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We probably need outfits like this. The CIA seems to have completely lost the ability to do human intelligence. They get punished when they deal with unsavory
by tsotha 16y ago
We probably need outfits like this. The CIA seems to have completely lost the ability to do human intelligence. They get punished when they deal with unsavory characters, which is a necessity in that business. So they don't bother, and rely instead on signals intelligence. Nobody ever got fired at CIA running a program to listen in on jihadi phone calls. But you're not going to pick up everything through signals intelligence.
- shkb 16y agoSpecifically they got their asses handed to them by the Soviets in human intelligence, and choose to do what they were good at. But why would you need a group like this, with all the problems of privatizing intelligence operations? Would reform be a better choice? Or the acknowledge that the disadvantages of covert operations are great enough to find an alternative (similar to how the disadvantages of conventional warfare lead to covert ops)
- alnayyir 16y agoMaking it politically viable for a government organization to inadvertently fund people like Osama Bin Laden in order to gather intelligence is hardly what most people think of as reform even if it could be effective.
- kprobst 16y agoMy reading of material like `The Sword and The Shield` and other books sourced from the Mitrokhin papers don't really support the idea that the Soviets had much success in HUMINT, especially after the 50s.
- tsotha 16y agoThe problem is "reform" is what got us where we are today. When a human intelligence operation blows up it's embarrassing. Congress gets involved "reforming" things. So you get stupid rules like "The CIA can never pay someone who's been accused of human rights violations". People genuinely put the interests of their country first and they get hung out to dry after the next election cycle. So the people who survive do what risk-averse bureaucracies always do: nothing.