[lbo-talk] Taibbi's review of zero dark thirty

andie_nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Fri Jan 18 20:05:04 PST 2013


The CIA analysts are actually highly professional and pretty scrupulous, if not always right. Back during the Reagan administration, they contradicted administration assertions about the size and state of development of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. The administration assembled a Team B, so called, of people who were not in any way experts in the current state of Soviet weapons, specifically to come up with an exaggerated statement of the state of the Soviet arsenal.

Of course the analysts' efforts are developed to imperialist goals. But their job, which to my knowledge they take seriously, is to provide accurate information, not propaganda, for imperialist purposes. Of course they are not always right, but they seriously try to be honest. Of course most of what they say is highly classified. Public announcements by the government are reliably propagandistic. They say you can't count on a political claim until its been publicly denied. That is a good rule. But what the CIA analysts say isn't public. And they're pros.

I should say that I grew up with these people. They were were the parents of my friends. (My own father was a mathematician in the nuclear weapons industry, of which he came to harshly disapprove.) I knew some ops guys too, people who actively worked to overthrow governments, assassinate leaders and the like. The one I knew best drank himself to death in self loathing.

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On Jan 18, 2013, at 7:41 PM, Bill Bartlett <william7 at aapt.net.au> wrote:


> At 11:01 AM -0600 18/1/13, andie_nachgeborenen wrote:
>
>> I wasn't holding you to a legal standard, not even "more likely than not." All you have is unadulterated speculation. You don't know what the powers that be wanted to hear or that Plame didn't give them just that; you don't know that they don't want to hear the truth even if it isn't what they want to hear; and you don't know why Libby blew her cover. You know, in fact, nothing, except that you want to attribute the direst motives to US policymakers.
>
> After some soul-searching, I have to concede you are right to a large extent. My assertion that The CIA provides its political masters with false intelligence because that is what its political masters want to hear, is idle speculation.
>
> Actually, I have no way to be certain why the CIA has been funded so lavishly for the last 50 years to make up this stuff. I guess my presumption that the actual result is the desired result is down to my being a little autistic. I tend to assume that the obvious answer, is the true answer. In other words, I have a little trouble grasping complex human behaviour.
>
> Bill Bartlett
> Bracknell Tas
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



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