US Intelligence Record A Disaster Comment by Larry Ross, July 27, 2007
This is a very fine analysis of CIA operations since 1945, by Chalmers Johnson, doing a review of Tim Weiner's book "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA". Chalmers Johnson is himself an authority on the CIA and international relations, author of 17 books and numerous articles. It is a long story of failures, lack of real intelligence, and counterproductive evil covert operations. These were often in support of the most odious of dictatorships - such as Pinochet in Chile and many others. One wonders about the influence of US intelligence on other allied countries, whose intelligence services receive secret briefings on supposed US intelligence. How much of this intelligence is worthless, faulty or contrary to the facts, and designed to influence the foreign policies of allied countries? We may never know as it is secret and not available for independent assessment. Allied governments may believe such defective or biased intelligence and make important decisions based on it. A good example is the New Zealand decision to go to war in Vietnam in 1965, or John Howard's decision for Australia to go to war for the US against Iraq in 2003. It is clear from the following essay alone, that there can be no competent, objective assessment and analysis of US intelligence by anyone employed by allied intelligence services, who has not carefully read "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" and related books. Without this knowledge they would not be able to give good, informed, unbiased advice to their own governments on the reliability of US intelligence and real US intentions and policies.
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The Life and Times of the CIA by Chalmers Johnson, TomDispatch.com, July 24, 2007
Wall Street brokers, Ivy League professors, soldiers of fortune, ad men, newsmen, stunt men, second-story men, and con men on active duty for the United States. This essay is a review of "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA," by Tim Weiner (Doubleday, 702 pp., $27.95). The American people may not know it but they have some severe problems with one of their official governmental entities, the Central Intelligence Agency. Because of the almost total secrecy surrounding its activities and the lack of cost accounting on how it spends the money covertly appropriated for it within the defense budget, it is impossible for citizens to know what the CIA's approximately 17,000 employees do with, or for, their share of the yearly $44 billion-$48 billion or more spent on "intelligence." This inability to account for anything at the CIA is, however, only one problem with the Agency and hardly the most serious one either. There are currently at least two criminal trials underway in Italy and Germany against several dozen CIA officials for felonies committed in those countries, including kidnapping people with a legal right to be in Germany and Italy, illegally transporting them to countries such as Egypt and Jordan for torture, and causing them to "disappear" into secret foreign or CIA-run prisons outside the U.S. without any form of due process of law. The possibility that CIA funds are simply being ripped off by insiders is also acute. The CIA's former number three official, its executive director and chief procurement officer, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, is now under federal indictment in San Diego for corruptly funneling contracts for water, air services, and armored vehicles to a lifelong friend and defense contractor, Brent Wilkes, who was unqualified to perform the services being sought. In return, Wilkes treated Foggo to thousands of dollars' worth of vacation trips and dinners, and promised him a top job at his company when he retired from the CIA. Thirty years ago, in a futile attempt to provide some check on endemic misbehavior by the CIA, the administration of Gerald Ford created the President's Intelligence Oversight Board. It was to be a civilian watchdog over the Agency. A 1981 executive order by President Ronald Reagan made the board permanent and gave it the mission of identifying CIA violations of the law (while keeping them secret in order not to endanger national security). Through five previous administrations, members of the board - all civilians not employed by the government - actively reported on and investigated some of the CIA's most secret operations that seemed to breach legal limits. However, on July 15, 2007, John Solomon of the Washington Post reported that, for the first five-and-a-half years of the Bush administration, the Intelligence Oversight Board did nothing - no investigations, no reports, no questioning of CIA officials. It evidently found no reason to inquire into the interrogation methods Agency operatives employed at secret prisons or the transfer of captives to countries that use torture, or domestic wiretapping not warranted by a federal court. Who were the members of this non-oversight board of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys? The board now in place is led by former Bush economic adviser Stephen Friedman. It includes Don Evans, a former commerce secretary and friend of the President, former Admiral David Jeremiah, and lawyer Arthur B. Culvahouse. The only thing they accomplished was to express their contempt for a legal order by a president of the United States. |
