What will become of the CIA?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/28/the-mission-the-cia-in-the-21st-century-tim-weiner-book-review

175 271 1 year ago

cuuupid5• 1 year ago

Author does not fully address that the CIA effectively funds and directs the rest of the IC. They gate all infrastructure - from networks to satellites to drones. When Congress tried to limit their operations with heavy oversight, they spun out a brand new intelligence agency, classified its very existence, and spun out operations on that side for years before CBO caught on.

Havoc• 1 year ago

Could you elaborate / point me in the right direction on this? Would love to read up on this spun out operation

cuuupid5• 1 year ago

Many would argue there are 2-3 agencies that fit this description but the most famous and clear cut is the NRO: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Offi...

bawana• 1 year ago

They ccreated a few private equity firms so they could get wall street suckers to fund their military and covert adventures.

RaftPeople• 1 year ago

Would love to read up on this spun out operation

It's called Treadstone, there are a few movies about it.

JamesSwift3• 1 year ago

Uhh, no? In what way does the CIA fund and direct the FBI and/or NSA?

threemux• 1 year ago

They don't. This guy is talking out of his ass. They don't have the same funding streams (NSA falls under DoD for example) or missions. Hell, several IC members are military organizations and definitely do not fall under CIA in any way.

cuuupid5• 1 year ago

Until 2004 directly via DCI, since then via embedding officers in leadership across the rest of the IC.

Today, NSA SIGINT still flows directly to the CIA. They are also the only agency without an independent mission, and must rely on the CIA or CYBERCOM to actually do anything with SIGINT (they are only allowed to gather)

Also an open secret that the FBI and CIA often collude and any operation that they can’t get a warrant for just gets performed by the CIA. The FBI’s threat matrix is coordinated by the CIA and despite the Church probes their collusion has only incentivized and even been codified (eg NCTC)

Animats2• 1 year ago

The CIA used to be in charge of the US intelligence community, at least on paper. But since 2004, there's the Director of National Intelligence, who heads an organization with about 1700 people. They supervise CIA, NSA, NRO, and the armed services intelligence agencies, and control the flow of information to the President. They create the President's Daily Brief, which the CIA used to generate. (Not to be confused with someone's podcast of the same name.) Tulsi Gabbard is the current DNI.

JamesSwift3• 1 year ago

It should be heavily emphasized that pre and post 9/11 IC are two completely different entities. One of the biggest changes post 9/11 was a fundamental analysis of how our agencies are split up and how they share information.

cuuupid5• 1 year ago

On paper sure, but ODNI & CIA are interchangeable highside. The NRO is spun off the CIA, NSA’s network sits in a network gated by the CIA, and everything under DIA is overseen by the NSC which is “advised” by the CIA. They also control all HUMINT which is critical to the mission of nearly every agency.

Would also mention the last two DNI were CIA directors. The two before that were NSA directors during a time where the NSA was largely controlled by the CIA and its leadership largely shared positions on the CIA’s senior leadership team.

actionfromafar• 1 year ago

The existance of the President's brief makes me smirk these days. It's probably a 10 second cartoon now, if it's used at all.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/gabbard-c...

jart• 1 year ago

Thank you so much for sharing this enlightening fact.

Also really happy to see a living legend hanging out here with us.

freejazz5• 1 year ago

When you say spun out, you mean that congress created another agency, right?

colechristensen2• 1 year ago

Congress gave the president the power to create national security agencies with the National Security Act of 1947. Eisenhower created the NRO in 1960 (well if was named differently and renamed to NRO in 61) There have been several changes to the relationship of the various national security agencies and Congress over the years.

dzonga• 1 year ago

yep!! people tend to overlook how powerful the CIA is. it's probably the only gvt agency which can fully fund itself, answers to no one. can probably take down the president, or the whole congress and judges.

what has saved americans is the CIA has been focused on foreign issues. once that might is turned internally there's hell to pay.

aredox6• 1 year ago

Good thing the current CIA director helped the current president avoid accountability for his first putch attempt.

pjc505• 1 year ago

Foreign abuses eventually rebound on the imperial core. The establishment of more and more internment camps and the snatch squads to fill them is extremely alarming, even if it doesn't have a "CIA" label on it but "ICE" instead.

America built a machine for overthrowing democratic governments in South America because they didn't align with corporate interests, and somehow pretends that this can be contained to only operate south of the Rio Grande?

