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The CIA's Reckless Breach of Trust

nytimes.com

21–30 of 94 posts

Re: The CIA's Reckless Breach of Trust

#21
post #2

No surprises here, of course this is what happens when you create an agency whose mission is to lie, decieve, and break the law, and then give it limited oversight and almost unlimited funding. The CIA's entire history is just one scandal after another.

Of course, a mission like the CIA's does not exactly lend itself to strong oversight. The issues of which you speak, seem like inherent challenges to making effective yet responsible intelligence organizations, rather than just garden variety stupid choices.

I agree that making an intelligence organization effective yet responsible is inherently challenging, but I also think that our government has made plenty of garden variety stupid choices w/r/t the CIA as well.

At this point from a simple costs vs. benefits standpoint I just do not see how even having a CIA (or at least the Clandestine Service portion) is worth it. They have wasted probably billions of dollars on countless blunders over the decades. They constantly embarrass the State Department by lying to and stealing from our supposed allies, and getting caught doing it. And they get informants killed. Now they're spying on the US's own democratically elected representatives. Meanwhile, what imminent dangers to US security has the Clandestine Service ever prevented? How do they justify their own existence? The Cold War ended decades ago, I don't see how their mission is relevant anymore.

Re: The CIA's Reckless Breach of Trust

#22

Well, I wrote my congressmen. What else can we possibly do? This is, however, a fucking travesty of justice. How can you possibly be caught committing a crime and have the higher-ups formally apologize, and say they wont do it again? This is high treason against the United States Senate. What the hell is wrong with this country? I feel like the US is one big democratic tease, pretending to be a bastion of free though…

> relatively peaceful

[citation needed]

The US has seldom had a decade of peace in its history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_...

Re: The CIA's Reckless Breach of Trust

#23
post #4
post #2

No surprises here, of course this is what happens when you create an agency whose mission is to lie, decieve, and break the law, and then give it limited oversight and almost unlimited funding. The CIA's entire history is just one scandal after another.

The CIA's charter forbids any domestic campaigns...

But defines "domestic" as something that never touches the internet, and never once does business with or makes a phone call to a foreign national.

Re: The CIA's Reckless Breach of Trust

#24

So we know from recent history that the US Justice Department thinks accessing a computer network without authorization is worth 35 years in prison. I was going to pose the question what the over / under line would be on charges for those members of the CIA who did this but then I realized that it would be a silly question. When it comes to the US Government the corollary of too big to fail is too powerful to jail.

It was CIA computers accessed by the CIA. :)

Re: The CIA's Reckless Breach of Trust

#25
You know what's CIA's even more reckless breach of trust? Organizing fake vaccination campaigns[0]. Now the efforts with eradicating Polio in some parts of the world meet with resistance of people who don't trust the vaccination campaign isn't a cover for US clandestine operations[1]. Hard to blame them, to be honest.

"The edict by the Islamic militants to ban immunization was in response to the CIA's setting up a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign in Pakistan."

And now thanks to CIA stunts many dozen (if not hundreds) Polio workers got killed and we risk not being able to eradicate the disease.

[0] - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccin...

[1] - http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/07/28/330767266/t...

Re: The CIA's Reckless Breach of Trust

#26

Well, I wrote my congressmen. What else can we possibly do? This is, however, a fucking travesty of justice. How can you possibly be caught committing a crime and have the higher-ups formally apologize, and say they wont do it again? This is high treason against the United States Senate. What the hell is wrong with this country? I feel like the US is one big democratic tease, pretending to be a bastion of free though…

> relatively peaceful [citation needed] The US has seldom had a decade of peace in its history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_...

Hah, well I did qualify it with a weasel word, so I didn't think I needed an example.

But I would note that we're likely at least as peaceful as the ancient empires of Greece and Rome, and probably "relatively" more peaceful than either.

Civilian police forces are born out of a commercialization of violence and an overseer to curb abuse. While there are rampant examples of the oversight failing (L.A. in the 90s, Seattle drones, or good old fashioned SWAT team overuse), by and large, I'd argue I'm living a pretty privileged and safe life here in the U.S. right now.

Re: The CIA's Reckless Breach of Trust

#27
post #10

"The committee has been working since 2009 on a comprehensive history of the agency’s antiterror program during the George W. Bush administration" That makes it sound like the investigation is politically motivated, which I find disappointing. It seems highly likely that some of those practices continued under Obama, and if there's any hint of political leaning in an investigation like this then most people will just…

Why is it no bad deeds seems to exist before the Bush administration? People have a weird concept of history.

Its completely political. The outsourcing of torture began under the Clinton administration:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/14/outsourcing-tor...

"In 1995, Scheuer said, American agents proposed the rendition program to Egypt, making clear that it had the resources to track, capture, and transport terrorist suspects globally—including access to a small fleet of aircraft. Egypt embraced the idea. “What was clever was that some of the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian,” Scheuer said. “It served American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to get these people back, where they could be interrogated.” Technically, U.S. law requires the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from foreign governments that rendered suspects won’t be tortured. Scheuer told me that this was done, but he was “not sure” if any documents confirming the arrangement were signed."

Re: The CIA's Reckless Breach of Trust

#28

You know what's CIA's even more reckless breach of trust? Organizing fake vaccination campaigns[0]. Now the efforts with eradicating Polio in some parts of the world meet with resistance of people who don't trust the vaccination campaign isn't a cover for US clandestine operations[1]. Hard to blame them, to be honest. "The edict by the Islamic militants to ban immunization was in response to the CIA's setting up a fa…

Shouldn't be difficult to fix. The programs should just be financed and controlled by Saudi Arabia or some other ME country.

Re: The CIA's Reckless Breach of Trust

#29
post #28

You know what's CIA's even more reckless breach of trust? Organizing fake vaccination campaigns[0]. Now the efforts with eradicating Polio in some parts of the world meet with resistance of people who don't trust the vaccination campaign isn't a cover for US clandestine operations[1]. Hard to blame them, to be honest. "The edict by the Islamic militants to ban immunization was in response to the CIA's setting up a fa…

Shouldn't be difficult to fix. The programs should just be financed and controlled by Saudi Arabia or some other ME country.

> The programs should just be financed and controlled by Saudi Arabia or some other ME country.

Hopefully a country that doesn't collude with the USA, since that'll hardly alleviate their suspicions. :-)

Re: The CIA's Reckless Breach of Trust

#30
post #4
post #2

No surprises here, of course this is what happens when you create an agency whose mission is to lie, decieve, and break the law, and then give it limited oversight and almost unlimited funding. The CIA's entire history is just one scandal after another.

The CIA's charter forbids any domestic campaigns...

When a society codifies secrecy into the law, that society has opened the door to every kind of unraveling of the rule of law.

We have gone from classified information to secret laws to who knows-what-all-else.

Among many other possibilities, the CIA's character might have been secretly changed - with it's agents authorized to lie about this change. Such is the can of worms that "classified information" opens from the get-go.

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