[OESY]

Angelo M. Codevilla is a professor of international relations at Boston University and a fellow of the Claremont Institute.

[iopscusa]

Codevilla has written some great books on the CIA and its history, check out Amazon!

[OESY]

So what does Congress do? To solve this not very well understood problem, it created a National Intelligence Director. How much easier it is to create a figurehead position that can be easily scapegoated if you wanted to undercut presidential programs? Not that the 9/11 Commission contributed much to Congressional comprehension, especially when they let Sandy Berger walk without a proper challenge to his credibility.

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[BGHater]

BTW, is anyone gonna get punished for spying on us Citizens by the CIA?

[Enchante]

Watching the process unfold by which Valerie Plame and associates were allowed to conduct a covert, wildly dishonest media campaign to bring down the elected government of the USA makes me think that the CIA is filled with treasonous hacks. I hope there must still be some good apples somewhere in there, but no intel organization of any competence and loyalty could have behaved as the CIA has behaved in the past few years.

[TChris]

The CIA last week released a heavily redacted version of a 1973 report what it considers its fathers' sins...

...

Since then, whenever we have had a intelligence windfall (e.g., access to the East German Stasi files after 1989) we have learned that all or nearly all CIA sources had been controlled by hostile services.

I hope her understanding of the intelligence business is better than her writing skills.

[gcruse]

The real sin of the CIA isn’t what they do, but that they do it so poorly.

[Ajnin]

The CIA like most other martial organziations are made of up primarily of two kinds of people, Careerists and warriors. The careerists spend most of the time in the office, doing whatever it takes to get as far up in the organization as possible. If their careers will be enhanced by doing the right thing they will do it. If their careers will be enhanced or safeguarded by stabbing their co-workers in the back, that's what they will do.

The warrior elements, by their nature are adrenaline junkies. They often stay in the field for as long as they can, depriving their organizations of much needed leadership.