Ironically I think the extremely indiscriminate nature of Trumpism might be its downfall when the security agencies finally turn on him. I wonder to what extent USAID really was a CIA front, and if they're offended that it was burned down without consulting them.

gadders12• 1 year ago

>can probably take down the president, or the whole congress and judges.

As the latest release of docs from the DNI shows, the CIA certainly tried to do this with Obama instigated Russian collusion hoax.

dontlaugh2• 1 year ago

They did take down JFK, famously.

coldtea4• 1 year ago

what has saved americans is the CIA has been focused on foreign issues

That doesn't really fit with "answers to no one", which can be understood as "it can focus on whatever it pleases".

gatlin2• 1 year ago

You mean when they fund domestic media projects, have their patsies write articles in domestic media, or impose regime change in our presidents?

1oooqooq• 1 year ago

probably now enjoying some fentanyl profits too

NoGravitas• 1 year ago

can probably take down the president

It is extremely likely but not proven that they have done so at least one time in the past.

jandrewrogers• 1 year ago

It doesn't work that way, there is a pretty clear separation between civilian and military intelligence. For example, CIA and FBI are civilian, NSA and DIA are military. This separation is both legal and practical.

Some agencies are more influential than others but that waxes and wanes over time. There is always some agency in ascendency and another in decline. I've seen the centers of influence shift between agencies more than once.

Your conspiracy theory is a bit overwrought.

tedmcory77• 1 year ago

"they spun out a brand new intelligence agency, classified its very existence, and spun out operations on that side for years before CBO caught on." - Do you have any details on this? Super interested in this.

caseysoftware4• 1 year ago

Is this a defense of the CIA? The first half of the article catalogs decades of failures ranging from comical to catastrophic.

"There was a time when the C.I.A.’s existential fear was of losing its adversary. In Al Qaeda, it found a new one; in Iraq, it created others. In Trump, it faces an adversary of a different kind."

Further, calling the Commander in Chief its "adversary" is terrible framing.. if they're working against the elected leadership of the US, who are they working FOR?

kevingadd• 1 year ago

if they're working against the elected leadership of the US, who are they working FOR?

Unironically: Either themselves, or the American people.

didibus• 1 year ago

All institutions are supposed to work for the people no? And kind of supposed to have some amount of independence for check and balances? To make sure none of them stop working for the people?

That's what I always thought.

goatlover3• 1 year ago

Hopefully the rule of law and democracy since the current POTUS is undermining those. Which is kind of ironic, given it's the CIA.

marknutter• 1 year ago

Hopefully the rule of law and democracy since the current POTUS is undermining those

The current POTUS is doing neither of those things.

amluto• 1 year ago

if they're working against the elected leadership of the US, who are they working FOR?

The various executive branch departments were created by Congress and are supposed to follow the instructions given by Congress. Various theorists disagree as to the extent to which the President is permitted to override the instructions from Congress.

cardamomo2• 1 year ago

It hardly matters what various theorists think while 6 justices on the Supreme Court are dedicated to giving the President as much power to override Congress as he pleases.

ike2792• 1 year ago

Article II of the U.S. Constitution vests the entire executive power to the President, so technically it is the President who is responsible for following and implementing the laws that Congress has passed. Since recent Congresses (going back to at least the 70s and somewhat even to the 1930s) have written laws somewhat vaguely to give the executive branch a lot of discretion, there is a lot of legal uncertainty as to what actions are allowed in this discretion. This is why so many of Trump's executive actions are working their way through the courts as it isn't immediately clear what he's allowed to do with his executive authority vs where he is stepping on Congress's toes. For example, it is an open legal question whether the President and executive agencies are required to spend every dollar allocated by Congress or if they can decide they've already spent enough to meet the Congressional intent of the spending and can decide to not spend anymore.

pessimizer2• 1 year ago

The President is chosen during an election for this very job. We can't discard democracy in order to save it if sovereignty is meant to be popular. We're not lucky like theocracies or kingdoms, where everything boils down to expert sages or raw power; the vote is the only thing that justifies our country. The only thing that makes people from the US a nation is their commitment to popular rule, one which inspired the world.

The Executive was made to serve the country and the law, not Congress. Congress is meant to serve the country and make the law. The Judiciary is meant to serve the country and rule on the Executive's service to Congress's written law, when asked. At any time and for any reason, Congress can impeach the President, and refer his case to the courts if they think it appropriate.

