D. J. Cotrona Quotes

There were many who were concerned that France was not part of our military coalition in the Iraq War. However, some saw this as an advantage as France is usually a demanding partner while, as some see it, their military contribution was minimal.

There was no national uprising. Not a single Cuban came to assist the Bay of Pigs invaders, nor was there even one sabotage action or other revolutionary action anywhere in Cuba. The conviction of the CIA that Castro was hated by the Cubans and the overwhelming majority of Cubans would welcome an invasion was so completely wrong that it was stunning. The assurances the CIA planners had received that there would be an uprising came from Cuban anti-Castro émigrés who were being paid by the CIA to organize the invasion force. They would only continue to get paid if the American authorities felt that there was a very good chance of success so they turned out to have a serious conflict of interest. But the CIA planners had been hearing this from Cuban exiles not involved with the invasion and they had a strong bias that no communist government could be a popular one. It was a great illustration of the fact that experienced professional intelligence analysts and operatives are susceptible to self-delusion and confusing wishful thinking with reality.

Just as the brief was received, Kissinger received a Cable from the American Embassy in Cyprus stating that the Greek forces had moved in Cyprus and decimated the Cypriot forces and burned the Presidential Palace. Nixon was furious at the CIA which based their entire brief on one agent talking to the Greek dictator in Greece and had no agents who could report on what everyone in Cyprus could see. {634509}, {634503} and {634502} for examples of Nixon flaming the CIA. This was one of the reasons he came down on them.

This is a major issue for the nation. How can the president be responsible if he is not informed? However, some argue that the President must have “plausibility deniability” so he can deceive foreign leaders without lying to them. The laws require that nothing may be withheld from the President but there are some in the agency including past directors who believe that they sometimes should lie to the President or withhold information when it is in the national interest—which of course only they judge without any checks and balances.

We bombed the building but it was the Chinese embassy. The map and intelligence as to what was in the building was provided as a recommended target by the CIA in another of their serious blunders.

See {637982} for one of the major reasons.

So far as the Iraq government was concerned the important enemy were the minority Sunni Muslims who had dominated the Shiites before the American Invasion. For America the enemy was Al Qaeda and the terrorists as well as the Sunnis. We ended up fighting Sunnis and even Shiites as the definition of the enemy changed with time.