James R. Clapper Quotes

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.

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.

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.

We tend to be hard on our intelligence agencies for a combination or reasons. Because much of their activity is secret and many of their successes are not known to the public. If they have a great success, the politicians generally take the credit. But if the intelligence agency makes a big error that causes a failure of some kind, a the politicians often violate the secrecy and blame the intelligence agencies. The Iraq Invasion of the George W, Bush administration was a good example. The President had received intelligence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. He invaded to prevent their being used. It turned ouit that there were no nuclear weapons at all, and the President and leaders of hs cabinet had misled, the people, the Congress, the UN and world opinion and started a war on false pretenses. The administration then went public about the intelligence failure. There was a great deal of intelligence that indicated that there were no Iraq nuclear program but these never reached the President, the military or the public. In addition, the intelligence agencies have missed some really major events, like the fall of the Soviet Union or the Chinese Communist victory in the Chinese Civil war. But intelligence is not an exact science; mistakes are inevitable, The politicians using the intelligence tend to think that intelligence estimates are more certaini than estimates can be. However the CIA in particular has had periods of rogue and illegal activities just which cause many citizens ro distrust them. They have illegally investigated Americans, actually conducted experiments with chemical weapons in American cities without any permission or authority, violated American law in the way they treat prisoners,and destroyed evidence, broken the law by conducting activities that Congress and the President had explicitly forbid. The FBI has also broken the law and spied on Americans who were critical of the government, and slandered the reputations of some Americans by “leaking” information that oftn was not even true. So the current intelligence have to bear the burden of their predecessors, but because of the secrecy, cannot take advantage of all the wonderful accomplishments and great sacrifices of many members of the intelligence agencies.

even though in this case the objective The State Department, the Defense Department and most important President Kennedy had decided to get rid of Diem. Most of the Central Intelligence Agency thought that this was a very unwise policy, because Diem was a known risk, and the people who would replace him and their talents and policies were unknown. The negatives of Diem—the facts that he, a Christian, was persecuting the majority Buddhists, was totally corrupt, and not a very good leader was less distressful to the CIA than to the President and the other agencies as the intelligence agency frequently not only tolerated “offensive” allies, but actually employed them including war criminals. Another importance of this quotation is that it shows that it was by no means certain that the CIA would always follow the orders of the President and the government policy makers. Colby, who was not the agency director at that time but was the head of the South East Bureau, was one high level official who argued that the policies should always be followed even if they were unwise or foolish. Another importance of this quotation is that it illustrate a common error that administrations are frequently forced to make: making a policy decision to eliminate a problem while not having much of an idea of what the alternative or consequence would be when the policy is implemented. The Syrian Civil War in 2013 was a good example. The Government side appeared to have used Chemical Warfare on Civilians and public opinion demanded that we do something. However, having a no-fly zone or any of the alternatives to prevent (punish) the government for the Chemical Warfare would strengthen the rebel side which was made up of numerous factions—some of which were known Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and jihadists. If the balance of power were tipped toward the rebels, the consequence for the American national interests were unknown—just as the consequence of ousting Diem was unknown and turned out to also be bad and was probably worse.

The scandals of the past of CIA lies to Congress and the President, mistakes they had made, and a raft of illegal activities, had eroded support for the agency. We still had the NSA and the Military Intelligence Agencies which had not been involved in the CIA scandals.

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.

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