The CIA shoud be renamed SLICC

   

"The CIA’s own assessments of the program have been viewed with suspicion by some at the White House, officials said. “Does it make any sense that the people who are totally invested in this program . . . are the same people who are writing analyses of the Syrian opposition on which decisions are based on the future of that program?” the first U.S. official said.

Amid the setbacks in Syria in recent months, key figures in the administration have advocated prioritizing the fight against the Islamic State, rather than against the Assad government. But agency officials disagree with this rationale, saying that the Islamic State can’t be eradicated until a new government emerges capable of controlling the terrorist group’s territory in Raqqa and elsewhere."

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Just to get things straight - the CIA is now by law the "National Clandestine Service." It pursues information using human agents (mostly by liaison) and it executes presidential policy in covert actions authorized by presidential "findings."  All of this is accomplished by the Directorate of Operations (DO)

Since the US IC re-structuring during the Bush Administration, the CIA no longer has a significant internal analytic body independent of the Directorate of Operations (the spies and covert operators).

The independent analysts in the IC are in DIA and State-INR and the work products reflect that.

The analysts they do have at CIA all essentially work for the DO, the people who run covert action and presumably favor the programs.

Therefore, it can be seen that as the person quoted underlined above asserted, the CIA is essentially a "Self Licking Ice Cream Cone."  (SLICC).  pl  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/plans-to-send-heavier-weapons-to-cia-backed-rebels-in-syria-stall-amid-white-house-skepticism/2016/10/23/f166ddac-96ee-11e6-bb29-bf2701dbe0a3_story.html

Comments

[The Twisted Genius]

pl,

It still exists as an organization, but I think it's more of a headquarters company for the analysts in the mission centers.

[Fred]

kooshy,

creative destruction just like was done to the social safety nets in the former USSR.

[Kooshy]

Fred- As an example of the disaster, a small printing compony ever since 80s is paying 50% of the employees health insurance cost. The compony due to its number of employees, is not required by law to provide health insurance. Ever since Obama care 3 employees have dropped out of the plan because they truly can't afford thier 50% of the cost.

[Fred]

Kooshy,

I'm sure HilaryCare! will do the same thing to Social Security.

[madmamie]

Ditto Kooshy...As someone who lives on BOTH sides of the pond I totally agree with your analysis. I would only add that Obama also has a driving need to be accepted by the existing oligarchy and was never going to let a few slaughtered women and children keep him from achieving that goal. He probably doesn't give a damn who makes the decisions as long as he doesn't get blamed for the bad ones. He's eager to become another ex-pres living off the fat of the land with his name on a library and lots of time to play golf.

[Bill H]

kooshy
Mr. Obama is quite proud of himself because Obamacare is doing precisely what it was designed to do; it is making profits for the healthcare industry.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Not to try to put lipstick on a pig, however, he did sign that Cease Fire deal with Iran - called JCPOA.

Of course, if he had very strong backing from his Barons in EU and his vassals in the Middle East, he could have conceivably signed a peace treaty with Iran rather than a temporary cease-fire.

[Cee]

All,

Hopefully they'll soon be nothing but a small puddle. Scoundrels.

FBI Agent: The CIA Could Have Stopped 9/11

Mark Rossini, a former FBI special agent at the center of an enduring mystery related to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, says he is “appalled” by the newly declassified statements by former CIA Director George Tenet defending the spy agency’s efforts to detect and stop the plot.

Rossini, who was assigned to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) at the time of the attacks, has long maintained that the U.S. government has covered up secret relations between the spy agency and Saudi individuals who may have abetted the plot. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who flew commercial airliners into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a failed effort to crash into the U.S. Capitol, were Saudis.

http://www.newsweek.com/saudi-arabia-911-cia-344693

Mike Springman- The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia blows the whistle on the 9/11 hijackers.

Springman went public (after internal efforts failed) to expose the State Dept/CIA conduiting terrorists into the US

BBC News Source: "former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah is Michael Springman".
BBC News | NEWSNIGHT | Greg Palest report transcript - 6/11/01

Thirteen of the 15 Saudi hijackers were issued visas to the United States, 10 of them at the US Consulate in Jeddah, according to US officials.

http://www.boston.co...dge/part1.shtml

Officials told to 'back off' on Saudis and Bin Laden before September 11
FBI claims Bin Laden inquiry was frustrated | World news | The Guardian

CBC News transcript- Michael Springman
"this operation in Jeddah was so peculiar, so strange, and it went against anything I had ever seen or heard in my 20 years in government, that I thought that what these people were telling me about CIA involvement with Osama, and with Afghanistan had to be true because nothing else would fit. By the attempts to cover me up and shut me down, this convinced me more and more that this was not a pipe-dream, this was not a machination, this was not a conspiracy theory."

[mike allen]

"Officials told to 'back off' on Saudis and Bin Laden before September 11"

True! It came from the Bush whitehouse. It goes back to the 2nd Bush/Gore debate on 11 October 2000. Question by moderator Jim Lehrer was regarding "police profiling" on blacks and hispanics. Bush turned it completely around complaining about profiling of Arabs at airports and elsewhere. Said he would stop that when elected. He was pandering to the Arab-American vote hoping to overturn Democratic advantage in Michigan, California and southern New England. Plus he had big bucks from his Saudi friends whitewashed through various PACs.

[Harry]

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/5143/christians_in_syria_help_us_pull_our_country_back_from_the_brink_of_the_abyss.aspx

It can be hard to find news reports with good provenance which give some clarity on what is happening in syria. The newspapers generally give the government line. I found this report very helpful.