Talk:Central Intelligence Agency/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

→

Archive 10

Function, history, and current references

I see the first responsibility of an article about an agency to describe its current form and give a basic reference. Instead, I find the lead to be a mixture of POV language and dated terminology (NSC 10/2, described here as the basis of clandestine operations, was issued in 1948), a lack of clarity about the relationship of the CIA to other components of the intelligence community as well as other national services, and an apparent willingness to take any accusation at face value.

In no way am I suggesting there have not been improprieties committed by the CIA, but I would expect to see both accusations and defenses, or independent investigations. It's simply hard to read the list.

May I suggest looking at some very specific history and background, comparing the US with other countries, in Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action? Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 22:41, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

We have a official document defining the duties of the CIA, and you want to ignore it because its too old? What next, strike mentions of the outdated constitution from United States? Lars T. (talk) 12:23, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a valid point, given the changes in the international, and indeed the US domestic environment, since 1948 I'd hardly consider it passses reliability criteria, never mind being independently credible.

For a start the high level relationships between DCI and the White House have changed.

Frankly the article as it stands is very POV and pretty conspiracy theorist, I've raised concerns before but the regular editors didn't address those. It appears that there might be an unwillingness to do that now as well. ALR (talk) 12:34, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I was born in 1948, and both the world and I have changed since then. NSC 10/2 was not a law, but a working document generated by a particular President's staff and that President's understanding of the world at the time. Indeed, National Security Council document identifiers change with Presidents; they variously have been called National Security Decision Memoranda, Presidential Decisions, etc.

Since they are internal documents approved by a President, laws subsequently passed affect them, given that those laws involve agreement by the Congress and the President. Laws, of course, also change over time, as the nature of the world has changed. Much of the 1948 policy of the US was based on the doctrine of containment of the Soviet Union, using ideas generated by the "X Article", also called the "Long Telegram", by George Kennan.

Both Kennan and the Soviet Union are dead, as well as the people that contributed to NSC 10/2. In 1948, the CIA did not yet have any responsibility for covert operations; it formalized its Directorate of Plans in 1952. See the history in Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action. To say that the original document defining responsibilities of the CIA is still authoritative would mean that no Executive Order, law, or National Security Council directive can change. All of those have changed, just as the Constitution has been amended over twenty times.

I suggest that the article should identify the most current law and those Executive Branch documents that have been released, and also refer to other articles that discuss them as well as controversies surrounding them.

ALR's comments are quite valid; I also saw the article as very strongly reflecting a POV that the CIA was an evil force and its evils had to be documented. Even the references to the A-12, SR-71, and U-2 were phrased in a conspiratorial way, not especially considering that two of those systems have been retired, and the organizations processing IMINT have changed. Those systems, incidentally, also collected SIGINT. Purely from a budgetary standpoint, the satellite systems are more expensive, and there is now a substantial amount of reconnaissance using UAVs.

May I suggest, Lars, that you also look at what tries to be an objective set of articles on the problem that the CIA was to help solve, starting with Intelligence cycle management? If nothing else, that will help define whether or not intelligence agencies, not just the CIA, was meeting its requirements. As it stands now, the history is almost completely focused on the operations side, and does not mention major analytic and estimative work at the same time. Further, operations are questioned, often in POV publications, but there is no context or response for the validity of those challenges. This is meant as a good-faith effort to improve the article's accuracy and readability. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

So is there , or is there not, an official document outlining the duties of the CIA today? Can the CIA do whatever it fucking pleases? Lars T. (talk) 13:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The strategic intent hosted on he CIA website? That document doesn't highlight the provenance of the intent, which is perhaps not surprising if the operational directive is classified. ALR (talk) 14:20, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't speak for Britain, ALR, but I'd say that most US agencies do not have a single document saying what they can or cannot do. They will have a high-level mission statement, but the actual guidelines come through the various laws that set the agency and its subordinate offices up, the budgets for their programs, and Presidential- and Ministerial-level directives, as well as internal directives. I used to be the network architect for the Library of Congress, which, as the world's largest library, is about as well-known and public an organization as you can find. Still, I don't think we had a single document that covered all we did. The closest thing was probably the organizational chart and the mission statements for the Divisions and Offices.

Incidentally, I put in mission descriptions yesterday for the Directorate of Intelligence offices. I think that is a reasonable start, especially when people need to understand CIA is not just a dirty tricks agency. Things are changing somewhat since the DNI was set up, but, before 2004 and the DNI, the Director of Central Intelligence issued documents, some classified and some not, called Director of Central Intelligence Directives (DCIDs). These were often the intelligence community interpretations of the presidential/National Security Council documents, which have different names in different Administrations: Presidential Directives, National Security Decision Memorandum, or NSC ids like 10/2.

If you look at my series of articles beginning with Intelligence cycle management, you may get a sense of the whole range of decisions, at different levels, that define the mission. You should be able to get a lot of concepts from the requirements and collection guidance parts of Intelligence collection management.

Also, there is a good deal of history, but also operational technique, in articles such as Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action, and some of my special operations articles, such as Special reconnaissance and Direct action (military). The latter two get more into the paramilitary, but note that the reconnaissance article is mostly about intelligence collection. My HUMINT article starts out with some of the "spy" things, which need to be followed down to Clandestine HUMINT and Clandestine HUMINT operational techniques. The article on Clandestine HUMINT asset recruiting is still in working draft.

In other words, it's a complicated subject. Even from the standpoint of laws, you start with the National Security Act of 1947, and then several additional acts over the next few years. There are things like the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. There is the National Security Strategy of the United States. FAS, National Security Arcive, Globalsecurity.org have lots of material. Go to Director of National Intelligence and follow lots of links, or at least the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:33, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Format and referencing of history section

The bulleted date format takes up a great deal of space on the page. It would read more smoothly if regular paragraphs were used, with dates in context.

Many bulleted comments have no context. Saying "The CIA trained police in country XXX" does not indicate if that training was under a foreign aid authorization, if there were improprieties, and the current relationship. Many of these training comments are not sourced.

Whenever possible, there should be cites from at least two positions, when allegations are made. It's one thing to cite a major newspaper such as the Washington Post, but another to post, without any other context, a website post from a writer for the Revolutionary Worker. Wikipedia policy is neutrality, but when an accusation is made, it needs the other side, or at least some context. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Howard, the police training lines are stubs from a sentence in Tim Wiener's book asserting that 11 LatAm countries, which he enumerated, were part of CIA police/military training program. Over time these can be filled out with more concrete citations. We already cite Weiner book at the top and I've been dinged for redundant citations.

Bulleted date form gives passage of time. Obviously agency function and politics change over time.

[Interjected]   I'd simply rather see a few paragraphs rather than bullets with no context. For a number of countries, not limited to Latin America, there were very major and often well-known programs. I'm thinking, especially, of countries where the only reference is to Operation Gladio, rather than things that might be in the last 20-30 years. [ Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 17:33, 19 December 2007 (UTC) ]

Because CIA is a civilian agency it turns out historically to be an especially political agency. Time is a very important dimension to give the history of the agency. The agency has a history. I am not trying to express POV. I want the facts and only the publically known and discussed facts in a discussion of agency actions. I am aware that CIA's charter has changed over time. However as the recent controversy over destruction of interrogation tapes shows, "a rose by any other name..." and also "if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck..."

Also note that there isn't a huge section on DIA covert ops. Either DIA doesn't have any, or maybe it knows how to keep a secret better, and maybe it has fewer ops over time which, by their nature or conduct, became public knowledge. Just something to think about.

Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 17:01, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

What is the notability of Weiner's book? I am aware of CIA and AID programs training foreign police and intelligence organizations, but that seems a fairly normal part of foreign aid and foreign internal defense. I'd certainly hesitate to call them covert; if they are classified, they would be clandestine between the US and the host nation. Is there a suggestion of impropriety?My concern is that single item references with no content suggests POV.

DIA rarely did covert ops, and formally doesn't do them any longer, with the few activities (Defense HUMINT service) was made part of the National Clandestine Service. I've expanded on some of this in Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action. Depending on definitions, there are some military activities that can be both covert and legal. The requirement is that they be in direct support of military operations.