If law (as regulation) is made from arbitrary agencies, denying people access to the courts when disputing that law is not helpful for democracy, it is anti-democratic, because it denies access to the judicial interpretation of Congress's intent. Congress, however, is free to make itself clear at any time, if it has the votes.

This all comes down to complaining about not having the votes. And in democracies, we shouldn't be sympathetic to people who don't have the votes.

cryptonector7• 1 year ago

The various executive branch departments were created by Congress

Yes

and are supposed to follow the instructions given by Congress.

Well, yes, but also no. Executive agencies must adhere to the law, but Congress cannot fully set the Executive's policy. Congress has very limited powers to force policy on the Executive, mainly advice and consent (for appointments and treaty ratification) and impeachment.

Past Presidents have wielded vastly more power relative to Congress than the current one. You should see the things that Lincoln did! Lincoln: suspended Habeas Corpus even though the Constitution says only Congress can, he abrogated treaties against the will of the Senate even though the Senate believed that since ratification requires their advice and consent then so much abrogation (but the Constitution is silent on the matter of abrogation) and as a result modern treaties have abrogation clauses to try to hem in heads of state but obviously those clauses can only go so far, and many other things. President Jefferson denied Adams' 18 lame duck federal judge appointees their commissions (and Marbury had something to say about that, namely that it was unconstitutional but also that he couldn't do anything about it). And that's just some of the notable things that Presidents have done that Congress (or in Jefferson's case, the preceding Congress) didn't like.

markus_zhang2• 1 year ago

IMO CIA is probably a state within a state with its own agenda and does not get enough oversight.

Oversight is a two edged sword. In one side of the argument, too much oversight effectively slows everything down and makes keeping secrets much hardet. On the other side, without enough oversight the intelligence agency simply has its own agenda, depending on who really control its financing.

Judging from the history of the Cold War era, it is impossible to give enough oversight when you want to fight a cunning enemy. I bet it is the same on the Russian side.

redeeman• 1 year ago

yes, such as when schumer warned trump that "the intelligence community has six ways from sunday to get back at you" on television.

Regardless of what one thinks of trump, this should be enough to have serious consequences for the CIA and other three letter agencies

audinobs• 1 year ago

Exactly. It seems obvious the CIA works for itself.

I would think this is true of any intelligence agency.

There is just too much power involved to not form an internal cabal. Financing is a trivial hurdle for the cabal to overcome once formed.

karaterobot• 1 year ago

I didn't find it to be defending the CIA's failures in any way.

The CIA didn't call Trump its adversary, the reviewer of the book did. They also said that Trump was the Agency's adversary, not the other way around. It is also possible to be adversarial against an individual while doing a good job working for them (see for example everyone with a boss they don't like).

I wouldn't read too much about the intentions of the intelligence community into that provocative sentence by an unaffiliated book reviewer.

smsm42• 1 year ago

Further, calling the Commander in Chief its "adversary" is terrible framing

Terrible, but not an unusual one. There has been a lot of talk about CIA feuding with various presidents, starting from JFK at least. And it's not exactly a secret they do this:

New Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump is “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community and its assessments on Russia’s cyber activities.
“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

And man was Schumer right about that.

who are they working FOR?

The same all large bureaucracies work for - itself. Self-preservation and self-expansion.

deanCommie• 1 year ago

The president is not the state. That's been established multiple times in cases like Nixon, and unfortunately recently regressed with the Trump SCOTUS decision.

But in theory all these organizations swear an oath to the constitution, not to any branch of government, and especially not their leadership.

If any of the leadership issues illegal orders or does work to undermine the constitution or the country, according to the oath sworn by CIA agents, they should be doing everything they can to work against this leadership.

Even the military expects soldiers to reject illegal orders to commit gencode.

cryptonector7• 1 year ago

The peak of the "the president is not the state" was when the SCOTUS approved of the special counsel law in the 80s. After the Clinton fiasco the SCOTUS has pretty much adopted Scalia's dissent in that case.

evilduck• 1 year ago

Ostensibly the CIA continues to exist through your elected congressional leadership as an agency created by the National Security Act of 1947. Voters don't have to vote consistently and can choose to have one branch of government ideologically at odds with the others. This would be the CIA working for the people but without it being aligned with the President.

