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Curse of the CIA
Corrupt. Inept. Affliction to all. A killer history.
- Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
- Doubleday (2008)
In 1959 or 1960, I spent three consecutive evenings in McMillan Theater on the Columbia University campus listening to former president Harry S. Truman deliver a series of speeches. I remember the man better than what he said: a middle-sized, pink-cheeked old guy in a grey suit, speaking with a high, flat Missouri accent. I do recall his confidence, especially when he said he'd been right to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He was a likable man, and he'd fully recovered from his 1940s unpopularity. What we didn't know, and what he may not have known either, was that he had done more than to fight and win the world's only nuclear war. He had been duped into a decision that has shaped the lives of all of us on the planet since 1945, and that has ruined the lives of most of us.
That decision was to replace the wartime Office of Strategic Services with a new spy service, the Central Intelligence Agency.
Tim Weiner has written this highly critical history of the CIA based entirely "on the record -- no anonymous sources, no blind quotations, no hearsay . . . compiled entirely from firsthand reporting and primary documents." Much of what he tells us has been known for decades. But Weiner strings together events that we might otherwise not connect, and the result is appalling.
Sixty years of failure
Less clearly known is how the CIA managed to get away with 60 years of gross failure. That failure began with the subversion of Harry Truman's modest wish to have a reliable source of information. And in its first decade the CIA struck the themes that have dominated our lives ever since.
Weiner shows that U.S. intelligence barely existed before Pearl Harbor, and imploded within weeks of the war's end. During the war itself, intelligence agencies did a fair job, though they needed mentoring and support from the British spy agencies.
The Office of Special Services conducted much of this intelligence, but its real forte was in dropping agents into Nazi-occupied Europe. Many were lost, but they did manage to do some damage and to support resistance groups.
After the war, suddenly out of a congenial job, some ex-OSS officers managed to persuade Truman that he needed more than just a postwar spy service -- he needed covert operations that would frustrate Soviet plans and advance American interests.
The OSS had been known during the war as Oh So Social, a cozy group of Ivy Leaguers. They'd had so much fun that they wanted to fight their last war all over again.
Their war, of course, had been a covert matter of dropping saboteurs into occupied Europe. They went on doing so, in the vain hope that guerilla forces might take over Ukraine or Albania.
In the postwar chaos, however, the Reds had sent their own agents west, and they easily worked their way into the infant CIA's networks. Most of the troublemakers dropped behind the Iron Curtain were picked up on arrival and shot. A few were used to exploit the CIA's gullibility, sending disinformation back to their handlers.
Meanwhile, the agency was setting up its first overseas prisons, primitive Guantánamos where prisoners could be interrogated without reference to U.S. laws or the Geneva Conventions.
Supposed victories of the 1950s
We've heard a lot about the CIA's early covert triumphs: the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran and Arbenz in Guatemala. Weiner shows that these were near-disasters, but they set the agency's course from the Bay of Pigs to Panama and the bribery that really won the opening stages of the war in Afghanistan.
Less well known is the CIA's success in postwar Japan, where it used money and war criminals to create a bogus democracy. In Europe, it drew on funds from the Marshall Plan to buy a congenial government in Italy -- while the Poles supported the Italian Communist Party with gold obtained from the CIA's botched airdrops.
In its first decade the CIA also demonstrated its inability to meet Truman's original desire: to supply reliable information about what was going on in the rest of the world. It totally failed to insert agents into Soviet-bloc governments. Intelligence came from the antennas of the National Security Agency, and from a few Soviet volunteers.
Decades later, a drunk named Aldrich Ames, who "failed upward for 17 years," gave the Russians the names of every Soviet agent he knew about, and he knew most of them. After all, he was the CIA's chief of counterintelligence for the USSR and Eastern Europe. He also supplied the names and jobs of hundreds of his colleagues. It took the agency seven years to catch him.
A litany of incompetence
Reading this litany of incompetence, it's hard to see how the CIA survived even its first decade. Many of the presidents it served regarded it with contempt and distrust.