Part of the reason the article may be confusing is the term "covert ops" is used very broadly in the article. It is not accidental that the National Clandestine Service is called that, rather than the National Covert Service. It could have a better name, because it does both covert and clandestine things -- and they are different; it's a very significant difference to people with exposure to the field. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 17:33, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Still concerned about balance

I've put in a fair bit of time on the article, both in verifying/cleaning content and filling in material, enough that I think I can say I have gone over things in detail.

Look, for example, at Korea and the Caribbean/Cuba/Cuban missile crisis; those are a start on what I think is encyclopedic coverage. Just to say, with no other background, that the CIA trained police or set up an Operation Gladio network really doesn't give information; I'd recommend waiting for more background and context.

There are news reports from reputable journalists, but there are also quite a number from activists for varying positions. I'm afraid I don't give equal credit to a staff writer for the Washington Post and for the Revolutionary Worker.

The article is impossibly long, yet its covert operations section is full of fragments. It's going to have to break up so those fragmentary sections can be edited; it's taking a long time to save the file now. Note that I was able to put estimative/analytic material in for Korea and Cuba. Much data of that sort is available, often in the form of the actual declassified documents. Not to put in relevant reports, National Intelligence Estimates, etc., gives the impression that the agency is purely covert operations, since the reports were almost never mentioned for countries I saw--just controversial "dirty tricks". That's not NPOV.

Many sources are available for the report literature, including the George Washington University National Security Archives, the Avalon Project at Yale, the archives at Mount Holyoke, the military staff colleges and research institutes, the Foreign Relations of the United States series, and even the CIA FOIA Reading Room. There is, for example, a huge amount of analytic reporting about Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1975, including strong disagreements among the CIA, military, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and White House (Sam Adams' book, War of Numbers is excellent, but also see the Pentagon Papers).

I'd like to suggest that people editing this look at some of my articles on the process of intelligence, which may help understand things that aren't just covert destabilization. Start with Intelligence cycle management, which will take you through a hierarchy of articles. The HUMINT sections do deal with clandestine rather than covert activity; I'm actively working on them. The article on Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action is particularly relevant both in history, and balance between clandestine and covert activities. Especially in WWII, there was often a conflict between operations and intelligence gathering.

Please let me help, but understand that my reaction is that things come across as very accusatory and unbalanced. Believe me, I am very aware of both improprieties and just plain incompetence in intelligence agencies, and they need to be brought out -- but in an encylopedic, not fragmentary and accusatory way. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 05:05, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Directorate of Operations/National Clandestine Service organization

I've put some sourced detail under the Directorate of Intelligence, which I may make into a graphic. Unfortunately, I can't find any organization charts online for the ever-changing organization on the DDP/DO/NCS. While I know where to get a number of books that gave a snapshot at some point in time, I have most of my hardcopy books in storage, so I can't source the reference. For anyone that has them, Richelson's The American Intelligence Community is probably most neutral. There are versions, certainly reorganized by now, in Agee, Marchetti & Marks, and (IIRC) Stockwell, among others. Does anyone have access to these books for sourcing? Here's some general text, but it's from my memory rather than something I can cite.

General Organization of the NCS/DI

More than most government agencies, the organization of a service that does clandestine intelligence collection, and covert operations, changes frequently. Some reorganizations will be based on geopolitical considerations. Most services, not just the CIA have a set of divisions and subordinate "branches" or "desks" organized around regions and countries. During the Cold War, for example, there was a Soviet Russia Division, where another division might have all of Latin America.

In general, however, the CIA operations side was structured into geographic areas, and then a set of "staffs" that provide various services:

• counterintelligence/counterespionage (Counterintelligence Staff under Angleton)
• cover materials (e.g, Central Cover Staff)
• paramilitary (e.g., Special Activities Division
• psychological operations
• other information operations (e.g., computer)
• technical support ("Q's shop", eavesdropping equipment, lock and seal opening, etc.)

There was usually a unit that worked with NSA to put SIGINT and other sensors into denied areas or diplomatic facilities. At one point, this was "Division D", and may now be the "Special Collection Service".

There has been a trend, visible in the DI, to structure not just geographically, but also by function, especially for transnational issues. For example, Plame worked for a Counterproliferation unit that mixed DO and DI personnel.

At various times, CIA operations has had its own information technology unit, as they did not want information on specific HUMINT assets on the general CIA computers, even though those computers are designed to be secure.

The Counterintelligence Staff was most dominant under James Jesus Angleton. While it was reorganized periodically to get rid of Angleton, there is no question that field operators, clandestine and covert, need a counterintelligence support unit. Counterintelligence, for example, would do name checks and other research on potential asset recruitments, to be sure they have not been associated with a foreign intelligence service.

Rationale for Secrecy

All large bureaucracies, certainly including the CIA, periodically reorganize for reasons such as trying to improve efficiency, or to recover from a scandal. Another factor, specific to intelligence services, is that they do not want details of their organization to be known externally. Some of this is a tradition of secrecy, but there are practical reasons. For example, if a foreign service knows the number of people working in a division, it will give rough priorities. Most importantly, the association of particular people with assignments is sensitive. If, for example, someone posted to an embassy, under diplomatic cover is known to have worked in the paramilitary division, that alerts the country that a covert military operation may be planned.

Alternatively, that paramilitary officer may be assigned to work closely with the government in that area,to help them run paramilitary activities against neighboring country, or for counterinsurgency.

If another officer is assigned to an embassy, and is known to be a scientific rather than geographic specialist, that can alert the host nation that the intelligence service either is going to try to get more information in that field, or may have already recruited human assets that need a specialist case officer, a case officer who will understand their reporting.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 20:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Additions, deletions, and going forward

In the last two days or so, I have been fairly boldly structuring, reference checking, and doing general editing. In a number of places, especially in South America, I replaced what was clearly partisan sources, written in emotional language, with bureaucratic but damning language from declassified CIA documents. Putting in details from US sources, which are hardly complimentary to the US, should indicate that I'm not an apologist.

At the same time, I do not consider the CIA or the US Intelligence Community the incarnation of evil. I absolutely believe that true intelligence is needed, and I changed the "covert and clandestine actions" to a geographical one in which I have included intelligence reports and estimates. Seeing the analytic product alongside "action", I believe, gives a much more balanced perspective. Also, this article is about the CIA, not all of US foreign policy. If a section discussed US actions but in no way referenced the CIA or any intelligence agency, I removed that content; some were, for example, presidential or private actions. There were times that the same action in Iran and Iraq was essentially cloned in both places, where it belongs only in one. That is one of the reasons I have been substituting Wiki headings for date bullets, so it is possible to Wikilink and avoid duplication.

The article desperately needs to be split into a core agency description, and then history by geographic area (as well as a separate section for transnational issues). We can discuss what the areas should be; I think separating Central and South America is not useful due to transborder events. Whether to split Europe into Western vs. Eastern & Soviet Union/Russia is debatable. East and even Southeast Asia works, but some thought will have to go into the Middle East and the Maghreb of North Africa, East Africa, Subsaharan Africa, and Southwest Asia.

I see little point to putting in "CIA trained the police of country XXX" when there is no other context. To me, those lines, by themselves, and especially without references, come across as vague allegations. Again, to anyone that might suggest I'm being an apologist, I documented some very ugly things done in Guatemala and Honduras, and have more material for Argentina. I also have some material that isn't all that complementary to Cuba, and some, as much as anything can be in a serious subject, that is comical: Brezhnev and Castro apparently each considered the other to be an idiot.

Sorry, I can't get serious about allegations that Afghanistan was the worst catastrophe in history, unless someone hasn't heard of World War II. Looked at objectively, some just doesn't make sense. For example, earlier text on South Sudan mentions that its late leader, John Garang, went to the School of the Americas. ummm...what? Sudan is in East Africa. AFAIK, Garang didn't speak Spanish or Portuguese. Why would he go to the School of the Americas, unless that is the euphemism for conspiracies? In fact, he took the Advanced Infantry Officer School at the Infantry Center. It's quite routine to have foreign personnel in regular US military educational institutions; Advanced (Branch) school is for fairly junior officers (e.g., Army captain), but you will find foreign students at the midcareer Staff Colleges and the senior War Colleges.

