>Secondly, this is part of CNN's revisit of the Cold War. Revisionist
news
>documentaries are good entertainment that lifts ratings.
>From what I have seen (catching glimpses here and there) CNN's Cold War
series hasn't been all that revisionist. One I saw detailed the
subversion of Italy's elections in '48, but it was all done in a "wasn't
this neat" tone - no moral questions were asked or answered.
>Thirdly, this is part of a campaign to sell the "new, improved" CIA as
an
>indispensable agency for the new wars on drugs and international
terrorism.
>We don't need dirty tricks any more because now we can kill bad foreign
>leader openly with cruise missiles.
I didn't really get this out of them at all. I don't want to oversell these specials as some kind of radical critique, but the tone of the whole series really focused on the morality of US foreign intervention, rather than questioning the specific methods of CIA.
>As you pointed out, former CIA agents are a major part of this
movement,
>both out of a need to clear the company name and to contribute the its
>rebirth.
This seems a bit too conspiratorial to me. Although they brought on toward the end a few predictable talking heads to talk about "reform", what really got my attention about the agent's stories was that they were talking not just about "screwups" (Aldrich Ames was not mentioned, for instance), but about the larger morality behind what it does. That is, they were questioning the "successes".
>The irony is that the new CIA's biggest enemy is the new FBI, over a
new
>turf war created by blurred national borders in relation to these new
wars.
>Problems are no longer divisible into domestic and foreign.
>As for as the Left is concerned, the CIA is much more intelligent (no
pun
>intended) and even honorable than the FBI, a good cop bad cop
arrangement.
Pat Moynihan came on toward the end recommend abolishing the Agency and dividing it's functions between the FBI and the military. This actually seems like a good thing to do from a PR point of view: since the CIA has served a such a lightning rod for bad press, you could score some PR points without really changing any policies.
You might be right about Turner's reasons for giving them the green light - but I think they were able to go a little farther than he might have liked. Still and all, an interesting alternative to 60 minutes on a Sunday night.
Jim Baird
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