the cia: evil conspiracy or heroic defenders of freedom?

i came across an interesting site run by the cia, which is mainly full of declassified articles about the history of the agency. it has some very fascinating reading on it, and i highly recommend it to anyone who is a conspiracy theorist or wants to find out more about the cia (short for central intelligence agency). i found out about all sorts of things, like the history of how the cia was created, and the very fascinating history of the cia bungling public relations and fanning the flames of conspiracy theorists throughout its history. if you study the history of the ufo controversy and cia involvement, you will see that the cia constantly lied and covered up the existence of the secret u2 spy plane program in the late 1950s, for example. another defining moment in the history of the cia was the coup it organized against the democratically elected leader of iran in 1953 that put the shah in power. the cia also horribly mishandled the public relations when a rogue district attorney in new orleans prosecuted an innocent businessman for conspiring to kill president john f. kennedy with cia assistance, based on faulty information from an italian communist newspaper; this ended up being the basis for oliver stone’s movie jfk. all of these great mistakes are chronicled in great detail in various articles on that site, which is where i found out about them. it is all quite interesting and illuminating. it seems the central intelligence agency does not make any great claims at infallibility; indeed, it is publicly admitting to all of these great mistakes, on its own website. it is rather ironic then, because a skeptic might ask, if the cia has lied so much in the past, why on earth would anyone trust it now? obviously, the answer is quite simple: most of the stuff in these articles happened long ago and can easily be fact-checked from other independent sources. the portrait these articles paint of the cia is not a very flattering one; the cia seems to have been plagued by incompetence and people doing their own thing without oversight, ever since it was founded, although in the 1970s, when congress began its oversight, things did improve somewhat. there is an article on how the cia consistently got it right on vietnam throughout the vietnam war, but how the closed-minded kennedy and johnson administrations refused to admit things were going wrong. more recently, some in the cia tried to undermine the bush administration and get john kerry elected president, according to the neocons at the weekly standard, but unfortunately the cia fucked up, like usual. all in all, the cia is a maze of contradictions. both accountable and secretive, according to president bush. both incompetent and brilliantly effective at times. both good and evil. but, it is undoubtedly a very complex organization. however, the history of the organization shows quite clearly its true nature. since its inception, the cia has been fighting a constant struggle to assert itself, to demonstrate its importance, to maintain its secrecy, and to defend its reputation. on all of these counts it has had many failures that are publicly known. but, its successes are things that are not known to the public. things that are secret, that worked... these are its true secrets. the cia always says that it wants to protect “sources and methods” by keeping various things classified, but what is ironic is, this stance makes the cia all too willing to discuss its myriad of failures since it was founded in 1947, yet they are obliged to keep their successes private. i imagine this must be quite annoying for them, which is probably why they have this website in the first place. but does that website really enhance their reputation, or just make them look even more incompetent? all signs point to incompetent. but at least the cia is openly willing to admit to its many faults, and does not deny any of them. so, i do believe the information on that site is accurate, because it would not make any sense at all for them to portray themselves in such a degrading manner if it were untrue. i just think, the whole enterprise seems rather pathetic, as a whole. but it was interesting to read that just 3 years into his presidency, george washington was spending 12% of the national budget on secret intelligence matters. there was really no oversight of intelligence matters until the 1970s, which marks almost 200 years of spooks holding free reign. but several articles discuss u.s. intelligence matters at the time of world war i, when it seems the united states intelligence services were in quite a disarray, understaffed and marred by infighting, and relying on a nationwide organization of self-appointed ultra-patriotic civilian spies who took the law into their own hands, with both comic and tragic consequences as their system of vigilante justice failed. this civilian organization was loosely affiliated with the justice department, while the justice department’s fbi and the treasury department’s secret service fought endless battles for power and prestige and for the support of president woodrow wilson. i think the fbi had a different name back then, i forget what it was. and there was a quite interesting article about a secret contact with high-ranking nazi official heinrich himmler during world war ii. if that had been handled properly, there is a possibility that we could have avoided the cold war by allying with the remnants of the nazis after a coup d’etat organized by himmler against hitler, and together going to war against the soviet union and defeating communism once and for all. but, this would have obviously had tragic consequences, since himmler was a war criminal, and this would have perpetuated the holocaust. a more likely scenario about what would happen if himmler tried to organize a coup against hitler is, himmler would have been found out and executed, but this would have caused major disarray and led to germany getting defeated earlier, and this could have saved many lives on both sides. but as the article astutely points out, it is impossible to really know what would have happened, and perhaps it was for the best that we chose to ignore himmler and maintained our alliance with the russians until the end of the war. in any event, i think the cia today is not doing well, especially after the fiasco of porter goss’s tenure, and it will probably be quite some time before they are able to get many people of the caliber of john walker lindh working for them. i mean, how easy was it for john walker lindh to just go off and join the taliban? and the cia can’t get any agents to join al qaeda? and the cia doesn’t have any clue about what is going on in iran nowadays or if it is pursuing nukes? i know this is easy for me to say and hindsight is 20/20 and i am monday-morning-quarterbacking, but seriously... come on. the cia is incompetent. they need to be fixed, so they can actually do what they are meant to do. and as for coups, i think the cia has become outdated and useless, and the u.s. government has increasingly turned to newer groups like the national endowment for democracy in order to carry out revolutions abroad. after george tenet’s famous “slam dunk”, the cia is pretty much a joke. they have become irrelevant, and all the real action is being done by other groups that are not accountable to congress. you know, ones like the national security agency, or the ones inside the defense department, or the shadowy foundations like the national endowment for democracy, or the new office of the director of national intelligence (dni). if the cia is to survive, it has to prove its worth, or else these other organizations will sideline it even more, until it becomes as irrelevant as fema and congress decides to scrap it entirely.