I imagine this sort of thing happened all the time.
Look at it this way: If the CIA had provided the FBI with information on Bayoumi when the FBI requested it, their target might have been arrested/prosecuted/deported and they would lose the lead.
Also, back in that era, information sharing between CIA and FBI was not even permitted.
"On Monday, Senator Lindsey Graham and I asked the Justice Department to produce any documents they may have in their possession relating to Jamie Gorelick's involvement in establishing policies preventing the sharing of critical terrorism-related information between intelligence and law enforcement officials. It is the fact that those have now been made public and, indeed, posted on the Department of Justice's Web site at www.usdoj.gov which brings me back to the Senate floor to briefly mention why I think Ms. Gorelick's testimony is even more important to explaining what she did as a member of the Justice Department under Janet Reno to erect and buttress this wall that has been the subject of so much conversation and why it is so much more important that she do so because the 9/11 Commission's credibility is at stake."
> Also, back in that era, information sharing between CIA and FBI was not even permitted.
What possible reason could there be for this? Both are supposed to serve the same government, one domestic and the other foreign. What would be the negatives with sharing information with each other?
One is a law enforcement agency that primarily focuses on domestic cases. It is set up to follow requirements that protect constitutional rights, with the ultimate goal being a prosecution through the justice system.
The other is an intelligence agency that focuses on foreign collection, analysis and action. Its activities are definitionally illegal in the places where it operates, with the ultimate goal being to inform and enforce American foreign policy using means other than the US justice system.
The CIA sharing information with the FBI generally means that the 4th amendment has been violated, because the CIA operates with an "ends justify the means" framework that the FBI isn't supposed to use.
Edit: I worked with defense/intel forensics as Iraq was transitioning from wartime (intelligence based) to peacetime (justice based) frameworks for dealing with terrorists. There is a massive difference between intelligence briefings needed in a wartime environment to prevent IEDs through "kinetic action" and the evidence packet needed to prosecute terrorists in court as civil society reasserts itself.
I feel so uneasy with a ‘division?’ of government defined as “ends justify.” The Constitution does not exist in those halls (as evidenced), and if one assumes an limit to infinity state, many tyrannical actions could take place.
Do you feel that fear is misplaced? Or do we derive societal level benefit from the unfortunate things that could (and do?) occur?
Different contexts require different paradigms. For example, you can't operate in a war if you require your soldiers to arrest everyone who is shooting at them and collect evidence for an eventual trial. You also can't operate as even a regional power (let alone a global superpower) without keeping tabs on your adversaries.
The difficulty is in structuring agencies that have to follow different paradigms and determining how they should interact. One key bifurcation is supposed to be that intelligence services face outward, dealing with people who don't have constitutional protection because they are not residents or citizens. That outward focus has gotten muddied by the focus on preventing domestic terror attacks, the reality that much of the internet's physical infrastructure exists within our borders, and the difficulty in automatically determining the nationality of online personas.
No, the CIA is one of the most evil and dangerous organizations on Earth.
They ran torture centers, got caught, got investigated by congress, lied under oath, then got caught hacking congressional computers to delete evidence of the lies.
Worse, the 92 tapes of torture were destroyed, and the incoming Democratic president announced that there would be no torture prosecutions, even for the woman who intentionally destroyed the evidence. Gina Haspel was appointed Director of the CIA by his Republican successor.
The list is endless. Similarly, intelligence agencies worldwide operate outside the law. Although there aren't any ex-"intelligence" heads of state... well, that's not entirely true.
Throughout history, those in power have often lied to those they govern, and it's a crucial aspect of their operation.
However, using torture, violence, false flag operations, and being an adversary to one's own people isn't necessary, except when it's deemed necessary for the "greater good."
It's a dark rabbit hole that can shatter one's faith in society, and even asking questions can lead you down that path. Therefore, most of us turn a blind eye to it.
Undermining one authority can undermine the credibility of all authority because all authority is built on faulty logic and falsehoods, despite being a necessary component of a functioning state.
> all authority is built on faulty logic and falsehoods
That’s a big claim. If you’re talking about current national and state-level governments, sure, granted. But there is plenty of legitimate authority out there.
If you think the CIA is one of the most evil and dangerous organizations on earth, you probably haven't had a lot of exposure to organizations around the world. I'm not saying their mission and means of achieving it is necessarily angelic. I'm saying that there are hundreds or thousands of much more evil organizations in this world.
Belarusian KGB, Chinese Ministry of State Security and United Front Work Department and 610 Office, Cuban Intelligence Directorate, Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, Haitian Service d'Intelligence National (funded by the CIA), Israeli Mossad, Pakistani ISI, Myanma OCMSA, North Korean Ministry of State Security and RGB.
The constitution does exist in those environments. Lawyers and judges review plans for covert action, assessing whether it’s constitutional, authorized by congress, and in accordance with executive policy.
"Both are supposed to serve the same government, one domestic and the other foreign. What would be the negatives with sharing information with each other?"
Any sufficiently large organization develops its own factions, with their own internal goals and culture, which will inevitably conflict with the other factions. The larger the organization, the more distant the factions can be from each other, and it doesn't take all that long before they don't even see each other as on the same side "under the hood" anymore, but simply as rivals.
The US government is way, way beyond the "sufficiently large" size, which is more down around the size of any organization that exceeds the Dunbar number. In the real world, even assuming the FBI and the CIA are themselves unitary organizations is only useful as a very rough approximation. I don't have the info to know what the factions are or who they want, I just know from general principles that they are individually far beyond the size where they are most assuredly factions within them, and probably large enough that the factions have their own quite distinct factions within themselves.
There are protocols for this sort of thing, so a given department takes the lead by default. On national security for example the FBI does the counter-intelligence investigations, but obviously affected agencies can, and do, decide to feed disinformation instead of allowing an arrest to proceed. This needs coordination to overcome the faction thing.
I believe that was the case. The 9/11 Commissions Report is actually really, really well written and quite a gripping read. Highly recommended but IIRC that was the reason. And the report is freely available if you don't want to pay for the book: https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf
I would imagine this is a large portion of it. I worked with multiple agencies in the post 9/11 world when I was a govie. We still had a lot of limits and oversight over certain projects. The varying title authorizations exist for a reason. The good sometimes comes with the bad, that dance is delicate.
Let's preface everything I say here with "on paper" or "theoretically" or "in an ideal world" ...
The FBI's goal is to arrest people, charge them, and send them to jail. Everything they do will be presented to the public, at trial, and examined by the opposing side and presented to a jury. There's not a lot of room for nuance here. There's also not a lot of room for secrecy. The accused has the right to confront their accuser.
The CIA's goal is to "protect the nation" and almost by definition deals entirely in secrets and ambiguity. "Sources and methods" are some of the most closely held and valuable secrets. "A person we kinda trust, sometimes, accused someone of possibly planning to maybe do something nefarious." -- not going to hold up well in court, even if it's totally reasonable to now put that person on some kind of watch list (and yes, at this point, all of us are on some sort of watch list -- see the disclaimer above; we're now at 30,000 days of the condor and counting)
So -- intelligence sharing between the CIA and the FBI sounds great in theory; in practice it may be tricky.
The FBI uses parallel reconstruction a lot to hide how they actually became aware of a suspect. As a jailhouse lawyer it was interesting reading cases where some FBI field agent did something really technical and comparing that with the their public testimony in cases that demonstrated a lack of the technical knowledge/capability needed make those technical jumps.
