7 ms·

Yeah, if Iran-Contra, Operation Condor, 28 Mordad, MKUltra, etc have taught us anything it's that they tend to at very best get a slap on the wrist after the fa

Yeah, if Iran-Contra, Operation Condor, 28 Mordad, MKUltra, etc have taught us anything it's that they tend to at very best get a slap on the wrist after the fact, and usually less than that.

wayoutthere 7y ago
I mean, the cynic in me says that the US needs a group of morally-compromised people willing to do bad things. But ultimately I don't think the short-term gains from that kind of activity are worth the long-term damage they do to our national conscience. Edit: To clarify, I am advocating against this behavior -- it's not worth compromising our ethics for the sake of accomplishing goals in the short term. Cynicism is no way to run a country.
- cambalache 7y ago
  I am not American, and I would agree with you if most of the operations were things like Stuxnet or Bin Laden's killing. But many of the most atrocious things committed by the CIA were totally gratuitous not helping one iota to the safety (perceived or real) of the American populace.
  - Kalium 7y ago
    The trick with intelligence agencies is that the general public only ever hears about a small number of operations. A large intelligence apparatus undertakes a great many, most of which succeed or fail in relative silence. This makes it impossible to generalize fairly about "most of the operations". You're working from a data set so heavily filtered as to be useless for that.
    - fit2rule 7y ago
      The corruption of government starts with its secrets. A truly free people keep no secrets.
      - EpicEng 7y ago
        That is just not in any way practical.
        sneak 7y ago
        The government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. Consent cannot be given if not informed. There is no way a government with a million people with Top Secret clearances is operating with the consent of the governed.
        EpicEng 7y ago
        So, specifically, you think that literally all information maintained by the government should be public? At som point, your vague philosophical statement has to be turned into real policies.
        sneak 7y ago
        Information is not maintained by the government. It is maintained by human beings working in a government capacity, and those human beings have no right to secrecy or privacy whilst working in that capacity. What I said was not vague.
        EpicEng 7y ago
        Well, that's one way to avoid answering. So what's your policy on classifying information as secret?
        fit2rule 7y ago
        If your government is keeping secrets from you, you are not able to be informed about the actions that government is taking in your name and you therefore cannot inform yourself about your own governments activities - thus it is not enforcing your freedom with secrets, but rather guaranteeing your subjugation.
    - depr 7y ago
      The ones we know about is enough
  - nexuist 7y ago
    >many of the most atrocious things committed by the CIA were totally gratuitous not helping one iota to the safety (perceived or real) of the American populace I'm not entirely sure about that. I believe the CIA has committed atrocities, but I find it difficult to believe that you could not justify every action they took in the name of national security - all the coups of communist / non-Western-aligned nations especially. In fact, almost anything that may harm the federal government (regardless of impact to the general population) can be designated as a matter of national security (perhaps by design). The point I am making is that it is easy to spin atrocities as necessary undertakings to agents with good intentions, all the way up to the top even (Operation Northwoods for example). Evil people are not necessary to build an evil organization.
    - boomboomsubban 7y ago
      > In fact, almost anything that may harm the federal government (regardless of impact to the general population) can be designated as a matter of national security (perhaps by design). The general population is something that can harm the federal government, are you fine with the CIA ruining your life to ensure that doesn't happen?
      - nexuist 7y ago
        >(perhaps by design) That was my point.
  - monocasa 7y ago
    We're pretty sure that stuxnet was NSA and Mossad fwiw.
- close04 7y ago
  If the expectation from intelligence services is that they are there to misbehave so that "the free world can stay free" then I doubt things would change. Distributed (national) conscience has the distinct advantage of not putting any pressure on any particular individual. Look no further from you local corporation where moral people will take immoral actions in the name of the company. Regular people sharing the burden with many others will not feel it. How do the actual people involved in this deal with it I have no idea. They might be a special breed and either don't see this as a moral failing, or simply can withstand huge pressure from their own conscience.
- munificent 7y ago
