#3 The source of the mail story is Evan Wright's new book: How to Get Away With Murder in America, reviewed a few days ago by the Danger Room. Wright previously wrote Generation Kill, which was based in part on his embed with a Marine recon unit during the 2003 invasion. Wright's Rolling Stone articles from the embed are some of the best reporting of that action.
What Wright describes here is an intelligence/covert operations organization that is not fully under control of the state it serves. This is a problem. It is reminiscent of 1960's episodes in South Florida where CIA officers recruited mafia for covert action against Cuba. You can judge the success of those operations for yourself.
What I suspect Wright probably lacks is proper context -- historical perspective. A few years ago Tim Weiner put out a book Legacy of Ashes which laid out, chapter and verse, the failure of CIA operations. But Weiner drew no conclusions about *why* operations failed, only that they did. I expect Weiner will be able to come out with a new edition shortly. |