CIA’s Loss of Top Spies ‘Catastrophic,’ Says Agency Veteran

[babylonsister]

CIA’s Loss of Top Spies ‘Catastrophic,’ Says Agency Veteran
By Jeff Stein, CQ Staff


Only a few months ago, Sam Faddis was running a CIA unit charged with preventing terrorists from getting nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Today, only 50, the equivalent of a full colonel at the top of his game, he has quit.

Scores more like him, Faddis says, spies with years of working the back alleys of the world, have walked away from the CIA’s Operations Directorate at the top of their careers, at a time when the agency needs their skills the most.

The directorate is losing “25 or 30 chiefs of station” — the top CIA representative in a country or major city — “or their equivalent” at headquarters, every six months, Faddis estimates.

That’s out of an estimated thousand or fewer case officers — the men and women who recruit and manage spies — worldwide.

more...

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=hsnews-000002976430

[arcadian]

1. Good. That organization needs to be shut down.

n/t

[rwenos]

2. So Who Is Supposed to Spy for the US?

You'd prefer the NSA do it? Or the Pentagon? Or Donald Rumsfeld's privateeers?

Or do you simply wish we didn't need a spy agency?

[arcadian]

5. Intelligence collection is one thing.

The CIA is around to perform regime change, coups and assassinations. Not really something I want done in my name.

[EFerrari]

10. You know what's hilarious? Blackwater and their offspring

has ex-CIA at the helm. We pay for their R&D and the privateers rake in our taxes dollars on the other end, torturing, killing civilians, overthrowing democratic governments. drug running, propagandizing. Great guys, CIA.

[arcadian]

12. Total Intelligence Solutions

Yeah they are a cute bunch.

[EFerrari]

13. How big a sewer must the agency be right now if these guys are walking off the job.

Good grief.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. State Dept's itty bitty intel unit

provided as good, and very often, much better intel. Until Rummie shut it down with Cheney's help.

What I want to know is where the HELL is the outrage about Cheney spying on his own government, including the NSC and Condi?

That is incredible. Well, credible, surely, but still mouth dropping.

[arcadian]

6. I think State's Bureau of I&R has a staff of about 200.

Is that before or after the chopping block?

[EFerrari]

7. Wow. I didn't know they did that. n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. My heart bleeds for the thugs at CIA.

Despite their long record of Humanitarianism around the world. :sarcasm:

[EFerrari]

8. Their outreach work in the Peace Corps, in USAID, even

in Human Rights Watch, has been truly inspiring. :sarcasm:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Their noble work in Nicaragua, Angola, Chile, Congo, etc, have not gone unnoticed.

They are gentle souls spreading love, democracy, and capitalism..not to mention their much appreciated enhancement of the bodybag and coffin industries.

[arcadian]

15. Not to mention Indonesia, VietNam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq...

Iran, Suriname, Guatemala, Australia, Italy, Greece, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico... and the list goes on and on.

[Rabrrrrrr]

9. Yet another way that Republicans make us less safe and less secure.

[ColbertWatcher]

14. Where are they going? retiring? Blackwater? n/t

[Hekate]

16. Makes you wonder just how bad it has gotten over there since Plame was outed...

The ones with no conscience can go to work for Blackwater or the like, and make lots of money; that part I understand.

But like the civil service, the CIA has a lot of believers inside, people who really want to believe they are serving a higher cause. A friend of mine's work used to put her in contact with agents, and in her opinion they were remarkably "straight arrow" types. Also like the civil service, a lot depends on institutional memory, and when you lose this many people you lose that. It makes me wonder why they are going.

I'm no great fan of the CIA, believe me. Where it's dirty it needs to be cleaned up, especially after 8 years of Bush. It's mission needs to be overhauled too, because straight arrow agents or not, the agency has done some remarkably dirty work in our name over the decades.

But I wonder why so many are leaving now?....

Hekate

[FarCenter]

17. THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY ABOLITION ACT OF 1995 - Senator Moynihan

http://www.fas.org/irp/s126.htm

(Senate - January 04, 1995)

By Mr. MOYNIHAN:

S. 126. A bill to unify the formulation and execution of United States diplomacy; to the Select Committee on Intelligence.


THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY ABOLITION ACT OF 1995

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, it is no secret that a serious re-examination of our intelligence needs is in order. Since 1991, when I introduced the End of the Cold War Act, I have endeavored to bring the shortcomings of the intelligence community to public light. Not to denigrate our intelligence efforts, but to improve them. Despite resistance to change, much of the End of the Cold War Act has been implemented. We have eliminated `Lookout Lists,' which excluded persons who merely expressed `unacceptable' opinions from entry into the United States. One aspect of the bill yet to be implemented brings me to the floor today: the transfer of the functions of the Central Intelligence Agency to the Department of State.

The scrutiny that has now visited the intelligence community in the aftermath of the exposure of Aldrich Ames, the man whose treason caused the deaths of at least 10 American agents, increases the likelihood that some long needed reassessments will be made. I do not relish these circumstances, for to a great extent the Ames case merely distracts from some of the most fundamental defects of the CIA. While the Ames affair brings attention to the Directorate of Operations, it takes scrutiny away from the Directorate of Intelligence.

What of operations? Speaking before the Boston Bar Association in 1993, John le Carre, the man who provided us with a window into the world of a spy, questioned the contributions of spies to the winning of the cold war. In his remarks he stated:

You see, it wasn't the spies who won the cold war. I don't believe that in the end the spies mattered very much at all. Their capsuled isolation and their remote theorizing actually prevented them from seeing, as late as 1987 or 8, what anybody in the streets could have told them:

`It's over. We've won. The Iron Curtain is crashing down! The monolith we fought is a bag of bones! Come out of your trenches and smile!'

...