Burn CIA and FBI to the ground? Start over?

IMO there is a lot of evidence of incompetence and malfeasance in the leadership of the 17 agencies of the Intelligence Community and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  A partial list of failures and misdeeds:

1.  They failed to predict the collapse of the USSR.  There was a lot of scholarship on the subject before the event and individual analysts were sure that the end was approaching for the Soviet government but the agencies refused to believe that such a thing could happen.  Why?  The IC accepted the insistence of the elected government of the US that history would continue in a straight line forever with concomitant profits for industry.

2.  They failed to predict 9/11. This failure was not "failing to connect  the dots."  It was largely a failure to run clandestine HUMINT collection operations well enough to know what al-Qa'ida was up to in detail.  This was not an impossible task.  The IC was offered the means of penetration of the group and refused to take the risk of disclosure with subsequent damage to executives careers even though it was well understood how dangerous AQ was after the East Africa bombings.

3. They failed to infiltrate Al-Qa'ida before 9/11.  Once again, this was not an impossible task. I could tell you how, but ...

4. The FBI has repeatedly participated in DoJ efforts to "frame" persons charged in federal courts.  They helped DoJ prosecutors do that to Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.  To my certain and personal knowledge from my work as a consultant to the federal courts and an expert witness in national security cases the FBI/DoJ have repeatedly withheld evidence from the discovery process in which security cleared defense attorneys were due this knowledge,  I have seen the FBI bribe witnesses to testify against defendants on what amounted to a contingency basis, i.e., no conviction, no fee.

5.  And then there is the current murky situation concerning the leaders of the IC; Brennan, Clapper etc., and the leaders of the FBI.  IMO it is clear that whatever they did exactly, they aligned themselves against Candidate/President elect Trump.

There are many, many more examples but time and space available here must limit my recitation of these issues.

Tell me, pilgrims, why should we put up with such nonsense?  Why should we pay the leaders of these agencies for the privilege of  having them abuse us? We are  free men and women. Let us send these swine to their just deserts in a world where they have to work hard for whatever money they earn.

TTG and I are agreed that the very first thing to do is strip CIA of whatever role they still have in the world of Covert Action.  CA includes all measures short of war but more violent than diplomacy that are taken to implement legal US foreign policy.  The CIA should not have this mission, one they have shared with the armed forces since 9/11.  CIA's present mission is to serve as the main US Clandestine Service, backed up by the military.  In this role they are supposed to recruit foreigners to spy for us but also to run a large part of CA.   It is obvious to anyone who has watched them try to do that over many decades that they simply lack the skills needed.  Watching them try, is like watching a monkey try to f---k a football.  In their efforts to comply with this mission the civilian leadership of CIA hire people who once were soldiers but who sought other employment and they also borrow junior soldiers from Army Special Forces.  Why not cut out the "middle man" in the process and have the military run CA?

An argument can be made that the FBI, the spawn of J. Edgar Hoover's peculiar brain (he amassed dossiers on US politicians in order to control them) and the CIA an artifact of the Cold War (which ALWAYS had too much power) should simply be torn down as institutions and replaced with other government bodies more reflective of our collective nation values.

The country needs a police agency that obeys the law.  The country needs a small agency to conduct strategic level penetrations of important foreign threats.

Should existing structures like the US Marshal's Service and/or DIA be given the missions of the CIA and FBI or should altogether new groups be constructed with better controls inflicted on them?

I look forward to the discussion.   pl

Comments

[Kilo 4/11]

Part of the appeal of you site, Colonel, is the wondrous fauna that show up from time to time. Each new column holds the promise of these surprises, like walking with Darwin through Galapagos.

[turcopolier]

kilo 4/11

maybe we should have a category for cryptid fauna; lake monsters, forest manbeasts, etc. Too many solemn people here. Solemn is different than serious.

[BABAK MAKKINEJAD]

Evidently, neither do you.

