What do you think of the CIA?

[kentuck]

Personally, I am not a big fan but others may see them differently than I?
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https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/history-of-the-cia/

History of the CIA

The United States has carried out intelligence activities since the days of George Washington, but only since World War II have they been coordinated on a government-wide basis. President William J. DonovanFranklin D. Roosevelt appointed New York lawyer and war hero, William J. Donovan, to become first the Coordinator of Information, and then, after the US entered World War II, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1942. The OSS – the forerunner to the CIA – had a mandate to collect and analyze strategic information. After World War II, however, the OSS was abolished along with many other war agencies and its functions were transferred to the State and War Departments.

It did not take long before President Truman recognized the need for a postwar, centralized intelligence organization. To make a fully functional intelligence office, Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 establishing the CIA. The National Security Act charged the CIA with coordinating the nation’s intelligence activities and correlating, evaluating and disseminating intelligence affecting national security.

On December 17, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act which restructured the Intelligence Community by abolishing the position of Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) and creating the position the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA). The Act also created the position of Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which oversees the Intelligence Community and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).

[lunatica]

1. I remind people all the time that it isn't a law enforcement agency

and that there are no laws it has to honor because they're in the spying business where laws are counter productive to what their goals are.

[unhappycamper]

2. Between 1947 and 2008, the CIA called one event correctly.

One.

http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371210093&sr=8-1&keywords=legacy+of+ashes

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. JFK wanted to

"splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds."


BTW the Kennedy assassination files were supposed to be released this fall after a half century.... The CIA put a hold on 50,000 pages never to be seen and then others so redacted who knows what they will say.

[1-Old-Man]

3. First off let me tell you how much I respect your opinions

The CIA is the intelligence arm of the President of the United States and it is responsible to no one else. Unfortunately for all of the rest of us Presidents come and go but the CIA persists. It is the persistence of the core (non political) leadership of the Agency that is the problem. The result is the CIA to have a mind of its own independent of its President's. It has demonstrated itself to be a rogue Agency throughout its history, no President has been able to reign it in.

[Savannahmann]

4. Well I knew we had an issue with this so called intelligence agency

When after the USS Maine blew up in Havana Harbor, Cuba. We started the Spanish American War, and acting upon the best intelligence available from the CIA Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders were dispatched to charge up San Juan Hill Puerto Rico.

As I understand it, after the mistake became public, the CIA promised to do whatever it took to make sure such mistakes didn't happen in the future including actually purchasing a map.

[Cirque du So-What]

5. Capitalism's Invisible Army

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5205337

[Monkie]

6. terrorists, mass murderers, enablers of tyranny

ask the people of south america what they think of the CIA, the people of asia, the iranians, all the countries that had their democracy subverted, their peoples killed, tortured.

this is the cia in a quote:

Phillips Talbot, the U.S. ambassador in Athens, disapproved of the coup, complaining that it represented "a rape of democracy", to which Jack Maury, the CIA station chief in Athens, answered, "How can you rape a whore?"

Under the junta, torture became a deliberate practice carried out both by the Security Police and the Greek Military Police, with an estimated 3,500 people detained in torture centres run by ESA. Examples of the types of torture commonly used include (amongst others):

Beating the soles of people's feet with sticks and pieces of metal pipe
Sexual torture such as shoving objects into people's vagina/anus and twisting them violently, or hoses shoved into the anus and forcing water in at high pressure
Choking people and shoving rags soaked in urine and excrement down their throats
Ripping out hair from the head and pubic regions
Jumping on people's stomachs
Pulling out toenails and fingernails

and this is from a couple of years in one country.

this is what they do in your name