Thursday, November 29, 2012

CIA headed in the wrong general direction Agency should not be paramilitary force

This is a critical question about the future of US intelligence operations and national security.  Some will note that paramilitary operations are a fundamental part of the original CIA.  Part yes, but should it be the dominant one?  If so, then perhaps some of the other 15 agencies in the Intelligence community should have the lead for analysis and the like and the D/CIA should become the Director of the Central Paramilitary Agency  (but CPA would not sound so good as an acronym)
V/R
Dave


CIA headed in the wrong general direction
Agency should not be paramilitary force
·       Roy A. Harrell Jr.
·       Posted November 28, 2012 at 4:31 p.m.

More than 50 years ago, my resignation from the Central Intelligence Agency was effectuated. The Company, as it had always been known, had become a bit too militarized and was not what some of its founders such as Allan Dulles envisioned.

Intelligence was collected but rarely analyzed coherently so as to contribute to enlightened policies. Much of what was collected by the Company lay unused, some of us feeling it is too expensive to collect this data, not to mention the risk involved.

Moreover the trend was in the direction of militarization, a task that could be more expertly done by the Department of Defense.

I chose, as an interim measure, to throw my hat toward a smaller but more focused intelligence-gathering group at the Department of State. These are decisions I never regretted and throughout my subsequent career I maintained a discrete but respectful distance from Company personnel.

There had been other military personnel at the CIA helm, including Gen. Bedell Smith, but without the lurid detail emerging from the FBI investigation that led to the fall of Director David Petraeus. There will be attempts to attach significance to the delay in informing President Barack Obama of the chief spy's plight up the Potomac River and elsewhere, but those behind such efforts probably will be disappointed.
(Continued at the link below)

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