What will become of the CIA?
newyorker.com157 points by Michelangelo11 a day ago
157 points by Michelangelo11 a day ago
(Archive: https://archive.is/6k1FH)
Author does not fully address that the CIA effectively funds and directs the rest of the IC. They gate all infrastructure - from networks to satellites to drones. When Congress tried to limit their operations with heavy oversight, they spun out a brand new intelligence agency, classified its very existence, and spun out operations on that side for years before CBO caught on.
Could you elaborate / point me in the right direction on this? Would love to read up on this spun out operation
Many would argue there are 2-3 agencies that fit this description but the most famous and clear cut is the NRO: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Offi...
The NRO was not spun out from the CIA. It's a separate organization. The wikipedia article you link to suggests that it was not created as part of the CIA.
If you remove government budget from an NGO and it cease to exist, it was never really a non-government organization, it is technically a government organization.
Spun off to another subsidiary seems like the game here!
Not just CIA. Whenever military industrial complex or bankers want a make over, defers litigation risks or just conceal ownership, they just create a subsidiary, spun it off with another name and/or hide the everything behind client attorney privileges.
It also gives the public a memory wipe. Very clever technique indeed.
> Would love to read up on this spun out operation
It's called Treadstone, there are a few movies about it.
They ccreated a few private equity firms so they could get wall street suckers to fund their military and covert adventures.
From the mind of Tom Clancy:
The Campus operates under the cover of Hendley Associates, a financial
trading institution. Hendley Associates is a trader in stocks, bonds, and
international currencies, though, it does little in the way of public
business and is not known to have any clients. . . . By intercepting
communications between the CIA and NSA, the Campus is able to take advantage
of SIGINT they gather and cross-deck to the CIA. This gives The Campus
currency-trading troops the best sort of insider information, which enables
the organization to make a ton of long-term money without anybody really
noticing. . . .
The CIA used to be in charge of the US intelligence community, at least on paper. But since 2004, there's the Director of National Intelligence, who heads an organization with about 1700 people. They supervise CIA, NSA, NRO, and the armed services intelligence agencies, and control the flow of information to the President. They create the President's Daily Brief, which the CIA used to generate. (Not to be confused with someone's podcast of the same name.) Tulsi Gabbard is the current DNI.
On paper sure, but ODNI & CIA are interchangeable highside. The NRO is spun off the CIA, NSA’s network sits in a network gated by the CIA, and everything under DIA is overseen by the NSC which is “advised” by the CIA. They also control all HUMINT which is critical to the mission of nearly every agency.
Would also mention the last two DNI were CIA directors. The two before that were NSA directors during a time where the NSA was largely controlled by the CIA and its leadership largely shared positions on the CIA’s senior leadership team.
It should be heavily emphasized that pre and post 9/11 IC are two completely different entities. One of the biggest changes post 9/11 was a fundamental analysis of how our agencies are split up and how they share information.
Thank you so much for sharing this enlightening fact.
Also really happy to see a living legend hanging out here with us.
The existance of the President's brief makes me smirk these days. It's probably a 10 second cartoon now, if it's used at all.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/gabbard-c...
I always picture handpuppets.
"Oh no! A missile is hitting Kiev!" (puppeteer makes sound of explosion like BKSHSH!)
"they spun out a brand new intelligence agency, classified its very existence, and spun out operations on that side for years before CBO caught on." - Do you have any details on this? Super interested in this.
Uhh, no? In what way does the CIA fund and direct the FBI and/or NSA?
They don't. This guy is talking out of his ass. They don't have the same funding streams (NSA falls under DoD for example) or missions. Hell, several IC members are military organizations and definitely do not fall under CIA in any way.
yeah the NSA is straight up US military. It's headed by a general or occasionally admiral. located on a US Army base (Fort Meade).
instead of each branch of the US military having their own codebreaking and SIGINT group the DoD decided to merge them and members of all services work at Ft Meade.
Until 2004 directly via DCI, since then via embedding officers in leadership across the rest of the IC.
Today, NSA SIGINT still flows directly to the CIA. They are also the only agency without an independent mission, and must rely on the CIA or CYBERCOM to actually do anything with SIGINT (they are only allowed to gather)
Also an open secret that the FBI and CIA often collude and any operation that they can’t get a warrant for just gets performed by the CIA. The FBI’s threat matrix is coordinated by the CIA and despite the Church probes their collusion has only incentivized and even been codified (eg NCTC)
NSA SIGINT flows to any agency who has a need to know.
And what do you mean by can only do anything with SIGINT? SIGINT is a broad term that includes COMINT and ELINT, which many other agencies do quite a lot with.
When you say spun out, you mean that congress created another agency, right?
