Talk:Central Intelligence Agency/Archive 7

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This is an archive of past discussions about Central Intelligence Agency. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Updated link to sandbox

User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-IntelOversight

Too many references to one dubious source...

Named "some". When a reporter or analyst makes a claim and publishes it, use their names, not "some". Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 05:23, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

History

May I suggest a more NPOV way of describing the high-level history in this article, understanding there will be more detail in other articles? The CIA, before and after the DNI reorganization, did more than covert and clandestine operations, which are different. Some of its activities, or at least the products of them, are overt. Others may not be public, but are analytical or logistic rather than action-oriented.

One model of the history might organize it by the four major directorates plus the executive office. The executive office part would address approval (or not, as in Iran-Contra and MKULTRA) of activities, budget and the battle to get it disclosed, the role of the inspector general and other internal monitoring, and brief changes mention of changes in strategy with changes of director/president.

A discussion of Intelligence History would include some of the more important correct and incorrect reports and analyses.

A discussion of Operations would include covert action, clandestine intelligence collection not by technical means (e.g., IRONBARK/Penkovsky), paramilitary and psychological programs, and, not to be forgotten, counterintelligence -- as far as I'm concerned, some of Angleton's actions, especially the Nosenko-Golitsyn molehunt, nearly paralyzed parts of the CIA. An equivalent molehunt, not unrelated to Angleton, had similar effects on the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, MI-6).

Science and Technology would include the obvious U-2, SR-71, and satellite intelligence, but other technical collection innovations. MKULTRA and other mind control, while some were done under Operations, logically belong here. Until the National Open Source Enterprise was established, a good deal of OSINT was here.

I would note that there are some activities that involve joint CIA and NSA operations for the clandestine placement of SIGINT and MASINT sensors. Over the years, there have been different names for the CIA component of this, or the merged organizations, such as Division D or the Special Collection Service.

It is not unreasonable to mention specific Directorate of Support activities, because some were controversial, and may or may not have been justifiable. The proprietary airlines were support activities, and may have been justifiable. The "Family Jewels" include a number of transgressions by the Office of Security in the Directorate of Support, in the general area of forbidden participation in domestic law enforcement.

The "Controversies" section, to appear a little more NPOV, should follow the History section, perhaps with internal Wikilinks in the History section. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:24, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Tightening up the Controversies

I've moved the controversy section, without deletions of any content, after the history proper. There was some duplication of text, as, for example, with "outsourcing", and I have it only in one place. At this point, I have not deleted anything else, or moved more than a paragraph or so, with even more detailed sourcing, to the Pakistan section. I'm appealing first for organization and editing; it's a second question if some of the allegations are adequately sourced as US policy, and a third question if there is a clear relationship between the act and the CIA (as opposed to US military or other organizations).

The essence of some of the controversies, such as human rights violations in interrogations, can be covered in a few paragraphs here, with the details in the transnational human rights article. Frankly, if I had a POV to damn the Agency as strongly as possible, I'd want to hit the reader with a range of offenses, written tightly. If, for example, one was reading about interrogation manuals, by the time one got through all the details, one might have glazed eyes by the time one got to extraordinary rendition.

I am not proposing deletion of content; I am proposing tightening the main page coverage of content and still having the details linked.

In some cases, however, some of the "controversies" are unclear. The section "Developing world", for example, has a paragraph of unsourced general allegations, followed by a rather sweeping statement of deaths caused by CIA -- yes, that devil CIA, apparently without any White House or other orders -- by John Stockwell, but without any real detail on Stockwell's analysis. Stockwell, IMHO, is quite a good source on CIA involvement in Africa, and in giving a flavor of headquarters politics. Broad statements like this are not up to his writing style in In Search of Enemies. Even a fervent opponent of the very existence of CIA really should ask, "are these controversies/accusations wandering prose, or do they slam home point after point?"

Again, were I in the role of POV enemy of CIA, I would ask myself, as I did with the details of interrogation and rendition, "does all the detail of the drug trafficking really contribute to a message about evil deeds, or would it be more effective to present the key elements and link to even more details in an article about transnational crime and drug trafficking?" That transnational article, incidentally, starts to explore issues of blood diamonds and the associated conventional arms proliferation, slavery, child soldiers, and other issues that are not even mentioned here. Those issues may not have a clear cause and effect with respect to CIA activities, but, again if I were an enemy, would I not want a brief list in the main part and details elsewhere?

Some of the subheadings are not to the point. I thought it was George W. Bush that liked vaguenesses like "War on Terror"? There is a legitimate discussion, with substantial legal arguments on both sides, about the issue of targeted assassinations of suspected terrorists. It would strike me that the key issue is legality, and the individual acts belong in the geographical sections on Pakistan, Yemen, etc.

I believe, and with substantial sourcing, that there were major failures of both intelligence reporting and intelligence consumption related to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Given that, and trying rather hard, I fail to detect the scandal in the vague leading paragraph about an anonymously sourced allegation of a covert operation aimed for 2002, by the CIA -- unless it was by Special Forces.

The bureaucratic turf wars that led to the creation of the DNI, and the possible legal loopholes for military covert action, are covered in at least two places in this article. Combine and tighten. I would do this in the interest of readability and objectivity, but I don't want to do this without some discussion.

There are other matters. Again, one of the old rules of giving an effective speech is relevant here: tell your audience what you are going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them. I would ask anyone who thinks, for example, that the rather vague descriptions of the family jewels, of the highly illegal activities, or other allegations are showing that much literary focus. Yes, I recognize Wikipedia is written by committee, but, every so often, pure editing, not editing in the sense of content, is necessary for quality. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 05:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Just to chime in on one side point you made, I would agree that the titles of some of the existing sections need some cleaning. Just one example is the "highly illegal activities." This is one that has kind of bugged me for a while, coming from someone who works in a law firm the idea of a "highly" illegal activity is rather silly. One crime is not more illegal than another, it is simply more heinous or serious. I realize the title is quoting one of our more educated and eloquent senators, and actually attempted to add the quotes to the title so as to more clearly indicate the connection, but this of course got reverted within days. (Morethan3words (talk) 10:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC))

This is a direct quote from the congressional report. This has been an ongoing argument, your not the first to bring it up. Trav (talk) 16:38, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I worked for the Library of Congress for several years, and with Congressional committees a good deal more than that. Some Congressional committee documents are superbly done, while others may have POV, or just plain bad preparation. For example, the Senate Banking Committee report on dual-use sales to Iraq is often cited, especially with respect to biological warfare.

Unfortunately, they apparently didn't have someone with at least first-year microbiology read their draft, or they had a POV. There are multiple lists of organisms, some of which indeed would be under the US Select Agent Program controls (since instituted) for things with BW potential. At least one organism, however, indeed would be anathema in the Muslim world, for it is a Saccharomyces species that is the yeast for excellent Belgian beer. The report tends to overemphasize the cultures, the easiest things to get if you want a BW program, and underestimate the specialized, large-scale fermenters, refrigerated centrifuges, lyophilizers, etc., which are much harder. Most of that equipment came from Russia and France.