If Congress decided to end the CIA then they could pass a law abolishing the agency or pass laws that refine the things they can or cannot do, but they're not inherently beholden to the President. The legislative branch being at odds with an executive branch representative isn't inherently problematic unless you think the President should be king.

cryptonector7• 1 year ago

This would be the CIA working for the people but without it being aligned with the President.

If the POTUS feels the CIA is not obeying legal orders then he can roll heads till they do.

HaZeust8• 1 year ago

"The legislative branch being at odds with an executive branch representative isn't inherently problematic unless you think the President should be king."

There's another lens: You could think this, and have it rooted in the belief that separation of powers and the "checks and balances" against political institutions should have expanded beyond 'Executive' <-> 'Legislative' <-> 'Judiciary'.

erikerikson• 1 year ago

The country and the people it exists to serve.

h4ck_th3_pl4n3t• 1 year ago

They are working for their own black budget above all else.

Legality doesn't matter as long as the money keeps flowing.

LatteLazy2• 1 year ago

Isn't the point of the previous examples that every organisation ultimately works for its own survival/growth?

The cia was basically pointless when the ussr fell (I'm not sure I agree but that's the logic). It needed a reason to exist and Al Qaeda provided that. When that wore thin, it manufactured its own reason in Iraq, a country that had no wdm and was no threat. And so on.

I'm not saying I agree but that is the logic I believe

jxf• 1 year ago

Regardless of how you feel about the US IC, I think the systematic dismantling of the national infrastructure and capacity to govern is, to put it mildly, a serious problem.

0x5FC34• 1 year ago

How much is a foreign intelligence service tied to nation's capacity to govern?

nine_k• 1 year ago

Averting threats from abroad is sort of important. E.g. a more capable foreign intelligence organization could have averted 9/11, and with it, an avalanche of changes in the way US citizens live and are governed.

standardUser• 1 year ago

That depends on the degree to which a nation is entangled in foreign trade and security and the threat it faces from foreign aggressors. The US of course being one the the most integrated, most meddling and most targeted nations in the world.

scarecrowbob• 1 year ago

I suppose that position comes down to weather you feel like these folks are representing you or you feel like they govern you.

Having read a couple of popular histories of the CIA and knowing how they thought about how folks like me live in the world, it is easy to understand that they are decidedly not acting in my interests.

If you find the interests of the US power to align with your own, that's probably pretty normal for US citizens. But even just looking at Paperclip and Phoenix, I'd be sad to be aligned with either of those crimes, and that's not even looking at the horrible outcomes of their work in Guatemala, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, etc.

The CIA is a pretty handy thing I suppose, as it's existence has convinced me that the US gov neither has my interests in mind nor represents me in any meaningful fashion.

Given the fact I think that they have done an immense amount of harm in the world, that fact has made my conscience much lighter.

anonymousiam• 1 year ago

How big is "big enough"? All aspects of the US Federal Government have grown enormously within my lifetime, and there have been very few cutbacks. Often times, an organization is less effective when it is bigger. You have the "too many cooks" issue, and the "need for consensus" issue, both of which become more of a problem with growth.

Muromec3• 1 year ago

Well, maybe US will decompose into a bunch of indent states with actually functioning politcs, maybe thats the plan

kulahan• 1 year ago

What an excellent outcome for China et al.

ykonstant• 1 year ago

Yup, as they say, get divided and prosper. Hmm...

pjc505• 1 year ago

"Yankees, Confederacy, California, Texas, and None Of The Above" would probably reflect the political and population-geography splits of the US better than the current situation. Would be very messy getting there though.

lotharcable• 1 year ago

Don't worry.

If CIA ends up hurting for money they can go back to using Israel to sell weapons to Iran and selling cocaine to intercity youth.

Like the good old days.

jbm• 1 year ago

I'm sure the "all conspiracies are without basis / nothing ever happens / I'm not organized so no one else is" crowd is pretending Iran Contra never happened as they downvote you.

msgodel2• 1 year ago

I think the construction of it has proven to be a serious problem and if we can't dismantle it in an orderly way then it needs to just be torched.

hackandthink• 1 year ago

I read Tim Weiner's first CIA book and expect something similar. You learn a lot about the obvious and well-known mistakes and crimes.

But I lack the basic sympathy for these organizations, if they were abolished the world would be a better place.

IdSayThatllDoIt• 1 year ago

It's a nash equilibrium, the primary value of spycraft is opposition to hostile spycraft.