There's no way to get real context into an article of this size, but it works much better with links. For example, the Soviet Union and Cuba would certainly be in diferent articles were there a geographic split, but there are important links between them. East Asia has a great deal of transnational issues, especially regarding China, Vietnam and Korea.

I'm a little surprised that there has been no comment; I do welcome working together in good faith.

As an aside, remember that US intelligence is more than the CIA. In discussing the Korean War, I did put in some SIGINT information that affects the CIA reporting. Do remember that during the Korean War, NSA did not yet exist, and the CIA clandestine service was still scattered among several agencies (until near the end). Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 23:04, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Howard, the "CIA trains police in country XX" lines are perhaps an incorrect inference from comments on pages 279 and 280 of Tim Weiner's book, namely

President Eisenhower had created a one-size-fits-all plan called the Overseas Internal Security Program, run by the CIA in concert with the Pentagon and the State Department...The program trained 771,217 foreign military and police officers in twenty-five nations. It found the most fertile ground in nations where covert action by the CIA had prepared the soil. It had helped create the secret police of Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iran, Iraq, Laos, Peru, the Philippines, South Korea, South Vietnam , and Thailand

and

The CIA was backing the leaders of eleven Latin American nations -- Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuala.

[Interjected]   Perhaps you can see my concern with the "CIA trains police in country XXX" with, say, Honduras. I put in a substantial amount of material from other sources about what was done or not done. I did not approve of the amount of redaction into some of the CIA Inspector General's investigation documents that were released. To me, if one is going to bring up a subject at all, that would be a starting amount of information, rather than "CIA trained police" with no additional context.

There are several other aspects to this. I am more willing to say "the US has been an anti-democratic force under XXX administrations", rather than portraying the CIA as the source of all evil. In some of the SE Asia material, for example, I went back to the discussions between Nixon and Kissinger about action in Cambodia, to which the CIA representative actually objected. [ Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC) ]

In an earlier comment, you asked "what is the notability of Tim Weiner's book". The notability is that he is a NY Times reporter whose individual articles are cited in this Wiki article; his book is a recent NY Times bestseller; and reading the book motivated me to try to expand the Covert Ops section, because it caused me to believe that we as a country are, on balance, an anti-democratic force, because many of the political decisions that Weiner documents are motivated towards manipulating elections in other people's countries to maintain center-right candidates in power. JFK and RFK being the worst offenders in this regard, and somewhere to the right of George W Bush in their (covert) actions.

So if you care as much about this subject as you clearly do, you should really spend the $20 on a copy of Weiner's book, because it is an opinion-making book that will set the tone for a lot of people. Wikipedia is also an opinion-making influence and is a focus of a lot of manipulation by opinion-makers. (For example, try inserting a reference to the Armenian Genocide in the main articles for Turkey or Ataturk, and see how long it lasts -- 5 minutes, tops, any time of the day or night.) And obviously then, if you feel Weiner's book is biased, the CIA page is actually a good place to counter that bias.

[Interjected]   Let me explain why I don't intend to buy Weiner's book, or spend time countering his claims. There is a huge amount of material online, which, in many cases, includes the original proposal and approval documents. Obviously, a good deal is redacted, but, when one starts to be familiar with the topic, it's possible to fill in a fair number of blanks. I prefer to go to those documents rather than news reports, although, on reading a number of Weiner's articles, I find him somewhat, but not completely, balanced--as with the issues about US-French economic intelligence, an issue where both countries are going after each other. [ Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC) ]

There is tons of good stuff in Weiner's book to support the concept that we as a country have been intimately involved in other people's elections on a regular basis. For example he's got 5 pages of detail (pp 116-121) on our support of Nobosuke Kishi and Okinori Kaya in Japan after WW 2. Obviously we are setting the tone now in Iraq elections. That is not too surprising. Much more surprising is the allegation that we set the tone one time for elections in Australia. A little less surprising is the idea that we would manipulate elections in other WW 2 enemy countries such as Italy or on-the-fencers like France. But if you put it all on a global list the scale is surprising. 71 countries are in the index of Weiner's book. We get involved in the politics of a lot of those 71. Is there a half-life for this? I.e., if you get in a war with a country and defeat them, for how long is it OK to dictate their elections? 10 years, 20 years? On another note, much was made of the Castro assasination attempt. That is an emotional subject.

[Interjected]   And largely because the Kennedys had personal animus for him and people like William Harvey would follow orders. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Handing Saddam to a bunch of cellphone-wielding Shiites to make a snuff film, maybe less so.

[Interjected]   Right there, you point to something very specific where I have a problem. Do I personally feel that the US should have invaded Iraq in 2003? No, and I was on record beforehand. Where was the intelligence justification manufactured? Mostly outside the CIA, in the Office of Special Plans (Feith) and in the White House. There is a problem of back-and-forth, though, with the White House and intelligence community, and it's a two-sided problem that goes back to WWII.

But what did the CIA have to do with Saddam's execution? I honestly don't see any cause and effect. If you want to talk about Saddam's execution as a consequence of the invasion, that's one thing, but I see that much more as a White House matter. Also, I don't think there was a force in the world, once Saddam fell, that would have saved his life. [ Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC) ]

Paying a woman push a button to blow up 45 people having a wedding party in the mountains that she's never even met and doesn't know the names of -- even less so. I know that war now is effectively a lot less bloody (and a lot more expensive), than it used to be, and it's getting less and less lethal as we go along -- still, individual incidents of our use of power can still be disturbing.

[Interjected]   What you just described goes right to one of my problems. You are talking about things that were indeed US policy, but not the CIA working in a vacuum. In some of those cases, it may have been military, it may have been private interests, and it may have involved CIA. The article doesn't distinguish. If the article was called "US covert action", fine, but it's called "CIA".

There are indeed times the CIA did things without proper approval, but there are many more when they followed orders. Should there be laws against some actions? Quite possibly -- but they often don't exist. There's also a good deal of responsibility about the Congress not insisting on its oversight; look at the quotes I inserted from Eisenhower about the U-2 incident and how Eisenhower, generally a pretty competent man, did not want Congress knowing about CIA operations.

On political blogs, I write extensively about how I think the oversight should take place. That is a place for original opinion and policy recommendations, but I don't see Wikipedia at that place.

There is also being clear what is US political policy, what is general intelligence tradecraft, and, for that matter, when something is not intelligence at all. CIA is just as much an intelligence agency as a covert action agency, but that would have been hard to tell from the article. There is so much intelligence material, indeed, that it couldn't fit.

Have you looked at the hierarchy of information on intelligence I've mostly written, starting from Intelligence cycle management? I've tried quite hard to be international in that. I've also written on the relationship between Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action, which is not limited to the US and may have a few surprises. Intelligence, incidentally, will be a Military History task force within a few days. [ Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC) ]

I haven't been commenting on your last few days additions because of 3 reasons: (1) I am deferring to you because I believe you are knowledgeable about (and something of an advocate for) the CIA. (2) I believe this article should be broken up into smaller, wikilinked chunks. However an earlier attempt to do this for covert ops was reversed by another editor, causing loss of edits.

[Interjected]   You've just pointed to a key part of the problem. Is the article about:

• The history about US covert operations, CIA or not?
• The history of the Central Intelligence Agency pre-2004 and the history of the Intelligence Community generally?
• US intelligence, which is not always covert action?
• Covert action, not necessarily by the US?

[ Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC) ]

If you can effect a break-up that doesn't get reversed by someone else, then I say go ahead. The main argument against break-up was that it is a strategy for deletion, i.e. break-up now, delete the branches later.

[Interjected]   South American activities are a special problem. It's not exactly that no one there ever thought of torture before the CIA was involved -- one can look back to Cortez and Pizzaro and find incredible violations of human rights. In some cases, I honestly believe that the US influence was moderating over something even more bloodthirsty. In other cases, there were things that were absolutely inappropriate -- but many before 1940, as described by Smedley Butler in War is a racket.

