Why am I seeing all this love for the CIA here?

[Jara sang]

It is a nefarious organization that operates under a veil of secrecy. They go about there business unchecked or at least unchecked by the general public and have been involved in several questionable if not out right illegal operations over the years. They have been involved in a series of assassinations of heads of states, they have implemented coups in countries whose leaders were democratically elected, they have backed dictators and torturers. They spy on U.S. citizens, conduct illegal medical experiments on U.S. citizens, and disseminate propaganda to U.S. citizens. The CIA is in effect, a secret police.

[Cassandra]

1. It's not like the entire CIA is suddenly beloved...

but Plame seems to be one of the good people, looking for WMDs overseas for us. Also, Rove is such a slime, he makes the CIA at its worst look good.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. Amazes me too. Apparantly DU'rs have a short memory.

In their eagerness to get Rove they are forgetting what the CIA thugs have done and continues to do.

I have no sympathy for Rove and less for Plame and her fellow enemies of the world. The whole lot should be in prison.

[fujiyama]

8. Please tell me

what crimes Plame commited?

This is not a defense of the CIA as an organization (which God knows all the atrocities it has commited), but not every person that works at the CIA is going around conducting experiments on people and assassinating people. It is necessary, contrary to what some may believe, that the country has an objective functioning intelligence agency.

[Lerkfish]

3. well, in this case there are mitigating circumstances...

1. there are people saying that Plame was going to uncover the BushCo WMD fabrications for false justification of war....or at least uncover Cheney selling nuclear goods to "enemy" states.
2. Wilson told the truth, actually doing his job, but BushCo wanted to punish him, which is retaliation against a whistleblower. The CIA was either an incidental collateral damage in targeting Wilson, or a "twofer" (see #1 above)
3. Think about it: BushCo is doing nefarious things so heinous even the CIA won't do it, which is why Rumsfeld stovepiped intelligence and set up his OWN intel cabal answerable only to the neocons.
4. the OLD CIA did some black ops to achieve reasonable goals. The ends justified the means, one could argue (I'm not, but one could argue). The difference is with THIS administration, BOTH the means and the goals are without morality. That's much much worse, believe me.
5. For a group of people quick to slather "traitor" charges against people who have the temerity to question BushCo's miserable failing policies, it is beyond ironic that they in their hubris commit treason.
6. The CIA acts on the behest of the government itself. If the CIA is doing nasty, nasty things, guess who signs the purchase order? Would you rather have Neocons in charge of the CIA? I wouldn't .


Other than that, you make good points in your OP.

[quiet.american]

4. Karl Rove is so heinous, he is more despised than the CIA.

Same dynamic as George W. Bush replacing Saddam Hussein as the most despised man in the world.

[bryant69]

5. No

The FBI is the secret police. The CIA (until recently) had no mandate to operate within the United States.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Jacobin]

6. Its function is to present uncooked intelligence to

civilians in charge of the government. There is significant evidence that they did not want to go along with the neo-cons wet dream of conquering the middle east and resisted providing the cooked intelligence which Rumfilled, Cheney, et al wanted, thus the creation of the Office of Special Plans to re-make the CIA's intelligence.

To the extent the CIA is or tries to be a check on the neo-con's world domination plans, I would have a hard time understanding why you would question democrat's support of the CIA on this issue.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. Maybe because the CIA are fascist thugs? Who should be shut down.

Not only that, but because they're heavy handed murderous thugs who are usually inept.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

15. "Fascist thugs"? No, those are the NeoCons....

...I don't think you know very much about the CIA. Maybe you should do some homework before making blanket statements.

I'll give you a hint...about three-quarters of the employees of the CIA are involved in analytical work. They are tasked with combing the world's news to sift out political, economic and military information for data entry into the Agency's computer systems. That's it...9-5, Monday through Friday normally, longer hours and weekends during periods of crises.