Ostensibly their goal is to find criminals and arrest them and in doing so they'll also be preventing foreign spies from spying, or domestic terrorists from domestically terroring; both of which are illegal in some way, I think.
Isn't one of the primary reasons for the FBI counterintelligence? I was under the impression that their other general-purpose law enforcement functions were secondary.
I believe the CIA cannot legally operate intelligence gathering on US soil or on US citizens, them sharing info to the FBI might reveal that they did that.
If the CIA accidentally collects intelligence about a US citizen’s overseas business dealings, for example, that shouldn’t be passed along to domestic law enforcement, right?
I was young at the time, but my recollection is that that was my understanding back then, and it seemed sensible. I'm not convinced it wasn't sensible.
See for example the following, from Wikipedia's Alfreda Bikowsky entry[1]:
> Bikowsky was a senior staff member at the Bin Laden Issue Station in January 2000.[16] She was the direct supervisor of Michael Anne Casey, a CIA staff operations officer who was assigned to track future 9/11 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar at an al-Qaeda operatives' meeting in Malaysia in early January 2000.[9] Casey blocked a draft cable written by Doug Miller, an FBI agent detailed to the Bin Laden Issue Station, to the FBI warning that al-Mihdhar had a multiple-entry visa for travel to the U.S.[17][18]: 240 Mark Rossini, another FBI agent first assigned to the Bin Laden Issue Station in 1999,[18]: 233 testified that Casey also verbally ordered him to not share information with FBI headquarters about al-Mihdhar or Nawaf al-Hazmi, who was traveling with al-Mihdhar.[2][19] Rossini further stated that Bikowsky told congressional investigators in 2002 that she hand-delivered al-Mihdhar's visa information to FBI headquarters. This was later proven false by FBI log books.[2] The CIA shared some details about al-Mihdhar with the FBI at that time, but not that he had a valid visa to enter the U.S.[18]: 244–7
This kind of story is inconsistent with the notion of a ban on information sharing between the two TLAs.
Of course, Bikowsky's story, and Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy's documentary Who Is Rich Blee, in which her identity was revealed, may be relevant to the linked article in their own right.
I know that information sharing between FBI and intelligence agencies existed in the late 90's, but the CIA was not directly part of that activity. If you look at my links in the GP post, you will see that Clinton's deputy AG was responsible for creating a "wall" between CIA & FBI. It's easy to look at that as a bad thing with the hindsight of 9/11, but I would rather live in a world with such a wall today vs. what we have now.
How do you square that with 1) two FBI agents "detailed to" the CIA's Bin Laden Issue station ("Alec Station"), 2) "CIA shared some details about al-Mihdhar with the FBI at that time"?
Compartmentalisation (i.e. an information "wall") does not equal a total ban on information sharing, as your comment might imply, it just mandates that there are filters and checks on information channels, rather than unfettered sharing, for obvious and sensible operational reasons.
Perhaps it's worth quoting at length from the source[1] for Wikipedia's statement that "CIA shared some details", which has a section on CIA / FBI information sharing:
> 4. Passing of intelligence information by the CIA to the FBI
> The CIA shares intelligence with the rest of the Intelligence Community through a communication known as a “TD” (“Telegraphic Dissemination”). TDs can be sent to other Intelligence Community agencies, including the FBI, and are available to the Intelligence Community through the Intelink system.
> Another type of intelligence report used by the CIA when conducting business with other agencies is a CIR, or “Central Intelligence Report.” CIRs are used for disseminating information to a specific agency or group of agencies. CIRs to the FBI normally concern something occurring in the United States, involving a U.S. person or an ongoing FBI investigation.
> In addition to formal methods of communicating by the CIA to the FBI, much information can be shared with the FBI informally. CIA and FBI employees who have similar positions and expertise develop relationships and communicate informally while working together on related matters, either by secure telephones or in person. In addition, meetings are sometimes held to discuss a matter or a piece of intelligence that is of value to both agencies. According to the CIA employees we interviewed, when the CIA passed intelligence information or other kinds of information verbally or by another informal mechanism to the FBI, the information exchange normally would be documented through a TD or a CIR. However, they said that not every telephone call or conversation was documented.
> C. FBI detailees to the CIA Counterterrorist Center
> In 1996, the FBI began detailing employees to work in the CIA’s CTC. During the time period relevant to this chapter of the report, five FBI employees were detailed to the CTC’s Usama Bin Laden Unit in four separate positions. Two of the positions were filled by personnel from the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and one position each was filled from the FBI’s New York Field Office and FBI Headquarters.
Ironically? Because back in the day we (the US) were terrified that the CIA or the FBI, given too much liberty of information sharing, could mutate into a USSR-esque KGB, keeping an eye on foreign powers but also scanning for domestic political dissidence and connecting the dots between exterior and interior threats. It was seen as a hallmark of a police state to have citizens under the same level of scrutiny as potential foreign threats.
9/11 changed a lot about how Americans perceive risk factors. The CIA, FBI, and DHS are still separate orgs, but there are now mechanisms by which they share information and the walls between domestic and foreign spying are a lot thinner.
> back in the day we (the US) were terrified that the CIA or the FBI, given too much liberty of information sharing, could mutate into a USSR-esque KGB, keeping an eye on foreign powers but also scanning for domestic political dissidence and connecting the dots between exterior and interior threats
The fear was, of course, justified, but the hard lesson learned in 9/11 was the old engineering lesson: everything is trade-offs.
Once it became clear that there was a decent chance the plot could have been foiled had the various orgs not firewalled information from each other, the writing was on the wall for the old fears. New fears had displaced them.
So the irony of that quote is that most people use it as caution against government overreach.
In context, Franklin was talking about a plan by the Penn family to buy the right to never pay taxes in exchange for providing private mercenaries to bolster the western Pennsylvania front against native attacks. The "those" he was referring to was government... The government of the PA colony. The "liberty" in question was the legislature's authority to determine how taxes should be levied. Hence the "deserve neither" part... "Make a short-sighted decision like that, as the leaders of this government, and you don't deserve the power vested in you."
This is true, but I think the original intent of quotes (for long dead figures whose lives have been mythologized anyway) is not very important. It isn’t like we’re trying to figure out the original intent of some law or something.
The quote as misinterpreted is what has entered the cultural consciousness. One guy meant to say one thing, but millions gave it a timeless meaning.
So it would be extremely relevant as the US government gives overt and tacit concessions to China as they are reliant on their manufacturing base for US security / arms
This wasn’t a purely hypothetical fear. Look up the findings of the Church Committee in the 1970’s regarding programs such as the CIA’s MKULTRA, the FBI’s COINTELPRO, and the NSA’s Project SHAMROCK.
The FBI, and the rest of DOJ, has more constraints as to how it can collect information due to it focused on law enforcement. The CIA on the other hand is focused on gathering intelligence so does not have those same constraints.
Following the exposure of COINTELPRO, the FBI dialed back its presence information gathering apparatus publicly, though critics of beaueau practices maintain similar programs have persisted through the following decades. Either way, 9/11 offered a chance to reinstate some of the FBI's old power and influence.
Yes, but that was curtailed due to abuses during/against the civil rights movement. It started coming back with Waco & the Oklahoma City bombing and then roared back after 9/11.
