Has the CIA ever done anything right?

[stormthebeaches]

I have been looking through the history of the CIA for a while and it seems that I can't find anything that the organization has done right. The CIA has indulged in plenty of illegal drug dealings and overthrowing democratic governments (somethings without the approval of the Congress, such as the Iran/Contra affair), but I can't find anything that the CIA has done right. Defending a democracy, stopping terrorist attacks and stuff like that.

So I have to ask the board, is there anything that the CIA has done right?

[salm]

Well, if secret services do their shit right the public tends to not find out.

[stormthebeaches]

What I meant was that whenever the CIA's activities come to light is always seems to be something criminal or just a case of vast incompetence.

[Mr. Coffee]

What I meant was that whenever the CIA's activities come to light is always seems to be something criminal or just a case of vast incompetence.

This is because when they do their job right, no one will hear of it outside of those that need to know about it.

[CarsonPalmer]

Well, the CIA has accomplished it goals plenty of times. The problem is that the goals themselves were seriously flawed. Iran is a perfect example; when the CIA overthrew the government and put the Shah in power back in the 1950's, it seemed a success. Eisenhower thought it was, and the Shah did stay up for almost thirty years. The problem, of course, is that the goals were bad.

Now, the CIA obviously deserves quite a bit of blame for that, since they were in charge of that intelligence, but their superiors were of the same mindset.

[Master of Ossus]

I have been looking through the history of the CIA for a while and it seems that I can't find anything that the organization has done right. The CIA has indulged in plenty of illegal drug dealings and overthrowing democratic governments (somethings without the approval of the Congress, such as the Iran/Contra affair), but I can't find anything that the CIA has done right. Defending a democracy, stopping terrorist attacks and stuff like that.

So I have to ask the board, is there anything that the CIA has done right?

You have to be kidding. Their operations during the Cold War against Russia, for example, were often quite successful. More recently, planning the overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan was an astounding feat that I don't think has any historical analogue (how often has an entire country been defeated by a few thousand people?).

[Simon_Jester]

Cortéz did it to the Aztecs, and pretty much the same way the CIA did in Afghanistan: use a small group of men trained in more advanced tactics and armed with more powerful weapons than what the natives have. Your core of elite, well equipped troops acts as a rallying point for a coalition of more numerous native forces in rebelling against the local religious hegemony.

With the foreign elite winning the key battles using their advantage in equipment, the hegemony's ability to defend itself against your local allies is disrupted: their battle-lines are broken by superior firepower, their leadership is cast into confusion, and so on. Then you march to the capital, lay siege, win, and parade through the streets...

[Elfdart]

I have been looking through the history of the CIA for a while and it seems that I can't find anything that the organization has done right. The CIA has indulged in plenty of illegal drug dealings and overthrowing democratic governments (somethings without the approval of the Congress, such as the Iran/Contra affair), but I can't find anything that the CIA has done right. Defending a democracy, stopping terrorist attacks and stuff like that.

So I have to ask the board, is there anything that the CIA has done right?

They've provided perfect cover for Russian spies.

[Guardsman Bass]

Their technical intelligence gathering (satellite photos and the like) has usually been pretty good.

[Rogue 9]

Their technical intelligence gathering (satellite photos and the like) has usually been pretty good.

I think what he's asking is whether or not the CIA has ever done anything morally correct, given the content of his posts.

[Phantasee]

Their technical intelligence gathering (satellite photos and the like) has usually been pretty good.

I think what he's asking is whether or not the CIA has ever done anything morally correct, given the content of his posts.

Well, the answer to that is, obviously, no. That's why they do things in secret. Is he, a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom the CIA provides, then questioning the manner in which they provide it?

[tim31]

You have to be kidding. Their operations during the Cold War against Russia, for example, were often quite successful.

Apart from, say, the Gary Powers incident, but in saying that highlight the OP's focal problem. My person favorite CIA cold war triumph is the Berlin Tunnel, an intelligence coup in spite of being compromised the whole time.

[UnderAGreySky]

There's a quote in the movie "The Recruit" (Al Pacino, Colin Farrell) where Pacino, as the trainer for the young recruits, tells them "Your failures will be front page news, your successes unknown." or such. Quite apt.

[Hawkwings]

Sheesh, do drivers on the road do ANYTHING right? Every week all we hear about on the news are car crashes!

The CIA is not going to publicize their successes until many many years after it doesn't matter anymore. And likely not even then.

[Master of Ossus]

Cortéz did it to the Aztecs, and pretty much the same way the CIA did in Afghanistan: use a small group of men trained in more advanced tactics and armed with more powerful weapons than what the natives have. Your core of elite, well equipped troops acts as a rallying point for a coalition of more numerous native forces in rebelling against the local religious hegemony.

With the foreign elite winning the key battles using their advantage in equipment, the hegemony's ability to defend itself against your local allies is disrupted: their battle-lines are broken by superior firepower, their leadership is cast into confusion, and so on. Then you march to the capital, lay siege, win, and parade through the streets...

