David Ignatius Quotes

“The word “monitoring” is a polite diplomatic word for “spying on”. She made this statement in July of 2014 when the Germans discovered that the United States was spying on their government and ejected key Americans from the country. Albright was explaining that this is extremely common and “normal” between allies. See {640830} for more on this subject.

The first two would often interfere with the operations.

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.

This was meant as a criticism of Webster, but must people saw it as a compliment. What Clarridge and other old hands at the CIA could never get straight was that they were supposed to break the other countries’ laws but not the laws of the United States. They were supposed to lie to other countries, but not to our President and Congress. This has been a constant problem for United States intelligence agencies. Some scholars of espionage believe that a good spy or spy master lies so often that it is part of his nature to do so as well as break laws. Psychologically it is difficult for them not to lie to anyone and they have little respect for laws. Webster fired Clarridge when Webster reformed the CIA but in the process he alienated most of the “veterans”.

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. The reason for the minimal funding was that, and not the lack of interests. We still had the NSA and the Military Intelligence Agencies which had not been involved in the CIA scandals

Expressing concern over President Obama extending some of the American citizen entitled privacy rights to foreigners. He was concerned that this might inhibit our spying efforts.

There have been times in democracies where a foreign ministry (State Department) is isolated from the elected politicians and implements a foreign policy that is at odds with the wishes of the elected officials and the majority of the nation. A good American example of this was in 1948 where America had to decide whether to support the creation of the State of Israel in the United Nations and through diplomatic recognition. The professional diplomats in the State Department had developed very close relations with Arab States, and many State Department employees were anti-Semitic. In addition, they thought the most important thing for America was not to risk the Arab oil supply. Meanwhile, the people, Congress, and President Truman were on the other side and Truman had to finally order The Secretary of State to stop his professional diplomats from pursuing their own foreign policy preferences. Even then some did not.

England in this quotation claims the right to interfere in the internal affairs of another nation if there is mismanagement or crises AND her national interests are affected.

“Dey” and “bey” were Arabic terms for the local ruler of an area.

See {640831} for more on this subject.

The only soldier ever so honored

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

Arguing for deploying American Homeland Security Personnel in foreign countries He was at the time Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security.