Right now, I'm not sure how much effort I want to put in, simply because I don't have any particular political agenda here -- elsewhere, yes. It happens that I've had professional reason to study Sudan in detail, and some of the material in the article made no sense at all. For example, it was charged that John Garang went to the School of the Americas. He actually went to the Infantry School. Why on earth would an African military officer, who as far as I know did not speak Spanish, go to the School of the Americas? It appeared someone with a political agenda of "US bad" decided any military instruction given to foreigners was done by the School of the Americas. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

(3) I fear that if I pushed every detail of Weiner's book into this page and ended up causing trouble for CIA, that I could make somebody in CIA angry, and put myself at risk.

[Interjected]   I think you are assuming much more domestic power than CIA actually has. While I have never worked for them, I've had interactions with them for close to 40 years. For example, I was the network architect at the Library of Congress, and, at the time, CIA, NSA, and the Library were the only people trying build computer workstation to handle Arabic, Farsi, Kanji, etc.

At the same time, I lived in DC for a long time. While it sadly wore out, for many years, I had a bathrobe that had been handmade by Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first DCI. He was an Annapolis classmate of my first wife's grandfather, and his hobby was sewing. The robe was too long for everyone else in the family, so I inherited it -- Hillenkoetter, IIRC, was dead by then. It's sometimes interesting to think of the head of the Evil Force sitting and sewing kimonos.

In 1972, I did a political policy analysis on security classification policy, and CIA was the most cooperative agency in government. I can also think of things they did, not even associated with covert action, that, in retrospect, were awe-inspiring in stupidity.

I have worked, sometimes after their retirement, with some senior intelligence officials, or just had occasion to talk to them. They tended to be more on the pure intelligence, and often technical side, which is very much short-changed if the emphasis is covert action. [ Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC) ]

You are doing a great job of adding a lot more detail. So other than what I've done so far, I don't want to take any more risk on this subject. (For example, when I listened to the novel Middlesex which comments on Armenian Genocide and read up on that and was inspired to insert some wikilinks on that subject in Ataturk page, I stepped into another hornet's nest that I decided to back away from.) Erxnmedia (talk) 16:16, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

So, I'm thinking how much energy I want to put into this, because before going much further, I would like to see a consensus about the purpose of the article, or series of articles. I'm not especially interested in doing a history of US covert action, especially one that ignores the contributions or cowardice of politicians in the White House or Congress.

What about things like the statement the CIA tried to have a coup against Hoxha of Albania in 1949-1952, when the CIA didn't contain its covert action units until 1952? (see Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action. The covert action shop in 1949 was OPC]]

Can we decide on the purpose and scope of the article on the talk page? As I say, I am not especially interested in a project on Wikipedia that is an expose of US covert action, no matter who did it. I do write about that sort of political context in other places. If the article is to be about CIA, including the intelligence component, and also about when they either were ordered from above to do things, or had the difficult choice of getting less horrors by moderating sometimes, or just closing eyes, it's quite another matter. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Howard,

I don't know who the deciders are on structure and scope for this article. The way it goes is you try something, and either somebody reverts you, or it sticks. There are a lot of people watching, and some community standards within Wiki editors as a Borg-like entity, so somehow it all seems to work out. It's a unique and fairly new process.

Here is what I hear you saying:

1. There is pre-2004 CIA and post-2004 CIA (pre-DNI and post-DNI?)

[Interjected]   That's one piece, especially when it come to the intelligence side. As far as HUMINT and to a significant extent, covert action, it still has the responsibility.

2. CIA acts in context

[Interjected]   This is worth exploring, although the context changes. What I do mean is that a significant part of covert operations, but definitely not all, covert actions start out at the White House level.

3. The other guys are worse

[Interjected]   :Again, there is context. Switching hats, I do a lot of medical work. If there's a patient with certain forms of cancer, you can do nothing, and see how comfortable you make them. You may also try some mutilating surgery or drugs that make the patient sick as hell, and they might or not get cured, be well for a while, or get worse.

There absolutely were and are democratic movements in Latin America. Costa Rica is about the only country in the world that decided not to have a military. OTOH, you had a lot of Nazis escaping to certain South American countries after WWII, because there was a tolerance to strongman rule and war crimes. If you are the US, and you know Nazis have sanctuary and official tolerance, that tells you something about its government--especially when you see a large part of the population disenfranchised and in grinding poverty.

I'm going to say some things to which there is no simple answer. Now, assume it's 1948-1952. A good deal of Eastern Europe was taken over. You've had the Berlin Blockade. While I document, in the article, that the Soviets were not nearly as in control of the Korean War as people thought at the time, there was valid reason to believe the Soviets were expansionistic, and already had taken over a number of countries. They are trying to expand influence. What do you do with countries where they might try to overthrow the government? Do you work with the thugs that are the government? Do you ignore it? A reality was that some Latin American governments routinely tortured and murdered. Torture is actually a lousy way to get information. Do you cooperate, maybe not torturing yourself, to have access to the goverments? Would some of their military have tortured if there had been no School of the Americas, or did any get moderated to any extent?

Remember Joe McCarthy has had everyone scared. Kennan had a rational containment policy and Marshall was extremely wise in rebuilding Europe, but there were people that ran to extremes with it: John Foster Dulles in particular, and it didn't help that his brother was DCI. There is a vignette of the fifties where Chou En Lai, generally considered the most approachable and reasonable of the original Chinese Communist leadership, offered his hand (and conversation) to JF Dulles at a neutral diplomatic party. Dulles harrumphed and ostentiatiously ignored him. If you have people who won't talk, you aren't going to find out if there are better alternatives.

4. Who cares about Weiner's book because all the sources are on the Web, and you already know most of the actual participants.

[Interjected]   Really, I'm not suggesting any one source. If a topic/period is to be discussed, however, try not to deal with any single source. In like manner, I have known some participants, by no means all, which give a different perspective. Even some of the critics have some solid areas as well as an ax to grind. Prouty, for example, is an excellent source on CIA logistics, proprietary airlines, etc. He is less authoritative on who ordered operations and why, and I don't quite buy his idea of the Secret Team that is secretly in control of everything -- but I will definitely use some information from him on Indonesia in the fifties, where it bears on the areas he worked.

For certain periods and eras, such as Vietnam, there is a huge amount of data, and yes, some if it first comes to light in books. Books, though, include things that deal with the overall situation, easily starting with Patti's book from 1947 or so when the US made, IMHO, the very bad decision to support the French return, rather than deal with Ho and a coalition. There are nearly 200 National Intelligence Estimates about Vietnam, and a huge number of very thoughtful studies. Is it reasonable to pay attention only to the ones that speak about "dirty tricks"?

5. Is this article supposed to be functional or investigative (i.e. critical) or all-encompassing or sketchy or what?

[Interjected]   Exactly. I am interested in historical documentation of a balanced picture. There are political blogs where I may be quite critical, but I don't see that as the purpose of Wikipedia, where NPOV is a founding pillar.

6. What about history of other people's covert ops.

[Interjected]   In some cases, you almost have to have them, because you may very well have had multiple sides changing factions. See the notes on China and Angola, which was at least three-sided, and Deng Xiaoping said the Chinese had, at some point, trained every side.

7. What about your articles on how people who actually work in Intelligence spend their days

[Interjected]   Well, yes. Some of the operations were dealing with intelligence gathering, some by CIA and some by other agencies. There were clandestine intelligence operations that involved the military.

8. If I don't keep putting in stuff, you'll get bored and you don't want to do it anymore.

[Interjected]   Well, what I'd most like to see is a division of labor among people who are willing to look beyond the sensational. I've never really been a specialist on Latin America, but I was able, fairly quickly, to find a wide range of sources on the Web, of things I hadn't known about. Then, when I found them, I cross-checked and tried to post, with sources, what was mostly agreed.

I hear you. When I started my adds last week or so, I also thought about adding a covert ops section for the Mossad, following Ian Black and Benny Morris's book "Israel's Secret Wars". I didn't because I thought my personal risk factor would really start going up. I think it would be useful and interesting to have, for each notable intelligence agency (DGST, KGB, MI6 etc), a clickable history of their activity by region by country.

I have a lot of respect for your articles on intelligence management, they read like practical training courses for people in the business, as it is actually practiced on a day to day basis, outside of the spectacular incidents of political manipulation of intelligence (e.g. S. Eugene Poteat's experience in the Gulf of Tonkin), and "regime change" operations.