Congress gave the president the power to create national security agencies with the National Security Act of 1947. Eisenhower created the NRO in 1960 (well if was named differently and renamed to NRO in 61) There have been several changes to the relationship of the various national security agencies and Congress over the years.
Thank you for explaining.
The entire existence of the NSA was classified for a long time too (including that they had a budget). These agencies seem to go through a cycle where a prior agency gets noticed/public and starts to get blowback, so can’t hide anymore. This makes it more difficult for them to do some or part of their mission, so a new secret agency gets spun up to do the new hotness part - and their existence is classified, wash rinse repeat.
And this is the American government functioning as intended! The president was given powers to create these agencies by Congress, and Congress regularly steps in to regulate and put into law various details of how they operate.
Today's Congress entirely failing to regulate the executive branch and seemingly... uninterested? in doing so is troubling for the stability of the republic.
> Today's Congress entirely failing to regulate the executive branch and seemingly...uninterested?
You say uninterested, yet it seems more like complicit. Both chambers of Congress are led by the same party as POTUS. They are quite happy with how things are going, and actively work to enable POTUS and his agenda. There are some things where previous Congress has put limits on POTUS that this POTUS is ignoring. If this Congress was really effective, they'd repeal those regulations so POTUS' actions would not run afoul of legislation. Instead, they are just ignoring the flagrant violations, and letting SCOTUS (also led by the same party) get involved with their decisions that POTUS has flagrantly pushed back against as well.
I’m assuming it’s some form of regulatory capture - Schumer’s comment to Trump [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/schumers-warning-int...], and the many shenanigans that Diane Feinstein apparently ran into over the years, makes it clear they intentionally dodge oversight and probably have a lot of dirt on people.
And if you were the NSA, how could you pass up on using some of that ‘accidentally’ collected intel to help avoid distractions while you ‘protect the nation’ eh?
It doesn't work that way, there is a pretty clear separation between civilian and military intelligence. For example, CIA and FBI are civilian, NSA and DIA are military. This separation is both legal and practical.
Some agencies are more influential than others but that waxes and wanes over time. There is always some agency in ascendency and another in decline. I've seen the centers of influence shift between agencies more than once.
Your conspiracy theory is a bit overwrought.
yep!! people tend to overlook how powerful the CIA is. it's probably the only gvt agency which can fully fund itself, answers to no one. can probably take down the president, or the whole congress and judges.
what has saved americans is the CIA has been focused on foreign issues. once that might is turned internally there's hell to pay.
You mean when they fund domestic media projects, have their patsies write articles in domestic media, or impose regime change in our presidents?
>what has saved americans is the CIA has been focused on foreign issues
That doesn't really fit with "answers to no one", which can be understood as "it can focus on whatever it pleases".
That's true to a point, but it has no legal mandate to operate domestically. That doesn't mean it has no domestic operations, it exists domestically after all, but it means it does so at the discretion of the entire rest of the executive and judicial branch. The FBI, police services and Homeland Security have jurisdiction, which the CIA doesn't.
Of course an agency which specializes in performing illegal actions without getting caught (often in places where even their mere presence would warrant their agents being quite literally shot) would never violate the law.
> can probably take down the president
It is extremely likely but not proven that they have done so at least one time in the past.
Foreign abuses eventually rebound on the imperial core. The establishment of more and more internment camps and the snatch squads to fill them is extremely alarming, even if it doesn't have a "CIA" label on it but "ICE" instead.
America built a machine for overthrowing democratic governments in South America because they didn't align with corporate interests, and somehow pretends that this can be contained to only operate south of the Rio Grande?
Ironically I think the extremely indiscriminate nature of Trumpism might be its downfall when the security agencies finally turn on him. I wonder to what extent USAID really was a CIA front, and if they're offended that it was burned down without consulting them.
> I wonder to what extent USAID really was a CIA front,
This needs to be shouted from the rooftops to the crazed Trumpers who think that USAID is a waste of money.
It's a jobs program for midwestern farmers to grow unprofitable legacy crops and then it morphs into an intelligence operation by giving those crops to the poorest of the poor as food donations in some resource rich but economically poor and geopolitically strategic areas, all while creating tremendous goodwill and ground-level intel.
And somehow, this combo deal that puts money in poor farmers' pockets AND creates tremendous political goodwill AND serves as a fountain of continuous strategic information in vital localities is seen as a bad thing by Trump fans.
I don't get it. It's probably one of the most economically beneficial operations the CIA has ever taken part of outside of trafficking cocaine.