  > the US needs a group of morally-compromised people willing to do bad things. It's tempting to think that, but do you have any evidence to support it? Look at the list of examples from the parent comment: Iran-Contra - We sold a bunch of weapons to a country that we're now apparently enemies with. The funded Contras committed a series of human rights violations and then fizzled out. Operation Condor - Thousands and thousands of innocent civilians killed, numerous South American countries still unstable and suffering the consequences of it. 28 Mordad - Maybe gave us access to oil we didn't really need. Created long-standing entirely valid resentment of the US and democracy which likely led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, rise of theocracy in Iran, and today's current trouble with them. MKUltra - Thousands of US and Canadian citizens, many already marginalized or mentally unwell were unwittingly drugged without their consent. Harrowing accounts like "they administered LSD to a mental patient in Kentucky for 174 days" and drugging deputy U.S. marshal Wayne Ritchie" who ended up having "a bad LSD trip that culminated in his holding up the bar at gunpoint." Afterwards, the CIA admitted the entire project was essentially useless. It seems to be that any organization allowed to perform morally-compromised acts as a honeypot for the kind of people who want to perform amoral acts, which are exactly the people we should not be letting make any of these kinds of choices.
  - jeltz 7y ago
    And there are more incidents where those came from. Helping Contras smuggle cocaine into the US. And the Bay of Pigs Invasion which basically forced Castro into an alliance with Soviet and almost started World War 3 due to the missile crisis. The CIA has done good things for the US too, but these events show that having a group of people doing bad things might not be good for the US in the short term either.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    I totally agree with you. While such unethical behavior may have seemed to solve an immediate problem, they created far more problems down the road than they were worth.
  - davidw 7y ago
    > Iran-Contra - We sold a bunch of weapons to a country that we're now apparently enemies with. The funded Contras committed a series of human rights violations and then fizzled out. Our current attorney general was involved in pardoning a bunch of the people behind this.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  The CIA will ever be judged by its failures while its successes will be invisible, classified, and by the nature of their success, known to almost nobody. Statecraft is messy business. If you don't get your hands dirty you either don't matter or you don't last. It is hard to judge these things fairly. Acting like we live in a perfect world and everyone who doesn't match that needs to be burned at the stake... well that's not helpful. Acting like the state gets a free pass for everything it does because being a government is hard makes us more and more terrible until something breaks. Yes, a state in a leading world position needs to have a morally flexible arm to get things done, but that arm also needs to be regularly held in check, even if it's just for show. The CIA and related agencies need pressure to keep them on their toes and doing the "right thing", but not expectation that everything they do will be entirely honorable. If you want that kind of thing, you have to move to somewhere small without much attention which has the luxury of honest opposition to all disreputable state behavior... because it is not in the position to be obligated to respond. (looking at you, smaller western Europe nations)
  - boomboomsubban 7y ago
    >The CIA and related agencies need pressure to keep them on their toes and doing the "right thing" How is that pressure supposed to happen when the referenced case, Nixon's "plumbers," shows them directly interfering with politics? No matter how vital you view an organization able to control foreign states, what you're building is an organization to control your state.
    - colechristensen 7y ago
      Develop and hold sacred the idea that organizations like the CIA, DIA, NSA, and the military (et. al) do not operate within national borders. i.e. when your military becomes police, your people become the enemy. It is a legitimately a difficult problem, perhaps among the most difficult problems in governing. How do you create and maintain a government for centuries which keeps its primary goal of serving the people. The US founders thought about this very much drawing on philosophers modern and ancient and they did a pretty good job setting up checks and balances, or more bluntly, competition. How do you keep the CIA and its like in check? Create opposing government entities specifically immune to its actions and allow them to compete for prestige. This is why we have three branches of government, two houses of congress with different election strategies, etc. Set up separation of powers, imbue the population to value and cherish that separation, and honestly, hope for the best.
FDSGSG 7y ago
> it's that they tend to at very best get a slap on the wrist after the fact, and usually less than that. Unless I'm missing something, that hardly seems relevant in regards to the question presented by the article.

