Has the CIA done more harm than good?

[Douglas Caddy]

 

Has the C.I.A. Done More Harm Than Good? | The New Yorker

[George Govus]

Published in the print edition of the October 10, 2022, issue, with the headline “Spooked.”

Now that's pithy.

Quote

J. Edgar Hoover argued that “World Wide Intelligence” should be turned over to the F.B.I., with military intelligence subservient to him. In some alternative history, he might have pulled that off; by 1943, he was running undercover operations in twenty Latin American countries. And so things could have been worse.

 

[Benjamin Cole]

Well, I read quickly, and it looks like the author New Yorker Sorkin essentially delivered a multiple-book report, but written from her own omniscient viewpoint. 

Of course, nothing about the JFKA, and scant about the Bay of Pigs. 

Sorkin is a generalist reporter for The New Yorker, and budgets are tight these days. Time was when The New Yorker might hire a Seymour Hersh on a story, and give him some time to write it.  

 

 

[Michael Griffith]

Well, the CIA has done many good things over the years and has contributed greatly to our national security. However, the agency's serious abuses and crimes during its first few decades of existence remain a large stain on our national honor and heritage. 

Has the CIA done more harm than good? On balance, all things considered, I would say no, but it's not an easy call. 

[Paul Brancato]

We know a lot about CIA operations in earlier decades, and little about recent decades. Seems to me that the Congressional investigations post Watergate were the last serious attempt to find out. My opinion is more of the same.

[Andrew Prutsok]

What good has it done? Serious question.

[Benjamin Cole]

5 hours ago, Andrew Prutsok said:

What good has it done? Serious question.

First, you have to accept that the proper role of the  US military and national security complex is to act as a global guard service for multinationals. (I do not). 

Even then, it gets iffy. 

Some think the primary purpose of the US military is protect the US territory from military attack.

This is now denigrated as "nationalism." 

 

 

 

[Allen Lowe]

The CIA is a terrorist organization.

[Michael Griffith]

I admired Antonio Veciana for defending the CIA at the 2014 AARC conference, even though he revealed at that conference that his handler had been David Atlee Phillips. What Veciana said about the CIA was, and is, absolutely true, and his audience needed to hear it. However, if you watch the video of his presentation, you get the clear sense that his defense of the CIA did not go over well with the audience.

When people get on JFK assassination forums and say extreme things like "the CIA is a terrorist organization," they risk helping to perpetuate the myth that only fringe ultra-liberals push the idea that JFK was killed by a conspiracy.