You know what's CIA's even more reckless breach of trust? Organizing fake vaccination campaigns[0]. Now the efforts with eradicating Polio in some parts of the world meet with resistance of people who don't trust the vaccination campaign isn't a cover for US clandestine operations[1]. Hard to blame them, to be honest.
"The edict by the Islamic militants to ban immunization was in response to the CIA's setting up a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign in Pakistan."
And now thanks to CIA stunts many dozen (if not hundreds) Polio workers got killed and we risk not being able to eradicate the disease.
Related: Posing as neutral Red Cross health workers to infiltrate a hostage camp. The Colombian government did this to rescue a high profile hostage. Most didn't seem to mind, some thought it was clever and honorable to do so. Now it's even more dangerous for all those, present and future, who work for the Red Cross or are wounded/taken hostage in battle. But so what? The Red Cross and the wounded don't get you reelected.
The Saudis are generally seen as completely in bed with the US by people who live in the Middle East, largely because the Saudis are completely in bed with the US.
The CIA subverted genuine local medical staff and used them their fake vaccination scheme. I don't think there's any way of convincing militant groups that vaccination workers aren't potential CIA spies at this point, at least not if they've got any sense.
Shouldn't have to be fixed. This is fucking around with vaccinating kids. People should go to jail. One guy did go to jail and the US has been demanding his release.
I don’t believe that is an entirely fair characterization of that action. Was the United States not supposed to go after Osama Bin Laden? Hiding in an allied country whose intelligence services derailed previous missions? [1]
I’m impressed by the diligence in trying to make sure your most wanted target is there before taking lethal military action. I’m disappointed by the immediate release of operational details for political expediency.
It is a tragedy that people are refusing vaccinations in Pakistan, but it’s not fair to entirely blame the CIA. At least pass some of the responsibility to the Obama Administration and Pakistan itself. [2]
This current event is different and shouldn't be confused with an actual success. When the intelligence services operate against the people of the United States and its elected representatives, individuals from the Agency should be going to jail. We've allowed far too much intelligence overreach and people need to start being held accountable.
>I’m impressed by the diligence in trying to make sure your most wanted target is there before taking lethal military action.
Diligence would have required following through with the vaccination campaign. For pennies they could have vaccinated the kids, and probably evaded detection, but in their haste they carelessly exposed their operation.
> I’m disappointed by the immediate release of operational details for political expediency.
I'm disappointed to see that sad pathetic excuse bandied about in defense of failure and malevolence. The gig was up a long time before the press found out, when they failed to follow through with the vaccination campaign. By allowing the operation to be discovered, they endangered not only potential future operations, but also the safety of aid workers everywhere on the planet.
>It is a tragedy that people are refusing vaccinations in Pakistan, but it’s not fair to entirely blame the CIA. At least pass some of the responsibility to the Obama Administration and Pakistan itself.
It is precisely the fault of the CIA, and not the sitting President because the CIA is responsible for planning its operations. The President doesn't dictate operational details.
I agree with your first point: They should have vaccinated everyone. I don't agree with your second point, way too much information about the operation was released. And your last point I find most discouraging. It's the president who is most responsible for the actions of the government both at home and abroad. It's too easy to blame a 3 letter agency than the leaders we elect for then we would have to blame ourselves.
> Was the United States not supposed to go after Osama Bin Laden?
Not at any cost, no. Now what with all of the "America...fuck yeah!" rhetoric after Bin Laden was killed, I gather that I might be writing for the minority opinion.
How many kids will die because they now won't be getting polio vaccines? How does that number compare to the number killed at the World Trade Center? If the numbers are comparable, then we figure brown kids have less value than Wall Street bankers? So, maybe apply a value of two-thirds (I'm pulling numbers that have been used in the past) one brown kid for someone working in NYC? If not, then what's the math that we can agree on?
It was all just a revenge killing anyway. Are we now safer with Bin Laden dead? I'm open to opposing opinions, but as far as I can tell we haven't improved anything.
Of course not at any cost. The irony of this tragedy is that the intent of the operation was to mitigate the possibility of collateral damage and going after the wrong target. I'm pretty sure Cowboy Bush would have been all in at the mention of Osama and never done the vaccination op.
To depict targeting Osama as a revenge killing is not right. I try to empathize with the grievances he had and represents against the US, but I believe the world is better off without him. We don't need people who inspire others to suicide and homicide in the name of religion.
“Jacques,” he said, “You and I share a common faith. You’re Roman Catholic, I’m Methodist, but we are both Christians committed to the teachings of the Bible. We share one common Lord”
Chirac said nothing. He didn’t know where Bush was going with this.
“Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East,” Bush said. ‘’Biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.”
Gog and Magog? What was that?, thought Chirac.
“This confrontation,” Bush said, “is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a new age begins.”
Chirac was bewildered. The American president, he thought, sounded dangerously fanatical.
After the call ended, Chirac called together his senior staff members and relayed the conversation.
“He said, ‘Gog and Magog.’ Do any of you know what he is talking about?”
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this. Violence in the name of religion is wrong no matter the side. While I disagree with the war in Iraq and only wish the best for the Iraqi people, to draw too much of a parallel between Bush and Osama I wouldn't say is fair.
I also think it distracts from the more important issues: The continuous belief in Washington that they can play with peoples lives like chess pieces and shape a better world through violence. [1], [2]
Only half of the hawks are playing cynical power games, the rest of them think they are in the middle of a religious war as foretold by prophecy. Unless you understand that many of our leaders and armed forces are literally involved in a crusade, then you will never get a handle on middle eastern policy.
edit - and the most dangerous are those who don't believe, but claim faith for leverage. Those are the people who will go into a 'final war' with an eye on the spoils. The true believer doesn't believe there will be spoils at that point.
Is a long article, I am sure some bits are more accurate than others as it will be made up of several sources and I cannot be bothered to fact check the entire piece, sorry.
The conversation I referenced was something I had previously read in a different article and it was quoted specifically to make a point about the assertion "We don't need people who inspire others to suicide and homicide in the name of religion.", namely the point that not only do the leaders on both sides do that, but Bush tried to do it to the leader of another nuclear power, in the language of end-time theology.
Which isn't just a bit off-key, but rather is completely fucking bat-shit.
Ronald Reagan riffing on that theme is equally mental:
"Ezekiel tells us that Gog, the nation that will lead all of the other powers of darkness against Israel, will come out of the north. Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn’t seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become Communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly."
Killing one guy who isn't even all that important in the organization should definitely not have taken priority over seriously harming polio eradication efforts.
Yes, sometimes you should let the bad guy get away if the consequences of what's required to catch him are worse. This should be obvious, but people's minds shut down when confronted with "terrorism".
"... but people's minds shut down when confronted with "terrorism"."
And why is that?
I ask, because, like many here -- well, as few, at least -- I grew up in the UK with the IRA bombing things around me every now and again. These were frequent events. I saw the aftermath of a few of them myself. They were as hideous, as you can imagine.
I narrowly missed being caught up in two. My girlfriend and I had a picnic on the Regent's Park grandstand the day before it was blown up with the military band playing at the time. I suspect that the bomb was right beneath us that day as we ate. Ticking away.
There were almost nightly atrocities on the TV news. It was a constant.
But minds did not shutdown. The public message, conveyed by the media, was to carry on as normal; that to do otherwise was to let the terrorists win. So we did. We kept calm and carried on.
So why are folk, these days, freaking out at the mention of terrorism?
Rationally, we know that the number of deaths from terrorism is tiny compared to almost every other form of death. We know that the probability of being present, let alone injured or worse, at the scene of an act of terrorism is vanishingly small.
What if instead of our politicians and media ramping up the fear factor they instead suggested stoic, silent resistance. What if they said that they had our backs. What if they were positive instead of negative.
Fear of terrorism is irrational, and everyone -- well, the vast majority -- would act accordingly if the politicians and media didn't exploit citizens' fears for whatever reasons they are exploiting citizens' fears.
And, because of this, going back to your point, I agree, killing Bin Laden should never have taken priority over harming polio eradication efforts. Doing so was purely story-building to support political grandstanding. It had nothing to with security or reducing terrorism.
It looks to me like a feedback loop. Fear in the populace results in politicians and media responding to and magnifying that fear. Fearful news reporting generates better ratings in a fearful populace, which makes them more fearful. Similarly, fearful political rhetoric garners votes from a fearful populace, which makes them more fearful. This would imply that it's sensitive to small differences in initial conditions.
One thing that I'd bet makes a big difference is the existence and magnitude of other threats. The US and UK are pretty solidly secure right now. There are no major human threats present now or in the near future. Compare with the era you're talking about, in which our countries (and, of course, many others) were perpetually 15 minutes away from total annihilation at the hands of the Soviets, either because they decided to try to take over the world, or just because of some terrible mistake. I imagine one probably doesn't take a terrorist nail bomb too seriously when you legitimately think there's a real possibility that you and everyone you ever knew will be killed in a two-hour-long WWIII.
