Posted by Phil Giraldi on 01/23/10 4:30 PM Last updated 01/23/10 4:31 PM   [Newer: Killing Americans as "Defined Policy"] [Older: Dying for Nothing In Afghanistan]

Congressman Paul has called for "taking out" the CIA for its involvement in drone attacks against civilian targets, in drug trafficking, and in regime change worldwide.  As a former CIA officer, I have to agree.  The Agency was founded as a central clearing house for intelligence, which most Americans would support, but it quickly turned into a private and secret army for the White House to do things that are both illegal and unconstitutional.  In the current context it is clueless about what is going on in Afghanistan and has clearly adopted a policy of killing as many people along the AfPak border as possible in the hopes that it gets lucky and actually manages to bag a terrorist.  This is foreign policy by use of terror, particularly as the United States is not legally at war with either Afghanistan or Pakistan.  Or Yemen.  Or Somalia.  CIA has been turned into a government sanctioned and authorized terrorist group, in my opinion, and it is astonishing that no one in the media or Congress, apart from Dr. Paul and a handful of others, seems concerned.  At a minimum, it is time to put CIA back in its box and make sure that it does nothing more than collecting and analyzing intelligence.  If that proves too hard to do, it is probably past time to completely take it apart and come up with something new. - Phil Giraldi, American Conservative Defense Alliance

Posted 01/24/10 02:34 AM libertyspirit Modesto, CA

"The Agency was founded as a central clearing house for intelligence, which most Americans would support, but it quickly turned into a private and secret army for the White House to do things that are both illegal and unconstitutional." White House?...don't they try to keep those puppets in the dark? I thought the CIA acted more on the behalf of corporations and the international banking cartel especially. After reading John Perkins book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, I was under the impression that the CIA was the group which followed him if he was unsuccessful in his mission. (Although he never said it was the CIA...his stories and accounts of CIA activity correlate on several fronts. (For example, Allende being replaced by Pinochet in Chile.) I know the CIA had other jobs as well, including funding themselves with drug trafficking and distablizing undesirable governments with whom Washington and the international power, money men disagreed. If only more American's knew. They would be completely floored!