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2010-10-19 Home Front: Politix

The Decline of the Independent CIA - Mel Goodman, the Baltimore Sun

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Posted by Besoeker 2010-10-19 05:43|| || Front Page|| [3 views ] Top

#1 No mention of the "Halloween Massacre"

The Carter efforts to shake up and "moralize" foreign policy (and the State Department) were paralleled by efforts to clean up the CIA. Responsibility for the latter task fell largely to a fellow navy man, Admiral Stansfield Turner. President Ford had already made a step toward requiring greater CIA accountability in February 1976, by limiting the function of intelligence in Executive Order (EO) 1190

The new order at CIA under Turner was best known for what the clandestine services would call the "Halloween Massacre" of 1977, a purge attributed in part to budget cuts, but which also reflected a change of emphasis from paramilitary action to intelligence collection and analysis. Former CIA covert action chief Theodore Shackley has claimed that over 2,800 intelligence officers, many of them paramilitary specialists were fired or forced out of the CIA.28 Turner himself has given a figure of 820 staff positions cut from the clandestine service, but maintained that the tightening up of personnel policies had actually improved both human and technical intelligence collection capabilities.29 Turner's critics also tended to be vociferous about the relative decline in the strength and status of the army Special Forcesâthe CIA's partner in paramilitary actionâwhich in fact began during the Nixon administration. Special Forces had diminished in number since their withdrawal from Vietnam in 1971, from a peak of 9,000 to about 2,000 in the late 1970s.30 The paramilitary side of covert action was indeed curtailed, if not to the extent suggested by Shackley and other ax-operatives.

Posted by Willy 2010-10-19 10:23|| 2010-10-19 10:23|| Front Page Top

#2 IMHO the CIA has been over tasked and is too political to run an intelligence effort.

Posted by Cyber Sarge 2010-10-19 15:09|| 2010-10-19 15:09|| Front Page Top

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