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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumIntercept: In 1974 Call to Abolish CIA, Sanders Followed in Footsteps of JFK, Truman
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/22/in-1974-call-to-abolish-cia-sanders-followed-in-foots----
But Sanders position is not that radical: many prominent politicians, including two previous Democratic commanders-in-chief, have called for the CIA to be dismantled or severely constrained.
John F. Kennedy famously described his desire to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Peter Kornbluh points out in his book Bay of Pigs Declassified that the State Department at that same time proposed that the CIA should be stripped of its covert action capacity and renamed. However, the CIA escaped any serious repercussions partly because, as Kornbluh explains, the CIAs then-director John McCone made sure that most of the copies of a damning report on the Bay of Pigs by the Agencys own Inspector General were literally burned.
Then in 1963, after Kennedys assassination, Harry Truman wrote a newspaper column explaining that I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.
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Intercept: In 1974 Call to Abolish CIA, Sanders Followed in Footsteps of JFK, Truman (Original Post)
kgnu_fan
Feb 2016
OP
Good thing they're not running for office this year ... this would really hurt their chances.
NurseJackie
Feb 2016
#1
huh?! so, valient & courageous past presidents who held principled positions should be mocked?
amborin
Feb 2016
#2
journalists at Intercept are doing amazing job unearthing historical perspectives nt
kgnu_fan
Feb 2016
#4
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)1. Good thing they're not running for office this year ... this would really hurt their chances.
amborin
(16,631 posts)2. huh?! so, valient & courageous past presidents who held principled positions should be mocked?
wow, just wow;
it is scary and sobering to see what's happening here
Merryland
(1,134 posts)3. Interesting - thanks for posting.
kgnu_fan
(3,021 posts)4. journalists at Intercept are doing amazing job unearthing historical perspectives nt
MisterP
(23,730 posts)5. many presidents come to the realization that the CIA should be dismantled as such
but only one will come IN knowing this