Unleash the CIA? Were You Born Yesterday?

by Theron Dash

The GOPers drumbeat concerning What Went Wrong that allowed 9-11 to happen is that Intelligence let the president down. No, not his intelligence, though that's a likely suspect, but the "Intelligence Community," the CIA and the FBI. Clearly they weren't "sharing information" effectively. And clearly, the Bushies need to deflect any criticism from themselves. But the intent is to build up the covert agencies, and arm them with Patriot Act Police powers, so they can read the riot act to anybody they please, without fear or favor of civil liberties, at home or abroad. And it's a real bad idea.

There's been a lot of talk about how diminished the CIA budgets had become, but little information on why that was so. It was because the CIA was running riot through the world for generations, especially since Nixon, out of control trying to rule the world.

It's all nicely outlined in a forthcoming book by Mahood Mamdani, an African political scholar who divides his time between Columbia University in New York and his hometown of Kampala, Uganda. He lays out what has reached the public in dribs and drabs over the years, but is strangely never discussed these days: how the post-Vietnam, Cold War CIA conducted a series of proxy wars, from southern Africa to Central America, attempting to bleed the Soviet Union dry in Afghanistan, and to weaken both Iran and Iraq by supporting both sides of their war. In the process, they created the terrorists they are now supposed to fight, and not just metaphorically created them: they recruited, trained and supplied them, including Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. They developed and unleashed all the horrors that now haunt us, including terrorist warfare, assassination and kidnapping; including financing warfare from drug money, and privatizing war with the help of the U.S. religious right.

The CIA materially aided Saddam Hussein, and the U.S. supplied him with WMDs including chemical and biological weapons, and training in their use. They supplied him with satellite images to help him target "his own people" for chemical attacks, and then tried to get the UN to look the other way. Among those involved in all of this, on a policy or operational level, were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other Nixon-to-Reagan-to- Bushies, I and II. (Which is not to say that Carter and Clinton were blameless. Their policies and approvals of CIA operations contributed to the reign of disorder and death.)

One official reason that CIA and FBI were limited in the information they could share was that the FBI had to follow rules in the U.S. that protect citizens in court cases, whereas the CIA didn't have the same constraints on how they gathered their information elsewhere. Another possible reason---and a situation that came up more than once---was that suspects the FBI wanted to prosecute were working for the CIA---"assets" in spyspeak.

Now let us praise the Patriot Act for allowing federal government police to deny rights by uttering the magic words, "terrorist," before any bothersome proof has to be produced. Actually, all it takes is "suspicion of" to do it, as thousands being held without charges would attest, if they could be heard. But of course we don't have to worry about our government abusing their powers in their heroic efforts to protect us. And you can stop those unpatriotic thoughts right now, if you know what's good for you.

And this selfsame Patriot Act will break down the walls between the FBI and CIA so they can share information, and that's going to make us safer. Unfortunately, the 9-11 commission is showing that the FBI couldn't effectively share information without walls, within the agency, and neither could the CIA.

Maybe they need better computers, and a better culture, and maybe more money to pay for them. But we can't afford a CIA powerful enough to create our next generation of deadly enemies. Or a powerful FBI at war with dissent.