All I'm saying, Trav, is that language in a Congressional report sometimes is deliberately dramatic. One can keep the quote, but the article might indeed contain qualifiers as given by talk. When I draw from government or specialized documents, I will quote, but I am apt to wikilink to definitions where appropriate, or, when I feel I won't violate WP:OR, add some explanatory text.

In the case at hand, for example, I think it's legitimate editing to have one section on controversies, and to identify, in the paragraphs on specific topics, those that the committee called "highly illegal." It may also be appropriate to put in clarifying legal language. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 17:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal for drug trafficking

I put a proposal on CIA Drug Trafficking to merge it into CIA Activities by Transnational Topic: Crime and Illicit Drug Trade. Since people may not yet be looking at the latter subsidiary page, I thought it would be appropriate to let people here know about the proposal, if the proposal would not be seen at the new page. A fast glance suggests that the Drug Trafficking page is fairly short, and, while it would add some content to the "Transnational" article, it would be a fairly clean merge. I haven't yet looked in detail at least one other drug-related CIA page, specifically about cocaine trafficking, but getting the drug information into one place would, I think, make things more user-friendly.

One of the advantages to moving the drug information to a slightly more general article on transnational crime is that the potential relationships between the drug market and arms purchases would be in the same article, just as arms purchases funded through blood diamond sales also would be there.

Thoughts? Comments? Trav, got any more pictures of the cute pig? :-)

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:00, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I've started cloning the drug sections to the transnational crime article, which gets interesting when one looks at the way money can flow among various transnational groups. Indeed, there starts to be an area of money laundering, blood diamonds and other sources of funds that are used by terrorist groups. I'm not sure how much belongs in the CIA Activities by Transnational Topic: Terrorism and how much belongs in the CIA Activities by Transnational Topic: Crime and Illicit Drug Trade section, with a nod to the separate article on financial intelligence (FININT). For that matter, some of the material on slavery, in Crime, may belong, at least partially, in CIA Activities by Transnational Topic: Human Rights

Organizational suggestions welcome. My goal is to have an thorough, well-sourced amount of these controversial areas in sub-articles, very clearly linked from a summary discussion on the main CIA page.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:10, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions still welcome. There is a good deal of material under Laos, in the Asia-Pacific section, that should probably be under Southeast Asia/Regional, as well as the transnational crime article. The latter should pick up Afghanistan, and possibly other areas in Southwest Asia.

I'd like to move the detail here (and also several topics under human rights) into the sections where they can be discussed in more detail, leaving a tightly written paragraph or paragraphs under controversies. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 05:13, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

100,000 employees?

That claim is made in the main article, but is unsourced. I'd have no trouble believing that number for the intelligence community as a whole, since, AFAIK, the greatest number of intelligence personnel are in the military cryptologic/COMSEC organizations that both support military operations and collect national-level information.

For the CIA itself, that's an awfully high estimate, implying a lot more people in the field than I think they actually have. Does anyone know the source of that number? Could it have been based on the CIA when it still headed the intelligence community?

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:09, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Assassination detail; general structure of questionable citations (and getting better ones)

Suggestions are welcome in where to put the details of assassination attempts, which, due to sheer length, probably should be referenced but not detailed in the main article. Where should the basic material about the Church Committee, which looked at multiple assassination attempts, go?

I started looking at this with respect to the coup in Iraq in 1963. On actually following the source citations, Feldman did not mention the CIA at all other than as "apparently", with a fourth-hand link to a Roger Gates article. The Roger Gates article about Robert Gates (sorry about all the swinging gates). Another article, by Morris, was of a page that did refer to former DCI Robert Gates, but not to Iraq. Unfortunately for citation purposes, a number of Morris citations link to specific pages of individual Asia Times articles. It could well be that appropriate material is on another page of the same article, but the forward-back links don't work on the page.

In general, I'm going to go more to the Church Committee than the journalistic accounts, as there is much more in very specific evidence citation. Where possible, I'm going to search for other references to documents the Committee considered strongly evidentiary. In this specific case, for example, there is an account of a poisoning attempt against an unnamed Near East "colonel", presumably General Qassim , but the action officer said it was no longer needed after a coup in Baghdad. The detail in the committee report, frankly, is much more detailed and plausible than Gates.

I'd very much appreciate comments about sourcing when it turns out that multiple listed sources are either personal accounts without detail and with much rhetoric, accounts of the accounts, or accounts of accounts of accounts. I'll put the specifics under Iraq in the talk page for CIA Activities by Region: Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia, but there are books cited to which I have no access. If anyone does have them, I'd appreciate verification. In addition to the material I'll put into the talk page for this article, (look at text in edit mode to see questionable citations commented out but not deleted) (signed the next day) Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 20:39, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Semi-Protected 2

Hi,

Due to the fact that almost all of the edits coming in from IP-only-identified users have been vandalism, I threw an sprotected2 tag on the page. I don't know if this will stick or work (I am not an administrator). If an administrator reads this and agrees and knows how to make it stick, please do so.

At the least, if people want to make crank edits, they should go to the trouble of making up an idea and putting in edits to the Frogurt page for 3 or 4 days before having a go at the CIA page.

Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 22:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Editing philosophy

Hi,

Howard B has been consistently pushing a philosophy of

Emphasizing intelligence analysis as well as the covert action side
Emphasizing wherever possible the chain of command from President on down in particular that the authority for particular covert actions and the decision to engage is made 2-3 levels up from DCI/DNI and 0-1 levels down from President in most cases. (I have also noted cases where President couldn't care less and policy-making is contentious and happens at lower levels, e.g. Afghan policy CIA-vs-State in 1989.)

In Howard's defense and as a bit of nostalgia, I now quote from a book I got for 50 cents at the library book sale, written exactly 40 years ago, which curiously echos all of Howard's points:

When I resigned from the Central Intelligence Agency, thus concluding a career of nearly twenty-three years in intelligence, the furthest thing from my mind was to write a book about the CIA or the United States intelligence system. But then, I had led a cloistered life for more than two decades.

What I did not realize was how little is actually known about the CIA and the American system for keeping our policy makers advised of the threats to the nation's security. Nor did I understand the depth of suspicion, if not hostility, that exists toward the CIA in some sectors of our society, particularly in academic life. I had been aware that some of the American press had been hostile, but perhaps erroneously had attributed this to a natural aversion to anything secret.

My contact with the American public during the years with the agency had been primarily in the area of personnel recruitment, and here there seemd to be not only understanding, but enthusiasm as well. The CIA, over the years, has always been able to recruit outstanding men and women, and perhaps I interpreted this as representing a general understanding on the part of the American people of what the Central Intelligence Agency is and what it does. I have learned since leaving the government that the success in CIA recruitment represents an interest on the part of young men and women in serving the government and not any real understanding of CIA.

The CIA, the White House, and Congress must all share the blam for this lack of accurate information on the agency and the United States intelligence system. For many years the CIA has had a myopic view of its public image and has assumed that the American people would accept it solely on the basis that it had been created by Congress, reported directly to the President, and that the top two officials, the director and the deputy directory -- the only two appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate and therefore known to the public -- were men of stature with international reputations. Even in this the agency has been in error, because not many people even know these basic facts about the CIA.

...

