes" is a bit like quoting Kim Philby
- fit2rule 7y agoThe time is long since past for the CIA to be disbanded. It was staffed with ex-Nazi's who used its secrecy as a fortress within which to build their own new reich, and this is the #1 cause of turmoil and strife in the world today. When you PAY someone to generate reports of bad news and non-optimum situations, they will generate bad news and non-optimum situations - and then report on it (accurately or otherwise). When you allow those same people to keep everything they do a secret, for the sake of 'national security', everything they do will be for the sake of 'national security' and therefore kept a dire secret. This includes their own war crimes and other crimes against humanity - as we have seen time and time again with the CIA and its military-pharmaceutical-industrial super-state, which rules us all through fear and coercion whether we like it or not.