Todd Akin Quotes
In the 1990s, human intelligence gathering was seriously neglected.
Akin, Todd. Speech to the House of Representatives. Congressional Record, Government Printing Office, 2004.
The President was complaining about the lack of intelligence on North Vietnam:
The major idea of intelligence agencies in a democracy is for the intelligence agencies to provide the policy makers with facts on the ground and data with which they can make sounder policies. However, many times the policies of the administration is so firm that the political ideology restrict not only the kinds of analysis the intelligence agencies do, but in some cases shape or control the conclusions of otherwise sound studies. The influence of Vice President Cheney on the CIA and the invasion of Iraq.
Intelligence agents tend to prefer covert activities to the less dramatic, non-exciting, activity of gathering and analyzing intelligence. Most national intelligence services tend to enlarge their portfolio to include covert activities regardless of what the national leaders intended. Because of the secrecy, they can often get away with this.
Actually, this is true for most government agencies and many non-government institutions as well. The concern is greater when organizations whose policies can affect life and death are not consciously developing and choosing policy alternatives and yet the policies are made by default.
See {634917} for a recent example of lying under oath to the Senate.
The American Embassy in Berlin had wiretapped the telephone and telegraph wires of the German Foreign Ministry. The man who did that was hired by Secretary of State Lansing as the first employee of the new unit.
William Todd Akin is an American politician and businessman who is a former U.S. Representative for Missouri's 2nd congressional district, serving from 2001 to 2013. He is a member of the Republican Party.