The American people have a deep concern, indeed fear, over the concentration of too much power in any area of our society. When this power is in the government and cloaked in secrecy, then their concern is even greater...It is not a concern about secrecy as such, which the people will accept as a necessity for national security. Nor is it a concern about intelligence activity, which the public recognizes as a necessary government function during a period of international tension and strife. It is a concern about secret power and the possibilities of its abuse.

...

Communist psychological warfare units never fail to take advantage of the discovery of any American intelligence activity. They invariably advertise it to the world in the worst possible light. Not content in just dealing with facts, the Communists have also proved to be adept in fabrication and forgeries designed to discredit the American intelligence and security services and have found willing audiences in this country, but even more so in the uncommitted areas of the world.

The James Bond syndrome, with its emphasis on cloak and dagger adventures, fast cars, and faster women, hasn't helped the CIA image. Most people now look in intelligence as all espionage and action, and fail to realize that the bulk of the work is the painstaking assembly of information.

The Central Intelligence Agency has been hurt by the fact that it combines intelligence and operations, action and information. The advantages of combining these responsibilities in one central organization have been lessened, if not negated, by the emphasis in the public mind on clandestine operations and the failure on the part of the government to describe the organization in perspective.

The above quotes are from "The Real CIA" by Lyman Kirkpatrick, MacMillan & Co, 1968. He was an Executive Director of the CIA (not sure what that is versus Director or Deputy Director).

Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 22:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

The Executive Director position doesn't exist any longer, and it may not have a direct counterpart since the DNI. It was, however, the #3 job in the Agency, running it on a "day-to-day" basis. Typically, in the old days, the DCI dealt with the White House and Congress, the DDCI dealt with the rest of the intelligence community -- one or the other tended to oversee the community-wide estimates. Below them was the Executive Director.

Kirkpatrick was generally considered to be in line for DCI, but had a serious illness (polio, IIRC), and felt that at the time, he couldn't do the necessary travel.

His point about combining intelligence and operations has never been solved well by any government in the world. The British split them somewhat in WWII, but the action-only SOE, admittedly created on a rush basis, had its own problems. Further complicating things these days is that the military has a special operations capability that blurs into covert action and even clandestine collection, and even more confusion comes from having military personnel seconded to CIA. See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for some comparative history. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 23:14, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Where do we put the Alcoholism page?

Here is another quote from Real CIA by Lyman Kirkpatrick, about the "foreign agency liaison" function, the details of which probably haven't changed in 40 years (like the details of his other comments that I quoted above):

My initial assignment was to be a sort of general handyman to Maddox, who at that point was pretty much trying to do everything himself. This involved liaison with the British Intelligence Service, certainly the most important part of our work.
...
The liaison work was interesting and those magnificent men working for the liberation of their countries were fascinating, each in his own way, but, after six months or so, I didn't give up the work with too much regret because it was tiring and a strain on the liver. Successful liaison in intelligence is achieved only through the development of close personal relations in which there is complete and absolute confidence on both sides. Almost immediately on my arrival in London I found myself plunged into a series of lunches that would last from 1 P.M. through a good part of the afternoon, and dinners that lasted well past midnight. Our European friends were formidable consumers of alcoholic beverages, with apparently little effect, and I always wondered whether they also put in the same long office hours that we did.

[Erxnmedia 12:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)]

I can think of some other sources that discuss drinking at the middle management level. How much of this can be sourced is a good question to which I have no answer. There are sources for the US Army especially and the US military generally recognizing that their social customs (think 1970s forward), such as happy hours and promotion/qualification rituals, that involved heavy alcohol consumption were shut down. Indeed, I remember (but can't immediately cite) some comments from officers who were really pleased about the effects of no-alcohol rules, in Muslim countries, about their performance.

So, I'm not sure this can be organized in a well-sourced way. If it can, I think we might be touching on a new page, which also has to recognize changes over time -- call it intelligence operators and human factors. Known alcohol use might be appropriate to have under director biographies, when appropriate.

You are talking about behavior that would be more common among field personnel in stressful situations. Today, there are probably enough trained managers that alcohol overuse might be spotted and a gentle suggestion made to get in touch with the Employee Assistance Program, with stronger and stronger situations if the matter continued. I'm a little more familiar with this being done at NSA than CIA. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:08, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

For my part, I think I tend to agree with Howard on the difficulties of trying to document this effectively. I admit a fair number of the sources I've seen do seem to discuss substance abuse in one way or another, but it seems like these statements are almost always anecdotal in nature. Therefore, I think maybe this is something that we limit to some statements on the biographical pages of the individuals themselves.

I think the only exception would be if one of us can find some description of any official policy or program the CIA has put in place to deal with substance abuse issues. I would be surprised if no such policy existed, but I'm not really sure where to find any description of such a policy or program. The only thing I can think of is maybe under the recruitment section of the official website, I would imagine they may have some description of something there, I'll give it a look see later tonight if I have a moment. (Morethan3words (talk) 09:00, 23 January 2008 (UTC))

By way of follow-up, I checked the CIA website and couldn't really find anything concrete, just some basic statements about it being a drug-free workplace and that they generally do not accept applicants who have used illegal drugs within the previous 12 months, although circumstances may be taken into consideration for individual cases or something along those lines. Nothing really that concrete that I could fins, although it is a pretty big website so maybe I missed something. In any case, if someone who happens to be living in a country where these types of materials are more readily available could give it another look to make sure, it would be much appreciated I'm sure. (Morethan3words (talk) 08:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC))

Thinking about this further, isn't this something that was a context of a specific time, such as the militant anticommunism that admittedly went through phases, such as McCarthy, John Foster Dulles, and JFK? Not necessarily at the DCI level, there's a fair bit of discussion of heavy drinking in accounts of socializing with Kim Philby, or with the operational staff for the Bay of Pigs.

There may be another article in this, not specific to the CIA, but, for example, looking at changes over time of the US Army (and other forces) attitude toward drinking. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:03, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

"Minister Responsible" @ summary template.

USA has "Ministers" ???????? Ministries are only present in Monarchies and/or President/Parliamentary systems. Please fix this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.34.98.154 (talk) 02:45, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course the US does not have ministers, although the template, which is a standard template and is currently under dispute, only has the option of ministers or agency executives, of which the Director of National Intelligence is neither. Even if we change the template unilaterally, not really sure what to change it to. DNI is not a Secretary-level position, right? Maybe "Cabinet Member Responsible"? Anybody have any thoughts? (Morethan3words (talk) 08:48, 25 January 2008 (UTC))

Also, I dropped a line on the template's talk page to see if anyone there has a thought. I also took the liberty of looking at the FBI's page, but that uses its own infobox which, while having some interesting additions, overall I don't think should be used as a precedent for this page. (Morethan3words (talk) 09:20, 25 January 2008 (UTC))

Wikipedia and CIA

I deleted a section that was repeated exactly later on in the article. The deleted section was called Wikipedia, and the exact copy is called "Wikipedia and CIA". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.100.218.210 (talk) 15:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

OK. It looks like that's when the citation to Steven Aftergood's article was deleted, and I just put back the reference. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 20:26, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Heraldic Image