That they persecute using their law enforcement powers. The CIA operates using different powers, they don't need a warrant to surveil a subject for instance
It turns out that in practice, you only need a warrant if your endgame is to prosecute and convict people in court. The FBI’s methods have historically included criminal prosecution, but are not restricted to it.
Yeah, their involvement in the assassination of Fred Hampton and blackmail/suicidal encouragement of MLK Jr. makes this pretty clear.
I'm sure if some brave activists were to rob the correct field office (which is the only reason we ever found out about COINTELPRO) today, they'd find similar evidence for the murders of Darren Seals and other BLM figures.
> Two other men connected to the protests, Darren Seals, 29; and Deandre Joshua, 20, were found killed under similar circumstances. Joshua was found dead in a torched car in November 2014 during the Ferguson protests. Two years later, Seals was found dead in a torched car after having been shot.
Because it’s completely untrue. People could actually read the memo rather than repeat Ascroft’s and institutionsl lawyers attempt to blame another admin/party for 9/11:
“We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will more clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued, criminal investigations. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation.”
Which should make all of HN’s sing, but easier to repeat the “wall” meme.
The CIA wanted to recruit, the agencies don’t play together, and when they get caught with their pants down it’s blame someone else. It’s really amazing how HN is 99% doubting of FBI/CIA/NSA/DOJ but be completely uncritical of something when convenient.
In theory, the CIA isn't supposed to operate domestically at all. In exchange, they're given a lot of slack with regards to their extrajudicial/unconstitutional activities. Slack in their respect for the law is not a desirable characteristic in your law enforcement agencies.
CIA is a surveillance organization with no significant restrictions on what they do outside the US, including on US citizens. FBI is an internal law enforcement agency (ostensibly) limited by american civil protections and due process.
If you take the organizations at face value by stated mission, it makes sense that the CIA would have a tremendous amount of information on US citizens that would be proscribed for the FBI. Allowing shared access is just asking for parallel construction and secret courts and shit.
Because a domestic covert spying agency is a secret government. See the Stasi, or the Church Committee hearings, or the Iran-Contra hearings.
A domestic spy agency would spend all of its time trying to control government, strategic industries, and self-dealing. There are no checks on an organization like the CIA other than the old limitation that it couldn't target US citizens. There's no way to oversee an agency that isn't obligated to explain itself to Congress, is supplied by secret budgets, and information on whose outputs is protected by the Espionage Act (or ultimately, indefinite imprisonment and torture, threats made to family members, etc.)
We're sacrificing democracy for a secret hierarchy of secret police. You've cut government completely out of the equation if you have a government department with the latitude and ability to control domestic politics. It's basically a military coup.
In the pre-9/11 era, one way of protecting domestic citizens against secret-police style spying was a literal hard firewall between the legally domestic FBI and legally international CIA.
Also, police agencies tend to be fiercely territorial about their jurisdiction and this rivalry was no exception.
Historically, CIA was supposed to be doing international intelligence gathering things while the FBI was more along the lines of the federal government's domestic crime investigation unit. CIA never really had to care about privacy rights because their targets were practically always foreign nationals not protected by the US Constitution. The FBI was almost exclusively operating domestically where Constitutional rights are practically always in effect.
Just putting a note here that whether or not foreign nationals are subject to the protections of the Constitution is a contentious issue.
IANAL, but in many places the Constitution specifically calls out citizens vs non-citizens and in other places does not make an explicit distinction. The bill of rights is one place it doesn't explicitly specify, and indeed uses language that elsewhere was used to indicate it applying to citizens and non-citizens. Of course that interpretation fell away during the cold war and is less popular now.
> The Patriot Act was written with “sunset” provisions requiring Congress to re-authorize the program every few years. Although the Act expired in March, 2020 without being reauthorized, federal law enforcement agencies retain most of the authorities granted by the act. The surveillance infrastructure that the Patriot Act created exists to this day. The Patriot Act is a prominent example of the use of terrorism to justify expanding government surveillance.
> Although the Act expired in March, 2020 without being reauthorized, federal law enforcement agencies retain most of the authorities granted by the act.
By what statute do they maintain those authorities if the authorizing legislation has expired?
It looks like those were sections 206 and 215, which were somewhat weakened by the same act.
Confusingly, there's a third provision, the "lone wolf" provision, which was extended during the Obama administration; that seems to be part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 and got rolled into the "USA Freedom Act" reauthorization in 2015.
You will note that US companies are still effectively, theoretically banned in the EU because violating fundamental human rights of persons located in the EU - and will likely still be as long as the Patriot Act-like laws, the NSA, or the EU still exist :
"What would be the negatives with sharing information with each other? "
In general in the dark world of secret services, there is a "need to know" principle, about protecting sources.
Meaning, what someone does not know, he cannot leak.
Because when the enemy knows, that file X leaked and he knows that only 5 persons had access to that file, they can find the source easily.
That has been happened a lot of times accidently, but likely has even been used to activly sabotage each others operations, as the bosses of each others service did not liked each other to put mildly.
Absolutely, it’s an organization designed to wreak havoc on the rest of the world to protect our interests… Im not ok with that being a thing at all to be perfectly honest.
Sure. Now if we could just make sure other countries did the same and never step in in future to fill that vacuum, then we'd have a better world. The CIA is uniquely bad by degree but not category.
The CIA is not supposed to be looking inward unless it's directly related to a foreign intelligence mission, and open collaboration with law enforcement would make it almost impossible to enforce that principle.
Separation of powers refers to the division of a state's government into "branches", each with separate, independent powers and responsibilities, so that the powers of one branch are not in conflict with those of the other branches.[1]
Like the Dept. of Justice, Dept. of State, Dept. of the Interior, the FCC the EPA, etc. etc., both the FBI and the CIA are housed with the executive branch of government, and are both executive branch agencies. The FBI is organized under the Justice Department and answers to the Attorney General, is a law enforcement agency but also an intelligence agency that reports to the Director of National Intelligence, just like the CIA, which is organized under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Congress, the legislative branch, has oversight via control of both FBI and CIA budgets, but the point to be gleaned here is that it is not the separation of powers that prevents FBI and CIA from sharing information, but instead, generally speaking, their separate mandates. FBI is a domestic law enforcement and intelligence agency, while CIA is not a law enforcement agency but instead an intelligence gathering agency that does intelligence analysis, and specifically information only regarding foreign countries and their citizens. Unlike the FBI, CIA is prohibited from collecting information regarding "U.S. Persons," which includes U.S. citizens, resident aliens, legal immigrants, and U.S. corporations, regardless of where they are located.
> Wouldn't the actual power be with the courts who would be the people convicting anyone accused of a crime by either FBI or CIA
Now let's think about how this would work.
The CIA obtains some information on a US citizen who is suspected of a crime, using methods that would be a violation of their constitutional rights, and therefore not be admissible as evidence against them in court.
The CIA can then (a) not share the information with the FBI; (b) share it with them, but they are not allowed to use it for anything because of how it was obtained; or (c) share it with them, and then they use it via parallel construction, in violation of the constitutional rights of the accused, and without revealing where they actually got it, causing "public trials" to become mendacious and opaque.
But (b) and (c) are the same thing, because the only use of (b) is to let (c) happen in secret.
I know they have a lawyer-drafted justification on file with the DOJ, but to the point of “courts permission” has that actually ever been tested in a real court (not FISA)? And if so is the decision public?