It's like wishing militaries didn't exist.

jMyles2• 1 year ago

It's like wishing militaries didn't exist.

I'm convinced that the evolution of the internet will bring this as well.

thrance• 1 year ago

The CIA does more than counterespionage. For example, Chile would be a much better place if the CIA didn't overthrow its democracy and install a fascist dictator, Pinochet, in its stead.

CalChris• 1 year ago

I like the idea of explaining Mad Magazine's Spy v Spy as a Nash equilibrium. Nash is about strategies, particularly that neither side could do any better with any other strategy. Spying's justification then comes from fact that withdrawal would be a worse strategy.

arp2422• 1 year ago

if they were abolished the world would be a better place

I'm not so sure about that; some actions of the CIA are questionable at best, but the Soviet Union or KGB were not the good guys by any means, nor is Al Qaeda or Putin's Russia.

The failures are far more publicised than the successes. How many $bad_things has the CIA prevented? I don't have a clear answer for that but it's obviously non-zero. How does that balance against the mistakes and crimes? Unclear.

And look, obviously the world would be far better off without the CIA, or KGB/FSB, or Al Qaeda, or any of these assholes. But I can't control what Russia or Al Qaeda does and neither can anyone else, and obviously we need to do something to counter these people. It seems to me what we need is a way to have a secret service that doesn't go to the dark side.

ElevenLathe2• 1 year ago

I don't have a clear answer for that but it's obviously non-zero.

This isn't obvious to me. Can you help me understand?

cycomanic2• 1 year ago

It's worth noting that the CIA effectively created Al-Qaeda, and also likely had some hands in Putins rise to power (https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/how-america-helped-mak...).

However, the big issue is that you can't argue the values of liberal democracy, the rule of law, elections, freedom of speech, but at the same time overthrow democratically elected leaders, torture innocents, run vile ph psychological experiments and keep people believing you.

I believe that the CIA has done more to destroy the trust in democracy and promote the rise of totalitarian regimes that we are seeing now, than any other single entity. Even if they prevented some terror attacks (and as we know they failed spectacularly to prevente several), that's not a price worth paying IMO.

HaZeust8• 1 year ago

How many $bad_things has the CIA prevented? I don't have a clear answer for that

Well that's the problem for your steelman on a position being an unfalsifiable hypothesis, isn't it? We DON'T know - and neither you or I know if it's actually non-zero either. We can probably list 20 main atrocities committed by the CIA together, and with a few hours of research we can probably get it up to a few hundred. But we can't find the inverse, so why introduce is as support in your argument?

lazide15• 1 year ago

The reason it’s a secret service is fundamentally because it has to operate on the dark side.

If it could be transparent and ‘clean’ it would be able to operate in the open.

reginald78• 1 year ago

Can't they just go back to selling crack cocaine to fund themselves again?

yieldcrv• 1 year ago

In accordance with the Executive Order, sounds like great “budget neutral” candidates to fund the bitcoin reserve

bamboozled• 1 year ago

Is that going to be a good thing ?

ml-anon• 1 year ago

The CIA spectacularly failed to prevent the US from being compromised by a foreign power. That was sort of its only reason for existing.

cosmicgadget• 1 year ago

You're thinking of the FBI.

Animats2• 1 year ago

The great problem of intelligence is that collection will tell you capability but not intent. During a war, capabilities tend to be used. Finding out that the enemy has massed forces somewhere or has a new weapon indicates something is about to happen.

During peacetime, there's mostly unused capability, and preparations take place that don't result in actual conflict. Military assets are built and trained, but not being used. Intent may exist only in the mind of the leader and may change rapidly.

This often frustrates decision-makers, who want intelligence to tell them what's going to happen.

JumpCrisscross2• 1 year ago

great problem of intelligence is that collection will tell you capability but not intent

We had a pretty clear picture of intent in the build-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Different countries have historically been skillful in different elements of intelligence. American geospatial and signals intelligence is renowned. Our human intellignece, on the other hand, has been crap in the modern era. I would be wary about projecting the strengths and weaknesses of the American IC to intelligence as a whole.

ArnoVW• 1 year ago

don't know why you were voted down. You are right, the intent was clear, thanks to geospatial and signals intelligence.