[Interjected]   Believe me, it is an ugly thing when I get started on my opinions of LBJ and Vietname. The best single reference on US decisionmaking, incidentally, is probably McMaster's Dereliction of Duty. Sometimes, one really has to dig into the details to find out how much to hate what someone did. Truth being stranger than fiction, Robert McNamara's middle name is "Strange".

Also if you look in Weiner's book (which you won't, but if you did), he throws out covert ops counts here and there of "300 this year", "200 that year", so even if you tried and had complete open sources on everything -- it would just take too long, and people would drown in the detail.

So if the point of my adds were "US covert/clandestine intervention in the political life of other countries" -- then that would be a theme, you could move a lot of stuff somewhere else, and you could back off of CIA as a focus.

[Interjected]   If someone wants to do that, fine. I'm not that enthusiastic about covert action as an effective way to operate anyway, and, in many cases, when I have documented it, it's to give a reason why it was a bad idea, so that people can learn from it.

I'm not personally interested in spending a lot of my own time documenting regime change, but, when someone is doing it, I'd like to see objectivity. It's too broad a field for any one person. Some of the things being said in areas where I do have some current knowledge, such as Sudan, do not make a great deal of sense.

The only problem with that is that, for better or worse, CIA really seems to be the go-to agency for boneheaded international covert/clandestine political interventions. It is the agency the public thinks about, knows about and hears about. It is, notably, an agency with a much smaller budget than agencies that don't get a lot of attention. It makes me wonder if CIA is the punching bag/sandbox for elected politicians to do their meddling with, while the remaining agencies are more businesslike and apolitical.

So I can't tell you where to start or what the point would be. I know you want a more functional and present-day focussed description of CIA on this page. That would be a lot easier if CIA simply renamed itself, like Russia did by relabelling the KGB the FSB, thereby putting a lot of it's history in a different box. By keeping the name, it is keeping the historical associations. I don't know if this is a good thing. It has a relatively short history -- 50 or 60 years -- it's easy enough to put that in a box and start over. Corporations do it all the time: Arthur Andersen becomes Accenture, Salomon becomes Citigroup, and so on. Maybe it's time for a name change.

Also when CIA get's it's name in the paper with NY Times publishing photos of rendition aircraft and lists of secret prisons and stories of Iraqis getting lost in the system between CIA prisons and military ones and they start erasing records -- well, it just starts looking like, whatever quiet period there may have been in the 1990's, the dogs of war are back on the payroll. In which case, evaluating the institution requires remembering it's history and how it acted -- in context, under orders, or on it's own.

To answer your question of my personal preference, I think a general subject of "How country A intervenes in the affairs of country B" might be too broad (isn't that just History?), maybe one like "How country A covertly/clandestinely intervenes in the affairs of country B" might be good. And then you could have U.S. times 71 countries and Israel times it's 71 countries and Russia and Britain and so on. That might be the right structure.

[Interjected]   If someone wanted to do that fairly, that would be great. I'm much more personally interested in how the US (or UK, or other countries) figures out what is happening in country X, and brings it to the civilian leadership, and decisions are then made. I'm just not that interested in covert action, mostly because all too often, it accomplishes nothing in the long run. It's most useful as an adjunct to a more conventional war. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hcberkowitz (talk • contribs) 23:25, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't honestly know. Erxnmedia (talk) 22:09, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

What to call spawned articles?

I'm inclined to create a section on transnational issues in the main article, but then split off the geographic sections into three articles, which reflects the CIA geographic organization in the Directorate of Intelligence (with the exception of Iraq as a special office). In doing so, I will have sections on regional issues, such as human rights in Latin America.

The challenge, however, is what to call the geographic sections. They are no longer restricted to covert action, but include analytic reports and intelligence estimates. Including such material is hardly a whitewash of the omniscience of the CIA, as would be evident in looking at Indonesia in 1965: the estimates leading a political action program meant only to strengthen opposition to Communist influences did not expect the massive military purge of the Communist Party.

Another problem is that there can be a very blurry line between CIA, State Department, military and White House direction. CIA has apparently been tasked with hunting al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia and Ethiopia, but State Department officials there say this is at odds with the broader program of stabilization.

So, any suggestions? I don't want to start creating articles that talk about all US policy in an area, but there is a need to show where CIA may differ with other organizations.Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:37, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Howard,

I think we should focus on CIA in any branches and not other agencies.

I wish you would read Weiner's book because he talked to most of the DCIs and towards the end of the book with Church hearings and going forward, there are many reinventions and huge personnel shifts in the agency, so you could identify eras within the 60-year history and have an article just on the management shifts.

It is clear in the book that there is no blurring of lines between CIA and DoD and State Dept, they seem to act quite independently.

I think I'm going to put a few more countries in with just one key and quite out-of-contect event per country, please feel free to expand.Erxnmedia (talk) 02:03, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I lived in the DC area for about 40 years, and you'd be surprised, if you hadn't lived there, about how much about the DCI's styles you'd hear at parties, from friends, and the local press. I'm not sure Weiner is going to add that much to it, and there's a pure size thing. If the regional detail splits off, then it makes sense to put the management changes and styles in the core article.

Some were very good and some were very bad. Admiral Red Raborn was a great engineer and project manager for submarines, but was totally out of his depth at CIA. He knew nothing of foreign affairs; after a briefing in which he was told a country was run by an oligarchy, he told an aid to bring him the biographical file on "that guy, Ollie Garchy".

OTOH, John McCone was probably the best DCI, even though he hadn't come up through the ranks. Smith, who had been Eisenhower's chief of staff in Europe, also was very good, and I heard a surprising number of people speak well of George H.W. Bush (perhaps he didn't pass on his brains). Turner and Schlesinger were hated and gutted lots of functions. The people with intelligence backgrounds varied; some leaned to their own operational specialty while others were more balanced. It was said of Allen Dulles that his appointment to DCI was like taking "the fastest telegraph operator and making him head of Western Union" (ok, dated reference, but Dulles tended to initiate actions more than was appropriate).

Actually, your point about the departments being at cross-purposes varies with both President and DCI. Eisenhower, not really surprisingly given his background, probably had the best-run White House staff, and things were done very systematically. They might be wrong, especially when the Brothers Dulles were involved, but they were logical given the assumptions. Casey, on the other hand, was an ideologue and a loose cannon -- while a lawyer, he had run OSS espionage missions into Nazi Germany, but was one of the many DCIs that didn't understand that CIA was both an intelligence and action agency.

Key question — to get in more material in the core article, the thing has to split up. What do we call the new articles?

Thinking about it, I'm leaning to 3 geographical articles that track the DI structure, plus a 4th for transnational issues (drugs, terrorism, global anticommunism, intelligence aspects of disease, proliferation, etc.) Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 03:43, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi Howard, I concur with this split. I see you are in the middle of it. Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 16:54, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

It took one more split -- Americas, Africa, Asia-Pacific were too big as a single article; I made each an article. I'll be going out for a couple of hours. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:58, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

umm....since you are halfway through the split and out for a few hours, please check for edits in main article that should be applied to split pieces, otherwise edits will get lost in process. thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 18:08, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Took off the tags

Hi, I took off the NPOV and length tags because it seems these issues have been largely addressed.

If anybody has an NPOV or length issue now, please add the tag back on and discuss here.

Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 02:14, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Cultural trivia section?

Don't many Wikipedia articles have a cultural trivia section? To me, it seems like the perfect receptable into which we could sweep all the "not verifiable" or alleged "conspiracy theory" or alledged not "neutral point of view" elements of this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.111.123.49 (talk) 19:09, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Seal

This is a pedant speaking, so ignore this freely! :D Anyway, unless the text accompanying the logo is an officially-defined symbology, shouldn't the paragraph read that the coat of arms of the CIA is a white compass star on a white background, with an eagle for the crest? Or some other heraldically-accurate description? I know that this is quite an unimportant issue of no consequence as to whether it is like-this-or-like-that, but maybe it can be looked into by someone more comfortable with this article. 202.89.153.149 (talk) 03:24, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Whitewash of CIA history

I almost left Wikipedia because I was disgusted and tired of the POV deletions and having to police articles which I contributed too.