The CIA operates outside the law by design. They just need to say they're doing it for "national security reasons". There are laws that attempted to curtail these powers, but it has never done anything other than creating additional paperwork.
When I saw they comment I had a similar thought. Of course the separation of powers is about balance between the branches of government, and the CIA and FBI are both in the same branch.
But having them separate allows the Administrative branch to operate in a way that hypothetically shouldn’t step on the toes of the judicial. (Well, that is the hope at least).
Having law enforcement and intel separate is a common seperation of powers thing (e.g. in canada intel was separated out from police after a controversey where rcmp burnt down a barn where they thought terrorists were meeting)
IANAL, but one sensible reason could be that the CIA investigates in a manner which is not always consistent with the FBI's rules for gathering evidence. Sharing the wrong information could poison prosecution.
Saying that it was not permitted doesn't mean that the information was not shared in some ways. After all, the whole purpose of CIA is to gather information by whatever means.
The origin is that the CIA came into existence when the FBI/J Edgar Hoover were at their height of their influence.
The FBI, military, and state department had an effective veto over new powers for the CIA, so the CIA agreed to lots of rules to make them happy: no overlapping function, no recruiting current employees, etc.
The argument was: “combining domestic and foreign intelligence is something the Nazis and Communists do, so it’s bad.”
There have evolved good reasons for the distinctions. The CIA never engages in criminal prosecution, so doesn’t need to worry about revealing evidence as part of a prosecution. FBI agents, by contrast, are paranoid about what information they are exposed to, for fear it could come out in court.
That’s much more recent, and would have been a surprise to Hoover. In fact, Hoover used the FBI to filter information gleaned from the Vernona Project. The president would receive summaries of analysts reports that were simply “vouched for” by Hoover.
By contrast the DEA was formed during an era when federal law enforcement and intelligence were at a low point in influence, so they stole people, mission, and influence. That’s why the DEA has its own foreign intelligence, domestic intelligence, diplomatic corps, and even judicial system.
A state is also a threat to its citizens. It's power must be limited through careful checks and balances. These create intentional inefficiencies. Combining the internal policing function with external espionage creates an organisation wilding the state monopoly on violence against its own citizens and able to claim it's actions are state secrets. Go ask how those released after years of imprisonment and torture in Guantanamo Bay without access to anything but a cruel mockery of due process how they feel about unchecked state power? Would prefer to talk to Uyghurs who managed escape from China instead?
The state must be kept limited in all its powers even in its power to protect from harm. Accepting the consequences of these intentional limitations is a price a society must pay for liberty or face the consequences.
In my opinion the USA has repeatedly fallen short in this regard. Coming back to your question here is an example of harm caused by (one-sided) information sharing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction .
> Any serious effort at transformation
must occur within the larger framework of
U.S. national security strategy, military
missions and defense budgets. The United
States cannot
simply declare a
“strategic pause”
while
experimenting
with new
technologies and
operational
concepts. Nor
can it choose to
pursue a
transformation
strategy that
would decouple
American and
allied interests.
A transformation strategy that solely
pursued capabilities for projecting force
from the United States, for example, and
sacrificed forward basing and presence,
would be at odds with larger American
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
51
policy goals and would trouble American
allies.
Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some
catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and
industrial policy will shape the pace and
content of transformation as much as the
requirements of current missions.
This sounds way less evil than the parent implied.
If I say "I cannot just go and buy a brand new car. Unless my current one is totaled", and a few months later I am t-boned by a truck at the intersection. Did the driver of the truck played into my agenda?
Whenever 9/11 and the followup "War on Terror" comes up, I remember this:
"In 1998, Kristol and Kagan advocated regime change in Iraq throughout the Iraq disarmament process through articles that were published in the New York Times.
Following perceived Iraqi unwillingness to co-operate with UN weapons inspections, core members of the PNAC including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Elliott Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Zoellick, and John Bolton were among the signatories of an open letter initiated by the PNAC to President Bill Clinton calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein.Portraying Saddam Hussein as a threat to the United States, its Middle East allies, and oil resources in the region.
Shortly after the September 11 attacks, the PNAC sent a letter to President George W. Bush, specifically advocating regime change through "a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."
The letter suggested that "any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq," even if no evidence surfaced linking Iraq to the September 11 attacks."
It's great because it doesn't attempt to provide explanations on its own, it simply asks questions based on text from the commission report, and news footage and documentaries you find on CNN, NBC, etc.
I think the tone of this article shifted quite a bit when it mentioned the context that CIA was trying to infiltrate Al Qaeda.
Before that point, it sounds like some kind of mkultra style conspiracy where they are actively malicious. After that point, it creates the impression that they were trying to do their job in good faith.
Pretty much. It’s not an “inside job” as much as it was a tragedy of errors.
The CIA having a double agent inside Al Qaeda sounds like a great plan… until you find out these men were involved in a terrorist plot that succeeded in killing thousands.
>Before that point, it sounds like some kind of mkultra style conspiracy where they are actively malicious.
The CIA MKULTRA program was a fact, not a conspiracy. Evidence of this program was discovered when the CIA inadvertently failed to illegally destroy documentation detailing the program. The known fallout from this program includes the Unabomber.
The entire history of the CIA is actively malicious. "Their job" is to lie, murder, kidnap, torture and otherwise manipulate every nation on the planet (including our own) in order to maintain their own power and US global hegemony. Anyone who doubts this should look into MKULTRA, Operation Northwoods, Operation Chaos, Operation Mockingbird, The Phoenix Program, Operation Paperclip - and these are just some of the CIA activities we know about.
As was pointed out by others, I did not call it false.
Something else to point out:
> The known fallout from this program includes the Unabomber.
I know that it's been said that Kaczynski was victimized by mkultra but that does not mean mkultra was responsible for his later actions. Plenty of others impacted didn't go on to be serial killers. Edit: and googling, it seems like there's some who say that the specific Harvard experiment he was a subject in was not CIA.
>Their "job," insofar as it requires lying to people, explicitly does not include lying or manipulating the American people.
Lying to the American people was the explicit goal of Operation Mockingbird, in addition to many other (known) CIA operations.
I would suggest that anyone who has a rosy (and false) view of what the CIA does (and has done) spend some time watching the Church Committee hearings (which themselves only scratched the surface).
You're defining "their job" as what they choose to do. I'm defining it as their mandate from congress. I agree with you that they have a long history of domestic manipulation and spying. That doesn't make it their job. They're committing a crime every time they violate their mandate; the CIA is a criminal organization that should be disbanded.
Their mandate from congress does not give them permission to operate domestically. So operation mockingbird is one example (of many, as you say) of the CIA doing what it thinks is its job, or at least, doing whatever it wants because it knows it will never be held accountable (especially as long as it keeps blackmail files on the senators overseeing it).
Or just trying to do their job. Their whole MO flies in the face of "good faith". Even when telling the truth, its always done so strategically. Like many foreign intelligence agencies, the CIA are the organizational equivalent of a sociopath and should be regarded as such, even by Americans.
I think a lot of CIA scandals over the decades do involve good faith, but also stupidity. They've sometimes been warped enough to think that doing obviously wrong stuff is good for the country and the world. The cold war in particular had a ton of this distorted thinking.
Did anyone actually read the article or is everyone just upvoting this because of the title? It says nothing about the CIA covering up an involvement in 9/11, and talks about covering up intelligence blunders.
