Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

Based on popular opinion they are either ineffective and comically incompetant or they are chillingly evil and in control of a number of vast, complex conspiracies. But none of their peers in the spy biz (and their peers would probably be limited to Russia and China in the big leagues) have to conduct their business under any degree of public accountability whatsoever. I think the toughest thing about working there would be to go through the rigors of recruitment and training only to learn that nobody at the CIA gets laid near as often as Danel Craig.

Somebody has been following me lately. Suppose I should vote for Obama next time :(

Do they have their share of failures? Sure. But the nature of the intelligence business is that you get publicity when you fail, and little or none when you succeed. That's because compromising sources or revealing methods of intelligence gathering is normally considered bad tradecraft. Have they done a lot of evil shit? Sure again. The evidence of history strongly suggests that the intelligence organizations of superpowers are not peopled by profound humanitarians. Further, they are used as weapons by ruthless manipulators of statecraft and geo-politics. Does this make them good? Not at all. It makes them remarkably similar to their opposite numbers in several other nations.

The CIA is basically the President's private army, answerable to no democratic process whatsoever. As Chalmers Johnson pointed out, no president since Truman has failed to utilize this "organization" for covert and clandestine activity around the globe. One of the major activities of the CIA is to repress democracy around the world; the CIA has been responsible for toppling democratically elected governments in Chile, Guatemala, and other places. This comes to a shock to most Americans, I know, but that's what happens when you exist on a steady diet of corporate news and sports; you lose contact with reality. How ironic it would be if, fifty years from now, there were Chinese military bases in San Diego, San Fransisco, and Seattle, and hoards of drunken and obnoxious Chinese sailors roamed the streets of these towns, raping and fighting and getting away with it all, acting like they owned the world. It would certainly be a taste of our own medicine, however bitter...

Who in their wildest dreams would want to work for this organization? What do those in the CIA do besides target assassinate individuals just to "keep things in line"? The CIA needs to go. It's not an organization that's committed to pacifism, freedom, tolerance, and peace.

The job of an intelligence agency is to gather information. Overthrowing dozens of foreign governments with coups d'état, subversion, and assassinations does not fit that definition.

Nah, its me. To be serious, though, the CIA has done some wicked s*** over the years, but they also kept somewhat more wicked types off of us from time to time. UPDATE: Does that "spying on fellow students" job pay well?

These guys wreak havoc wherever they go, and they're so sneaky, skulking around behind the scenes. They're nothing but troublemakers, and I don't really understand why we must have the CIA.

We need it more than ever. Hollywood does a number on it but that is becuase most writers are lefto nudniks and couln't pour urine out of a boot if the directions were broadcast on the heel.

hard to honestly rate cause you dont really know what all goes on , what it actually can do, how much money it has, etc. has had some obvious lapses, but probably does more for our good than we realize.

The CIA does a decent job as an intelligence organization, but it has plenty of faults and failures, too (as Wiggum correctly pointed out, they can't exactly go around trumpeting their successes - it could compromise methods or sources). To those who would comment that the CIA doesn't have enough of a handle on the Middle East, and don't have enough Arab linguists (which they are absolutely correct in saying), I'd note that the Clinton administration effectively gutted this country's human intelligence (HUMINT) capabilities. It takes no time to phase out or destroy such a capability, but it takes lots of time to build or rebuild it. There's just too much reliance on technical means to collect intelligence data, but not enough analysts to interpret the flood of data derived by technical collection platforms - there are a finite number of photointerpreters and skilled linguists to decipher the massive amounts of data, not all of which is useful. It's a herculean task sifting through ... Read more

As has been said: The words American and Intelligence do not belong in the same sentence!

Movie recommendation: The Recruit.

The most powerful world terrorist organization of them all.

Got blowback? I'm just afraid to put anything more... laterZ! ZIP!

Useless now, useless during the Cold War, useless since its inception. Perhaps the most incompetant governmental agency of them all. "Asleep at the switch" should be its motto. Proved to be real good at violating the privacy and civil rights of U.S. citizens guilty of nothing more than exercising those rights, but piss-poor at collecting intelligence about the Commies, the antipathetic Nations of Islam, etc. Totally blew it in terms of 9/11 and you have to wonder what these Bozos made of the repeated threats against this country by Osama going back ten years. It's interesting that the Arab world has been the true enemy of this country for the past quarter century, yet the CIA has virtually no workable and effective intelligence network addressing this peril: they don't even have enough translators of Arabic languages to fill the most cursory of needs!!! The only decent job they ever did was that masterful assasination and coverup in Dallas, November 1963. Turns out that CIA opera... Read more

An Intellegence Agency that (A)Cannot prove that Osama Bin Laden is indeed dead (B) Is not reliable enough to determine if there indeed is a connection between Bin Laden and Hussain (C)Cannot find Bin Laden (D)Cannot find Hussain (E)Was Instrumental in the assassination of John F. Kennedy (F) Is run by corrupt politicians and (G)Threatens America's national security with their recruiting methods.

misnomer

Did you know that the CIA is the FBI's prime suspect in the anthrax attacks? Type in your search engine- CIA Anthrax -- or Look up: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/audiovideo/program mes/newsnight/ archive/newsid_1873000/1873368.stm --- and --- http://www.dimmockreport.com/ciaanthrax.htm ---and--- Bioterrorism : FBI and CIA Suspect Domestic Extremists ... Read this] More News Top FBI and CIA officials believe that the anthrax attacks on Washington, New York and Florida are likely the work of one or more ... http://www.gospelcom.net/apologeticsindex/news1/an0 11027-01.html --- http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/anthraxsuspect.ht ml --- The truth is stranger than fiction.... The CIA operates outside the boundries of our laws. The CIA is an anti-America deceptive organization dedicated to the destruction of the Greatest Nation of Earth for the benefit of the one world gov't. America stands for freedom and the O.W.G. stands for control. Learn for yourself that they are not to be tr... Read more

They've had their fair share of blunders historically along with the FBI. I can only hope that they do in fact do their best to protect the well-being of American citizens.

I am rating this agency high since I have very high expectations from it right now to assist with the eradication of terrorists around the world!

You people don't seem to have a clue. The CIA is the biggest Drug cartel in all of America. They are a ludicrously corrupt organization and are highly unconstitutional.

The CIA is doing a fine job, but this organization is still full of phonies and maybe even spies.

Maybe I'm naive, but it seems to me that if the CIA is doing its job, it should be very difficult for all of us outside the CIA to know how well they're really doing. You know what I mean? If, for instance, the CIA has stellar success in recruiting wall-placed spies in the intelligence organizations of other countries (like the highly publicized Russian moles found over the past few years in the CIA), they can't exactly hold a press conference to announce their excellent work. It has to be a secret. So almost the only kind of press the CIA can get is bad press - stories like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. So I'll give the CIA the benefit of the doubt and assume they're doing a much better job than we know.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men...the shadow knows and hopefully the CIA. This Spy vs Spy stuff is so far removed from the way I think of every day life it seems completely unreal to me. I agree with Wiggum though...maybe we can safely assume that no news is good news.