The description of the Heraldic image used by the CIA (perhaps it's referred to as a seal) is strange. It explains the meaning of each element without citation but it's doubtful that each element has a meaning, let alone the meaning attributed to it. Many people are mystified by heraldry and imagine that everything must mean something, but that's rarely the case. One of the most doubtful parts of the description is that the field (viz., the "sheild") has a meaning. The elements on the image were obviously a, somewhat, inept immitation of the heraldic tradtion. In that tradition the sheild, itself, is standard. To say it has a meaning is an odd claim. It's like saying that, not only the symbol on a football player's helmet has a meaning, but the helmet too is meaningful... it's not really. It just protects the dude's head. In heraldry, the only meaning of the sheild is to provide a place to put the charges. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.87.57.63 (talk) 07:22, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Referenced.[1][2] VigilancePrime (talk) 07:30, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Editing

maybe more pictures to make things clear —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.131.38.5 (talk) 02:33, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Pictures of what? Organization charts? Document and action approval, at least before and after DNI? Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Junior Officer Training (JOT), not "operative training"

I'm without my library at present. For many years (and possibly now), the early and less sensitive parts of CIA Junior Officer Training (JOT), before new employees had full security clearance, was given away from Headquarters. Any Arlington, Virginia cab driver could take you to the CIA "blue building" at the corner of Glebe Road and what is now Route 66. The Office of Training subsequently moved to another Arlington location, but the 1000 Glebe Road facility deserves a historic note.

This facility was identified in at least one book, IIRC Frank Snepp, although it could have been Marchetti & Marks. Does anyone have access to the reference?

I did edit a section on "operative training", which dealt only with advanced operations training at Camp Peary and elsewhere. The term "operative", in any case, is not used. That training may or may not be under the NCS rather than the Office of Training. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:48, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Updates and migration, February 2008

My goal is for the main article to serve as an overview in understanding the organization and its supervision, with issue details in clearly-linked subordinate articles.

For example, I'd like to move the details of interrogation manuals, renditions, etc., to the human rights article, expanding them there and having a clear link in the main article.

I'm still thinking about the intelligence failures, as I don't want to make the intelligence technique series of article specific to any given organization. Nevertheless, there is general information about analytic pathologies and inadequate information technology elsewhere, which may have had a role in some of the more recent failures. Suggestions welcome.

The detailed drug accusations should move to transnational drugs and crime, not hiding the existence in any way but minimizing the details in a paragraph in the main article, which links to the detailed one.

I'd like to see more detail on where some of the external links apply, having just removed several that are dead. The Harold Pinter speech, for example, never mentions the Central Intelligence Agency; why was it there? Where, specifically do comments from Noam Chomsky go, which are specific to CIA rather than general US policy.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:39, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with this in principle, and want to add that I apologize or not moving more quickly on the "U.S. Intelligence and War Criminals" article, I've started a sandbox on my user page but have not added any content to it, in part because I am not certain how the introduction to the page should be worded. I admit this is kind of a lame excuse, and will try to work more on it soon. (Morethan3words (talk) 06:52, 22 February 2008 (UTC))

I had forgotten your mentioning that additional article at all, but wanted to say that I think it's an excellent idea. In particular, some of the worst war criminals, such as Shiro Ishii of Unit 731, made agreements with, for example, the Army, before the CIA or even OPC/OSO existed. I'm reasonably comfortable with Reinhard Gehlen not being a war criminal, but some of his subordinates probably were. The initial contact with him was pre-CIA, and then his organization was US-supported up to, IIRC, 1956, when he moved it to the German government and the information-sharing became intergovernmental.

There may well have been deals struck later. I have yet to see any sourcing on the area of Nazis with information on toxins, and, from my personal experience in that area, I'd be surprised if there was much Nazi work on BW or biologically derived toxins. The only area of WMD in which they made real progress was in the nerve agents for chemical warfare; the US coded the initial series as GA, GB, etc., with the G for German.

In no way am I trying to whitewash the CIA. Sidney Gottlieb, for want of a better term, was, IMHO, a Cold War criminal. It's a bit frightening when I realize that I was working in the clinical labs of Georgetown University at the same time that some of the CIA-funded work was on the floor below me. Nevertheless, there is a constant problem of people confusing the CIA with the US government as a whole, independent intelligence agencies with the CIA, and White House level orders as CIA-originated. Were there bad things originated in the CIA? Certainly! Gottlieb is one of my personal standards of slime, if I insult slime. I simply want to place derogatory material precisely.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:50, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Challenges in Naming and Moving Human Experimentation

First, I think it's more accurate, less sensational, and more in keeping with related material to refer to "human experimentation" rather than "mind control". One can point, for example, to the Declaration of Helsinki and the Nuremberg Code being in effect long before the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention. Not all of the experiments were to increase suggestibility or willingness to talk; some dealt with incapacitation. In taking a broader term, yet another problem is that the general program of chemical research under Gottlieb included toxins for assassinations, which, AFAIK, were never tested on humans, although there is reasonable information that they were given to operational staff at least in an assassination attempt against Castro.

Second, while these did take place in the Americas, I think the main discussion belongs in Human Rights rather than the geographical piece. Torture and inappropriate interrogation took place on several continents, and I think the human experimentation really should be under a common header. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:34, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Text from US Government documents

I have restored deletions made by an editor yesterday, on the grounds that the material was copyrighted. The text, however, came from US government documents not subject to US copyright.

Foreign Relations of the United States is published by the Department of State, as a permanent record of foreign relations-related actions of multiple government agencies, including the CIA, its supervisory organizations, State, etc. The documents directly published by CIA are also not subject to copyright. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 17:00, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

When you put these in just blockquote them and reference the source page and link properly. No need to paraphrase, just make it clear where you're pulling from. It's fair use. Erxnmedia (talk) 19:25, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

You are right. I have been fairly consistent, I think, doing that in the subordinate articles, but may not have done so in the main article. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 19:31, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Article is too long

This article is insanely long. 177KB is 5-6 times the length specified by the manual of style. Please trim this article and/or move into subarticles. 64.178.96.168 (talk) 20:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't disagree in the slightest; the article has gotten shorter than it was. There are enough sensitivities, however, about content that it has been advisable to propose specific movement to subarticles, which I have done. If there is no objection after a couple of weeks, I will, indeed, move the sections in question. The subarticle structure is in place. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 20:34, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

People with their own agenda have added full sections. As a result the organization is totally out of control. There is no real chronological history per se. Just histories trying to prove a point or several points. There is no place to fit in highly emotional real events such as the assassination of Richard Welsh, the station chief at Athens, and William Francis Buckley, whose torture and death occurred over several days. These had a profound effects on the people who work at the CIA, many of whom have had field experience.

Perhaps the material should be collected chronologically. Then summarized and forked for various subthemes. Student7 (talk) 02:13, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

If you are referring to the main article, many would agree that sections were added by people with agendas. Late last year and early this year, some consensus was formed that there had to be subarticles for reasons of pure size, and that the main article

1. In large part would be an overview

2. Was no place for agendas

While there are articles elsewhere that, IMHO, are pure POV, I'll suggest that the consensus that emerged was that the first set of articles would be a mixture of geographic and transnational, and, with some general introductions and transitions, be chronological within those articles. We still have POV problems, but they are more localized, and, in some cases, can be taken to their own articles. In some cases, even the first set of subarticles are growing unwieldy.