Given the amount of amunition, medical teams, blood reserves, etc, it was clear that they were not staging an excercise. Unfortunately the Americans lost all credibility after the Gulf war. History is a bitch.

scythe• 1 year ago

There was already a war on the border of Russia and Ukraine in 2022. The Donbas conflict from 2014-22 took thousands of lives and devastated several towns.

cess114• 1 year ago

The US hasn't seen peacetime in a very long time.

dylan6042• 1 year ago

That's by design of the military industrial complex that we were distinctly clearly warned against. Also, it's very hard to convey not being peacetime when all of the fighting is thousands of miles away across various oceans where the US citizens are not affected by it. By all accounts of the US citizens, it's been very peaceful. We haven't even had to ration food, metals, or any other type of sacrificial gestures. We've had tax break after tax break, so the citizens haven't even had to make financial sacrifices to pay for the fighting. There's been no media blitz to "support the war effort" by buying war bonds. So by all means, it has been quite peaceful for the citizens. Sure, some soldiers are getting killed like soldiers are prone to do, and that affects some of the US citizens, but that's still a very small percentage. A larger percentage are affected by drunk drivers, distracted drivers, or other auto accidents.

runjake• 1 year ago

It's important to note that CIA is a very large, bureaucratic government. Perhaps the best example of the downsides of "big government".

There are a lot of great people who work there. And people who innovate, but that's in spite of.

It is the opposite of nimble, innovative, and adaptable.

pphysch• 1 year ago

Always interesting to read these highly-selective histories of the CIA, where the most powerful clandestine organization in the world is presented as largely above-board and under-resourced.

Apparently the CIA was struggling to find a place in the early 90s while its former director was the sitting POTUS and the USA was renewing its grand campaign to covertly and overtly reshape the Middle East. Sure buddy, totally believable.

And no mention of the CIA's protection of 9/11 attackers from FBI persecution prior to the attacks.

NoelJacob• 1 year ago

Nice try, CIA

Validark• 1 year ago

You're supposed to say,

"Not today, CIA" "Nice try, FBI" "Nice attempt at obscurity, Department of Homeland Security"

herodoturtle• 1 year ago

And don’t forget

“$&773AjjaWj7-_£7f, NSA”

neonate• 1 year ago

https://archive.is/6k1FH

droideqa2• 1 year ago

A good article that is critical of the previous book by Weiner ("Legacy of Ashes") is this article[0].

Here is a quote from it: "A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist has distorted what was said, why it was said, when it was said, and the circumstances under which it was said—all to support his thesis that CIA has been a continuous failure from 1947 up to the present. Weiner’s use of the plural 'final gatherings' in the excerpt from his account suggests he knows what he is doing."

[0] https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blog/legacy-of-ashes.pdf

giantfrog• 1 year ago

The author was not only a longtime CIA employee, but staff historian. Not the most trustworthy source here.

https://nationalsecurity.gmu.edu/nicholas-dujmovic/

droideqa2• 12 months ago

Well I assume the NSA is competent, not sure about CIA.

EverydayBalloon• 1 year ago

"If a genuine emergency were to take place, and Trump tried to use the occasion to cancel elections or declare martial law, who would be able to stop him?"

LOL

cryptonector7• 1 year ago

This comment was killed, and I vouched for it because the comment's quote from TFA is accurate, and its implication in TFA is that the CIA should be able to do something like, idk, kill or remove the POTUS, something that is quite nefarious. Pointing out that TFA does that is very much worth having here. Feel free to discuss.

HaZeust8• 1 year ago

Agreed, but it's a good question. Will the will of the people do it - should we expect the will of the people, as a conglomerate, to make such a concentrated and calculated decision?

woodpanel• 1 year ago

But these days the threats are coming from above.

Author makes it sound like democratically legitimate oversight is bad

ashoeafoot2• 1 year ago

The military industrial complex lies in ruins, the west is in full retreat while other empires expand in another great game and the CIA conspiracy theories where revealed as just left racism dogwhistles. Because of course , non-white people can not be bad acteurs , creating their own destiny and pursuit the original sin that is imperialism, racism and genocide. They are noble savages.

Meanwhile , the agents of centralized incompetence aggregated, rainmade the public behind this conspiracy facade, by hijacking the stories of local developments.

So tirrd of all this hyperbiased nonsense, that then turns out to be the narratives pushed by the working secret service of hostile nations.

If you willingly turn yourself into a propaganda asset of a hostile foreign power, you should leave the democracy you reside in .

ggm• 1 year ago

If it wasn't for "Felix Leiter" in James Bond, I think pretty much all non US views of the (fictional) CIA would be net negative.