No, not literally. But a "9/11 coverup" suggests a coverup about the substance of the events on 9/11, rather than a coverup about the extent or manner of intelligence operations that preceded it. Calling it a "pre-9/11 intelligence gathering coverup" would be more helpful.
but lets not pretend that's not on peoples minds when they read the title. it seems like it ought to be going out of its way to avoid that implication.
I did not interpret the headline that way. I’m not sure why someone would jump straight to that aside from the “Bush did 9/11” memes that get circulated every now and then.
Ya thats one reason. It's an incredibly well known conspiracy theory. I think most readers would've passed over the thought when reading the title and assumed thats what it was referencing.
I’m still not buying that “most readers” are so familiar with that conspiracy theory that they would jump to “FBI agents have taken it upon themselves to publicly accuse the CIA in involvement in 9/11”
There is so much room for discussion about incompetence and bad systems when talking about 9/11. There was even a whole tv show with Jeff Daniels a few years ago that managed to talk about it without reading like lyrics from an Anti Flag album.
They might not settle on that as the most likely interpretation, but I would bet money that it was one of if not the first interpretation that came to mind for most. I think title authors are accountable for such things, and less discriminating readers will not make their way all the way to more reasonable interpretations.
"People in a position to know have suggested that the CIA concealed information about Hazmi and Mihdhar’s travel because the CIA wanted to recruit them through Saudi intelligence, which would go a long way to support the defense theory that the United States and Al Qaeda are not at war..."
I don't grasp how showing the CIA was attempting to recruit these people as operatives proves we are not currently at war with Al Qaeda; intelligence services try to recruit operatives in an opposing force's camp all the time.
It's worth remembering that Al Qaeda in Syria (under various other names) was funded and armed by the United States, Britain, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar according to numerous published reports, and that fighters for the organization were trained at secret CIA/military bases in Jordan and Turkey, and that the CIA operation in Libya in coordination with Qatar (out of Benghazi) funneled Libyan weapons to the organization for use against the Syrian government.
For example:
"Arming Syrian rebels: Where the US went wrong 10 October 2015 BBC"
> "Those who supported his approach, the Arms for Rebels group, included then-CIA Director David Petraeus, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and most of the foreign-policy establishment in Washington, both Democrat and Republican."
"Behind the Sudden Death of a $1 Billion Secret C.I.A. War in Syria (2017)"
> "...some of the C.I.A.-supplied weapons had ended up in the hands of a rebel group tied to Al Qaeda..."
Seems to be a pattern of behavior dating back to the Cold War, when the CIA decided that supporting violent religious fundamentalists in the Middle East and elsewhere would provide a bulwark against the Godless Communists.
Well it's a legal defense and IANAL. I think what they are getting at is that the US gov and these groups have a long history and they are allies more often than not.
* 1980s Afgan-Soviet War: Allies
* 1990s Balkins Wars: Allies
* late 90s attacks in Africa and Middle East: Enemies?
* Post 2001: Mortal Enemies
* Post 2011 Arab Spring: Allies in overthrowing the Syrian state.
It started much earlier than that, when the CIA took over Nazi Muslim terrorist networks after WWII, and from that started working with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s. Ian Johnson's _A Mosque In Munich_ is a must-read if you are at all interested in why 9/11 happened:
Privately, President Eisenhower seemed concerned about how to reach the Muslim world. He wrote to his confidant, the Presbyterian church leader Edward Elson, that Islam and the Middle East were always on his mind. “I assure you that I never fail in any communication with Arab leaders, oral or written, to stress the importance of the spiritual factor in our relationships. I have argued that belief in God should create between them and us the common purpose of opposing atheistic communism.” In White House meetings he was more blunt. Speaking with the CIA covert operations czar Frank Wisner and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Eisenhower said that Arabs should dip into their own religion for inspiration in fighting communism. “The President said he thought we should do everything possible to stress the ‘holy war’ aspect,’ according to a memo outlining the conversation. “Mr. Dulles commented that if the Arabs have a ‘holy war they would want it to be against Israel. The President recalled, however, that [King Ibn] Saud, after his visit here, had called on all Arabs to oppose Communism.” The Operations Coordinating Board — the body set up to imple- ment covert plans by the CIA and other agencies — took up Islam. It had already produced a detailed study of Buddhism and how that religion could be used to further U.S. interests. In 1957, the board established an Ad Hoc Working Group on Islam that included offi- cials from the U.S. Information Agency, the State Department, and the CIA. According to a memo on the groups first meeting, its goal was to take stock of what public and private U.S. organizations were doing in the field of Islam and come up with an “Outline Plan of Operations.’ The plan had two main components, both of which were echoed in CIA actions in Munich. First, the United States would shun traditional Muslims in favor of “reform” groups, like the Muslim Brotherhood. Then, as today, the Brotherhood’s radi- cal political agenda of a return to a mythic state of pure Islam was obfuscated by its members’ use of modern symbols, such as West- ern clothing and rhetoric. “Both the Chairman and the CIA mem- ber felt that with the Islamic world being divided as it is between reactionary and reformist groups, it might be found profitable to place emphasis on programs which would strengthen the reformist groups.” In May, the coordination board passed the inventory and plan of action. Its statements were clear and simple: Islam is a natural ally, communists are exploiting Islam, and Islam affects the balance of power. The paper listed a dozen recommendations for strengthen- ing ties with Islamic organizations, especially those with a strong anticommunist bent. As always, the operations were to be covert. “Programs which are indirect and unattributable are more likely to be effective and will avoid the charge that we are trying to use reli- gion for political purposes,’ the report concluded. “Overt use of Is- lamic organizations for the inculcation of hard-line propaganda is to be avoided”
What? There is not one mention in that wall of words of any Muslim groups being either Nazis or terrorists. If you knew Hitler's plans for the Arabs you would know it doesn't even make sense. This smacks of far-right Israeli propaganda.
Thank you for the data, some of which, I'll say with qualification, was new to me. I would say information but it took a lot of wading through unrelated and tangentially related links to find what you are talking about.
I recommend reading the book (Ian Johnson's A Mosque In Munich: Nazis, The CIA, And The Rise Of The Muslim Brotherhood In The West) because it is the first (and, AFAIK, so far only) study where all the "tangentially related links" are explained in context. Johnson did an excellent job of perusing West German and newly declassified CIA documents, as well as tracking down and interviewing surviving participants of the events. It is not something you can credibly explain in one post.
I guess I don't understand the writer's, or your, focus on the fact they were Muslim when the CIA, and adversarial intelligence agencies generally recruit opportunistically from any disaffected groups.
Because that is what the book is about. Specifically, about the history of the Islamic Center of Munich, regularly attended by Mahmoud Abouhalima, the 1993 WTC bomber, and Al Qaeda co-founder and bin Laden mentor Mamdouh Mahmud Salim. I don't know what you are trying to imply. As suggested previously, read the book.
"Because that is what the book is about." Is your intention to promote a book? I thought it was to make a point was about US alliances and supporting for terrorists and other unsavoury types going back a long time.
That argument would only be stronger if you left it broad by including US support for Catholic Guatemalan dictators and Italian fascists, Protestant White South Africans, Orthodox fascists during the Greek civil war or useful nazis generally. These all predate 1957 but instead you single out Muslim groups to make a more narrow point? I'm just wondering if you have something against Muslims.
That would be as a counter intelligence purpose. Here the CIA wanted to befriend alqaeda. But not directly. So they went through an ally intelligence route.
