CIA may well suck at doing their job — getting intelligence that is useful to the country.

No, that is not their job. That is their cover story, and has been for 67 years. The Pike Committee (whose staffers were as great as the SSCI staffers — who deserve a medal, by the way, for exposing the CIA’s subterfuge) revealed that the intelligence arm of the CIA was a joke. That’s why their report was suppressed.

Don’t believe me. Listen to what 25 year CIA veteran Ralph McGeehee wrote in his book on his time in the Agency. (He served in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and at Langley, 1952-1977. While retired for years, his analysis remains contemporary. McGeehee was also a recipient of the CIA’s Career Intelligence Medal for “exceptional achievement.” )

… the CIA is the covert action arm of the Presidency. Most of its money, manpower, and energy go into covert operations that, as we have seen over the years, include backing dictators and overthrowing democratically elected governments. The CIA is not an intelligence agency. In fact, it acts largely as an anti-intelligence agency, producing only that information wanted by policymakers to support their plans and suppressing information that does not support those plans. As the covert action arm of the President, the CIA uses disinformation, much of it aimed at the U.S. public, to mold opinion. It employs the gamut of disinformation techniques from forging documents to planting and discovering “communist” weapons caches. But the major weapon in its arsenal of disinformation is the “intelligence” it feeds to policymakers. Instead of gathering genuine intelligence that could serve as the basis for reasonable policies, the CIA often ends up distorting reality, creating out of whole cloth “intelligence” to justify policies that have already been decided upon. Policymakers then leak this “intelligence” to the media to deceive us all and gain our support…

Telling people that the CIA’s job is intelligence is to perpetuate (not consciously, I’m sure) a fairy tale.

“And now everyone is being called into the Principal’s office for spankings.”

Funny, except that some staffers may have their professional lives destroyed
and face bankruptcy because of their legal bills.

@Jeff Kaye: Thank You

The Hot Club of Detroit: “Nostalgia in Times Square” by Charles Mingus.

(Ref: Los Hermanos Macana Tango New York Times Square, a place that will convince you that there are doppelgangers.)

It’s not a ‘spat’ John Brennan and his hand puppet, Barack Obama, are criminals. They need to be impeached, convicted, and jailed.

And isn’t there a majority leader who has some sway over this matter? This is just crazy. Why should DiFi have this kind of power, or does it go beyond her to protecting the White House as well?

@JohnT: Now if he would call a football game with a West Coast theme I might like him better;)

There is a new personal attack against Emptywheel by the Ratfucker known as Spandan C of The People’s View. Spandan C, slanders Marcy Wheeler by name, as being “Anti-American”.

The tweeter account emptywheel belongs to Marcy Wheeler, who is the Senior policy analyst for Greenwald’s new magazine.

It is already happening. Instead of condemning Russia’s aggression, Snowden’s chief defenders (and his chief benefactors) are already taking Russia’s side, gleefully celebrating the Russian actions as indicative of waning American influence.

The reason for this is simple. The people masquerading as the high priests of the anti-war, dogmatic Left aren’t liberals or leftists at all. What they are is anti-American. They celebrate anything they view as embarrassing or undermining to American influence and American power. Snowden’s revelations and Russian actions aren’t contradictory in their value system, since the only thing they value is the undermining of the United States.

It is not just about a “stall”. It is also destroying reputations and manipulating discussions with lies and black propaganda. That is OPERATION JTRIG. And there is hardly anyone more clumsy and inept than JTRIG’s funny clown, Spandan C.

But Spandan’s single virtue is persistence, as he has been catapulting neo-con propaganda against antiwar activists for years. Spandan is too young to have any knowledge of the Joe McCarthy and McCarthy’s attacks against American citizens. But Spandan uses the same “anti-american” accusation that Joe McCarthy used very successfully. Spandan is the true traitor.

And the irony is clownish since Spandan puts the tag “Professional Left” on his vicious Post. That is a White House insult that was first used against Jane Hamsher.

We are close to learning who really runs the executive branch of the federal government. For the past five years I have watched in amazement as a young, idealistic senator from Illinois has gradually morphed into a cheap imitation of Dick Cheney. Has the President become the captive of his national security establishment? Why does he continually take the side of the NSA and CIA whenever questions are raised about surveillance, torture, or the strategies employed in the so-called War on Terror? If I’m off base, the President can do all of us a favor and resolve the current imbroglio over the torture report by authorizing its release and firing his CIA Director.

On a related matter, I want to thank Marcy Wheeler for her work in creating this site. Exposing the guttersnipes living in the fascist sewer is not for the fainthearted, and she has demonstrated on numerous occasions her steadfast determination not to bow down to the dark forces seeking to undermine and destroy our constitutional republic.