To follow on your example, there is discussion of Welch in the Europe/Russia#Greece section, and, so far, Buckley seems to fit better in the transnational terrorism article. In no way does any of that preclude articles on them individually; they are certainly notable. It doesn't sound as if we are in fundamental disagreement.

From my perspective, I've learned some logistical matters that, to some extent, were ways of dealing with POV and style issues at the time of a rather intense set of edit wars. As it is, I have made mistakes such as not taking transnational terrorism into my userspace, getting it to a point I considered smooth there, with invited comments, and then moving it into mainspace. It would be fair to various people to establish that some points that had been in the main article were preserved, perhaps through transformation. Some might be sufficiently POV best to go into their own articles.

I welcome more specific discussion. The model is still evolving, and you make good points.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:48, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Lots of recent additions

There's been a growing consensus, since perhaps November or December [2007], that the main CIA article is far too long. As a result, there are a set of sub-articles, and even some of those are getting unwieldy.

To see the list of subarticles, scroll to the bottom of the main CIA page and click on "Central Intelligence Agency". In many cases, the text (e.g., on drug trafficking) has been copied to the subordinate article (e.g., Transnational Crime & Drugs). I had thought it appropriate to wait a week or two more before replacing some of the main article text with Wikilinks to the subordinate pages, but I'd like to hear any concerns soon. A number of editors are adding material to the main article, in areas covered by sub-pages, and it's getting hard to keep the sub-pages synchronized.

Sub-pages often have additional information that is not in the main article; the only reason any content from the existing main page would be lost would be duplication or citations missing for several months.

If there are no objections, I'd like to start the major moves (e.g., human rights violations, drugs, etc.) within a day or two.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 20:11, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

You have my full support in moving text to appropriate subarticles at your excellent editorial discretion. Sorry for being a recent offender in terms of perhaps adding excessive material to this main article. It takes forever to render on the browser of a handheld device at its current length, and thumbwheel scrolling is next-to-impossible. Plausible to deny (talk) 20:46, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

OK. While I recognize the human rights article can use additional work, I propose to start moving the relevant material (interrogation techniques, rendition, assassination) to it on March 4th. Please note that "targeted killing" is in the anti-terrorism article, which needs a bit more flow editing before it is ready to take the appropriate sections from the main article. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:57, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Moving 2003 War in Iraq--move to Iraq regional, or War on Terror?

I think that the 2003 invasion of Iraq belongs under the regional section that contains Iraq, but some might suggest that it was rationalized as part of the war on terror. I believe the sections in the current CIA article talking about such things as the Bin Laden Station and the Worldwide Attack Matrix belong in the transnational article about CIA and terrorism.

An argument can be made in either direction, but I'd like to hear any objections, which may be very good ones, to my proposal.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 00:57, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Influencing public opinion and law enforcement

There is a link to "CIA and the Media", but that is mostly a stub. Again trying to get details out of the main article, this section could go in at least two places.

First, it could go with some other domestic things, such as Operation MOCKINGBIRD, now in the regional section on the Americas.

Alternatively, the "CIA and the Media" section, the US activities in the Americas regional article, and "Influencing public opinion and law enforcement" could go into a new article on CIA domestic activities -- which would also include some of their legitimate domestic operations, such as debriefing travelers.

Both places have arguments for and against. While I might lean slightly toward the second, I really would not object to either placement, as long as the "CIA and the Media" stub gets merged.

Thoughts? Preferences?

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 03:03, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I would advocate the second option. However, I think the article in question should emphasize, early on, the fact that the CIA was never supposed to operate domestically at all, and therefore a good portion of its domestic operations were more than certainly illegal. (Morethan3words (talk) 11:19, 3 March 2008 (UTC))

Thanks for the reality check on option 2. As far as domestic operations, I'm not trying to do a "depends on the meaning of is", but there were some things that they did and do legally. Even the illegality has to be separated into things they did on their own and things they did with White House or other specific authorization.

May I assume that no one objects to saying they were authorized to produce and distribute intelligence to the US government, and selected products to the public? One example is that they have been the government-wide (and often public) source of a wide series of maps. This might seem trivial, but I mention it because the legislative authority was the National Security Act of 1947 provision that CIA could perform, IIRC, "other services of common concern." I doubt anyone would argue with the maps and later the World Factbook, but the exact same provision of the Act is the one later interpreted to allow them to do covert action, especially with the 1949 amendment.

Another activity, for which I've never seen a serious complaint, is doing voluntary interviews with Americans and US residents who had traveled overseas, trying to see if, as an incidental part of their travel, had learned anything of intelligence value. This function moved around bureaucratically, but probably was most often in the Clandestine Service. It was variously called the Domestic Contact Service, Domestic Collection Division, and Natural Resources Division. Some years back, the main office was in an open office building in Washington DC, near the White House. There are CIA offices in many major US cities, usually in listed in the phone book with no address, but in some Federal office building. This sort of interviewing, as well as preliminary recruiting and probably security clearance, was the major function of those domestic field offices. In some cases, they also held people that worked with manufacturers of equipment (e.g., satellites, agent radios) contracted to the CIA.

An activity that was not authorized by higher level, was cited as problematic in the Rockefeller Report (IIRC), was assistance, by the Office of Security, to local police departments in the Washington DC area. The rationale was these were the departments that would physically protect beyond the fence of CIA buildings.

There was no question that things like mail opening and infiltrating protest groups were outside their charter, but some of these did have higher-level approval although rather clearly illegal.

Are there really two articles here? One might be "CIA Operations in the US", which would include highly questionable relationships with domestic media, such as Operation MOCKINGBIRD and subsidies to the National Student Association, but also neutral things like the Domestic Collection Division. The other would be "CIA and opinion groups outside the US" (this is a terrible title and I'd welcome a better one) dealing with such things as subsidies to European journals, associations, etc., which might actually have been legal, but go into the blurry area of affecting news, which could wind up in the US press.

I'll set up draft(s) in my userspace and announce the links here. Apologies for finding that I've had to do appreciable drafting in some of the subordinate articles such as CIA transnational activities against terrorism; they needed more editing and sourcing/new information than I had realized. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 12:57, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Let's move bulk of CIA NCS section into standalone NCS article

CIA page is > 100 KB

NCS article in CIA page is longer than NCS standalone article

Solution: Move bulk of NCS article in CIA page into NCS standalone article

Any objections?

Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 18:49, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

That could work. We will want to have enough introduction in the main article to show how it relates to the other divisions, and also to the oversight function. Oversight isn't exclusive to covert action or even NCS; sensitive technical collection (e.g., the U-2) were also under that same mechanism. I'd rather see the internal reports and recommendations stay in the main article, since they generally dealt with the agency as a whole.

The transnational articles address tasking for the NCS and its precedessors, but also intelligence analysis, interagency work and estimates (less important for CIA now that the National Intelligence Council moved to the ODNI), etc., but still making up a rational set of articles, maybe more of a matrix than a strict hierarchy -- but the intelligence community is becoming more of a matrix organization anyway. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 19:20, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

If I did it I wouldn't bother with user space, I would just cut and paste and let God sort out the dangling references to other parts of the main CIA article.