I think that's a stretch, but Al Qaeda was basically eradicated or forced into hiding between 9/11 and the beginning of the Afghan invasion in a desperate attempt to keep the US from attacking. Al Qaeda was in essence a name for bin Ladin's bank account, because he was doing VC funding for training fighters and making audacious attacks against the US and the Saudi royals. That financing source was cut immediately, and Ladin-financed people trapped in Afghanistan had to figure out how to escape a country filled with locals who thought (correctly) that the US was going to come and murder everybody because of what these foreign fighters had been doing.
After that, the US called everything in the Middle East that it wanted to kill "Al Qaeda" and made "The Taliban," i.e. the local government, somehow "Al Qaeda" too, or maybe even worse.
What was "Al Qaeda" and what was "Freedom Fighter" was based on whether we wanted to topple the government or not and unrelated to any qualities or beliefs of the groups. We poured money and weapons into some radical Islamist groups while executing others.
I get the idea as a layman from the outside that spies all sort of run in the same circles for obvious reasons, they are getting and exchanging value with eachother and constantly trying to recruit eachother etc. So yesterdays recruit is tomorrows terrorist. And if you’re a spy who is actually connected you’ve likely met with them and used them for info in the past. I assume it’s just how spycraft works.
It’s likely a deeply unpleasant and not generally understandable business. I don’t say that as an excuse rather that it’s just who gets attracted to and works in the scene and how they network.
"Terrorism" is a political label defined by relationship to state power. From a state perspective a terrorist you support or endorse is simply an ally or asset. Your support is what makes them definitionally not a terrorist, and by removing it you change the category of their actions to terrorism.
That is a by product of the decades old, failed, and terrible US Policy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" which has causes more global destabilization, and hardship worldwide than anything since Communism left the world stage.
I can't believe it wasn't more explosive at the time, but this whole tale from Ali Soufan of the FBI that he told the New Yorker in 2006 is absolutely harrowing. The CIA explicitly withheld a single piece of intel that he had requested that could have lead them to prevent 9/11.
don't the FBI and CIA fight all the time? I think the FBI is just jealous they're constrained (or at least suppose to be constrained) by the US constitution where the CIA gets to do whatever they want and play with the best toys.
uff, I had been somewhat (worriedly) expecting another american civil war.
what is unexpected about it, that it not going to be California Vs Georgia, or the Virginias Vs Florida (I don't know enough about state-politics within the USA so disregard my specific examples)
the surprise for me is that it will (already is but whatever) be things like this, "department of commerce" Vs "securities exchange comission" or things like this...
the Federal Bureau of Investigation is FIGHTING the Central Intelligence Agency!
This isn't particularly news. It was well known shortly after 9/11 that the FBI and CIA did not cooperate, fought with eachother (they still do), but most of all, by law, they couldn't communicate with eachother. It's not really a particular bombshell.
“My agency” infighting by largely ex-officers based on actions where the leadership of the involved agency were on the same page highlighted because it relates to a issue raised in a court case is... A very different thing than a civil war.
You can’t understand the US government without recognizing it as a substrate for inter-factional conflict between different segments of the ruling class. It’s organized crime and gang warfare all the way down.
"Coverup" seems like "Lab Leak" in that anyone can project as much evil intent onto the phrase as they want.
Did they coverup a failure? Did they coverup their own involvement?
I realize that I'm only discussing the headline, and that the article goes into detail, but I think the headline is intentionally vague to allow this projection.
The headline did not sit well with me either, maybe something like "coverup related to 9/11" would be better?
It's funny, I have a very different take on the use of the phrasing "lab leak," since to me it seems intended to preempt any consideration of an intentional release.
Since I just watched Chinatown for the nth time, this is fresh on my mind.
Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.
applies here. We don't know what really happened and we can't. These are people who lie and cover up for a living, even to each other. Even under oath.
Exactly, every time you deal with info from CIA and related orgs, you need to understand that their job is to lie and deceive for a particular goal. There is no reason whatsoever to think that what they're saying is true, unless it is strongly corroborated by other facts and reports.
That may be how they interpret their job description, but it's not the job the taxpayer pays them to do, certainly not when it comes to lying domestically.
I watched it for the first time a month back and was blown away. And the central conflict around water scarcity in CA is still incredibly relevant today. What a movie!
If you want the answer for yourself, you need to demystify "terrorism", since that is the headline narrative from day one and to this day. When you grok what terrorism really is, the logical conclusion to who did the deed is to answer the question of who benefited, what motives, and look for evidence.
Terrorism is a method of rulership over publics, not a tactic of war. Unless you consider the rule of terrorist ideology to be one of "at war with those under rule", but that is different model of thinking. Either way, terrorism comes down to low grade rule by mean and vicious people, the kind you would hope never to elect. Indeed, one might conclude as I have that terrorism is rule by the unelect.
Terrorism is not a tactic of warfare, it is violent coercion. Even that much is obvious, for it coerces people to become defensive, scared, etc. Civilians are not the target of military for war. Never have been. Only pawns can be used to enact terrorism, for no individual has anything to gain by the act.
No military strategy has ever used nor teaches terrorist methodologies. The response by the USA shows precisely why it is foolish, for it gains nothing to the attacker: no territory gained, only an enemy provoked.
The accused actors had nothing to gain unless they were pawns for reward, but then that would mean they did not plan it, nor conceive of it from the base notion of coercion toward a benefit. Nor did the accused actors have a motive. The narrative already becomes convoluted beyond this point, so I pull out my Swiss Occum Razor and shave it back. That is when I realize how deep the ideological methodology of terror-ism must be.
Terrorism is not the act of rogues and individuals, but this is what you are wanted to believe. Terrorism is the plan and rule of those found at the conclusion of logical procedure. Who benefited, what motives, following clues...
You are sticking to rationalization, so I must argue that.
Rationality is the mirror of mystification. With rationalism you can endlessly circle the argument in defense of thy mystical beliefs.
Your mystified understanding of terrorism is that psychological profiles are sufficient. This subverts due process.
Nothing about rationality guarantees a positive outcome, and is typically a trick that leads to no conclusion. That is the very opposite intent of logical conclusion by way of reasoning.
Irrationality is simply circling the other direction, actually nothing and no different, but the word is used to create a false dichotomy so you can call somebody crazy by another name, and keep the argument and process couched in mystification.
It is literally in the name: the ratio is tangential to the circle.
For the philosophers, this is why the pushers of rationalism thrust Kant to the fore, he wrote that reason is insufficient. That may be true for some types of inward thinking like creativity and invention. The truth can never be invented though ergo reasoning is perfectly fine for the due process of uncovering the truth.
Kant's philosophy is used to justify judicial review, where you are guilty until proven innocent, which is precisely why we are forced to recite the complete opposite. If "innocent until proven guilty" was true and in force, it would be apparent, and what is known need not be repeated interminably.
This is the lie at the root of jurisprudence, and is the conclusion of actually bad reasoning, and is forced via unjustified action we call Justice. Justice must be justified because punishments are crimes in any other context.
As a result, we cannot act with justification based on reason, but must follow strictures, aka laws. For instance, you maybe cannot defend yourself against a lunatic because it can be rationalized a million ways that self defense was not justified due to circumstances, literally circular positioning, rationalization.
Government is religion based on rational mysticism. It has nothing to do with the power of democracy, freedom, doing what is right, and self determination. It is moderation by another name, and from on high by elitists who control judiciaries.
