John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA TODAY
“The CIA Is Out of Control, Has Been Since the 50's”
No other result is possible given all the circumstances of the organization.
You create a secretive organization which has relatively little oversight.
Its members are given to understand that they can lie, even under oath. Director Helms openly said as much during the Warren Commission’s investigation into Kennedy's assassination.
You pass laws, pretty much for appearances, about matters like the organization not spying on its own people, but the organization just goes around these laws with various subterfuges, and no one in authority corrects them. CIA has always spied on Americans through one device or another, especially by using other friendly intelligence services to get around the laws.
You give the organization virtually unlimited resources.
You task it with very dark deeds in other countries, great numbers of them, so that they become inured to such activities. As any student of human psychology knows, once people get used to doing things in one area of activity – such as dirty tricks in countries abroad - they will gradually slip into acceptance of using the same methods anywhere. People’s minds are not compartmentalized like a set of laws.
Moreover, on the “operations” side of the house – as opposed to the purely intelligence-collecting side, the CIA having what are almost two distinct businesses under one roof – the nature of the work involved requires the services of very specific types of individuals.
Narcissists and psychopaths, intelligent ones, are both needed by the organization and attracted to the nature of its well-paid work, people pretty well without conscience, as you may well understand by such operations as we do know about.
One, the CIA’s International Torture Gulag, a collection of black “rendition” sites scattered in several countries where kidnapped people are secretly imprisoned. I have no idea if it still operates, but it did for many years. The CIA’s current Director, Gina Haspel, headed up one of these, and her icy smile would have been one of the last things some unfortunates saw.
Two, America’s industrial-level extrajudicial killing operation with drones and missiles and kill lists, where employees sit in secret rooms in front of computer screens to play violent computer games with real humans. They kill people they know nothing about, people who have no legal rights, people who are legally guilty of nothing. They also frequently kill other bystanders in error, but neither bystanders nor targets are guilty of anything.
Three, the plotting against and overthrow of governments in other countries, often even democratic governments if they look like stumbling blocks to American interests. Just a few well-known examples include democratic governments in Guatemala, Chile, and Iran. A whole list of leaders has been eliminated since the 1950s, and an even longer list of countries have experienced destructive black operations.
Four, the utter corruption of many foreign leaders through the use of blackmail, threats, and secret payments. These are methods are used on leaders of “friendly” and allied countries. Talk about interfering in other people’s elections, CIA has been relentless in such activities.
CIA’s ability to do what would be unacceptable things is aided greatly by little accountability and plenty of resources.
In general, we all know what effects power has on people. It corrupts, and the closer you get to absolute power, the closer you get to absolute corruption.
Readers may enjoy these articles about CIA:
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/why-the-cia-always-will-be-a-costly-flop/
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/the-cia-and-americas-presidents-some-rarely-discussed-truths-shaping-contemporary-american-democracy/