I decided to check on this page, and sure enough, large portions of cited text, with over 93 citations were moved and deleted, replaced with a whitwashed mickey mouse version of the history of the CIA.

It was no surprise that those who wanted to delete this troubling history from wikipedia had no problem with this unrefrenced history of the CIA.

The length tag was removed [even though the article was still 93 kilobytes long], and so was the NPOV tag.

This argument started when a self proclaimed CIA employee started removing sections of this article. It continued with a Single Purpose account who created a dummy page which confused other editors. This argument continues with editors who have less than 100 edits.

REMEDY

I have ask for a third party moderator on this page. I am going to ask other wikipedians who care about a full history of the CIA to get involved with this article too. If this does not resolve the situation we will go to RFA. I think we can avoid and AfD but I don't rule this out. I think a AfD is the only remedy to stop this blatant whitewashing.

I redirected all the split off pages. I couldn't find many of my contributions. The older style was much better of topics instead of regions, the torture manuals are now buried, as are the alleged drug activities of Air America. I will completly rework all the section tonight.

No one who wants to delete this section complains when it is deleted. So I have little sympathy for the changes that were lost in reverting this page. If editors want to add back this information which was removed in the reversion they are welcome. Unlike many editors, I will not delete information which I don't personally agree with. Trav (talk) 18:06, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Personally I think what you've done today is little short of vandalism and will revert to the previous version accordingly.

Whilst I'm not keen non Howards writing style the content was substantially improved over the version which you've reverted to. Feel free to tender for an RFC.

ALR (talk) 18:46, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

The real vandal are those who remove referenced material and whitewash history. I will revert you reversion. Look t this version [[1] compared to the current one, whole sections are gone. Where did they go? They are replaced by nonreferenced whitewashed history. Who is the real vandal? Someone who removes entire cited sections or someone who attempts to restore it. You have a very Orwellian view of vandalism. Trav (talk) 18:50, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm completely confused, in that I've been taking an extra effort to come up with as good references as possible.

Ernxmedia asked if there was objection, and none was raised at the time he removed those tags.

Seriously, I think that's an excellent idea.

I am completely confused. Who is supposed to be a CIA employee? What single purpose account and dummy accounts? Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 19:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

AFAIK, the KUBARK and related pages haven't been touched. There are references to them as improprieties in the main body, although I attempted to make the language referring to them more NPOV.Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 19:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Please reply below comments. I will discuss this later. Again I am totaly troubled at the whitewashed version of history.Trav (talk) 19:09, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

What SPA and CIA employee?

Who has proclaimed themself a CIA employee, and what SPA is involved?

Could someone tell me what is involved here? I've done a lot of work on the CIA article, but I've also done a lot of work in other areas, including intelligence concepts not focused on countries, and also written extensively in computer networking and other areas.

I have tried to rearrange the CIA article, which was both long and POV when I started, and preserve well-sourced data in additional articles. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 19:24, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

You are not a SPA sir.

User:Morethan3words is the WP:SPA (discussion above). User:No barometer of intelligence aka User:Office of independent counsel stated he was a CIA employee[2]

Please read the portion of this discussion page in the edit diff linked to above carefully, taking special attention of the word not. I am NOT a CIA employee (or former employee for that matter) and have never claimed to be. I am, however, typing this comment out laboriously on the tiny keyboard of a handheld device, and can't really elaborate or get further involved in this current discussion. I have been inactive on Wikipedia of late for a variety of reasons, but felt compelled to break my self-imposed silence to correct the record on this very important point of fact. No barometer of intelligence (talk) 01:00, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Both editors have complained about the article being too big, both have removed items. User:No barometer of intelligence did it in a way that I supported. He removed the section to another existing article and retained a paragraph. User:Morethan3words, like other editors, deleted the entire section, moving it to another page. The SPA disappeared now.

User:arkalochori, who removed the CIA/Wikipedia section was indefinitely booted as a sock puppet. Travb 00:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Not everyone who disagrees with the organization or tone of the article is a CIA employee, alumnus, or wrong. I offer no suggestions at this point, and would prefer to remain apart from content debates, as I've only been involved in vandalism patrol, but flat rejection of every edit since December 26 is not a way to collaboration. Redirecting content forks may, in fact, be appropriate, but it also stifles debate on their content and appropriateness. I would suggest that the redirects be removed, and the forked articles debated properly in the open, together with a discussion on the length and degree of detail in the main article. The inquiries into the potential motivation of editors are becoming ironically similar to James Angleton's mole hunts. I will further remind all parties of WP:OWN. Acroterion _(talk) 03:26, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

No barometer of intelligence, you wrote:

Like all but a relative few CIA employees (I'm not including myself in that group by virtue of awkward sentence construction), I can't read Arabic.

This is an awkward sentence. I completely misread it. I believe you. I crossed out the section. My apologies.

User:Acroterion, I agree everyone who disagrees is not a CIA employee, etc.

I really commend User:Hcberkowitz edits. He has added 60 kb of information to the history section. That history section is intact. I will not move that history section. I commend Hcberkowitz work.

(smile) Thanks for whoever is commending me, although I've lost track of who is saying what. No matter; it's more important that useful work gets done than a specific person gets credit. See below about breaking up. 04:18, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I restored all of the sections before they were completely jumbled by E. I speak about that below.

I have never heard of an article being broken up into 8 articles. This is unprecedented. I have no idea where certain sections went in these 8 articles. After working with this article for two years, if I can't find the material how can anyone else?

Here is one area I'm confused. Something like World War II certainly won't fit into one article, and we are talking about worldwide events over 60 years. How could they fit?Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 04:18, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Please also keep in mind that this article has been attacked for years [see above]. There is a small group of people who want to remove all negative references to the CIA.

If you can access the 1958 India section, you will find a quote from Henry Kissinger, directly responding to Zhou Enlai's question (in 1972) as to whether the CIA had tried to kill Zhou with a bomb on a chartered airliner. It's worth following the URL back to their full discussion, which is fascinating. Kissinger said that Zhou much overestimated the competence of the CIA. I'm certainly aware of things that were highly inappropriate on moral and legal grounds, some things that were simply absurd, and other things that were very well done. To borrow the quote that Bill Buckley used as the title of his intelligence novel, which Buckley took from TS Eliot, it's an "Infinity of Mirrors". Very little is pure white or pure black. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 04:18, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I again commend Hcberkowitz for mentioning some of these negative events. But huge sections were removed to 8 different articles, completely changing the article.

After E making such a huge jumble. E added so much material from other articles and made the table of contents the largest I have ever seen on wikipedia. I understand what Hcberkowitz was trying to do after to help. Hcberkowitz seems like a really calm gentleman, who has handled this situation much better than I have. For that I commend him.

I look forward to working with everyone. I have worked with User:No barometer of intelligence and other editors to make this a awarded "good article". I am not happy with the article right now either. Travb 03:57, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Travb - your comments are most helpful. I'd suggest a new thread to work things out concerning potential daughter articles, citations, and reorganization. Acroterion _(talk) 04:16, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

The above comments assume that User:68.89.131.187 is in fact Travb editing from an IP. If so, it would be most helpful if you were logged in. If not, we have a problem. Acroterion _(talk) 04:23, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I have blocked 68.89.131.187 (talk · contribs) for 24 hours for impersonation of Travb (talk · contribs) in conversations on this page. Acroterion _(talk) 04:54, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll try to sort this out later, since Travb's appeared under his account again. Acroterion _(talk) 05:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Restoring items

I am going to start restoring certain historical items one by one to this article. Which was moved to other articles.

I have no idea where certain sections went in this move.

I am going to add back information before Erxnmedia's edits. I will explain why in the next post.

Travb 00:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I did disagree with some of Erxnmedia's edits, and questioned them on the talk pages, or sometimes in inline comments. In some cases, I might be able to give some useful background on the disagreement and how the version evolved. There were cases where I don't think it was a "whitewash" to say that a particular command arrangement did not conform to reasonably accepted and sourced information. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 04:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Erxnmedia

User:Erxnmedia criticized me for deleting his edits, when in reality it was WP:SPA User:Morethan3words who created a misspelled version of Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intellegence Agency, which Erxnmedia edited. [This misspelling tactic is a common tactic of SPA's attempting to cause confusion]. There was no criticism of the SPA after I explained what happened.

