Question for CIA buffs: Have they ever been wrong?

[cynatnite]

It's a given they've done their fair share of govt. toppling and interfering in other countries over the years. I think it's something we can pretty well agree on.

But, when it came down to it, have they ever been so wrong as for 9/11 to happen? Have they ever been this wrong when it came to something like WMD and going to war?

I can't imagine them ever being this wrong.

[punpirate]

1. Well, yes...

... about Soviet capability, throughout the `50s, `60s, `70s and `80s. Around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CIA did an internal study, finding that their estimates of Soviet strength, Soviet readiness (air defenses, etc.) and the Soviet economy were not nearly what they had decided them to be--for decades. They had grossly overestimated the Soviet threat, in short.

Cheers.

[Missy M]

3. But did they overestimate the Soviet strength for decades for a...

purpose. Did they do it to keep people scared so the defense industry could keep making airplanes, bombs, missiles, guns etc.

[punpirate]

5. The analysis side has always...

... prided itself on its independence from politics. Certainly, though, the general political milieu could have been a factor in those estimates.

But, here's an indication of how politics attempted to influence the CIA analytical side. During the `70s, the neo-cons tried to use the president's intelligence advisory council (largely made up of private individuals and industry leaders) to get access to raw intelligence data for an "independent" review of the CIA's intelligence estimates. This was the so-called "Team B" exercise.

Team B was largely peopled by neo-con academics, right-wing military, etc. They said that the CIA had grossly underestimated the strength of the Soviet Union (basing their opinions on CIA data which the CIA later admitted were unreasonable over-estimates). Rumsfeld and Cheney, at the time in the Ford administration, pushed this view for all they were worth, despite the arguments against doing so by the CIA.

So, the analytical side of the CIA had tried to resist politicization, even if they were sometimes excoriated by presidents for making mistakes (Carter told his CIA director, Admiral Stansfield, to raise hell with the agency because of its failure to adequately predict the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, for example).

They do make mistakes, and that can be a result of a sort of institutional bias toward US interests, as one might expect. But, one must understand that ever since William Casey, the ideological and political biases of the director have infected the analytical side of the agency in ways that were not previously present.

The paramilitary side of the Operations Division has always been very nearly out of control at all times, but the gradual changes toward politicization of the analytical side is a relatively new phenomenon.

Cheers.

[Missy M]

6. No surprise to see Rumsfeld and Cheney's name in this analysis...

and how long those two have been around basing their opinions on CIA data that are unreasonable over-estimates. It also makes me wonder if the failure to adequately predict the overthrow of the Shah of Iran during President Carter's administration was a deliberate act against Carter.

[punpirate]

8. Actually, the Team B folks thought that the...

... CIA was grossly underestimating the Soviet Union, when the CIA was actually overestimating Soviet strength. The neo-cons wanted an assessment that was even more absurd. It was really crazy--this will explain the situation at that time:

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=apr93cahn

On your other musing, Carter did inflame the CIA. From the time he entered office (including his choice of Stansfield Turner for CIA director--which threw out Yale good ol' boy George H.W. Bush), Carter had pissed off the CIA, especially by his suggestion that the renegade on-the-ground spooks could be brought under control by substituting them for mechanical devices such as satellites.

Carter wanted to minimize the negative effects of the paramilitary side, which had been nutso for a long time and whose actions had been documented by the Pike and Church committees. Torturing people and overthrowing governments surreptitiously didn't figure into Carter's plans to improve human rights around the world. What happened was that the ousted spies aligned themselves with Reagan and his campaign manager--the old-time OSS guy, William Casey. And the neo-cons played them like a fiddle. To see the effects of all those ex-CIA guys volunteering their time and energy to Reagan and Casey, you have to go here:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile.html

Long series of articles, but they make fascinating reading.

Cheers.

[Missy M]

10. Thank you for all the articles Punpirate, I can't wait until I can.....

read them all later on today because it is all so fascinating.

[wakeme2008]

2. Has the CIA every been RIGHT

would be a lot easier.

[reprehensor]

4. Scott Ritter says they didn't 'get it wrong'.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/21/144258

Scott Ritter on the Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Well, what do you think is the greatest misunderstanding of the American people right now about what has happened in Iraq?

SCOTT RITTER: Well, first of all, the reason that we're there. They think that this was an accident, that this was a noble cause, that people like the President, like Bill Clinton before him, like their respective administrations, journalists like Judith Miller just honestly got it wrong. And I don't think – you know, here we are today in Iraq, and it's a disaster. I don't think anybody's going to debate that statement. Some people say though, ‘We're working towards a continuation of this noble objective. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. That's a good thing. And now we're going to try to build on that good.’ And I'm not going to debate whether or not getting rid of Saddam Hussein is a good thing or not. But, you know, if you embrace the notion of the ends justify the means, that's about as un-American a notion as you can possibly get into.