But while the CIA couldn't fool Soviet counterintelligence, or outsmart Osama Bin Laden, it could always present something that its political masters would swallow: a convenient thug installed in some government, some Soviet helicopters downed by U.S.-supplied missiles in the hands of the mujahideen. The blowback would come, but on someone else's watch.
Weiner's portrait of the agency is probably too one-sided. No doubt it achieved some covert successes that really did advance American interests, and obtained intelligence that guided American policy.
But even the CIA's own statement about his book is notably defensive: Yeah, Ames sold our guys out, but they did good work before he nailed them.
What seems clear from Weiner's book, though, is that the CIA effectively ruined the lives of almost everyone on the planet. It corrupted democratic governments and backed up dictators. It gave the Soviets and Chinese good excuses for oppressing their own people. It trained Osama Bin Laden and then failed to stop him when he turned against the West.
Perhaps we'd have been better off if Secretary of State Henry Stimson, back in 1929, hadn't shut down the U.S. "Black Chamber" that had been decoding foreign messages since 1917. "Gentlemen do not read one another's mail," he primly explained.
But if Stimson had let a professional intelligence service continue to grow, it would have been well prepared for World War II. The OSS amateurs would never have got off the ground. Postwar U.S. governments would have had reliable information.
And the rest of us might have had longer and happier lives.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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20
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HowMuchLonger
4 years ago
Is CIA a failure?
"It trained Osama Bin Laden and then failed to stop him when he turned against the West." How about it trained ObL to turn against the West? They trained Hussein, who served them well. They trained Bush Sr., who trained Bush Jr., who now owns (as in pwns) the formerly great nation.
What you see as failure they see as a good thing. Every failure "proves", that there are scores of successes.
"Cat's Cradle", the arson of Reichstag, and countless other items of our culture prove that the CIA lives happily at the expense of everyone else.
Are they a failure?
bpither1
4 years ago
Military or Civil
Military or Civil Intelligence are oxymorons when the accumulation of information is subject to interpretation. You can have all the resources in the world to fight your battles and yet fail in the end game. It's just too bad the innocent and powerless are crushed beneath the wheel in the process.
My father was on Crete during the German invasion of May, 1941 and I took a particular interest in understanding what happened. It is an extraordinary story of the fallibility of the human senses and perception even if you have all the advantages. The Intelligence gatherers at Bletchley Park near Cambridge had cracked the German code and knew everything. They knew the date of the invasion, where the Germans were landing and how many men (20,000). The British had twice the number (42,000) led by a very brave Victoria Cross recipient. Another New Zealander, also a Victoria Cross recipient commanded the ground forces which would meet the first German parachute jump. They had the Intelligence, the numerical advantage, the guts and yet they lost!
How could that happen?
Simply put: every single invasion up until that time came from the sea. Even if all the information pointed to an airborne invasion, the first of its kind, the British held back anticipating the main thrust would come on the beaches. They refused to believe it could be any different despite all the information indicating otherwise.
Even if you believed an assault would be from the air would you risk your command, your life and the lives of your closest comrades to behave any differently from your previous experience?
You can transpose this same scenario to present day as an ironclad response to the nutbars who believe that 9/11 was a major conspiracy.
harry
4 years ago
good intention but...
a little naive. if this book becomes popular it may open a few eyes, which is always good. however another book: "Nato's Secret Army" is perhaps a better source. i think it would be interesting to explore what else those 'oh so social' ones were up to, and which familiar names on that list.
harry
4 years ago
and bpither1....
wrong. it's not just too bad, it's wrong. inexusable, criminal. the assumptions/apologies behind your statement are frightening.
right. one can see whatever one wants when wearing the appropriate glasses. this is why science gets stuff wrong, that tricky interpretation thing. having said that, which set of accumulated information did you consult whilst forming an opinion on 9/11?
bpither1
4 years ago
harry
"too bad" is an understatement rather than an assumption or apology.
"which set of accumulated information" - didn't have too - just used common sense. Look at it this way: How many conspirators would it have taken to engineer 9/11? Hundreds? Thousands? Not one of whom during the past 6 and a half years got drunk in a bar and blabbed away about how smart they were to pull the wool over the public eye. Or, sold the information to the media after a divorce left someone broke.