That's a surprisingly good parallel, given that the Europeans were about 400 or a thousand years ahead in military technology when Cortez arrived and the Americans were maybe 100 years ahead.

[Teebs]

Well, the answer to that is, obviously, no. That's why they do things in secret. Is he, a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom the CIA provides, then questioning the manner in which they provide it?

Are you trying to say that people should not question the actions of the CIA because it purports to protect their freedom? That strikes me as an extremely stupid stance to take.

[CarsonPalmer]

Are you trying to say that people should not question the actions of the CIA because it purports to protect their freedom? That strikes me as an extremely stupid stance to take.

You haven't seen the movie A Few Good Men, have you?

[d'Artagnan]

Are you trying to say that people should not question the actions of the CIA because it purports to protect their freedom? That strikes me as an extremely stupid stance to take.

I read Phantasee's comment as a criticism of a desire to have one's cake and eat it too; that is, it would seem rather hypocritical of someone to simultaneously denounce the CIA's actions as immoral and praise their effects.

[Edward Yee]

This seems to be a trend with organizations or units involved in clandestine operations, even when the publication is of successes that would make them sound like fucking gold. Apparently the Director of Special Forces, UK didn't want the book Task Force Black book to come out despite the recounted operations (i.e. the 2006 rescue of Norman Kember) having taken place years ago. Though the source is unattributed, this quote seems to summarize the view:

“As far as DSF is concerned, when he saw the manuscript, all he wanted to survive was about three lines,” one defence source said. “All DSFs would prefer nothing to be written about the SAS. In fact their ideal situation would be if neither the word ‘special’ nor ‘forces’ ever appeared in print.”

Stormthebeaches, have you been following the "Salvation War" threads?

[Simon_Jester]

Sheesh, do drivers on the road do ANYTHING right? Every week all we hear about on the news are car crashes!

The CIA is not going to publicize their successes until many many years after it doesn't matter anymore. And likely not even then.

Thing is, in this case absence of evidence leaves us with no idea what their success rate is. It might honestly be in our best interests to fire the lot of them for all I know, and I'm never going to find out. And they like it that way.

Which bothers me, for some reason.

The problem I see is that this undermines the ability of the public to decide what the government should and should not be doing: they get a badly lopsided picture of the realities of, well, pretty much everything related to foreign affairs, simply because all the relevant information is classified to the limit of the military and intelligence agencies' ability to get it filed that way. You can't even judge them on results, because half the time you don't have a complete picture of what the results are.

Treating the voters like mushrooms might be in their best interest; I obviously don't know. But it's got risks, not least the risk that they'll wrongly decide that something that should be done... shouldn't.

[K. A. Pital]

No secret service is morally clean; many of it's actions are reprehensible and frankly, most secret services are ugly organizations meant to exert violence in unusual covert ways. How is that "right"? It's no more right than war. It's just a reality of the current order of things in the world.

[TheKwas]

That's a surprisingly good parallel, given that the Europeans were about 400 or a thousand years ahead in military technology when Cortez arrived and the Americans were maybe 100 years ahead.

You're dumb as balls if you think that the best measure of technological advancement is a linear measurement of time.

The stone-tipped spear was invented roughly 300,000 years ago, while the bronze-tipped spear was invented a mere 5000 years ago. That's a difference of 295,000 years. The years between the invention of the katana and the AK-47, by contrast, was a mere 1000 (or so?) years. By the above metric, would you give the bigger advantage to a person with a bronze-tipped spear facing a person with astone-tipped spear. than a person with an AK facing a katana-welder?

[Gil Hamilton]

That's a surprisingly good parallel, given that the Europeans were about 400 or a thousand years ahead in military technology when Cortez arrived and the Americans were maybe 100 years ahead.

I might question it slightly, because the European's inadvertantly exposing the native population to infectous disease for which they had no defense had alot to do with it as well. Central America might not have been so managable if influenza wasn't doing alot of the Spanish's dirty work for them, possibly killing 90% of the total population of the region we call Mexico from when the Spanish first landed to the first time they bothered to conduct a census.

[Teebs]

You haven't seen the movie A Few Good Men, have you?

Nope, I know the general idea and a couple of quotes but haven't seen it. I was aware of the similarity which is why I wanted to check exactly what he meant.

I read Phantasee's comment as a criticism of a desire to have one's cake and eat it too; that is, it would seem rather hypocritical of someone to simultaneously denounce the CIA's actions as immoral and praise their effects.

Which is all very well apart from the logic being used doesn't allow you to question whether the CIA's actions do have a net positive effect or make a judgment about whether the positive effects outweigh the immorality. That sort of thinking is deeply unhealthy.

[irishmick79]

Wasn't the Keyhole satellite program initially a CIA operation?

CIA's pre-war analysis of the '67 arab-israeli war was remarkably accurate, correctly forcasting the outcome of the war and was pretty close on the eventual duration of the conflict as well.