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Remotely archiving
Oct. 11th, 2001 11:47 amIn response to an article in Slate:
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Subject: Intelligence as opposed to covert ops
From: Hal O'Brien
Date: Oct 11 2001 11:44 AM
I've heard this puzzlement about Sy Hersh's article in other corners. I think the main misunderstanding is one of defining the CIA's mission.
An intelligence service is one that gathers information about other countries and organizations. Much of the work involves analyzing publicly available material. Some of the work involves intercepting communications clandestinely. Another part of the work involves persuading people to tell us what publicly available material and intercepted communications cannot -- direct reports about what happens behind closed doors.
Any similarity here to journalism is, I'm sure, purely coincidental. {cough}
While the CIA is an intelligence service in this sense, it also has a whole other mission tacked on to it -- that of being, basically, the President's secret army. Overthrowing Arbenz in Guatemala, or Mossadegh in Iran, or Allende in Chile, all fall into this category.
The upshot of this is that the CIA always has an internal battle going on, because the goals of the two branches are mutually exclusive. An intel guy wants stability for as long as possible so his source can promote into ever more senior and informed positions... and thus hand over the information to his case officer. The covert ops guys, on the other hand, always want as much sturm und drang as possible because... well, because that's their job. And if a completely new regime comes to power, one that executes the intel guy's sources -- well, too damn bad, says the covert ops guy.
I think that what Mr. Hersh has long decried is the CIA's covert ops/Presidential army mission. What he's saying in the "New Yorker" article, though, is that the efforts to constrain that mission have also constrained the beneficial intelligence mission -- the one that should've warned us about the WTC/Pentagon attacks.
So, the goal isn't for CIA to give bin Laden an exploding cigar, a la Castro, as much as to know when, where, and what bin Laden had for breakfast... so that if we want to bomb him through conventional means, we can.
At least, that's my interpretation of the article. I could well be wrong.
-- Hal
*^*^*
Subject: Intelligence as opposed to covert ops
From: Hal O'Brien
Date: Oct 11 2001 11:44 AM
I've heard this puzzlement about Sy Hersh's article in other corners. I think the main misunderstanding is one of defining the CIA's mission.
An intelligence service is one that gathers information about other countries and organizations. Much of the work involves analyzing publicly available material. Some of the work involves intercepting communications clandestinely. Another part of the work involves persuading people to tell us what publicly available material and intercepted communications cannot -- direct reports about what happens behind closed doors.
Any similarity here to journalism is, I'm sure, purely coincidental. {cough}
While the CIA is an intelligence service in this sense, it also has a whole other mission tacked on to it -- that of being, basically, the President's secret army. Overthrowing Arbenz in Guatemala, or Mossadegh in Iran, or Allende in Chile, all fall into this category.
The upshot of this is that the CIA always has an internal battle going on, because the goals of the two branches are mutually exclusive. An intel guy wants stability for as long as possible so his source can promote into ever more senior and informed positions... and thus hand over the information to his case officer. The covert ops guys, on the other hand, always want as much sturm und drang as possible because... well, because that's their job. And if a completely new regime comes to power, one that executes the intel guy's sources -- well, too damn bad, says the covert ops guy.
I think that what Mr. Hersh has long decried is the CIA's covert ops/Presidential army mission. What he's saying in the "New Yorker" article, though, is that the efforts to constrain that mission have also constrained the beneficial intelligence mission -- the one that should've warned us about the WTC/Pentagon attacks.
So, the goal isn't for CIA to give bin Laden an exploding cigar, a la Castro, as much as to know when, where, and what bin Laden had for breakfast... so that if we want to bomb him through conventional means, we can.
At least, that's my interpretation of the article. I could well be wrong.
-- Hal