9/11 was a failure of intelligence because it took a long time before anyone in authority was going to risk their neck (and the mortgage) by believing what was in front of their nose. Those with the initiative to act otherwise are usually kept under wraps as low grade intelligence officers and are rarely promoted by the unimaginative sloths who run the show.
clubofrome
4 years ago
Nut Bar 1
As long as you buy into present day market economics, I guess you'll believe anything! Hamsters on the wheel, independant thought is neither incouraged nor taught. The public is dumb and numb, and those crushed under the wheels are just the price of progress. War is sport. The coverage is just the same, and still we rehash the battles for years after, just like old football games. Never questioning why we were fighting in the first place. It's the sport of kings and presidents and prime ministers, puppets whose strings are pulled by their masters who feel entitled to rule the earth and all it's resources. They send us to war so they can feel powerful. As Ed says temporary control of energy. Resources that are quickly disappearing by the way, and the trickle down effect to the middle classes is drying up. When the bank failures start for real then look out, because the big economic wheel will stop and in about a week the food shortages begin. I used to think 50 - 60 years before the real shit hits the fan. Keep a close eye on what happens in the next few years, especially in the US. When it does, people will still look to their governments for relief!! They take it all away, the house of cards crumbles, and then you ask them to fix it!! Who's the nutbar?
I'm sorry! Did I interrupt your train of thought?
bpither1
4 years ago
My point, harry, in the
My point, harry, in the original post on the 1941 Crete campaign was to exemplify that no matter how much information one accumulates it is imperfect, since chaos is the natural product of any clash between opposing wills; clear, predictable and mechanistic interaction is just a fairy tale. That's why we get it wrong sometimes.
The processing of information is what interests me. All you have to do is stand in a circle of 10, whisper a story to the person beside you, and listen to how it changes by the time it quietly goes around and gets back to you.
In addition what we often view as true is just whatever our peers let us get away with, or else "the truth" is brilliantly accepted for the moment until the contradictions pile high and create the next paradigm a hundred years hence. You mention science: The Aristotelian inquisitors who challenged Galileo refused to look into the newly invented telescope because they knew what the stars looked like based on their interpretation of scripture and Ptolemy.
My comment on the competent being left to wither by the slothful can be summed up by British Prime Minister Lloyd George when he referred to a WW 1 officer as " One of the most able and successful brains I met in any army. Needless to say, he never rose in the war above the rank of colonel."
Van Isle
4 years ago
I must be a nutbar.
If you want to believe in something then I suggest that everyone have a look at the movie Zietgeist, then see who's the nutbar.
James Burns
4 years ago
The CIA simply makes things
The CIA simply makes things far worse around the world. The US would be far safer if they simply disbanded the agency.
As for intelligence, there's always been a far simpler way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Intelligence
"Secret" information by it's very nature is going to be riddled with inaccuracy. It's only through repeatedly verifiable sources of information that you can actually begin to form an accurate picture of any given situation (much like how scientists are able to form an accurate picture of aspect of reality from huge numbers of independently verifiable experiments).
The CIA is just a secret club for American elites, where they can get up to all the worst forms of human behavior in the name of national security.
clubofrome
4 years ago
Recent headlines from the web...
So much for Larry and Curly! What's Moe been up to...
Doesn't the Homeland Security Department give you that warm and safe feeling too!
The brain
4 years ago
CIA spooks, war profiteers and war mongers
When it comes to the security of any nation, nation by nation has to be examined thoroughly for:
Resources
Demographics (pop, language, governments)
Terrain and geographical location, including neighboring nations
Military capability and history
And knowing the facts of each nation by nation... the next question of growing populations, consumption trends and resource extraction, sustainability and environmental sustainability of life must be found.
Contingencies such as Green tech, the implications of geothermal closed loops in target locations on a big power generated level must be looked at. Hydrogen generation, solar refraction, panels, wind mills, tides, hydro and estimated resources needed to generate power would be needed models that must be looked at for the future survival of the human populations we have now, never mind the expected increases in human populations to come.
