Ronen Bergman Quotes
Even though intense focus on Iran's nuclear program has presumably increased the volume of intelligence gathered about it, it remains true that intelligence officers tend to rely heavily on a few trusted sources.
Bergman, Ronen. "Will Israel Attack Iran?" The New York Times, 25 Jan. 2012.
The argument here is that secret intelligence, comes from sources and people whose views and claims are not subject to the test of public scrutiny representing a narrow information sample. Publicly available information, while it does not include secrets that the enemy wants to keep secret, does represent vetted and processed information with challenges and contradictions also publicly available. Proponents argue that it is more reliable. Secret intelligence has produced some of America’s worst debacles. An example is the Bay of Pigs. Secret intelligence assured Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy that the majority of Cuban people was hostile to the Fidel Castro government. If freedom fighters would land in Cuba, the vast majority of Cubans would join them. When the invaders landed, most Cubans were so outraged that their country was being invaded that there was massive public support for Castro’s troops who quickly captured the invaders who were waiting for the popular uprising.
Helms had very bad experience even in hinting at unfavorable news about the Vietnam War. See {634520}. He didn’t even send copies to his own executives, the White House Chief of Staff or the other White House staff like the National Security Advisor who would normally receive copies of top secret memos.
Actually the United States has a long history in interfering with foreign elections throughtout Latin American Countries, Europe, Asia,, and Africa. Russia also has been trying to tilt elections recently in Eastern Europe and befroe the COld War the International Communist Party was involved trying to swing elections since shortly after the Russin Revolution. Before that the Czars agents were involved in many foreign elections. But the United States and Russia historically are relative newcomers and rank amateurs in interering with foireign elections when compared with Germany and France and the Champion--Great Britain who controlled much of the world and very often promoting democratic values like elections throughtout the world and then workign to manipulate those elections. Japan and Chine did much less of this historically. Instead they just conquored other counties and placed their puppets in charge. What was new in teh 2016 Russian interference in the American Election was the fact that it was done by hacking computers. Putin had accused Hillary Clinton of Interfering with the Russian election when he last ran for President by funing Russian organziations that oppo
Ronen Bergman is an Israeli investigative journalist and author. He is a senior political and military analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's largest-circulation daily.