100%, CIA has long controlled that narrative in this country though its subsidiaries. Just a few BIG examples:
1. USAID – Frequently used by the CIA for covert operations and as cover for agents abroad. (Washington Post [1])
2. Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) – CIA-founded and funded anti-communist intellectual network during the Cold War. [2]
3. Air America – CIA-owned airline used heavily during the Vietnam War and Laos operations. PBS [3]
4. Blockstream - CIA backed "non-profitable" company that controls the Bitcoin GitHub repository and guides development founded by useful idiots like Gregory Maxwell, "Blue Hair Matt," and a handful of other internet trolls with no real software credentials.
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/usaid...
2. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1263191.The_Cultural_Col...
Citation #1 is 404 - unable to find this article anywhere when googling.
Citation #2 is a link a good reads page for "The Lincoln Lawyer" - confused on how this is relevant to "air america"
Citation #3 is not a specific link to any particular article, just the miamiherald's home page.
And someone previously mentioned there is no citation for claim 4
Kind of feels like astroturfing or a bot of some sort. Mind clarifying any of this?
The counterargument is pretty simple - it was directly funding propaganda. One of the truly fascinating aspects of the USAID budget cuts was a lot of journalists suddenly looking for new funding including an astonishing 9/10 Ukrainian outlets who were drawing funding from foreign sources like USAID [0].
As a matter of principle it just isn't possible to run a democracy where the government, in its official capacity, is working to shape the narrative. I can't deny that is what has been happening for decades, but the result is a toxic soup of lies and would explain a lot about why the journalist community seems to have been slowly unmooring from reality - they're attached to the money printing pipe. People shouldn't be paying for political propaganda with their taxes; particularly not in the US where it is probably leaking into domestic politics. Those NGO networks USAID was pushing money towards appear to be hostile in the main to the Trump voter base and their political objectives.
[0] https://rsf.org/en/usa-trump-s-foreign-aid-freeze-throws-jou... - I note they put in an erratum, although given that the US is almost certainly trying to obscure where its propaganda funding there are still a lot of questions. Their source in imi.org.ua was quoting some eyebrow-raising numbers.
>As a matter of principle it just isn't possible to run a democracy where the government, in its official capacity, is working to shape the narrative.
You're not that naive...come on.
Of course it's possible to run a democracy when the government is working to shape the narrative. Every government regardless of their type tries to control narratives. That's sort of their whole thing....
Quite. Only billionaires should own propaganda organizations. The toxic soup of lies should be fully private.
>Ironically I think the extremely indiscriminate nature of Trumpism might be its downfall when the security agencies finally turn on him. I wonder to what extent USAID really was a CIA front, and if they're offended that it was burned down without consulting them.
If it was a swamp/intel front I don't think it could've gotten burned down. I think the CIA laughed the whole time "this is what those idiots get for not doing their stuff under our umbrella and letting us take our cut".
Just because Trump represents a slightly different faction of capital doesn’t mean he seriously threatens the one the CIA is the paramilitary arm of, though.
That would explain a lot about how aggressively it was nuked. Trump's operators hate the CIA with a memetic passion, to the point it's like a joke.
I would be shocked if the CIA hadn't registered what was happening, isolated its would-be minder, and gone totally dark. If they hadn't been running an American imperialist plot to conquer their Cold War enemy, by now they've got no choice but to do that. And we won't be hearing about it unless they had a complete collapse of opsec.
They don't have operational control of the ICE camps, though maybe they'd rather take them over than take them down.
Huh? Most of the point of killing USAID was because it was a CIA front.
And yes, they've been operating domestically as well with the same color revolution tactics. Particularly to try to keep Trump out of office.
Trying to project this onto ICE is cute.
>>America built a machine for overthrowing democratic governments in South America because they didn't align with corporate interests, and somehow pretends that this can be contained to only operate south of the Rio Grande?
It's been used in Ukraine and other Eastern Europe countries as well.
This is a slur against the genuine demands for freedom from those countries, and not one you'd say if you listen to people from there.
(while I'm happy to condemn the CIA, the existence of one bad actor does not disprove the existence of other bad actors out there)
So countries in Latin America didn't want to be "free" as well?
I don't think people wanted Pinochet and his torture and murder spree, no. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14584095
You are correct, originally people of Chile voted for Salvador Allende, A leftist politician.
But that has been deemed unfit by the CIA and somehow Pinochet coup d'etat succeeded.
Backing from the US helped a lot there.
Well that's one country in South America. What about the rest?
heard of Venezula? [https://time.com/5512005/venezuela-us-intervention-history-l...]
US support for the ‘64 Military coup in Brazil? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Brazilian_coup_d%27%C3%...]
and Bolivia.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...]
Not to mention all the drug war meddling in Columbia, etc.
Or the really crazy Operation Condor [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor]. Which included Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Peru.
You’d have to be willfully ignorant to not know this history.
Screwing with South America has to be one of the CIA’s favorite hobbies.