Need to know whats left? Ask a geologist..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybRz91eimTg
So far, all we have seen from the CIA is the emergence of a privatized war in Iraq with the likes of Haliburton/KBR and Blackwater fighting covert ops. We have witnessed a death count as high as 1.2 million now in Iraq with most of its oil techs assassinated in an attempt to force Iraqi governments to de-nationalize their resources... and its working.
The same thing is happening in Afghanistan where oil and gas estimates have gone through the roof in the North of Afghanistan.
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav090306.shtml
The brain
4 years ago
Cont.
Virutally every war, coup or governmental leader assassination has been CIA involved to secure assets for corporate america. In some cases, corporations themselves are directly involved. The securitization and war with the Taleban (which are Pushtin tribes numbering 14 million mainly in the south of Afghanistans 28 million as well as 28 million in Pakistan out of a nation of 162 million) exists to develop the North and break the Talibans ability to nationalize oil & gas assets in the North.
The nationalist Taleban government has been demonized as is often the case of any other government that nationalizes assets the U.S. wants to own through globalization.
The war on terror and the spread of democracy is nothing more than words used to cover the quest for corporate and large shareholder ownership of the worlds largest resources. The CIA is used to keep the U.S. empire strong and the only way it can do so is to keep the worlds most prized resources under the ownership and development of the U.S. itself.
Most people don't know for example, that the war on Vietnam was over oil and the reason for war with Vietnam was Norwood which was a claimed Vietnam naval strike on U.S. ships which was also a bald faced lie.
U.S. foreign policy is like this. First there is negotiations to get the resources they want. Usually, its bribes. If bribes don't work, it turns to threats. If threats don't work, the U.S. government tries a coup. If the coup doesn't work, the U.S. counts beans and looks at the option of invasion/occupation. Welcome to the CIA playbook and its an ugly one for imperial conquests to support an empires world dominance and not much more.
The brain
4 years ago
Lies www.youtube.com/watch?v
Lies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYI7JXGqd0o&feature=related
PBS clips of intelligence worth watching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygb5uyPZBkg
G West
4 years ago
Not sure they even 'need' the CIA
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/us/13fisa.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
gkam
4 years ago
successes
The CIA apologists like to complain that we only know of their failures, and not their successes. Not true.
We know of their "success" in the ruin of the democratically-elected Mossadeq in Iran. We replaced him with our puppet, the hated Shah, and started the misery that has lasted for generations.
Following that debacle, they destabilized the democratically-elected Jacobo Arbenz in Central America, bringing the pain of success to those people, leaving more than 100,000 to die by torture from the violent right-wing dictatorships we put in power.
We could go on to Nicaragua, Vietnam, Chile, and almost every other country cursed by CIA aggression.
The CIA airline, Air America, ran hard drugs from Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base while I was there, in their DeHavilland Otters, Pilatus Porters, and Helio STOLs, run by Albert Hakim, the buddy of Ollie North, hiding the millions in the Nugen-Hand Bank in Australia.
Later, they ran cocaine out of Ilopango Airport in Tegucigalpa (hangar five), until our streets were awash in it.
These people are war criminals.
emulatenorway
4 years ago
Watching...
Okay the CIA has been used for the benefit of the Capitalist system. This is not news, every intelligence source is going to try to "balance" its interests regardless of what ideologies they are supporting. Really the problem if you want to call it that is too much media exposure for the CIA and interest by peoples all over the world. Mention CSIS and no one has any examples of coups or failures, how about Germanys intelligence services or maybe the NSA.
There is no need to demonize an organization for doing what they were set up to do. Although these people have done very bad things in the past it is up to thier governments to restrict working practices to facilitate outcomes with less collateral damage and somewhat more humanitarian means. Some of the problems with outcomes from operations around the world result in apathy about the regions once goals are reached. This tends to be where the CIA goes wrong.
Dictatorships have suppressive qualities that many have to bear because of a lack of willingness to formulate political idologues closer to what we are experiencing at the moment, soft Facism. IT is not the lack of resources because this can litterally be done relatively cheaply at the expense of expediency. Time always seems to be the biggest agent of results, therefore if you have as leader of a nation one 4 year term to get your results to develop your world expediency is going to be the main goal.