Perhaps we're geared towards thinking about existential threats, and if one isn't present, we'll magnify whatever we can find.
Thank you for sharing your personal accounts. I wish the politicians and the media wouldn't exploit citizens' fears. It's time to end the 'war on terror.'
Was the United States not supposed to go after Osama Bin Laden?
No, but sometimes the price of a just aim is too high to pay. In retrospect at least the damage to the anti-polio campaign was too high a price to pay for his death, just as nuking the city to get him wouldn't have been justified. I find the mistake they made somewhat understandable since they could easily have failed to foresee the consequences of their actions, but it was still a mistake.
> I find the mistake they made somewhat understandable since they could easily have failed to foresee the consequences of their actions, but it was still a mistake.
Yeah, like arming Bin Laden when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, who would have guessed? Iran-Contra fallout? To an outside observer, it would appear that the CIA may have a sound tactical approach in many cases, but fails miserably at strategy and long-term view.
EDIT: oh, yeah, and Iran and the Shah (for the youngin's, the movie _Argo_ gives an ever-so-brief bit of background at the beginning). How could I forget about that textbook example of blowback?
The CIA is !precluded! operationally and I think legally from operating with USAID for this very reason. It wasn't a _mistake_, it was 'not-fucking-caring.'
I agree, the vaccination part of the operation was a mistake. But if the information had been released in 5-10 years the effects would have been less tragic. There are reasons clandestine operations should stay clandestine, at least for a period of time. [1]
> Was the United States not supposed to go after Osama Bin Laden?
I'm with mikeash on this: sometimes the cost is too high.
For the sake of argument, compare it to more traditional hypothetical trade-offs, starting with what almost nobody would have considered justified:
Would getting Bin Laden have justified dropping a nuke on Abbottabad?
… What about conventional bombing the entire city?
… the neighborhood?
… the block?
… that house?
I suspect that the number of bystander casualties most people would consider too high is lower than the number of people who have already died either directly (medical workers) or indirectly (unvaccinated children).
How come nobody in the media is calling this treason? We're talking about a government agency hacking and spying on the US Senate. This is like a Will Smith movie plot about the government "bad guys".
"Improper access"? Are you kidding me? I guess Manning was a fool for not "apologizing" for his "improper access". That would've definitely saved him.
What's worse is that even after Feinstein accused them of hacking and spying, they still did it afterwards [1]. And if they get away with it now, they will most definitely continue to do it.
Nonetheless this is a complete moral failure and power-abuse that is equally worthy of punishment. They were monitoring use of the network, then attempting to classify new information as it was being analyzed.
Uh, it's still unauthorized even if they set it up. The DBA at a bank might have full access to the database, but if he uses it to siphon off Social Security numbers it'd be unauthorized access. Same thing here - they explicitly weren't supposed or authorized to access the network.
This is the CIA hacking the Senate. It's not GOP vs Democrat or even Executive vs Judiciary vs Legislative.
Besides, I think it can be entirely fair for newspapers to pose the question of "Is this tantamount to treason?", and let people decide for themselves.
The issue itself may not be partisan, but it will still be interpreted that way. The media has been a political strawman for both parties for a long time. Each accuses the other of essentially controlling it to further their agenda. Once accusations of 'treason' are made from a media source, then inevitably at least half of the country will dismiss it as propaganda.
If a media outlet did, I think they would probably have to do so carefully.
It's the CIA looking at activity logs on CIA servers, to monitor what Senate users were doing, so they could interfere with the things the Senate found.
It's shady, and likely illegal, but it's not quite hacking, and it's definitely not hacking the senate.
If you're trying to prove the media doesn't get accused of partisanship with that, it's not a strong case. There were arguments on this very site that the media outlets which weren't reporting aggressively enough on the Snowden events were suppressing information on behalf of the intelligence services, and the ones which were, were either attempting to lambast him on behalf of of the same, or were manufacturing the whole thing as a smokescreen to hide the government's true crimes. Only the Guardian itself ever seemed to get by without some accusation of pandering or being a shill for some dark agenda.
I'm not suggesting it isn't a legitimate argument to have but... especially given the political climate post-Snowden, I wouldn't expect discourse wherever the 't' work is invoked to be particularly helpful.
Well, I wrote my congressmen. What else can we possibly do? This is, however, a fucking travesty of justice. How can you possibly be caught committing a crime and have the higher-ups formally apologize, and say they wont do it again?