[prawnik]

IMHO, almost any system can be made to work, as long as it is not run by sociopaths.

Moreover, the entire principle underlying modern systems of government can be summed up as "keep power out of the hands of sociopaths". In fact, the reason the representative democratic republican system was as successful as it became was because of its relatively better track record at the same, at least compared to the autocracies and oligarchies that it largely replaced.

Read "The Prince" - Machiavelli took great pains to explain that he described not what princes should be like in an ideal world, but what they actually did. In fact, the old systems were pretty much sociopath factories, and those princes and oligarchs who weren't prepared to do whatever it took to keep their thrones were quickly replaced by more ruthless sorts. The sad life of Henry VI of England is quite instructive.

Now, would a randomocracy work better? I don't know. I recall that the ancient Athenians used it for a time.

[Leith]

USPHS has been around for over a hundred years. And their roots go back to Presidents Jefferson and Adams.

[Factotum]

Diana, ITA - loving one's subject matter is the key to successful teaching. It is infectious. Yes, you do write well.

[Max G.]

A most provocative essay, Pat, but there is wisdom in the provocation. The National Security Act of 1947 was adopted was adopted to deal with the challenges provoked by what came to be called the "Cold War." When the Cold War ended in 1979, we might have asked which elements created by that act still needed to be retained. But we didn't. Rather, the key question was what other threats remained out there for our vast national security establishment to deal with, and we found them in spades. The fact was that in the post-cold war period (1990s) the US emerged with almost no "serious" threats like that posed by the Soviet Union and the appeal of communism. That didn't mean the dismantling of everything, but a serious review of what remained necessary could have been undertaken. There was the effort, you remember, for everyone to cut their budgets by 17 1/2 percent, a rather thoughtless way to realize the "peace dividend." I remember everyone gnashed their teath about that. Bureaucracies have a way of seeking to be self-perpetuating, and we all floundered for a time. 9/11 proved to be a blessing in disguise. The "war on terrorism" proved to be a budget bonanza. We had found our new cause. However hateful 9/11 was, it was not a threat like that we faced during the Cold War, and even that was probably exaggerated. We are still organized to fight the Cold War, and indeed we seem to be bringing it back into existence by perceiving threats in every little corner of the globe. I think your call for a review of our national security requirements is long overdue. I have never worked at a pay grade where I could have much impact. It was the politicians of the day (Acheson, Marshall, Forrestal, et.al. who put the current structure in place, and it is likely the current politicians of the day who will have to change it. Will they? I doubt it.

[turcopolier]

All

Max G is an old friend.

[lordkoos]

"Unproven" if you want to ignore millenia of observing human behaviour. That phrase is very old.

[catherine]

''run the government like a successful corporation. None of the secrecy, insubordination and subversive activity would be permitted in a successful company. ''

You mean like AIG or Texaco or Pacific Gas and Electric Company or Bear Sterns or General Motors or Pan Am?...lol

[gaikokumaniakku]

Dear sir, in response to your query:

Where does Commitment to the Enterprise, i.e. Well-Being of the Country, any country, come into play? You cannot run a country staffed by men who fancy themselves as little don corleones.

I submit that in the past, the USA has had people who were wise and competent in their struggle to preserve the republic. A few of them were:
Smedley Butler
David Hackworth
Ron Paul
Bill Binney
Karen kwiatkowski

These people sacrificed their personal comforts and ambitions to uphold the good of the USA. If we have such people and if they prevail then the republic will survive. On certain anonymous "committees of correspondence," we flatter ourselves by calling ourselves autists, and we make the bold claim: "The autist is the natural enemy of the psychopath." Let us hope that the psychopaths will soon be exposed and defeated.

[Fred]

It was much better before the flood of victims arrived to tell us how much better were the societies they had to flee.

[Rob P.]

