Secret CIA Document: Americans Are “Coarse,” “Emotional” and Lack Civility
"The upper class in every country always believes the commoners are appallingly crass, irrational and impolite. (For instance, heres a column by George Will called Civility and Civilization.) Meanwhile from the commoners perspective, its pretty crass, irrational and impolite of the upper class to keep shooting them in the face.
The CIA has just declassified an article from its in-house magazine "Studies in Intelligence embodying this dynamic. The article describes the CIAs response to Gary Webb's 1996 San Jose Mercury News series "Dark Alliance" about the CIAs protection of Nicaraguan contras whom the CIA knew were smuggling cocaine into the U.S.
Webbs reporting was accurate and, we now know (partly thanks to an internal CIA investigation triggered by the series) arguably conservative. But from the perspective of "Studies in Intelligence," the problem wasnt the CIA's alliance with drug dealers; it was that stupid, crude Americans believed this scurrilously accurate nonsense:
ultimately the CIA-drug story says a lot more about American society on the eve of the millennium than it does about either CIA or the media. We live in somewhat coarse and emotional timeswhen large numbers of Americans do not adhere to the same standards of logic, evidence, or even civil discourse as those practiced by members of the CIA community."
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/
Louisiana1976
(3,962 posts)midnight
(26,624 posts)"this article was declassified as the result of a lawsuit against the CIA by a former employee, Jeffrey Scudder. Scudder had pointed out that the CIA was refusing to release hundreds of decades-old documents that, according to the law, could no longer be kept secret. In response, the CIA very logically and civilly destroyed his career."
LiberalEsto
(22,845 posts)cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
DeadEyeDyck
(1,504 posts)midnight
(26,624 posts)protected.
"I submitted a FOIA and it basically destroyed my entire career, Scudder said. What was this whole exercise for?
malthaussen
(17,187 posts)... is not that they kept such a document in their files -- totalitarians are famous for keeping incriminating evidence lying around -- but why, in their little circle of firelight where they all knew this to be true in the first place, was the study even undertaken?
-- Mal
DJ13
(23,671 posts)Ummm....maybe he's on to something there.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)marble falls
(57,079 posts)know their masters' voice.
http://ts4.mm.bing.net/th?id=HN.607997701051385911&pid=15.1&H=120&W=160