NCS is it's own creature now, and the NCS article hasn't been touched by the CIA article contributors. It's probably time for some cross-pollination from the CIA groupies and maybe time for the CIA groupies to let the NCS baby pursue an independent life.

That said, the United States Intelligence Community is where you would put the matrix or table; there is a list now which is clearly incomplete because it doesn't include NCS. Note also that in the Intelligence Agencies of USA template, NCS is listed under "Other" which also clearly denigrates it's importance as a new separate entity equal in status to NRO or NGA. Note also that not all elements of this list are in the template, which is another oversight.

This place is a shambles.

Erxnmedia (talk) 20:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I would not go so far as to say it is fully independent. Quite a number of groups have been given "Enterprise" or "Service" or other quasi-independent names, but I'm not convinced they are. As far as I can tell, there would still be a number of resources in CIA on which NCS would depend, but, of course, I haven't seen the actual classified org charts.

The reason I'd do it in userspace is that I've gotten tired of edit conflicts and people who keep throwing updates into the main article. While I can turn off bots, I still get drive-by editors if it is in mainspace and I know it isn't ready.

Further, NCS does very definitely matrix with "CIA" missions such as terrorism, counterproliferation, and transnational crims.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 22:09, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I see

In the first few lines, "IC" is defined as "Intelligence Community" which I would have expected. However, a pointer to the DNI managing the IC takes one to an article which seems to redefine IC as "Intelligence Cycle." While we are not responsible for that article, it doesn't seem right and is confusing. Note that the "IC" abbreviation is used throughout the article. Student7 (talk) 02:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Student7,

Which pointer are you talking about in what part of CIA article? Here are some pointers:

United States Intelligence Community versus USIC (these two really need to be reconciled because the Wiki version seems out of date
Director of National Intelligence versus ODNI and Template:Intelligence agencies of USA which relegates ODNI and NCS to "other" whereas they are now "central"
Intelligence cycle which is the Wiki Book on the theory of intelligence gathering

also when you say "we are not responsible for that article", which "we" are you talking about, SPECTRE?

Thanks,

Erxnmedia (talk) 13:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I apologize for not being clear and forcing you to guess. It is the short phrase "manages the IC." So you won't have to edit to look, the imbedded link is:"Intelligence cycle management|manages the IC". Article uses the word "cycle" rather than "community."

When I said "we" are not responsible, I meant the editors of CIA are not responsible. Yes, it's a forked article and many editors inteested in CIA maintain this forked article as well. But my point was that it is a stand-alone article (though forked). Peculiar Wikipedia point.

Brilliant thought: Maybe you are responsible! Aha! :) Student7 (talk) 13:56, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Student7,

I have disambiguated the sentence in an inclusionist fashion.

Thanks,

Erxnmedia (talk) 14:20, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, as long as you are rounding up the usual suspect, I think I'm the guilty party in having "cycle" embedded in the Wikilink rather than "community". Good to have other eyes on it. I realize that in my own writing on intelligence, IC refers to the community -- would you believe I never before realized that intelligence cycle has the same abbreviation, simply because I will say "cycle" or "intelligence cycle", but can't remember using it as an abbreviation.

I'm the primary author of intelligence cycle and its subordinates, which also drift into special operations. Erxn (we are friends who sometimes squabble, but we are on a first-name basis, as it were) calling that whole series of articles a wikibook fascinates me; I realize it is in the book size and complexity range. Yes, I have published books, although in engineering.

The reason I had community management point to intelligence cycle management is that while the term "intelligence cycle" certainly doesn't appear in any of the formative documents for the CIA and US intelligence community, managing the cycle, and avoiding the history of failures, defines good management. I suppose this is original research or synthesis, but a simple wikilink does not seem to be a mortal sin. I wonder if it is worth massaging things into a book, and if I can still wikilink from the book space.

"Cycle" becomes even more relevant when one starts to think of OODA loops, which I mention in several places in the intelligence cycle series; I was looking at some articles the other day and realize I should move it to a more prominent spot in intelligence cycle management.

You raise a very valid point, however -- where are these currently two series, with some links, going? There is a very POV contingent that, I believe, progressed when moving from a title of "CIA-sponsored covert regime change" to "US-sponsored covert regime change". I've given up, in that series, of ever getting even a more accurate "US-sponsored regime change", as the actions in Grenada and Panama and Iraq were hardly covert. Some of those US sponsored operations were asinine, but it says something to me that there is no equivalent article (i.e., in addition to rather than instead of) the Soviet regime changes in Eastern Europe. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:30, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Exrnmedia for making that change. I'm just too much of a newbie to do anything. While I have both of your attention, as a newbie, I want to see history first in the article, not structure. All most agencies have is structure. Who wants to read history about (say) GAO? But CIA is different. I realize that merging all the stuff together one gets a lot of errors the agency made because Congress and the media have publicized them, but that is the way it goes I suppose. There were a few successes in there as well. But we expect this agency to act. Like Special Forces or an Army or any group that actually performs rathers than talks or shuffles paper. Well, even IRS history might be interesting. But structure. Golly. I think it should be summarized and forked IMO.

I was sort of hoping that S.P.E.C.T.R.E. was going to turn out to be "Spies ProjECT..." (words fail me here). Was sort of looking forward to putting that as a logo on my user page. "This editor is a member of SPECTRE" with a pointer to the WikiProject page. Maybe I'll still do that! :) Student7 (talk) 16:07, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Structure

Structure, and GAO plus a wide range of other oversight organizations, really do need to be at the beginning. First, unless one understands the structure, how can the history be explained? We've had a long problem of "history" just being covert action, without the approval process that did or didn't work, which leads to some justified but a lot of unjustified claims of a rogue organization. As Harry Truman's sign read, "the buck stops here", so if a President authorized an action, that's important -- and without the structure of the approval mechanisms, how can that be explained?

As an aside, I very much want to read structure about any organization I'm going to study, or my studies become chaotic because I have no context. You mention, I hope jokingly, "spies". That isn't even the term intelligence people use for espionage, but there is much more to intelligence than espionage and covert action. With all due respect, your comment "But we expect this agency to act. Like Special Forces or an Army or any group that actually performs rathers than talks or shuffles paper" is not a realistic expectation of the way the system is supposed to work. I can point you to a long series of Special Forces, to say nothing of the Army as a whole, about the paperwork necessary in planning a mission. Even a raid that lasts a short time, such as Son Tay, took months of planning, much of which was paperwork. One lengthy effort requiring much reading of paper, requesting more paper, and analyzing paper to produce a plan was a detailed study of North Vietnamese radar coverage so the raiders could thread through it without detection.

Remember this is an encyclopedia and not Tom Clancy. There is no compelling need to have a "hot" opening, although it needs to be clear. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying. I don't like slapdash quotes from the media. "Clark looked crestfallen as he answered...". Jiminy. But structure to the average reader is like watching grass grow. You'd have to be an insdier to understand it. And maybe a history of structure is there and is of interest because the organization grew that way for a reason. But this history could be intertwined with a general history. The agency had this failure so they then set up this separate group to make sure that didn't happen again.