The other one-quarter is involved with gathering intelligence in the field. They are members of embassy staffs, employees of front companies, and in roles involving even deeper cover. Very, very few CIA employees are involved in assassinations, torture, and other violent acts.

Valerie Plame's global CIA network of approximately 60-70 agents was involved in the undercover tracking of the materials that can be used to build WMDs. Her group was one of the last two groups able to tell the truth about Iraqi WMDs...that there weren't any. That's why the NeoCons had to discredit them, and/or expose them. The UN Weapons Inspectors was the last group, and they were ordered out of Iraq just prior to the illegal invasion of that country.

[JackRiddler]

16. surprised to see you going along with the CIA's PR myths

Sure, this is true of official CIA:

"..about three-quarters of the employees of the CIA are involved in analytical work."

And what kind of "analytical work" would that be? To what use is it being put? One function: to determine when and how to intervene in the business of other peoples, by often violent and illegal means.

"Very, very few CIA employees are involved in assassinations, torture, and other violent acts."

Yup, they try to always have other people do it for them. They make sure that the killers are contract workers who can be plausibly denied.

So does that justify these acts? Is murder less murderish when done by the CIA, instead of the evil Rove? Is it less murderish when just a handful of hired assassins kill hundreds of victims, sparing the rest of the employees the need to get their hands bloody?

The CIA long ago ceased to be the president's foreign policy arm. It has become a nest for networks of loyalty (also known as clubs or rackets) extending into the private sector, other agencies, and nearly every institution of civil life. It owns companies, its contractors are full of ex-agents, all manner of spin-offs are off-the-record and on black budget.

Its stated job is to not let you know what it really does.

What is the official CIA, compared to the private spook world that it has spawned, and for which it still serves as part-cover?

JFK played around with the thought of breaking up the unconstitutional secret government, and he was shot for it. The CIA director whom he fired got to run the laughable investigation.

Bush (the real one, not the moron son) would have never been jack had he not been a spook, and then head spook at the right time, when he became the favorite of all spooks, the ultimate company man.

As for the present "neocons" in power, they began at the CIA as Papa Bush's "Team B."

Do you think that because the title of DCI has passed on to successors, the Bush mob are no longer part of the CIA community and presumably directorates?

Plame is an intramural conflict that I welcome, but please don't pretend to know what her crew was really doing.

Even if they were all doing good work, most of her network would, as I said, be contract employees. So they also illustrate the deception behind the "three quarters are analysts" statistic.

[GeekMonkey]

9. Because The Cheney/Bush administration is even worse

[fujiyama]

10. What love for the CIA?

This is about a possible crime being commited. Not every person that works at the CIA is a murderous thug.

[lvx35]

11. The US needs intelligence

And marginalizing Democrats from government agencies by denouncing them entirely (rather than specific actions) doesn't help our leaders get in and make necessary changes.

[Junkdrawer]

12. There are two CIAs...

There is the CIA built by John Foster Dulles – the one that overthrew governments, committed assassinations, and Lord knows what else during the 50s, 60s, and early 70s.

Then there’s the CIA reformed by Frank Church and various ‘Watergate Babies’ in the late 70s. The CIA whose sole mission is to provide accurate information for decision makers. By law, this should be the only CIA.

Unfortunately, we have seen that when the Senate Church Committee ‘reformed’ the CIA, all they did was to force the Dulles CIA further underground and into blacker budgets.

A lot we have seen in the past two years (the outing of Abu Ghraib, Plame, Sy Herch’s articles) tells me these two CIAs are at war. And here’s what’s weird: the attempt to discredit Wilson by tying him to his wife tells me that many in Washington know it and that Rove assumed that the big name reporters side with the Dulles faction.

[Jara sang]

14. Next on my book list:

Ghost Wars: A Secret History of the CIA from Soviet Invasion of Affganistan to September 10, 2001

[rman]

13. I don't know why you see that - it's not here

Maybe you misinterpreted the post about there being two CIA's that are at war with one another?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4085148