This is high treason against the United States Senate. What the hell is wrong with this country? I feel like the US is one big democratic tease, pretending to be a bastion of free thought and high ideals. When in reality it's no different than any other relatively peaceful, horribly corrupt government that has ever existed.
Reading a history of the Roman Republic and eventual Empire recently, I have a suspicion we're headed down pretty much the same path, simply with better access to current information. That could change everything. But it probably wont change anything.
I sometimes wonder if we are in the mid to late republic. [1] I want to believe in the progress of the country, but sometimes it seems like stagnation since the 70s and that post WW2 may have been the zenith of the American Rebublic. The divide between military and civilian, the Tammany hall nature of D.C., the bread and circuses all around, our country has issues to fix.
But, I believe that we are moving forward, the world more than just the US, by many measures: mortality [2], poverty [3], violence [4]. So, I hope that we are something different than the Roman Republic and can last longer as a republic. My greatest fear is a 1984 style of perpetual surveillance, doublethink and corporate slavery. Oh wait, we are already there ;)
There are bullet-ridden and blood-stained flags in San Francisco's City Hall that beg to differ and were carried by this city's sons to different wars and conflicts. I cried when I first saw them.
This is a gentle reminder that when someone says "Place X has known peace for period Y" they mean "There has been no significant military action in Place X for period Y.". People from Place X can engage in military action in other places during period Y, but Place X is still in a period of peace.
Hah, well I did qualify it with a weasel word, so I didn't think I needed an example.
But I would note that we're likely at least as peaceful as the ancient empires of Greece and Rome, and probably "relatively" more peaceful than either.
Civilian police forces are born out of a commercialization of violence and an overseer to curb abuse. While there are rampant examples of the oversight failing (L.A. in the 90s, Seattle drones, or good old fashioned SWAT team overuse), by and large, I'd argue I'm living a pretty privileged and safe life here in the U.S. right now.
What Americans don't understand is that their democracy is a joke.
-Real democracies don't suffer from gerrymandering.
-Real democracies have a free media that will challenge their government (the US news agencies are controlled by large corporations, the corporations are fine to challenge the government on a range of issues, but nothing truly substantive).
-Real democracies have elections with choice, not two parties that differ only by shades of grey.
So we know from recent history that the US Justice Department thinks accessing a computer network without authorization is worth 35 years in prison.
I was going to pose the question what the over / under line would be on charges for those members of the CIA who did this but then I realized that it would be a silly question. When it comes to the US Government the corollary of too big to fail is too powerful to jail.
No surprises here, of course this is what happens when you create an agency whose mission is to lie, decieve, and break the law, and then give it limited oversight and almost unlimited funding. The CIA's entire history is just one scandal after another.
When a society codifies secrecy into the law, that society has opened the door to every kind of unraveling of the rule of law.
We have gone from classified information to secret laws to who knows-what-all-else.
Among many other possibilities, the CIA's character might have been secretly changed - with it's agents authorized to lie about this change. Such is the can of worms that "classified information" opens from the get-go.
Of course, a mission like the CIA's does not exactly lend itself to strong oversight.
The issues of which you speak, seem like inherent challenges to making effective yet responsible intelligence organizations, rather than just garden variety stupid choices.
I agree that making an intelligence organization effective yet responsible is inherently challenging, but I also think that our government has made plenty of garden variety stupid choices w/r/t the CIA as well.
At this point from a simple costs vs. benefits standpoint I just do not see how even having a CIA (or at least the Clandestine Service portion) is worth it. They have wasted probably billions of dollars on countless blunders over the decades. They constantly embarrass the State Department by lying to and stealing from our supposed allies, and getting caught doing it. And they get informants killed. Now they're spying on the US's own democratically elected representatives. Meanwhile, what imminent dangers to US security has the Clandestine Service ever prevented? How do they justify their own existence? The Cold War ended decades ago, I don't see how their mission is relevant anymore.
The nation needs an intelligence community. In the modern world, that's non-negotiable.
But having said that, there are a few breaches of trust that warrant extreme action, and this is one of them. This isn't some low-level analyst using his pull to get out of a parking ticket. This is the executive branch of government running an intelligence operation against another branch of the government.
There's no known universe in which this is anywhere near being acceptable. And even if you buy the lone wolf scenario thrown out here, it still means that the agency had an atmosphere in which it seemed okay to do this -- and it was done with little or no oversight. In fact, this is a much worse scenario, because it implies that lone wolves all over the agency are doing all sorts of things on their own initiative. God knows what.
Congress, kicking and screaming, is going to have to grow a set of balls and publicly tear apart the intelligence apparatus again. We are probably going to need new constitutional amendments to address property rights and the idea of "personal papers" in the digital age. Computers are extensions of people's minds. They are not like music players or VCRs. Not at all.