A little late to the party. Your questions on reorganization of the intelligence community are very critical at this time in our country's history. Perhaps you will allow more discussions in the future because the subject could not be covered in short answers. How to do it is the other big question. My experience in the IC spanned 35 years and showed me that only failures and catastrophe prompted real changes. And the changes came not from the President but from Congress and its control of the purse strings of all these agencies. Congress has in the past slashed or cut-off funding for agencies and departments. Ending the Vietnam War came about not by military defeat, but with Congress saying no more money. The Church Committee brought to light many unsavory actions in the IC with the upshot being a law that US intel. agencies may not spy on US citizens. Of course, we know how they get around this, like having the Brits or Aussies do it for us and hand over the info. we want. Iran Contra etc. etc. brought some reforms, but not what is needed. With the formation of the Dir. of National Intel. we supposedly gained a means to control the IC. Instead this person has been appointed to make sure the intel. community does what the powers-that-be want--not necessarily what the President, the JCS, or the Congress want. Real reform will only come with an entirely new lineup of agencies, firm means of controlling them, and explicit, utterly clear mission statements. I wish. Not likely to happen, and alas, not until a serious catastrophe.

[Babak Makkinejad]

And with that, I will generously, let you have the final word.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Then this is a problem of deficient education, in the sense that the word is used in the Spanish language: educado.

[CK]

I too am very old, that crap is repeated over and over does not change its essential nature as crap. It has also been said over and over that money = merde, and that just like merde it has to be spread around to be useful.

[Florian L.]

I recommend strongly reading the book "The Secrete Team" by Fletcher Prouty. There he explains in detail how the CIA was transformed out of the OSS. And he especially describes how the National Security Act was twisted to allow the CIA larger covered operations. Initially the CIA was intended to be an organization to collect and analyze intelligence from the various sources. It was not intended to conduct covered operations (only very limited). Hoover made the CIA to what it became. The politicians/lawmakers knew why they didn't want the CIA to have the power for covered operations.
Prouty describes also how the CIA can take hold on whatever it needs of the military, personell and equipment. A particular problem is that Military personell is switching force and back from military to CIA and vice-versa. That makes the military completely infiltrated by personell that is often more loyal to the CIA than to the military. When they switch back to the military the ties to the CIA do not get lost. And many of them love the CIA, they call it "Fun And Games". That's appealing.
But in this way the CIA is not only infiltrating the military. They infiltrate the civil bureaucracies, politics etc. as well. Prouty himself in the fifties and early sixties was a so called briefing officer. He briefed some of the top-tiers in Pentagon and White House. They are nearly always coming from the CIA, so Prouty.

Here I can give only a very short sketch about the contents in Proutys book. He gives an ample insight of the history and the inner workings of the CIA. And it is not just another of those hide and seek spy story books about the CIA. Prouty draws also the connection to how the CIA is embedded in the society and how it is used as a tool in the power play.
You can find digital copies of the book on the internet.

[Aurelius]

Excellent post and discussion - thanks

[turcopolier]

lorianL

J. Edger Hoover? He was head o the FBI, not the CIA. Go back to sleep.

[Florian L.]

Sorry, I mixed it up. It was Allen Dulles of course.

[Thibaut]

I read your texts and I have a strange feeling because you remind me of Colin Powell at UN, trying to persuade people around the world that Irak has WMD. So now it is not Irak but CIA and FBI that have to be destroyed and are full of bad boys or super villains. The problem is that maybe the crisis is inside the storytelling that you share with your enemies.
In this case, your are speaking the langage of your own destruction.
But this is just a feeling.

[turcopolier]

Thibaut

"your are speaking the langage of your own destruction." Ah, you think I never left. "Whenever I think I am out, they pull me back." Childish idea. I watched Powell at the UN, knew he was acting the fool and lost all interest in ever talking to him again. Too complicated for you? You are aware that I publicly opposed the war in Iraq?

[zaatogg2]

Did JFK say something along those lines? Or was he misquoted?