The ex-ops were mostly pleasant, intelligent, but mostly rather dull people who'd been "cultural attaches" from the "State Dep't" and worked in foreign embassies, no doubt, like the (very nice) parents of a dear friend who'd be stationed in S & C America, implicated in horrors, but definitely not demented. The Agency discourages dementia except in counterintelligence.
The one real covert ops type I was pretty close to and knew as such, had been instrumental in the overthrow of Mossadeq on Iran, etc., spent my HS years drinking himself to death, something he managed to do by my sophomore year of college; he found it hard to live with what he'd done. He was a lush but not a nut case.
The real point, Carl, is the problem is a bad system, not bad people. It's a system that takes nice patriotic, interesting, sane people like my friend's dad Robert and turns them into killers or people complicit with killers who can't sleep right ever after.
--- "B." <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> You know, I've met a few people in the past who
> wanted to work for the CIA. Not especially
> right-wing in outlook, more like some sort of comic
> book conception of things, not far from the kind of
> Asian-Buddha-master-ninja-special-forces crank kind
> of person (Stephen Seagal) who collects swords on
> their walls, has a room dedicated as a "dojo" in
> their apartment, and is very much into stealthy
> Ninja-type crap, army surplus catalogs w/ night
> vision goggles, etc. There's some kind of Mission
> Impossible-esque world of intrigue and espionage
> that attracts them, not necessarily ideology or a
> good knowledge of world affairs.
>
> -B.
>
>
>
> Carl Remick wrote:
>
> "Who but a lunatic would want to work for the CIA
> in the first place? I don't consider this a
> trivial matter. An important part of educating the
> public about the nature of spycraft is informing
> Americans what a bunch of wackos the US employs to
> stir up trouble around the world. These people are
> demented, dangerous and should be discredited
> wherever possible."
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com