Rule by ideology leads to every kind of terrorism, but it doesn't make the trigger man special, only a pawn. It is important to know ideology is not about ideas but deos, the "God Complex". The terrorist actor is always a zealot.
The ideologue behind the plot, the agent or collective agency, they influence the actor via their God Complex which lacks the foundational principles. That is why ideologically driven people are fractious, without a functional spirituality that connects them and maintain virtues such as "do not kill people for no reason" or "unelected action undermines the legitimacy of our very own elected representation!"
Global warming is the ideology of ecoterrorism, but we don't see multitudes in arms, and we don't see their representatives and generals, we only see the limited agents, a parade of the unelect.
We don't see continuous campaigns, we see odd events. We see publicity, never discretion. Violent or not, it is always a performance. And rather than serving their side, terrorist are usually pawns of their own enemy. That is the true art of terrorism.
If the ideologue had real power, a military and industry and political strength, they have no reason to influence and orchestrate acts by zealotry. Power works with diplomacy, and bad diplomats are fast replaced with better ones. War is the ultimate in diplomacy.
Terrorism is always convoluted schemes that do not achieve real ends such as changing policy or destroying the enemy. That is because the motive is ulterior to the action, and not powerful enough to do great damage; the reaction has to be the source of damage. The zealot has no idea about the real motive; they have only good intentions toward the deos.
If the actor discovered the motive was not truly their own cause, that wouldn't serve. If they do not, the reward is rarely enough to perform false work, and they do not preserver long. Such is the case with mass protesting, which is low grade terrorism, intellectually violent if not physically. If the protest was true in force, they would just sweep away the antagonist.
Tenet declared WMD in Iraq was a slam dunk. I don't know what evidence he presented but my military source in Iraq told me the chemical weapons they found and disposed of had US nomenclature which would make sense since we were helping Iraq deal with Iran in the 80's:
"According to Iraqi documents, assistance in the development of chemical weapons was obtained from firms in many countries, including the United States, West Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France. A report stated that Dutch, Australian, Italian, French and both West and East German companies were involved in the export of raw materials to Iraqi chemical weapons factories.."
End of the day the CIA operates way outside the lines on the field. Like not even inside the stadium. Tenet and his counterpart however did end up resigning for a series of screw ups which is about as far as it goes on that level.
There's also that funny historical anecdote that Saddam Hussein was literally a CIA assassin for a while... though later him easily taking power because he happened to try a coup just after a CIA-backed one seems to have been just a coincidence ?
> Please describe how the statement you quoted is untrue
One we're arming Kyiv. That they've incorporated members with a problematic past is known and, frankly, rational. (Can't be choosy when an actual fascist neighbor is invading.) Characterizing aid to the entire Ukrainian military as "arming literal nazi corps" is selectively, misleadingly and incorrectly reductive.
Two, the Azov Brigade was destroyed (after fighting bravely) at Mariupol [1]. We can't be literally arming them because they've been dead or captured for a year.
Finally, the the Congress literally banned arming the Azov regimen inter alia in 2018 [2]. War is messy, so results won't be perfect, but there is a clearly-understood consensus across NATO and in Kyiv about what will and won't be tolerated.
> One we're arming Kyiv. That they've incorporated members with a problematic past is known and, frankly, rational. (Can't be choosy when an actual fascist neighbor is invading.)
If you're arming Kiev and Kiev is arming these "members with a problematic past" (nice euphemism) then you're also arming them.
Looks like this logic worked well for Iraq and Afghanistan, it only caused milions of deaths and decades of destruction.
> Two, the Azov Brigade was destroyed (after fighting bravely) at Mariupol
Get up to date, the Azov Brigade has been long restored and rearmed. They have new members and they trained them already.
> If you're arming Kiev and Kiev is arming these "members with a problematic past" (nice euphemism) then you're also arming them
Which, again, is (largely) not happening. The Azov regiment fell last May; our weapons had barely begun arriving in Kyiv then.
> this logic worked well for Iraq and Afghanistan
You're comparing a dictator and terrorist insurgencies with a democracy. Ukraine is closer to WWII. We aren't trying to create a state where one never existed, destroy a state that was previously stable or cause an insurgency to annoy someone; we're helping an extant state fight for survival.
(Also, are you arguing nobody in Britain or France or Poland in WWII had problematic views? Does that mean the American war effort, and subsequent Marshall Plan, was in support of those elements?)
> the Azov Brigade has been long restored and rearmed. They have new members and they trained them already
So a new group of people adopted fallen symbols, and we're supposed to assume ideological continuity [1]?
I'm not going to argue there is no far-right element in Ukraine, or even in the Ukrainian military. In an ideal, world, they'd be expelled. But in an ideal world, Moscow wouldn't be launching a land war in Europe. It's misleading to the point of incorrectness to say we're arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine, or that these people form a significant amount of the present Ukrainian military or state, or that they have material influence over Kyiv.
The fascist party has zero seats in parliament. Both the president and prime minister of Ukraine are Jewish and there was discussion about prosecuting Azov before they were wiped out in the fighting. Every country has fascists, overstating their number in Ukraine is Russian propaganda.
Lets use another example to say why it's misleading, even if it's true.
> The US is arming Nazis and Nationalists inside of the United States.
This statement is true. There are Nazis and Nationalists inside of the US Military and inside of various police departments.
This statement is also misleading. It implies that we're giving arms directly to nazis and nationalist, rather than it being a byproduct of poor screening. It also implies that we're doing this on purpose, but that isn't the case.
Now lets try the same thing with Ukraine. If you look at the infamous Azoz battle group you will find nazis. Therefore, it is true that we're arming nazis. However, you'll also find muslims, jews, and other groups that are decidedly not nazi. At the same time the Wagner group, which is on the Russian side of things, has a lot of nazi and nationalist inside.
So yes, the statement is true, but it also misleading. It tries to make a simple point, when the reality is far more nuanced. It's just not a good faith argument because it's made to push people into believing something that isn't true- namely that ukraine is a nazi/ultranationalist hotbed that we're arming, while russia is trying to fight off the nazi threat. This is propeganda that Russia has been pushing for over a year now, but anyone who looks at the situation can see a nazi threat on the russian side and a bunch of people defending their homes on the other.
The complexity of such a situation seems to escape some. Instead they assume (and accuse) we are making a dedicated effort to arm Nazis in Ukraine. This is clearly not the case, it's more akin to collateral damage. In that regard, there is one point we should keep in mind though:
Once weapons are brought into any theatre of conflict they are very hard to control.
> How do you do that? By supporting the factions that are. What are those factions? Hypernationalists, which in Ukraine's case means Banderites & other Nazi-aligned factions
You're describing a tiny fraction of Ukraine's armed forces and source of popular support, much of which has been destroyed or captured in the last year of war. It's simply untrue that Ukraine is being sustained by neo-Nazi elements.
> the broad political environment of Ukraine. Of which the ideological figurehead is now Stepan Bandera. Do you disagree?
Bandera died in 1959 [1]. Maybe you mean symbol instead of figurehead?
If so, still, I would love to see reliable polling for his sustained support in any prominent, extant Ukrainian political movement. Because from what I see, it remains a problematic pocket of the Ukrainian population, and one to a large degree under Russian occupation.
> If so, still, I would love to see reliable polling for his sustained support in any prominent, extant Ukrainian political movement.
