5 ms·

It may be more of a problem with the "service mentality" the document is talking about. Bad things happen when what your customer actually wants is "Find me a p

It may be more of a problem with the "service mentality" the document is talking about. Bad things happen when what your customer actually wants is "Find me a pretext to invade the Middle East and reshape it in a more US-friendly form, because Western intervention in the area has always turned out fine."

arca_vorago 12y ago
Bingo. The problem is that in the intel community they used to have that salty old graybeard that would tell general X and politician Y the cold hard truth to power that they need to hear, instead of what they want to hear. Post 9/11, there is evidence that it was mostly vp Cheney who physically intervened in this process, personally pulling in analysts and grilling them... The problem to me is that the same chilling effects we have seen develop in the journalistic community have also grown in the intel community, and when you have analysts who spend more time kissing ass than calling people out bullshit like they should, we are only going to end up in worse geopolitical situations. NSA right now holds cards over CIA, keep that in mind as well.
- flurpitude 12y ago
  NSA right now holds cards over CIA, keep that in mind as well. Can you elaborate a bit or suggest some reading on that point?
  - arca_vorago 12y ago
    Well it's more of an insight gained mostly from reading former-spooks books and similar. The fact is that the resources, both monetary and physical, are much larger than the company (CIA). It employs many more people as well, and a lot of people don't realize that the agency (NSA) has paramilitary divisions as well. The main reason I say though is because NSA has the upstream under their thumb. Pretty much anything the company does is going to be visible to the agency but not the other way around, which creates an information power disparity that is inevitable with the current organizational structures.
btilly 12y ago
On this topic it is worth highlighting the following line from that document: Newcomers to the IC may not realize that the CIA presence in the Oval Office during the George W. Bush administration was the exception, not the rule.
rst 12y ago
Which is reportedly the case, without exaggeration. According to one CIA agent's memoir, the group in charge of monitoring Iraqi WMD activity was literally told, by their boss, "Let's face it. The President wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it." (Source: "Blowing my cover", the memoir of ex-CIA agent Lindsay Moran, who says that hearing about this was the reason she quit.)

arca_vorago 12y ago

Bingo. The problem is that in the intel community they used to have that salty old graybeard that would tell general X and politician Y the cold hard truth to power that they need to hear, instead of what they want to hear. Post 9/11, there is evidence that it was mostly vp Cheney who physically intervened in this process, personally pulling in analysts and grilling them... The problem to me is that the same chilling effects we have seen develop in the journalistic community have also grown in the intel community, and when you have analysts who spend more time kissing ass than calling people out bullshit like they should, we are only going to end up in worse geopolitical situations. NSA right now holds cards over CIA, keep that in mind as well.

flurpitude 12y ago
NSA right now holds cards over CIA, keep that in mind as well. Can you elaborate a bit or suggest some reading on that point?
- arca_vorago 12y ago
  Well it's more of an insight gained mostly from reading former-spooks books and similar. The fact is that the resources, both monetary and physical, are much larger than the company (CIA). It employs many more people as well, and a lot of people don't realize that the agency (NSA) has paramilitary divisions as well. The main reason I say though is because NSA has the upstream under their thumb. Pretty much anything the company does is going to be visible to the agency but not the other way around, which creates an information power disparity that is inevitable with the current organizational structures.

btilly 12y ago

On this topic it is worth highlighting the following line from that document: Newcomers to the IC may not realize that the CIA presence in the Oval Office during the George W. Bush administration was the exception, not the rule.

rst 12y ago

Which is reportedly the case, without exaggeration. According to one CIA agent's memoir, the group in charge of monitoring Iraqi WMD activity was literally told, by their boss, "Let's face it. The President wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it." (Source: "Blowing my cover", the memoir of ex-CIA agent Lindsay Moran, who says that hearing about this was the reason she quit.)