Probably the same can be said of MI5.

gadders12• 1 year ago

Yeah, this article hasn't aged well. It looks like a CIA briefing of a friendly journalist in advance of the Tulsi Gabbard releasing the evidence that the CIA colluded with Obama to lie about Trump/Russia collusion:

https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-...

LatteLazy2• 1 year ago

The press release seems to conflat cyber attacks (of which there were none) with election influence (I think interference would be another phrase for the same thing?). But those are different no?

"Russia tried to get people to vote for candidate X" can be true even when "Russia tried to stop people voting by breaking machines" isn't.

mpalmer• 1 year ago

This is an extremely credulous take. Even reading the press release it's obvious Gabbard (a massive defender of Putin's Russia) is conflating two entirely different things, namely hacking election infrastructure vs the massive political influence/misinformation campaigns.

You might also recall a Senate Republican-led effort that determined that Russia did attempt to influence us elections in favor of Trump, unless you are avoiding facts that don't confirm your priors.

gadders12• 1 year ago

>You might also recall a Senate Republican-led effort that determined that Russia did attempt to influence us elections in favor of Trump, unless you are avoiding facts that don't confirm your priors.

At Trump's request though? That was the lie from Obama.

thiagoharry• 1 year ago

They will continue commiting crimes around the world. Do not worry.

josfredo• 1 year ago

Aww, thanks for the reassurance! (Equally useful comment)

cess114• 1 year ago

It's weird how accounts like this one forgets to mention how the CIA rebooted global heroin trade (as well as addiction at home) and gave it to italian mafia networks, and of course subsequent deep interfacing with such actors.

Especially since it mentions election interference in Italy through those same mob networks.

Perhaps it's easy to forget they early brought the fruits of their activities home and never stopped, or easy to believe that they only have effects abroad.

https://history.wisc.edu/publications/the-politics-of-heroin...

skeezyboy2• 1 year ago

"rebooted global heroin trade" lol you been keepin an eye on it yea?

cess114• 1 year ago

Yes, it was killed by the second world war, then reignited by the US, as famously documented by Alfred McCoy. In the US it wasn't just Frank Sinatra that was friends with Lucky Luciano, you know.

jokoon• 1 year ago

It's true that if a leader betrays his own country, is that really a treason if that leader was elected?

Democracy and politics are outside of the realm of the CIA and intelligence, because the CIA is under the command of the white house.

It's true that Putin found a big vulnerability in the US by abusing its democracy, it's difficult to deny it.

jonyt• 1 year ago

The article comes off as a laughable attempt to fire the arrow and then paint the target around it. For example the author claims about 9/11 that "the first attack had already achieved its aims: it dragged the U.S. into a protracted war in Afghanistan, pushed the country back into the moral swamp of torture, and, as a bonus, helped goad America into invading Iraq." Bin Laden was a fanatical mass murderer and his aim was to establish a caliphate. I highly, highly, highly doubt that he saw the attacks as an attempt to degrade the morals of the CIA (or any of the other outlandish claptrap that the author claims).

nobunaga• 1 year ago

Bin laden did achieve what he set out, hurting the US, not just the CIA. You could argue that todays problems actually started with Bush and his cronies cheney et al. And while he poked the monster that killed him too much, America is not what it use to be.

And you, underestimate people that are not of your own.

jpadkins• 1 year ago

You should read the words of Bin Laden, pre 9/11. His stated goal was: "Terrorizing you, while you are carrying arms on our land, is a legitimate and morally demanding duty."

He wanted to get the US in another Vietnam. He understood the effect it would have on the American people.

msgodel2• 1 year ago

The state should not have secrets during peace time. It's a crime against the population. I'd love to see all of these agencies gone.

ashoeafoot2• 12 months ago

A joke? Even without trump gutting the agency, reality of the us spiraling into isolationism and the great game resuming without the us and without us armament suppliers, reveals the Centralized Incompetence Aggregated organisation as just a public rainmaking scam. Its whole nimbus nothing but left imagination with distinct racist overtones. Has that mighty CIA ever existed ? Is it in the room with us right now?

richardatlarge• 12 months ago

A stupid, cynical ending with no insight. Better to explore the way the CIA could be used by an authoritarian like Trump.

Everything in the NYer these days is NYer Lite. And the timing could not be worse.

What will become of the CIA?

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