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News :: Government Secrecy |
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Calm Down Everyone |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sam Smith
(No verified email address) |
30 Sep 2003
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Tempest in CIA Teapot a Study in Misdirection |
The current hysteria over the outing of a CIA official by Robert Novak is of little benefit to anyone except those wishing to perpetuate the myth of the agency among the general populace. The incident is a classic case of the capital's concern for an issue being in inverse proportion to its importance.
The media attention is being driven by a number of puerile factors:
- Some Bush capos' desire to embarrass Joseph Wilson.
- The CIA's desire to embarrass George Bush
- The Democrats desire for an issue, any issue, that might work
- And the media's desire for an issue it can understand.
To get an idea of how silly this frenzy is, consider what is being alleged - that Novak endangered the life of a CIA operative by revealing her name.
If she had really wanted to keep her cover, the first thing she should have done is divorce Wilson. Surprising as it may seem, the evil forces of the world are quite aware that CIA agents are omnipresent on diplomatic staff, hanging around ambassadors, and so forth. A would-be assassin merely has to narrow the field down from about a dozen people to pick his target. They don't need the help of the Prince of Darkness. In fact, the proper response of Novak when told about Wilson's wife should have been, "So?"
I asked an old Washington hand how he would pick out the chief agency person at an embassy. His answer: "the one who was too much of a smart ass and [being on another's payroll] didn't have respect for the ambassador."
Over the years, much of the best work of the CIA has been done by those who in a different environment would be known as scholars or senior fellows. They get their status by knowing more about their subject than most other people and not by handing explosive cigars to their subjects. The good ones, as in other places such as the campus or the newsroom, are, however, the exception. More fall into that category well encapsulated by Lyndon Johnson when he told an aide to bear in mind that the agency was filled with Princeton and Yale graduates whose daddies wouldn't let them into the stock brokerage firm.
The evil forces don't usually assassinate analysts. Instead, they go after their opposite numbers in the spy game. In this game, the agency's record has been pretty pitiful ranging from painstakingly building a secret tunnel in Berlin only to find out later that the East Germans knew about it all along, to totally misrepresenting the Soviet economy, to not being able to find bin Laden.
The agency has been able to avoid responsibility for its history of failure largely because of a sycophantic media, some of which - hundreds during at least one period - were either directly in its employ or at its service. Given the contemporary lack of honor in the media, one might reasonably surmise that the day of the agency-embedded journalist has returned.
The CIA has all the virtues and failings of a government bureaucracy but without even the minimal open oversight that other departments get. During its history, only a tiny number of agents have been killed or endangered by the media. Its own failings, exercises in institutional machismo, career stuffing, and foolhardy fantasies have cost far more lives.
Howe many? Well, the notorious CIA official James Angleton said shortly before his death, "You know, the CIA got tens of thousands of brave people killed. . . We played with lives as if we owned them. We gave false hope. We - I - so misjudged what happened. . .
"Fundamentally, the founding fathers of US intelligence were liars. The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted and promoted each other. Outside their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things, that in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it. . . Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Offie, and Frank Wisner were the grand masters. If you were in a room with them you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell. . . I guess I'll see them there soon."
So calm down and think about something else more important, say like the law known as the Constitution that George Bush broke - by failing to uphold it in his lies to the people and the Congress about Iraq. |
See also:
http://prorev.com/indexa.htm
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