But I've worked in and with large bureaucratic organizations before. The structure is always quite pretty. But in fact, there are just a few people who are interested in getting things done (as opposed to endlessly discussing it. Some of which is necessary). These people usually cross organizational lines.

I had a horrible insight into a government organization recently. Congress passes a new law which they (and the public and the media) supposed would be placed into effect "immediately." Instead, the bureaucracy has an endless number of meetings discussing how this will be done, who will do it, preparation of anticipated FAQs, etc. Because the bureaucracy doesn't want to leave some loophole that potential customers will rush into and give the organization a bad name. As a listener, I sympathized. As a taxpayer and doer, I was a bit annoyed. So count me with the doers, the organization is just a chart on a wall that never quite seems to do what the title says.

But the main reason is that discussion of organization is like discussing grass growing - it is uninteresting to the average reader. While the article shouldn't be "Tom Clancy," perhaps it doesn't have to be "Silas Marner" either! :) Student7 (talk) 16:42, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Howard,

Please try to keep the history of the CIA more entertaining.

Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 17:57, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, if I may start with its predecessor, the OSS Research & Development branch developed a mixture codenamed "Who, Me?". Packaged in little tubes that Filipino street children could squirt onto the seats of Japanese officers, it had to oxidize a bit before it became an "indolic and skatolic perfume" of incredible offensiveness. (This can all be sourced).

IIRC, it was in Operation SILVER, one of the CIA operations to tap Soviet communications cables in West Germany, they leased a store that actually was the access. Thinking hard to get the least likely to be patronized, they decided to have it specialize in English tweed appropriate for handmade suits. Unfortunately, that was a year when English tweed was a fashion fad, and more fabric needed to be airlifted to maintain the cover.

On the internal side, for a number of years, one of the old OSS types would burst into the psychological operations class for junior officer trainees, and exclaim he had the ultimate morale-destroying weapon to use against the Soviets. He explained that CIA could commission a supply of 18 inch/46 cm condoms, to be airdropped over the Motherland. They were to be marked "Made in USA. Size Small."

I could mention some of my own experiences with bedbugs and field-filled beer bottles, but those were Army.

British intelligence could be rather literally entertaining; Noel Coward was an agent handler, whom the Germans never suspected because no sane intelligence agency would assign someone so flamboyant to HUMINT. Was it von Manstein that said "War is chaos. The reasons the Americans are so good at it is that they practice chaos every day?"

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:15, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

If this were simple, I would simply edit out the boring stuff. But it requires forking, not a simple matter to revert! I am not trying to make it difficult.

Third party? Student7 (talk) 21:10, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe you aren't trying to make it difficult. Nevertheless, the nature of an encyclopedia is that it sometimes has to have things that may seem boring, in order to introduce other things in context. Let me throw out some examples of activities:

Development of advanced reconnaissance aircraft (e.g., the U-2), which, in conjunction with people doing very hard analysis at desks, established there was no "bomber gap" with the Soviet Union
Testing of "truth drugs" and other mind-affecting drugs on human beings, without their knowledge or consent.
Attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro
An attempt to overthrow the government of Albania, shortly after World War Two
After the CIA was forbidden to use US funds to support the Contras, the Director, along with White House personnel, carried out an arms-for-hostages-and-Contra-funding operation

The first and third were approved by the President or a committee at White House level. The second was done internally to the CIA, without higher level approval, and in violation of numerous standards for medical research. The last was done by a CIA director, who used his contacts, although not the CIA staff, to carry out something the Congress explicitly did not want done but the President did--although it's not completely clear if the President was aware of exactly what Casey, North, etc. was doing.

Isn't it important to know, in looking at different acts, if they were legal or not, and, especially if of questionable legality such as the assassination attempts against Castro, where the request originated? I don't see how these things can meaningfully be discussed without at least some structure, including the processes for approving operations that penetrated other sovereign nations, and/or may have involved the expenditures of hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.

Can you give us some idea of what sort of things you believe should be presented early as "not boring"? For that matter, what do you consider a necessary introduction? I am concerned that forking will re-create some problems by overemphasizing some things that seem exciting, and give a distorted picture of what the agency does and does not do. That's not whitewashing, because some of the operations were highly inappropriate. Some activities might seem boring, but considerably contributing to US decisionmaking. Sherlock Holmes didn't do better analysis than some people in the Directorate of Intelligence, but Arthur Conan Doyle didn't have to follow Wikipedia requirements for sourcing, weight, and other policies related to quality. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 21:36, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for considering my opinion. As a newbie, I may appear ungrateful for all the hard work that has been done by you guys. This is the first time I have seen a "mature" article where the original principals hadn't wandered off and therefore wouldn't care what I did! :) Thinking off the top of my head - why not skim organization. Just crude tasking to prepare the reader for what comes next. Fork stuff that won't (or may be) covered later. Since the organization has a rich history, start with the 40s. The organization evolved for reasons (maybe the structure changes weren't known at the time, but no matter). This will give the reader an understanding (without us doing the analysis) of why things are the way they are. To me structure and history are most likely interwoven. And the history is interesting without embellishment. Just a thought.

Confession - two of the articles in which I put a lot of work in now have size problems! :( Understandable that I would try to "fix" someone else's! :) BTW, if you want to take a shot at mine, feel free. I'd be glad to point you! Student7 (talk) 22:08, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

With due respect, "exciting" articles could be a considerable problem here. There are people that think the CIA is the personification of evil. There are people that think it can do no wrong. I hope I'm in the middle, recognizing that US intelligence (not necessarily the CIA) did some very bad, some very good, and some things that were neutral. To make things "exciting" might very well disrupt the consensus that has been reached over this wide spectrum.

You mention, for example, staring in the 40s. That's an example of why history and structure is necessary, especially if your image of CIA is "Special Forces". CIA was created in 1947, but it did not have control of the covert action (Office of Policy Coordination) and clandestine intelligence collection (Office of Special Operations) until 1952. For that matter, Army Special Forces was created in 1952.

Some very controversial things happened in the 1945-1952 time frame, but they weren't done by a recognizable CIA. For example, an exceptionally nasty Japanese war criminal named Shiro Ishii, who did human experimentation on a level not approached by the Nazis as well as using biological warfare against the Chinese, was given immunity from prosecution, by Army Intelligence, in exchange for his data. Some accounts say the CIA did this, but this happened, in large part, before any part of CIA was created. There was an OSS mission to French Indochina, which had made contacts with Ho Chi Minh which, if exploited, might have avoided decades of war in Vietnam. OPC tried to overthrow the Communist government of Albania. Assorted people, some CIA and some not, created very questionable relationships with domestic and foreign news organizations.

Without knowing some of what the intelligence analysis and counterintelligence people were doing, it's not always obvious why an operation was even considered.

Frankly, I have tried to be accurate and unexciting in writing about these, and would not have dreamed about introducing the "action" material until the legal structures constraining (or not) were presented. To make some of this material "exciting" might mean writing it with other than a neutral point of view, in violation of Wikipedia policy. Remember, things have to be sourced, and without original research. If the available sources aren't exciting, it's going to be very difficult, without original synthesis or research, to make them exciting.