Jackboots are all the same no matter who is in them.
The brain
4 years ago
Demons
Actually, there is that need. The roles the CIA has played throughout the world over the last 50 years has been incredibly demonic. The term demonic to describe the CIA is highly apt. Lets not forget how many countless times the CIA has demonized a people for imperial means, here. How many coups... civil wars have they instigated... how many outright wars... what, the CIA couldn't come up with a better plan than pinky and the brain world domination that has cost the lives of millions of people?
We are talking about an organization that has continually had horrific "back up" plans if these plans weren't "first". We are talking about intelligence guiding a nation here, after all, that has killed/murdered more people in this planet than any other nation in this world since WWII.
Intelligence is supposed to be about intelligence, not clubbing nations with nationalized assets over the head to take what they want. To think, to remotely entertain the idea that its needed.... is to not think at all. Its like GWB's lust for oil burning flying in the face of global warming and creating oil war after oil war until its all gone and the environment hovers on the brink of total ecological collapse. THE CIA COULDN'T BE MORE LOGICALLY STUPID. Surely they could have come up with better than "lets burn more oil"!!
Demons were never indicated to be all that smart by Christianity. Demonizing the CIA is more than apt. Its needed. In light of a destructive course of oil burning ways without thinktanking solutions needed to get America off oil dependence...
International wire taps without warrants that aren't even making headlines... continued losses of human rights for so called "security"... I'd say its more than long overdue.
emulatenorway
4 years ago
Narf!!!
"Intelligence is supposed to be about intelligence..."
You have detailed the truths about what the Corporate intelligence agency has done and is responsible for. But, you have to take the respnsibility portion of the argument for the results to the people that do the planning and the implementation of the atrocities that have resulted. Rand corporation is directly responsible for a great majority of the deaths on this planet as well as the School of the Americas. The CIA is not a think tank and does not come up with policies that are supported by government.
I agree that the CIA is bad, no contest. But the CIA gets is directives from its directors and government officials. None of what they have been able to do would have happened if proper constraints were imposed on them. Once you closed down the CIA you automatically have the NSA taking over their job. The NSA is 6 times larger than the CIA, so do you think it would be a good idea to roll all the people from the CIA into the NSA?
Should the responsibility for all the deaths resulting from the CIA be properly set George H. Bush would be the one going to the gallows undoubltedly. Research how long he has spent in the "intelligence" services and what his roles have been. Then look at Rand and who ties in with George.
Getting rid of the CIA will not stop horrendous things from happening. Policy must be made that restricts Business interests from becoming a concern to intelligence services and those that are influenced by them (Congress and Senate). This is the biggest policy change needed by government. Corporations deem themselves international now after they have used the CIA and the US political system to get what they needed in other countries. Now the Corporations are done with America and setting up shop in Dubai and Africa. They are intentionally allowing the US to tank since they can wield their power using Saudi Shieks to press the US to use thier power the way they need.
Go on Google earth and see all the crazy Construction going on there. It is going to be a Major Power centre and is being built as such.
The brain
4 years ago
LOL
I agree with you for the most part of what you said for the most part emulatenorway except for this.
The CIA is not a think tank and does not come up with policies that are supported by government. - emulatenorway
They have thinktanks, don't kid yourself! Naturally, the CIA is much more than that, but planners most definitely exist and are used as such in the CIA.
I agree with most of the rest of what you've said, by the way. Were not all that far apart with what you are saying. I believe our "angst" comes from the blind sighted lust for money and power trumping ecological survival which trumps them all. Any "plans" that don't look at environmentally sustainable ecological survival of life including our own of which we are so dependently interconnected with, is a failed plan that leads to nothing more than a literal dead end.
emulatenorway
4 years ago
What are we going to do tonite Brain?
Jumping into this topic was done with some hesitation since I was expecting a rant like Demons and much more. Now after looking over other posts you have on this thread I realize you keep yourself informed as few people have knowledge of the oil implications in Afghanistan. Keep it up.
Here is a mental exercise for you. What happens if Nato and other western forces withdraw from Afganistan?