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.
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.