Good for him! They have literally no legitimate reason to exist. They were founded to be a Central Intelligence Agency, a clearinghouse for all intel that could see the big picture.
Remember 9/11/2001? We had to found DHS because it was determined no one was doing that one job
Remember 9/11/2001? We had to found DHS because it was determined no one was doing that one job
The CIA absolutely should be abolished, as part of a realignment of our intelligence structure that ALSO abolishes the DHS, as that agency has also chosen to focus on being literal supervillains instead of minding the store.
The National Security Council is the closest thing we have to the "big picture, eye on the prize" intel corroboration body but as we're seeing clearly today it is too subject to byzantine vendettas and agendas and too easily subverted by a rogue executive.
Ideally we would have a re-constituted centralized agency for intelligence like the CIA but without the "other duties" clause; it would have the opposite, its mandate sharply limited. No field operations in or outside the country. It would collect findings of other agencies.
Ideally -- as national security is literally a national concern and Congress would need to be able to make informed decisions -- the new agency of centralized intelligence would be an interbranch operation with half its principles appointed by the executive and half by Congress.
The need to have them subsumed under the executive branch has to do with chain of command, with having a single voice telling them what to do and where the buck stops, but as this agency would not be conducting any field operations the need for one voice of command lessens.
Both Congress (the appropriate committees, anyway) and the White House would receive the same briefings from the agency.
What about the intelligence gathering capabilities currently operated by the CIA?
Well, we'd need a new agency to do that stuff. And only that stuff. Not assassinations, not propaganda and psy ops, not weird experiments, not run drug and human trafficking rings.
Well, we'd need a new agency to do that stuff. And only that stuff. Not assassinations, not propaganda and psy ops, not weird experiments, not run drug and human trafficking rings.
It could be a much smaller agency and still provide better intel because it wouldn't be busy playing at being a supervillain.
And, also, you know, be less evil.
And, also, you know, be less evil.
Oh, we absolutely should have intelligence agencies. We've got a ton of them. So many that post-WWII we decided we needed one agency to compile all their findings and spot the patterns, put the puzzle pieces together, etc.
That was SUPPOSED to be the CIA
That was SUPPOSED to be the CIA
But the CIA's charter, the law that established it, in listing what the CIA was meant to do included language to the effect that they would also do "other duties as decided by the director". (Paraphrased from memory.)
And right away, some terrible people saw that as a loophole.
And right away, some terrible people saw that as a loophole.
The CIA was not supposed to be an intelligence gathering agency. They were not envisioned as being spies but analysts. Right away, though, they became... not even spies. Villains. Comic book villains. James Bond villains. Not even hyperbole.
You say we need intelligence agencies. What's an intelligence agency do:
Gather intel, or try to assassinate Castro with an exploding cigar?
Gather intel, or sell drugs in our own inner cities to weaken Black communities and raise untraceable cash for illegal arms deals?
Gather intel, or try to assassinate Castro with an exploding cigar?
Gather intel, or sell drugs in our own inner cities to weaken Black communities and raise untraceable cash for illegal arms deals?
The CIA has given US citizens LSD and other substances as part of an experiment into the limits of mind control. The CIA has investigated everything from stink bombs to cats with surgically embedded cameras to chemical weapons that would turn Communist soldiers gay.
In this century the CIA has operated a network of black site torture prisons that produced no actual intel (because that's not what torture did) and carried out drone warfare. Warfare!
The CIA has had a vested interest in keeping us in Afghanistan because of the poppy fields that fuel their drug trade that funds their crimes. I'm not saying we're the victims of that because we're not. But this immoral thing that is being done in our names does not make us safer
We need intelligence agencies but we do not need the CIA. We would be safer without the CIA. We would have better intelligence capabilities if we got rid of the CIA and replaced it with two newer bodies, one that JUST does analysis and one that JUST does intel gathering.
I'm not naive, I'm not thinking we could maintain field operations by having people do nothing but sit in cafes in friendly countries and hope they overhear something. The field agency I'm describing here would still, I'm sure, be doing things I'm not comfortable with in my name.
(Not my name specifically, but our name as a nation. That tweet was exactly at the character limit.)
But, like, the CIA's original clearinghouse function. If you're a US intelligence agency and you know even a fraction of what the CIA does, you know it's essentially a self-sustaining body that raises its own money with crimes and approves its own operations...
...at that point, you can't ever fully trust the CIA, you can't trust them to not stab you in the back or use whatever information you give them for their own unfathomable purposes.
The existence of the CIA makes intelligence sharing within the US and with our allies shakier.
The existence of the CIA makes intelligence sharing within the US and with our allies shakier.
And I've said this before, but the thing about the CIA is, you can limit yourself to documented/declassified/proven things they did and they all sound so far-fetched, so either cartoony or evil or both, that you sound like a conspiracy theorist.
When a TV show or movie wants to show a character is a "conspiracy nut", they have them mention the CIA and MKULTRA, the mind controle experiment. MKULTRA is absolutely a thing that happened. It's real. It's documented. But it's such great shorthand for "whackjob".
We would be safer without the CIA. Whether they'd let the country survive ousting them and shutting them down is another question... but that's hardly an argument for their necessity or usefulness.
