Do you generally believe what the CIA says

[Occam Bandage]

when it comes to its declarations of who knew what when?

[havocmom]

1. I generally believe the CIA is comprised of factions

Some are bad spooks: rights don't matter, justice is just a tool, not a goal, power is the end game and any means are justified to that end. Some are good spooks: there ARE rules, called laws and they really do need to be at least considered.

I believe there has been a not-to-civil war going on within the CIA for quite some time.

[TahitiNut]

19. Yup. The term is "compartmentalized."

:thumbsup:

[OmahaBlueDog]

21. Lots of non-spooks as well

Lots of analysts who sit at desks doing tasks like traffic analysis, foreign news analysis, and satellite photo analysis, to name a few of many things that are done by people who have nothing to do with torture.

As said in the thread above -- it's very compartmentalized.

[Captain Hilts]

26. Analysis and operations are very different cultures. A lot of good folks work at CIA. nt

[Mike 03]

2. By definition, I would not believe what the C.I.A. says about any contemporaneous issue.

But I do like to read between the lines and figure out for myself what is really going on, which is not that difficult, thanks to news services and the internet.

A more interesting question would be, "Do you think it's okay that the CIA lies?"

[Occam Bandage]

5. That would be a more interesting question indeed,

but not the one I want to ask. I'm asking this in light of the recent unsubstantiated allegations by the CIA that they told Democrats everything regarding torture years ago. I would not imagine that DUers would happily believe a bald-faced attempt by the CIA to cover their own asses, but yet I have seen quite a few people claiming that the CIA's claims are proof that Democrats are complicit/guilty/whatever.

[baldguy]

3. The CIAs mandate does not include diseminating the truth.

[Mike 03]

4. I agree. The whole point of the CIA is its capacity to deceive in order to

elicit the information it desires.

Edited for sloppiness.

[Hannah Bell]

6. so why did dems believe valerie plame?

i believe pelosi & some other dems knew because it makes more sense than otherwise. the timeline - who knows.

[Mike 03]

7. Who said that CIA agents always lie? The point is that it is the job of CIA agents

to obfuscate, misrepresent and decieve in order to elicit information.

What does the Plame case have to do with anything remotely having to do with the question being asked here in this thread?

[Hannah Bell]

23. 1. no one said that, did they? 2. because the op is "do you generally believe what the cia says"

[Occam Bandage]

8. She was speaking against the interests of the CIA.

The claims about Pelosi are entirely within the interests of the CIA. If they can deceive the public into believing that "everyone is just as guilty," then there can be no prosecutions, and they are safe. I'm surprised you're so gullible when it comes to swallowing the CIA's angle. You don't seem the type to be so trusting.

[Mike 03]

9. Good points. NT

[Hannah Bell]

24. against the interests of the cia? how's that?

[Occam Bandage]

27. Because Plame, after her outing,

was happy to talk about how intelligence was misused for political purposes. It is not in the CIA's interest for former active CIA members to explain how our nation's intelligence apparatus served as a tool of the Republican party's political apparatus.

[Mike 03]

11. Also, you will remember Plame was NOC. It's very easy to get stabbed in the back

and thrown under the bus when you are NOC. She was brave to speak out, IMO.

[spanone]

18. plame was 'outed'..... another illegality that has gone unprosecuted

[jwirr]

10. My problem with the CIA is that they are still stuck in a world that has

communists and enemies around every corner and they do not know how to live in a world that does not lead to empire.

Today we need to be prepared to recognize an enemy that thinks just like they do about us. But we also have real problems that are destroying us from within: corporations that do not care about the state of our nation unless it is their own bottom dollar; homegrown terrorists; selfishness and greed that is dividing our people into the haves and have-nots and the outright refusal to recognize our role in global warming and the coming oil peak. The CIA is looking backward instead of ahead.

[gratuitous]

12. If the CIA told me the sun was coming up in the east

I'd make sure I looked out the window before proceeding in reliance on that fact.

[emulatorloo]

13. especially if they were sympathetic to Cheney and the Republicans eom

[bemildred]

14. No, they are lying assholes.

One must not only assume they are not telling the truth, one must assume they are lying in some regard, since that's their job.

[Warren Stupidity]

15. Isn't it part of their job to lie and decieve?

[ControlledDemolition]

25. ... to assissinate, to smuggle drugs... n/t

[stray cat]

16. As much as I believe web sites and bloggers.....

[spanone]

17. george h.w. bush director of the cia 1976-1977...hell no

[lunatica]

20. The CIA is government sanctioned lawlessness.

Their job is to spy and do whatever they feel is necessary to 'protect' the US. They are behind every assassination, every coup and probably every war since their inception. They answer to no one, not even Presidents. No one watches them, monitors them or has any control over what they do.

[bemildred]

22. Word.

Sort of like a gang, or "terrorists".

[Sebastian Doyle]

28. Harry Truman called the CIA a "tool of Wall Street bankers"

Specifically, it was the same exact group of Wall Street bankers who funded Adolf Hitler. Prescott Bush and his partners the Browns, the Harrimans, and the Dulles brothers.

Of course now that the Wall Street bankers are openly destroying this country, that kind of makes the CIA redundant.

[ColbertWatcher]

29. I think it depends on who says it and when.

I have suspicions when a high-level official makes statements immediately following an incident--which is not something that the CIA does on a regular basis, nor something I think they'd authorize--so I expect that whenever something is said it is said carefully (by which I mean in a way that a casual reading will mean one thing, but a more careful reading means something else).

The nuance of the statement will make it seem deceitful, but it's probably done to satisfy legal considerations as much as to cover someone's ass.