After I stopped editing the article on 13 December 2007, Erxnmedia continued to add A LOT of information to the article, he increased the size of all of the small sections. Here is the stark differences before Hcberkowitz started to remove the sections.

May I just try to get some clarification here? Yes, I tried to get small sections to have substantive content. In some cases, that meant adding intelligence material (as opposed to operations), or questioning the sourcing of some of what you are mentioning was being added. Do you have a concern with substantive additions or source questioning, or putting in material that is not related to covert action but is related to a CIA assigned mission? Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 04:08, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

[3] User:Lars T. tried to stop Erxnmedia from "needlessly" cut and pasting so much material from other articles, and Erxnmedia reverted him. [4]

Erxnmedia also restored the dozens of === sections which I removed, which made the article look much longer than it was, even after I asked him not to do this. I told him that it would make the article look to big and harken users to complain it was too long.

It was like Erxnmedia intention was to split up the article.

And indeed, when the article was split up Erxnmedia didn't complain. He even suggested to remove the long and NPA tags after all of his edits and the criticism of the CIA was removed. Travb 00:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate the information, although it's still a little hard for me to follow who is saying what. If I misattribute something because I misread, just let me know.

I'll try not to point fingers at anyone, but just give a perspective on what I saw happening. There may well be some edit capabilities and ways to block which I don't understand -- for example, while I will go and try to research it, I don't understand what angle brackets nowiki does to length. Early in my involvement with the CIA article(s), most of the detailed entries were in the form of colon asterisk date, not a Wiki heading. This made it impossible to link to them from elsewhere in the article, to get a TOC, and it often indented and took up more whitespace on the page. Some of my first steps were mechanical, to convert entries to heading format rather than bullet, just to make it easier to read, and to link and comment.

It did concern me, however, when I saw what appeared to have been a list of country after country with essentially the same unsourced information, without specific dates, just something like "CIA trained police from year X to year Y." There was no indication of the starting date and authorization, which is one of the things I started researching. As many of you know, the US Congress put a number of restrictions on any police training in Latin America, partially over concerns with human rights. There were some provisions for the President certifying a specific need, usually in counternarcotics or, after 9/11, counterterror. Unquestionably, there were ideologically based circumventions of Congressional intent, as in Iran-Contra. So, I started with "improve reference" or "citation needed", which I could then check against legislation, or special exception invocations by the White House, certainly not under one political party.

None of us "own" the articles in this series. Other intelligence articles are under the Military History project, which now has an intelligence task force, but the emphasis there has been more on techniques than politics. While I certainly could be off on timing, I believe I waited around a month after asking for sourcing before removing something unsourced.

Another matter of concern, however, is that in an article about the Central Intelligence agency, there seemed no mention of any intelligence reports or estimates, just covert action. Since intelligence community reporting should have an important impact on US policy development, and is often released over time in sources such as the GWU National Security Archives, FAS, or the Foreign Relations of the United States series, I believe it can be quite important to know the intelligence positions taken that might have caused certain orders to be issued. In some cases, the consumers of intelligence may have said they wanted intelligence only to support a particular policy, whether the facts supported it or not. Having the combination of intelligence with information on both overt and covert activities gives a much more accurate picture of the international decisionmaking and action of the United States as a whole. Prior to 2004, the CIA was the coordinator of the intelligence community, so the reporting and the decisions were intertwined.

I do not believe that a single article can cover the worldwide history of operations over more than 60 years, but I also do not believe that reasonably sourced material should be removed. Certainly, the articles on, say, WWII, have many more associated article to deal with details. I believe that one article can really do justice to its organization, major policies usually under directors, Congressional hearings and new legislation, and its series of charters, and then the interested reader can go to a more detailed article for greater detail. For the world wars, etc., there is often a brief section about a theater of operations or a period of history, and then a wikilink to a more specific article about a theater, and perhaps even more wikilinks to specific battles, commanders, units, etc. Is there some reason why such a structure cannot apply to intelligence, or, if you will, "secret wars"?

Some actions, acknowledged as CIA, were inappropriate or incompetent. Others that were alleged may have internal conflict or alternative explanations. I did not feel a bullet saying "CIA overthrew X" with no more detail was either informative nor credible, so I branched to further detail in what I thought would be more readable articles. In some cases, after asking for sourcing, after talk page discussion with specific editors who said they had no sources other than one book, I deleted material that I believed to be logically inconsistent. In other cases, I added significant detail to the original.

I look forward to collaborative cooperation, which recognizes that especially with classified or partially declassified operations, there may well be more than one reasonable, sourced, explanation. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 04:08, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow, I thought I wrote a lot. Forgive me if I miss some of your points. I skimmed what you wrote.

Sorry if I am not clearer, you seem to be confused with who I am referring too.

The section I think you are referring to is Central_Intelligence_Agency#Covert_Operations. This section was a section paraphrasing the covert activities of the CIA, which was compiled by Blum, William and Weiner, Tim [footnote 107 to 108]. I didn't add the section. I think NY did.

This section has steadily grown, and it absolutely exploded with Erxnmedia. If you notice in that section, I added a merge tag suggesting it be moved to CIA sponsored regime change. I welcome redirecting all of those regional articles and putting them into CIA sponsored regime change.

Again look at the size of the section since December 14th. Erxnmedia added a lot of material which was unnecessary. You responded by trying to fix the problem. I wasn't here, I had left wikipedia disgusted [for the 10th time]. Trav (talk) 04:53, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Current chronological section, specifically on covert operations

I have no problem with all about having a chronological history. I do have a problem limiting it to covert opeations, and I just don't think that some of the specific matters (I'll give an example) can be covered adequately in a single article.

As an example of how that it's a bad idea to separate covert operations by the CIA, intelligence reports and estimates by the CIA and the intelligence community, and covert action tasking by one of the many NSC committees (e.g., 303 Committee, 54/12 Group, Special Group (counterinsurgency), I'd like to refer to the section on Indonesia in the separate CIA Activities in Asia-Pacific article. Since that article was clearly wikilinked from the start of the main CIA article, and also had a navigation box, I didn't think it would be hard to find.

Very briefly, in the late fifties, CIA got orders to overthrow Sukarno. They organized exiles in the Phillipines and Taiwan, and flew some in and brought in others by US submarine (source: declassified US documents, primarily in the Foreign Relations of the United States) series.

In 1964 and 1965, there were a series of National Intelligence Estimates and other analytic products that suggested ways of strengthening elements of the Indonesian political system, as a means of restraining (I'm not saying this is right or wrong) Sukarno's alliances with China and Russia, and his support of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The NIEs did not expect Sukarno to fall or the military to take an active political role.

1965, however, brought an extremely bloody civil war/military purge of the PKI, which, if one read the NIEs, should not have happened. As I understand the events, the PKI, on its own, killed six generals, and the military basically ignored Sukarno and tried to kill every member of the PKI.

How can one understand the Indonesian situation, and the Indonesian-US relations since, without looking at both the relevant intelligence estimates and the orders of the (IIRC) 303 Committee? Just looking at covert action proper, IMHO, cannot give a decent picture. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 04:30, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree 100%. Before you came to this article, myself and other editors were moving material and leaving brief one paragraph explanations, adding {{further}} tags.

The Robertson panel [Robertson Panel], was a section which I rewrote and expanded with references to avoid an edit war. No barometer for intelligence moved that section to Robertson panel [Robertson Panel] and let a brief paragraph explaining what it was. I did the same thing with the Black sites section.

Hcberkowitz, where is that section now? I can't find it. I can't find anything with this new layout. I have never heard of an article being split into 8 sections. This is unprecedented.

Again, I support moving all of the old covert action sections into one article, CIA sponsored regime change, and retaining a paragraph. The other sections, Robertson Panel, highly illegal activities, nazi collaboration, drug running, etc, should remain here or be moved to their respected articles and a paragraph remain. That is the normally policy on how to move sections.Trav (talk) 05:03, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I cut the Robertson Panel discussion down in the main area, but linked to what I believe may be more detailed information under Arthur C. Lundahl, the "Father of Photointerpretation" who worked with the University of Colorado investigators. There have been some recent declassifications in that area. From my perspective, the Robertson Panel is a rather minor event; the Air Force was much more involved in the matter.