This whole mess has been an example of how the political class will put off making a decision that might involve risk as long as possible. I keep wondering what more has to come out, and how much is enough.
Here is some more info on a figure behind the open source intelligence movement below. It's not just intelligence that they want to reform, it's the entire system.
"The committee has been working since 2009 on a comprehensive history of the agency’s antiterror program during the George W. Bush administration"
That makes it sound like the investigation is politically motivated, which I find disappointing. It seems highly likely that some of those practices continued under Obama, and if there's any hint of political leaning in an investigation like this then most people will just ignore it as more partisan bullshit.
> That makes it sound like the investigation is politically motivated, which I find disappointing.
No, what's politically motivated was that the chain of command that authorized and enacted torture was never prosecuted. This is not just a simple violation, but a Grave Breach as defined in the Geneva Conventions. In an effort to avoid what would be an inevitable partisan shitstorm, the heinous acts committed by the CIA and authorized explicitly by the White House were whitewashed. This report was the only thing that remained in the arsenal to hold these perpetrators accountable, and the CIA was actively attempting to thwart its work.
> That makes it sound like the investigation is politically motivated, which I find disappointing.
All congressional investigations are political motivated. That said, who cares if it helps the truth comes out?
The mere fact that the CIA was willing to pull BS like this on their overseers:
"The CIA, though, spied on what the staffers did on the system. This allowed the CIA to manipulate investigation. When the staffers found some particularly juicy bit of information, the CIA was able to yank it from the system and re-classify it so that the staffers couldn't use it. Before the final report was ready, the CIA was already able to set the political machine in motion to defend itself from the report."
http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/07/no-cia-didnt-spy-on-other-...
Personally, I'm glad they did that if only so the general public is aware of the kind of BS the CIA pulls.
Agreed that it will seem politically motivated, but if it actually sees the light of day, the report will beg questions of how these practices have been stopped by the current administration. Hopefully that leads to bipartisan reform, and not a bunch of shouting and precedent-building.
"In 1995, Scheuer said, American agents proposed the rendition program to Egypt, making clear that it had the resources to track, capture, and transport terrorist suspects globally—including access to a small fleet of aircraft. Egypt embraced the idea. “What was clever was that some of the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian,” Scheuer said. “It served American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to get these people back, where they could be interrogated.” Technically, U.S. law requires the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from foreign governments that rendered suspects won’t be tortured. Scheuer told me that this was done, but he was “not sure” if any documents confirming the arrangement were signed."
In this as other spheres of recent, catastrophic failure (i.e. the financial crisis): I'm down to saying to TPTB:
"No jail? You fail."
If Brennan can't be prosecuted for perjury, then a very public and (really) career-ending firing is in order.
As for the Congress that has been soaking up these lies and dissemblance, well, if you're a U.S. citizen, don't forget to vote. Also in local elections, where candidates grow into future Congress-critters -- or used to, before they started simply buying their way in.
I recently read "Legacy of Ashes"[1]. If you're interested in the extremely long list of breaches of trust that the CIA is responsible for it's a great resource.
I am of the opinion that nothing is worse for a society than corrupt law enforcement of any kind. I am generally against death penalty, but think it should be applied for even minor breaches by law enforcement. If we cannot trust the people who are supposed to keep us save the entire system is broken.
"Bush derangement syndrome?" At some point during the Bush years the New York Times seems to have been hit with said syndrome and devolved into nothing more than another partisan rag.
Bush is mentioned three times in the article. Guess how many times Obama is mentioned? Not once. The most powerful and influential person in this issue, Not Mentioned Once.
So what if Bush implemented these policies. So what if by some miracle they were able to prosecute and convict him. We'd still have the status quo.
Articles like the one above are the very reason I hold "The Paper of Record" in almost as low esteem as outlets such as Fox News.
While that may make you feel better about whatever country you happen to live in, if the most powerful nation in the history of the world qualifies as a banana republic then the phrase has no meaning.
It's hilarious, if anyone else was caught infiltrating senate computers .. but the CIA f'n seriously they were trying to interfere with a torture investigation .. ridiculous where are the repercussions what country am I living in?
"The edict by the Islamic militants to ban immunization was in response to the CIA's setting up a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign in Pakistan."
And now thanks to CIA stunts many dozen (if not hundreds) Polio workers got killed and we risk not being able to eradicate the disease.
[0] - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccin...
[1] - http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/07/28/330767266/t...