Yeah, if Iran-Contra, Operation Condor, 28 Mordad, MKUltra, etc have taught us anything it's that they tend to at very best get a slap on the wrist after the fact, and usually less than that.

wayoutthere 7y ago

I mean, the cynic in me says that the US needs a group of morally-compromised people willing to do bad things. But ultimately I don't think the short-term gains from that kind of activity are worth the long-term damage they do to our national conscience. Edit: To clarify, I am advocating against this behavior -- it's not worth compromising our ethics for the sake of accomplishing goals in the short term. Cynicism is no way to run a country.

cambalache 7y ago
I am not American, and I would agree with you if most of the operations were things like Stuxnet or Bin Laden's killing. But many of the most atrocious things committed by the CIA were totally gratuitous not helping one iota to the safety (perceived or real) of the American populace.
- Kalium 7y ago
  The trick with intelligence agencies is that the general public only ever hears about a small number of operations. A large intelligence apparatus undertakes a great many, most of which succeed or fail in relative silence. This makes it impossible to generalize fairly about "most of the operations". You're working from a data set so heavily filtered as to be useless for that.
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    The corruption of government starts with its secrets. A truly free people keep no secrets.
    - EpicEng 7y ago
      That is just not in any way practical.
      - sneak 7y ago
        The government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. Consent cannot be given if not informed. There is no way a government with a million people with Top Secret clearances is operating with the consent of the governed.
        EpicEng 7y ago
        So, specifically, you think that literally all information maintained by the government should be public? At som point, your vague philosophical statement has to be turned into real policies.
        sneak 7y ago
        Information is not maintained by the government. It is maintained by human beings working in a government capacity, and those human beings have no right to secrecy or privacy whilst working in that capacity. What I said was not vague.
        EpicEng 7y ago
        Well, that's one way to avoid answering. So what's your policy on classifying information as secret?
      - fit2rule 7y ago
        If your government is keeping secrets from you, you are not able to be informed about the actions that government is taking in your name and you therefore cannot inform yourself about your own governments activities - thus it is not enforcing your freedom with secrets, but rather guaranteeing your subjugation.
  - depr 7y ago
    The ones we know about is enough
- nexuist 7y ago
  >many of the most atrocious things committed by the CIA were totally gratuitous not helping one iota to the safety (perceived or real) of the American populace I'm not entirely sure about that. I believe the CIA has committed atrocities, but I find it difficult to believe that you could not justify every action they took in the name of national security - all the coups of communist / non-Western-aligned nations especially. In fact, almost anything that may harm the federal government (regardless of impact to the general population) can be designated as a matter of national security (perhaps by design). The point I am making is that it is easy to spin atrocities as necessary undertakings to agents with good intentions, all the way up to the top even (Operation Northwoods for example). Evil people are not necessary to build an evil organization.
  - boomboomsubban 7y ago
    > In fact, almost anything that may harm the federal government (regardless of impact to the general population) can be designated as a matter of national security (perhaps by design). The general population is something that can harm the federal government, are you fine with the CIA ruining your life to ensure that doesn't happen?
    - nexuist 7y ago
      >(perhaps by design) That was my point.
- monocasa 7y ago
  We're pretty sure that stuxnet was NSA and Mossad fwiw.
close04 7y ago
If the expectation from intelligence services is that they are there to misbehave so that "the free world can stay free" then I doubt things would change. Distributed (national) conscience has the distinct advantage of not putting any pressure on any particular individual. Look no further from you local corporation where moral people will take immoral actions in the name of the company. Regular people sharing the burden with many others will not feel it. How do the actual people involved in this deal with it I have no idea. They might be a special breed and either don't see this as a moral failing, or simply can withstand huge pressure from their own conscience.
munificent 7y ago