Do you have a reason for not having a section for all CIA activities in a year, or in a geographic area? I'm confused by what seems to be an insistence on treating covert action differently than intelligence collection, intelligence analysis and estimates, and certain of the major Directorate of Support activities such as proprietaries that have (or had) a reasonable operational purpose. Also, while all regime change by the CIA is broadly under covert operations, not all covert operations are for the purpose of regime change. For example, some of the late forties (yes, I recognize it wasn't all CIA then) and early fifties subsidies to mainstream liberal and labor groups were seen as a way to balance a tilt to a potential Communist government, in countries that essentially stayed liberal after WWII.

I would oppose having an article on CIA sponsored regime change, for at least two reasons. First, I can think of very few regime change attempts that were not approved by the National Security Council or the operations approval committee (OCB, 303, 5412, Special Group, etc.), and indeed may have been the subject of a Presidential Finding, National Security Decision Memorandum, Presidential Directive, or whatever the document was in a particular Administration (I've never understood why the name has to keep changing). It would be considerably more correct to say "US sponsored regime change", because:

1. AFAIK, CIA operations to change a regime were approved at a higher level.
2. There are regime change operations in which the CIA had a minimal role, as in the BLUE SPOON (the actual operational plan that was renamed "Just Cause"). Panama, Grenada, and Iraq were regime changes by primarily overt military means.

While I can edit it more tightly, I think the Indonesian section in Asia-Pacific showed the balance of intelligence and covert operations. That section, incidentally, could easily link to a separate article on US-Indonesia relationships, picking up all the diplomatic, commercial, public health, regional security (e.g., antipiracy) and other issues in which CIA isn't especially involved.

Trav, I will have to admit that I'm bothered by what I find a narrow view of CIA, focused on regime change and covert action. I am bothered by giving a prominent place, in the main article, to things that are 50 and more years old, where the principals are all dead, while there are current controversies that are much more significant to life. For example, relations with Nazis pale into insignificance to the manipulation of intelligence about Iraq and unrelated terrorist activity. I don't know if you consider Gehlen a Nazi or not -- some of the CIA relationships with Germans that were not ideological Nazis seem perfectly reasonable. Ernxmedia was very hot about "Operation Gladio", which he seemed to take from one book, and -- I suppose I can mention some personal experience and OR in a talk page -- some of the claims about countries other than Italy were, to my direct knowledge, flatly wrong. [ Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 05:38, 5 January 2008 (UTC) ]

[ Interjected. ] For the record, I don't care about Gladio. What I did when I saw Operation Gladio in the CIA Operations category was put a reference to it in the CIA page. Then I did a Wiki Search and saw 5-6 other pages with Gladio references for other countries. So I put those in the page, in context. The reason I did that is because I believe that by linking in context related Wikipedia articles, whether they are true or false, they will get more editing attention if they need it, and if they are correct, they will be appropriately and helpfully visible to people interested in that topic. By linking in context, I hope to see more consistency arise among the articles available in Wikipedia. That's all. Erxnmedia (talk) 09:44, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

As I understand it, your basic goal is to have all articles on a topic linked. May I examine that in terms of the general mechanics and information structure of Wikipedia? Let's say the topic is a different but often extremely controversial subject: barbecue. (for people outside the US, there are quite a few regional styles for cooking meat, and people can get very emotional about their preferred style. Few know that Korean style would compete with the best).

The way I understand Wikipedia is designed, to make a large number of people aware of a topic, and to let those who have the expertise or motivation find the articles, is to put them in a category. Another mechanism is for them to be in under a project and have a rating, such that someone interested in the broad category can find what is present.

Where we disagree, I think, is that if there were a main article on "barbecue", you would like to see a brief link to "North Carolina style", and hope someone sees it, and starts editing, since there are three distinct North Carolina styles, and at least one South Carolina version. They differ, in this context, with key differentiators such as having mustard in the marinade.

My contention is that having many short entries/links, without any more context, makes the article much harder to read. If the barbecue article had no general rule to add context, it would become little more than a "list of" page, or a "category" page.

I would suggest that you can achieve what you want, in a way that is less disruptive to many peoples' reading style, is to make sure all of these articles have a category: CIA tag. I would also recommend you put them under a project/task force so they get stub through FA status, and, under the project, people interested in editing will see those in need of work. Putting (double braces)MILHIST | intel=yes (double braces) on the talk page will, beyond the category list, make the topics visible to interested editors. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:30, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not "sympathy" to suggest that there may be overemphasis on very real improprieties of the past. It's not "sympathy", although with the DNI, it might be better in a separate article, to discuss both the history and possible changes in Congressional oversight. That oversight, incidentally, is needed for covert action, for clandestine and sensitive operations that most often are HUMINT, and multibillion dollar technical fiascoes like the Future Imagery Architecture. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 05:38, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

RE: Covert operations of the CIA, the title may be wrong, we could change the title and move the long regional CIA laundry list, now on four plus pages, to one page. What do you think?

In regards to what is in the article, Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. There truly is no limit to what can be covered on this subject. Your 60 kilobyte addition is intact. In fact it is very prominent and above the covert section. There is a huge section on intellegence gathering. I am not asking you to remove anything from your excellent addition to this article. I welcome the full history of the CIA. Both the good and the bad. Trav (talk) 06:54, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Classified budget

I seem to remember reading a NYTimes article in the recent past about an inadvertent reveal of the scope of the CIA budget (perhaps through an FOIA request for testimony of a hearing that was mistakenly not closed? Can't remember at the moment). I'll look around and see if I can find the cite, but does anyone remember off hand? If its been revealed by someone who ought to know, then we should put that in as an estimate in the infobox and include "Exact budget remains classified." ^Avruchtalk 04:33, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Oooh I bet its in my secrecy news archive, or the NSA one from gwu. It goes to my work e-mail, I'll check it tomorrow. ^Avruchtalk 04:43, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Steven Aftergood, at the Federation of American Scientists, has been after this for years. There's a very recent discussion, which I have to reread, on the front page of the http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/ blog today (January 5, 2008). Part of the confusion that exists now is there was an agreement to publish the total budget for the CIA, prior to the 2004 reorganization of the Intelligence Community. The interpretation now is probably to publish the budget for the DNI, since CIA is subordinate to the DNI. I'm not sure if there has been an agreement to publish the total budget of the subordinate agencies, such as NRO, NGA, CIA, NSA, FBI (intelligence only broken out of law enforcement), and the military agencies that have different budget slots for national-level intelligence and intelligence in direct support of military operations Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:42, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Perspective

There is too much secrecy to tell which agencies might be involved, but if this dispute is getting too heated... A bit of intelligence perspective could come from http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/20/280529.aspx. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hcberkowitz (talk • contribs) 15:53, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Effects of US intelligence reorganization

When trying to tell what the CIA has or has not done, especially with respect to recent events, do remember that its bureaucratic position has changed. From 1947 (in theory, more like 1952, to 2004, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) "wore two hats". One was to run the CIA. The other was to coordinate the entire Intelligence Community.

In late 2004, the position of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was created, and the position of DCI abolished, as well as most of the IC-wide responsibilities, which moved to the office of the DNI. CIA position titles and functions were changed, for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, the head of the CIA is now the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DCIA).

I've seen some references saying where the CIA did something, where it really happened in the DNI or sometimes the White House/National Security Council. This is not a simple matter to explain CIA activities, since prior to 2004, the National Intelligence Estimates and similar documents, as well as the Presidential/NSC committee action authorizations, could both be under the CIA for a given year. Now, some of this information goes under several agencies.

It's worth noting that the reorganization still left major intelligence analysis function in CIA, as well as the National Clandestine Service, which does both clandestine intelligence gathering and covert action.

I don't have a simple answer moving forward, but I hate to see covert actions alone presented without the directly relevant intelligence estimates and NSC authorization. This is not too much of a problem right now, since the more recent actions are classified, but it is something to consider when discussing things like "budget". Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:03, 5 January 2008 (UTC)