Reply #7: Given the highly compartmentalized nature of intelligence work, I am willing to... [View All]

believe that some networks in the CIA are not actively doing bad things, and might actually be doing good things.

But, when Bush appointed Porter Goss, who is in the infamous Mexico City photo of the Cuban-exile, Operation 40 assasination team, you knew that the policy of the Agency was going to get pretty ugly.

In my opinion, the CIA is like the Five Families. The fact that one of those families might not be as insane (i.e., might actually want to stop nuke proliferation) as another (the neocon family, aka the BFEE), does not make me want to run out and embrace that family.

After fifty years of intelligence agencies, American democracy is in the toilet - largely because the CIA has become a Praetorian Guard for the president. I disagree with your respect for the agency. We tried to get control of it in the late 1970s, with the Church and Pike investigations. The Agency simply went rogue/private, and started using its self-funding proprietaries on behalf of the gangsters who have eventually become the W Administration. That is, we lost control of the CIA thirty years ago. In that time, it has created an entire black infrastructure. If some of that infrastructure (i.e., Brewster-Jennings) happened to accidentally serve a useful purpose for the average American, that is no reason to pretend the CIA is on the side of the people.

arendt