Spy Versus Law?
Reader comment on: Hoekstra Sets His Sights on CIA Chief

Submitted by Claude Bogardus, Dec 12, 2007 09:46

Presidents of the United States rely on the product of the CIA at their own risk. The "Company" is notable for its failure to anticipate and predict aggressions and upheavals of foreign polities that can affect the American National Interest. An Intelligence Operation is evaluated by its political masters on the value of the information relating to foreign states' intentions, capabilities, aspirations, motivations, processes, and plans. The satellite photographs and the audio conversations can be extremely valuable, but only if the political status of the examined foreign state is correctly understood. The CIA at present ls little better informed that an alert and intelligent reader of newspapers concerned with the state under study. The CIA seemingly cannot recruit spies privy to the secrets of potential enemies, relying, instead, on "walk-ins" who may very well be carriers of disinformation sent by potential foreign enemies.

The CIA was, from its inception, organized to operate outside the Law. The Kennedy Administration assumed as much and attempted to use the Agency in this manner. The Pike and Church Congressional Committees during the 1970s put paid to that immunity. Incompetence became tolerable, if it did not embarrass an incumbent Administration. The selective participation of the CIA in the political processes of the United States grew to resemble nothing so much as Opera Bouffe. I submit the so-called Plame Affair as a recent example.

he abolition of the Agency is the indicated cure.

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