There are a lot of people involved in this, some with very strong opinions. I would be very concerned that trying to fork "exciting" things would ruin a consensus and perception of neutrality that took some time and grief to create. Unless I saw a very clearly detailed plan on how the forking would be done without violating WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:WEIGHT, and other policies, I'd have to oppose forking for the sole purpose of making it a more exciting read.

You said, "And maybe a history of structure is there and is of interest because the organization grew that way for a reason. But this history could be intertwined with a general history. The agency had this failure so they then set up this separate group to make sure that didn't happen again."

Let me simply say I don't know how to write it that way, nor do I especially want to write it that way, if for no other reason than the danger of upsetting the consensus, thin as it is, that exists. The Dulles-Jackson-Correa report is probably the most important single document in the development of the CIA, and a good deal of the thinking that went into it is not about CIA failures, but variously about OSS/SIS/SOE successes and failures, as well as the knowledge of abuses from security agencies in other societies. Harry Truman repeatedly said he didn't want the CIA to become a Gestapo. I didn't stop and explain the things that the Geheime Staatspolizei had done, what had to be avoided, and what useful things came from how they set up their card indexes of people. Later, things from the Doolittle Report to the Church Committee and the commissions on 9/11 and Iraq 2003 showed weaknesses.

Actually, I rather liked Silas Marner, but have also read everything that Tom Clancy has published. If this isn't too forced an analogy, Masters and Johnson, in writing the first serious books on human sexual response, deliberately wrote them in a dense medical style not necessarily understandable by a nonprofessional, and in no conceivable way exciting. By avoiding sensationalization, they got more research done. There is lots and lots of spy fiction and not much intelligence & special operations fact. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 23:12, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

If none of that works try watching this punched-up video of Live at the Pentagon. Erxnmedia (talk) 23:15, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Watch it, or I will start doing Dr. Strangelove impressions. Apropos of Masters & Johnson, Herman Kahn did say to a military audience, "Gentlemen. You do not have a war plan. You have a wargasm."

For those that have seen "Raiders of the Lost Ark", the final scene, where the Ark is being wheeled into storage, the warehouse looks exactly like a section of the Army Intelligence Center, when it was at Ft. Holabird in a dingy section of Baltimore. Ft. Huachucha is much prettier.

Apropos of not much, a scary number of Americans believe that Joan of Ark was Noah's wife. Further, one of the Air Force planners for the Son Tay raid was LTC Thomas Minor, so, previously, he must have been Major Minor. A recent Air Force Chief of Staff was named John Jumper. Would you want to get into a plane flown by someone named that, if you didn't have a parachute? He really should have been a paratrooper. Thinking of my mother being Pearl ("enemy") Berkowitz, and an officer and gentleman until she made major, Monty Python sometimes falls short of military reality.

I even know someone who is an alumna of both CIAs, the Culinary Institute of America (which has precedence) and the Central Intelligence Agency. If she threw a knife at you, it would not just kill you, but also turn you into an elegant garnish. Chefs are supposed to be temperamental -- who would think of one as an intelligence officer, such as Julia Child (OSS China)?

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 23:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay. You've made your point. No genuine history, so people make up what they see in the media which is often wrong or wildly biased - a bit different than, well, GAO, I suppose. I will wait. Student7 (talk) 02:04, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Reality check on reducing the size of the main CIA article

It has been my impression that a reasonable number of editors have concluded that the main CIA article is too long to be practical to edit, and sometimes even to render. The solution, without losing valuable information, is to move text to the set of sub-articles identified in the navigation box at the bottom.

In moving, it is sometimes necessary to add a small amount of text to the main article in order to explain what has moved, and occasionally to add definitions. In general, however, am I correct that there is a consensus not to add any significant new information to the main article? A possible exception could be with truly general material, such as agency-wide history or organization. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The Military affairs section

Is the "Office of Military Affairs" still in existence?

The citation about it in this section points to [3], which does not seem to be accessible at this point, so I'm updating it (the citation) to the only page at CIA that seems to say much about it: [4] (OMA is at the very end of that page). (I hope that was OK, hc! ;)

Anyway, that office may now be called "Military Support" or something instead -- I'm not sure though, and didn't find too much under that name, either, at the CIA website. →Wikiscient→ 16:49, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

The most recent thing I've seen, but I will have to find the link, is in a general CIA mission statement called "Support to Military Operations". There has been a long history of military functions in CIA that often managed to complement the roughly equivalent military intelligence groups, such as the Office of Strategic Research concerned with the balance with the USSR and China. They have also had assorted groups, sometimes in the DS&T, for weapons identification that has been useful with irregulars.

The NCS absorbed the Defense HUMINT service, although there are a few HUMINT organizations within DoD, with a fairly clear responsibility to a command or a class of operations. The situation is probably fairly obscure, and I wouldn't be surprise, in flux. AFAIK, there is still an Associate Director [of the Central Intelligence Agency] for Military Support (AD/MS); perhaps searches centered on that official might get to the current situation. I'm trying to clean up my mess in the CIA terrorism article, while dealing with things like work, so I may not be able to get right on it. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:58, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

You're building one of those Russian fishing trawlers, right?

Anyway, I added a couple of acronyms to that section to confuse matters. Erxnmedia (talk) 17:17, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

No, Cape Cod and Connecticut quahog (ocean clam) trawlers (well, dredgers). Or, more specifically, their navigation computer system. :-) Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:11, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

War Criminals (updated)

After working on the draft in my userspace, and getting some useful comments, there is now an article, not limited to the CIA, with an awkward but accurate title: U.S. Intelligence involvement with German and Japanese War Criminals after World War II.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

The title is awkward because US intelligence involvement with war criminals was not limited to CIA, since a number of the recruitments were either before the CIA was formed, or before it had control of clandestine/covert operations. Yes, the CIA later ran some of these, sometimes witting of the war crimes status of people working for them.

Germans: In other cases, such as Eichmann, he never worked for the US, but there were political reasons not to expose him -- because, for example, he could expose a war criminal who was a close advisor to Adenauer.

There were recruitments of Nazis, perhaps not war criminals for acts during WWII, but Soviet agents.

Other recruitments were not for intelligence, but for research & development. Wernher Von Braun appeared to be witting of slave labor, but not a direct participant, and was himself arrested by the Nazis. Walter Dornberger was held by the British for two years, and probably had more awareness of slave labor, although it is unclear whether he had any direct role.

Japanese: On the Japanese side, Shiro Ishii was given immunity for monstrous human experimentation, in return for biological warfare data. Ishii had the better of the deal, unless it can be argued that he contributed significant negative data -- learned from inefficient BW against the Chinese.

I should mention that I learned a great deal when working on the Japanese section, such as some of the first coherent explanations of some inexplicable activities of COL Tsuji Matsunobu. While I didn't think it was possible, my opinion of MG Charles Willoughby is even lower.

My next CIA-related goals deal with what I now think should be separate articles:

Influence on public opinion both domestically and internationally. This probably includes intelligence activities under press cover.
Inappropriate or questionable domestic activity, either for perceived Agency security or at White House direction. This article will not deal with unethical human experiments done domestically, which goes into the human rights article.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:30, 18 March 2008 (UTC)