> the US needs a group of morally-compromised people willing to do bad things. It's tempting to think that, but do you have any evidence to support it? Look at the list of examples from the parent comment: Iran-Contra - We sold a bunch of weapons to a country that we're now apparently enemies with. The funded Contras committed a series of human rights violations and then fizzled out. Operation Condor - Thousands and thousands of innocent civilians killed, numerous South American countries still unstable and suffering the consequences of it. 28 Mordad - Maybe gave us access to oil we didn't really need. Created long-standing entirely valid resentment of the US and democracy which likely led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, rise of theocracy in Iran, and today's current trouble with them. MKUltra - Thousands of US and Canadian citizens, many already marginalized or mentally unwell were unwittingly drugged without their consent. Harrowing accounts like "they administered LSD to a mental patient in Kentucky for 174 days" and drugging deputy U.S. marshal Wayne Ritchie" who ended up having "a bad LSD trip that culminated in his holding up the bar at gunpoint." Afterwards, the CIA admitted the entire project was essentially useless. It seems to be that any organization allowed to perform morally-compromised acts as a honeypot for the kind of people who want to perform amoral acts, which are exactly the people we should not be letting make any of these kinds of choices.
- jeltz 7y ago
  And there are more incidents where those came from. Helping Contras smuggle cocaine into the US. And the Bay of Pigs Invasion which basically forced Castro into an alliance with Soviet and almost started World War 3 due to the missile crisis. The CIA has done good things for the US too, but these events show that having a group of people doing bad things might not be good for the US in the short term either.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  I totally agree with you. While such unethical behavior may have seemed to solve an immediate problem, they created far more problems down the road than they were worth.
- davidw 7y ago
  > Iran-Contra - We sold a bunch of weapons to a country that we're now apparently enemies with. The funded Contras committed a series of human rights violations and then fizzled out. Our current attorney general was involved in pardoning a bunch of the people behind this.
colechristensen 7y ago
The CIA will ever be judged by its failures while its successes will be invisible, classified, and by the nature of their success, known to almost nobody. Statecraft is messy business. If you don't get your hands dirty you either don't matter or you don't last. It is hard to judge these things fairly. Acting like we live in a perfect world and everyone who doesn't match that needs to be burned at the stake... well that's not helpful. Acting like the state gets a free pass for everything it does because being a government is hard makes us more and more terrible until something breaks. Yes, a state in a leading world position needs to have a morally flexible arm to get things done, but that arm also needs to be regularly held in check, even if it's just for show. The CIA and related agencies need pressure to keep them on their toes and doing the "right thing", but not expectation that everything they do will be entirely honorable. If you want that kind of thing, you have to move to somewhere small without much attention which has the luxury of honest opposition to all disreputable state behavior... because it is not in the position to be obligated to respond. (looking at you, smaller western Europe nations)
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  >The CIA and related agencies need pressure to keep them on their toes and doing the "right thing" How is that pressure supposed to happen when the referenced case, Nixon's "plumbers," shows them directly interfering with politics? No matter how vital you view an organization able to control foreign states, what you're building is an organization to control your state.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    Develop and hold sacred the idea that organizations like the CIA, DIA, NSA, and the military (et. al) do not operate within national borders. i.e. when your military becomes police, your people become the enemy. It is a legitimately a difficult problem, perhaps among the most difficult problems in governing. How do you create and maintain a government for centuries which keeps its primary goal of serving the people. The US founders thought about this very much drawing on philosophers modern and ancient and they did a pretty good job setting up checks and balances, or more bluntly, competition. How do you keep the CIA and its like in check? Create opposing government entities specifically immune to its actions and allow them to compete for prestige. This is why we have three branches of government, two houses of congress with different election strategies, etc. Set up separation of powers, imbue the population to value and cherish that separation, and honestly, hope for the best.

FDSGSG 7y ago

> it's that they tend to at very best get a slap on the wrist after the fact, and usually less than that. Unless I'm missing something, that hardly seems relevant in regards to the question presented by the article.