Submitted by Claude Bogardus, Jan 10, 2007 10:02

The CIA's refusal to cooperate, based upon purely political considerations, demonstrates the unethical intrusion of a "secret" agency into the political processes allocating power within the Federal Government. Recall that the Wretched Nixon was finally overthrown when a taped recording revealed that he directed Haldeman to interpose the CIA between the the FBI and a vigorous investigation of what was then called the Watergate Caper. (The Wretched Nixon countermanded that order within a fortnight in a recorded telephone conversation with Acting Director of the FBI, L. Patrick Gray. But "smoking guns" cannot be undischarged.) The CIA was designed to be a political beast. The Agency was to be loosed against foreign governments, but foreign governments fight back inside that twilight zone of secret struggles.for power. In a milieu where the currency of power is knowledge, a secret Agency is a Merchant Bank of Power, acquiring and guarding knowledge and investing that knowledge in operations to gain ever more knowledge and the political power it confers. The tactic usually employed is the selective leak of knowledge that may not even be true (disinformation happens). It is far easier to run a clandestine operation in Washington than in some miserable third world backwater, where the secret police employ methods shocking in their cruelty. The rewards in prestige, status, and budget engorgement are greater in Washington that in, say, Zimbabwe, and the posting is certainly more comfortable.

The CIA should be abolished. The United States Government cannot retain its legitimacy while such such struggles continue. Return the functions of the Ageny to Military Intelligence. The Armed Forces do have salutary traditions of apolitical obedience to the Civil Power, which would be, at least, a marginal improvement. And the CIA is not all that potent in foreign climes, anyway.

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