You don't need polling because the glorification of Bandera is so blatant that you have to willingly look the other way to not see it.
Here are some videos of the torchlight processions performed to commemorate him every year in many cities of Ukraine including Kiev, Lviv, Lutsk, Dnipro, Kherson, Sloviansk, Zaporizhzhia and so on.
"On 1 January 2014, Bandera's 105th birthday was celebrated by a torchlight procession of 15,000 people in the centre of Kyiv and thousands more rallied near his statue in Lviv."[0]
In contrast in 2019 in Kiev the most partecipated Ukrainian gay pride ever took place, barely half the people showed up.
Anyway if you really want a poll, they did it and it shows that 74% of Ukrainians have a positive view of him[1]. Weird and convenient how this information is excluded from the english version of the WP Bandera page.
> Because from what I see, it remains a problematic pocket of the Ukrainian population, and one to a large degree under Russian occupation.
Quite the opposite. The western part of Ukraine has far more positive views of Bandera. See the map of cities where Bandera has receive onorary titles[2].
This is the first time I've heard of Bandera, but skimming the wiki articles these dates and numbers lack some context which I think is important.
"On 1 January 2014", this was during the Euromaidan period. There were earlier rallies, including "50,000 to 200,000" on 2013-11-24. Anti-protest laws were enacted 2014-01-16. Yanukovych was impeached on 2014-02-23.
"Anyway if you really want a poll, they did it and it shows that 74% of Ukrainians have a positive view of him." This poll was conducted 2022-05-04, only 2.5 months after Russia invaded Ukraine on 2022-02-24. In comparison, a 2021-05 poll found 32% positive, 32% negative, and 21% mixed. (The 2021 poll was included on the UK wiki page right before the 2022 poll.)
"Weird and convenient how this information is excluded from the english version of the WP Bandera page." This specific poll is in the English version of the WP page under "Attitudes in Ukraine towards Bandera". It was added sometime around 2022-06
They don't need to be the current leaders when they can just threaten any elected government into submission, and they have all the power to do it. Trained forces, modern weaponry, popular support.
> And quite the minority in the country considering how high their Jewish president poll right now.
They are not your classic Nazists. Groups like the Right Sector are best described as a "generic form of Ukrainian ultranationalism", which allowed the inclusion of ethnic minorities, including Muslim Crimean Tatars and Chechens, and ethnic Jews, Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, and Romani[0]. I call them Nazis as a simplification, as they adopt the same symbology, most of their values and modus operandi.
Also consider how everyone proudly adopted "Slava Ukraini" even if it's the official slogan of Stepan Bandera's wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Imagine milions of Italians saluting with "Duce mia luce", or Germans resurrecting "Sieg Heil".
The mythos of nazi/fascism is quite easy to simplify :
We (religion/ethnic group/nationality) are intrasequely better than (the out-group: French/lybians/Serbs/Anglo-Saxon/muslims/whatever) and the reason why they (are living better/are richer/are more powerful) is because we have traitors in our midst (jews/socialists/communists/anarchists/tzigan/liberals/whatever) who work against us.
If you do not have the second part, you will have a more standard cesarism (that can be left-wing too, like leninism or early trotskism). A recent example in my country would be Gaullism, in a way.
Are they nazi, or 'just' cesarists (with even more nationalism on top) ? Do you know who their internal enemy is? It should be designated and different from their actual foreign enemy. Example : in France, the far-right foreign enemies are muslims, but the traitors/internal ennemies are left-wingers/academia. If they do not design 'traitors', I wouldn't classify them far-right (because they wouldn't be).
Everybody knows that everyone lied, that there were no WMD, that all is an excuse to kill and profit, that the real culprits got await scot free.
It all comes down to the US being a failed democracy. It does not matter if it's all lies, the people in power cannot be prosecuted, the secret agencies cannot be shut down. The beast is too big, we just have to live with the tyranny hoping it doesn't turn on us next.
I agree. I think my point is not that we should invade for humanitarian reasons, but that I don't feel too bad about the Iraq invasion, given what I've seen.
1. al-Qaeda leadership fled Afghanistan for Pakistan before the US invasion, and the US knew it but invaded Afghanistan anyway.
2. Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons were well known to America, because American intelligence helped him acquire and target those chemical weapons against Iran in the Iraq-Iran War. Even going so far as to provide him with satellite intelligence for this purpose.
3. The "WMDs" used to justify the invasion of Iraq to the public were not chemical gasses. The US government claimed Iraq had a nuclear weapons program in advanced stages of development. This was never true and they knew it.
There are truths on both sides of the argument IMO. It's not black and white. But it's hard to seriously consider the opinions of those who haven't participated in it in any way (government, contractor, military...) and may not even have been born when these things kicked off. Media is a very biased filter.
Also the same day that the UN was presenting evidence of chemical weapons having been used by Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld was flying there to reassure Saddam Hussein about the US oil pipeline project in Iraq.
I think that the chemical weapons might have been used as an excuse for the first Gulf war by George H.W. Bush, 6 years later ??
Primarily though I think the US govt at the time genuinely thought they could do regime change and create stable democracies in both Afghanistan and Iraq. They doubtless had many murky reasons for wanting to believe they could do this, but I think the belief that they _could_ do it was sincere if proven false by events.
When asking ChatGPT to write comments, consider using the SmartGPT approach and break up the task into two prompts. The first prompt should generate options to be evaluated by the second prompt.
Prompt #1 "Let's write a comment for Hacker News. The title of the article is {XXX}. You didn't click on the link, so you don't know what the article is actually about. The current top comment is {YYY} by user {bar} with karma {83939}. I want you to write a comment in response to {ZZZ} by user {foo} with karma {9001}. Keep your comment in a single long paragraph and use jargon. Write two comments one supporting user {foo} and one as a rebuttal."
Prompt #2 "You are a resolver tasked with picking which of two comments will earn the most karma on Hacker News. The first comment is in support of the comment {ZZZ} by user {foo} with karma {9001}. The second comment is a rebuttal. Pick one and explain step-by-step why you believe the comment would receive more karma than the alternative."
I know so - by definition a crank must be in some minority. What I think is this dumb subset shouts above its weight.
Not is every Trump voter is a crank (there are multiple reasons people vote for a fascist). But "the media" isn't against either of them. They are both minorities that Fox News amplified to make money over the past two decades.
A construction crew completed a retrofit on Citicorp Center in NYC over a few months, and the project was kept secret for almost 20 years after its completion.
Look at it this way: If the CIA had provided the FBI with information on Bayoumi when the FBI requested it, their target might have been arrested/prosecuted/deported and they would lose the lead.
Also, back in that era, information sharing between CIA and FBI was not even permitted.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
https://irp.fas.org/congress/2004_cr/s042804b.html
"On Monday, Senator Lindsey Graham and I asked the Justice Department to produce any documents they may have in their possession relating to Jamie Gorelick's involvement in establishing policies preventing the sharing of critical terrorism-related information between intelligence and law enforcement officials. It is the fact that those have now been made public and, indeed, posted on the Department of Justice's Web site at www.usdoj.gov which brings me back to the Senate floor to briefly mention why I think Ms. Gorelick's testimony is even more important to explaining what she did as a member of the Justice Department under Janet Reno to erect and buttress this wall that has been the subject of so much conversation and why it is so much more important that she do so because the 9/11 Commission's credibility is at stake."