We're talking about solving a problem. We have yet to define the problem. And the problem isn't just what's happening in Iraq but it's the whole process that took place in the United States leading up to the war, this dishonest process of deliberately deceiving the American public. And it's not just George W. Bush. For eight years of the Clinton administration, that administration said the same things. The C.I.A. knew, since 1992, that significant aspects of the Iraqi weapons programs had been completely eliminated, but this was never about disarmament.

AMY GOODMAN: How did they know this?

SCOTT RITTER: They knew it, (a) because of their own access to intelligence information, and (b) because of the work of the weapons inspectors. In October of 1992, I personally confronted the C.I.A. on the reality that we had accounted for all of Iraq's ballistic missile programs. That same year they had an Iraqi defector who had laid out the totality of the Iraqi biological weapons program and had acknowledged that all of the weapons had been destroyed. The C.I.A. knew this.

But, see, the policy wasn't disarmament. The policy was regime change. And disarmament was only useful insofar as it facilitated regime change. And that's what people need to understand, that this was not about getting rid of weapons that threatened international peace and security. This has been about, since 1991, solving a domestic political embarrassment. And that is the continued survival of Saddam Hussein, a man who in March 1990 was labeled as a true friend of the American people and then in October 1990 in a dramatic flip-flop was called the Middle East equivalent of Adolf Hitler.

[newswolf56]

7. More than any other intelligence agency on the planet, the CIA's...

primary allegiance has always been to global capitalism, with the interests of the government of the United States taking very much a second place and the people of the U.S. an extremely distant third.

This is admittedly opinion only, but the evidence is nevertheless more than conclusive, starting with the betrayal of U.S. political interests in China (backing the criminal Chang Kai Chek over Mao); Iran (the downfall and murder of Mossedegh); Cuba (the alienation of Castro on behalf of United Fruit, Domino Sugar and Texaco); Vietnam (no explanation necessary); the Congo (the murder of Patrice Lumumba); Chile (the murder of Allende); the Cold War (keeping the fear and hate at maximum intensity to serve the interests of capitalism by fostering the economic destruction of the Soviet Union) etc. ad nauseum. This is not to mention its domestic activities -- again in service to capitalism -- which include clandestinely agitating the Red Scare and destroying the Counterculture (Operation CHAOS), not to mention its suspected involvement in the politically pivotal (and therefore coup-like) assassinations of the 1960s.

Most other intelligence agencies truly serve their own national interests (rather than global capitalism), which is why in many instances their "product" is so superior to the CIA's.

The huge and virtually total conflict between the pro-corporate interest of the CIA and the public interest of the U.S. has always been evident to those of us who pay attention to such things, but now -- chiefly because the death of Soviet Communism was the death of any functional alternative to capitalism -- the conflict is becoming more obvious to the public because of worsening economic conditions: capitalism merely reverting to its pre-Russian Revolution savagery, and the CIA responding accordingly.

As to missing the clues on 9/11, ask yourself who this helped: George Bush, capitalism's ultimate achievement, as measured both in concentration of wealth (outsourcing, downsizing, pension-theft, wage-reduction, skyrocketing prices, genocide by destruction of the social safety net etc.) and disempowerment of non-wealthy Americans (CAFTA, indentured servitude disguised as bankruptcy reform, unrestricted illegal immigration ad nauseum).

[Chemical Bill]

11. This is not just opinion.

The CIA was started by Wall Street denizens like the Dulles brothers and Clark Clifford. Officials have often come from Wall Street, like Bill Casey, or had family connections, like George H W Bush. Going back to the middle ages, the banking industry has had an intelligence gathering side, more so than some governments. It's no surprise that the banking industry would infiltrate governmental intelligence gathering and use it for their own benefit. Mike Ruppert has a good explanation at the beginning of "Crossing the Rubicon".

Bill

[H2O Man]

9. Two points

that are important. Well, at least I think they are.

First, the Agency is large and has a long history. A good background book is Joseph Trento's "The Secret History of the CIA." It's a fair book. There have been a wide range of people, from very good to very bad, who have worked there. Too often, those who have risen in the ranks are not the good people. This is the way that agencies work, from a city department to a county or state agency. And the top people tend to set the tone.

Second, there is a significant struggle going on within the larger struggle over who will control intelligence agencies in this country. Briefly, human intelligence became less of an investment than machine intelligence, in the last 25 years. Within that, there is the general conflict between the human assets within the embassies, and the NOCs. It takes a heck of a lot more investment, in both time and money, to set up a NOC operation. It is my opinon that the current administration has sided with the larger faction, which is the embassy-connected agents, than the NOC programs. It is, of course, impossible for the former to make connections with the type of non- state-sponsored enemies we face in the modern world.