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2005-08-27 Home Front: Politix

Debate over how much of CIA review to publish

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Posted by Dan Darling 2005-08-27 01:12|| || Front Page|| [6 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Intelligence is a messy business. My end, the imagery part of it, was usually pretty cut and dried: the enemy was either visible at some place, and in such and such a strength, or he wasn't. It wasn't always easy finding him, but we did more often than not.

Human Intelligence was much more tricky. You never knew whether someone was giving you good information, or feeding you disinformation. Even electronic intelligence intercepts could be phony, and more than a few times, were deliberately used to create confusion: RE, the phantom armies in England prior to D-Day.

The biggest problem with intelligence is that some people won't believe it, no matter how much confidence the rest of the community puts into it. There are a LOT of bureaucrats in the CIA, as with any other political organization. Their main objective in life is to go as high as they can, and retire. In order to do that, they don't EVER make waves. If something's too controversial, or isn't quite what they expect, they have a habit of "losing" it, or applying pressure to have the reports changed to something less controversial. I've personally experienced this not once, but dozens of times. The old "CYA" attitude has destroyed more good intelligence than any other single factor.

The CIA needs a good housecleaning, and the deadwood dropped overboard. That will ONLY happen if someone imposes it from without. No internal activity will work. That goes twice for the NSA and NPIC/NISC/NIMC.

Posted by Old Patriot">Old Patriot 2005-08-28 00:03|| http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/]">[http://oldpatriot.blogspot.com/] 2005-08-28 00:03|| Front Page Top

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