George Schultz Quotes
The CIA’s intelligence was in many cases simply Bill Casey’s ideology.
Bill Casey had an individual ideology of the world and being a strong administrator imposed that on most of intelligence analyses that the agency did during his tenure.
George P. Shultz, U. S. Secretary of State (Republican), Interview with Tim Weiner, 1982
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He was not referring to economic corruption but intellectual and moral corruption. Regan who appointed many excellent key officials picked a very unfortunate choice to lead the CIA. William J. Casey had many faults and weaknesses—See {637472}, {636743} and {637469}. But the worst of his damage was imposing his ideology on the agency and having the intelligence analysts shape their intellectual product to conform with a particular world, political, and religious view. See {634408}. This became acceptable and as future administrations took power their ideologies were considered by the CIA professionals and reports were edited and shaped accordingly. Reform was instituted by some of the future CIA directors but there were precedents from the Casey days for years. One particularly bad manifestation of this intellectual corruption occurred when Vice President Richard Cheney imposed a neocon world view on the agency with a pliant CIA director and the agency gave the President a totally inaccurate assessment of Iraq nuclear capability and intention which triggered the disastrous Iraq war, made all the worse when there were not only no nuclear weapons in Iraq as had been reported, but there was not even a single laboratory trying to develop nuclear weapons or even nuclear power.
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.
During the George W, Bush Administration, key politicians, including the vice president pressured and influenced the CIA and to produce intelligence reports that justified their policy of invading Iraq. After the invasion, the weapons of mass destruction were shown to have never existed even though they were the official causes belli (cause of the war).
Agree resigned from the CIA in protest to its political positions.
Precursor to CIA. During WWII Donovan’s OSS, the FBI and the State Department had the three civilian intelligence organizations while each of the 4 Armed Services had their own intelligence services. Rarely did any of these 7 organizations communicate with any of the others. In the case of the OSS, the FBI and the military services tended to try and obstruct many of their operations. This was the first call for what became the CIA.
This quotation comes as a major surprise to most people who perceive modern CIA as the MAJOR U.S. spying and covert action organization. It is a marvelous case study of agency “mission creep”.
There has always been friction between the military intelligence services and the CIA. The main friction was that the CIA was not very forthcoming to military intelligence with the details of their secret intelligence whereas the Israeli’s shared with all the U. S. Intelligence Agencies.
Ford was then a member of Congress. This was known as the “Domino Theory” and was the strategic reason that sending troops to Vietnam was in America’s vital Interest. However, the Domino Theory was incorrect. Vietnam did fall to the Communists, and yet NONE of the countries became communist. Actually, they became even more democratic.
If Casey had listened to Sofaer as the State Department did, President Reagan would have been spared the worst Scandal of his Presidency—Iran Contra. Casey had a great antipathy to lawyers. See {637470}.
Casey continuously violated the law and lied to the President and Congress.
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”.
- Born: December 13, 1920
- Died: February 6, 2021
- Nationality: American
- Profession: Public Servant
George Pratt Shultz was an American economist, diplomat, and businessman. He served in various positions under three different Republican presidents and is one of only two people to have held four different Cabinet-level posts. Shultz played a major role in shaping the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration. From 1974 to 1982, he was an executive of the Bechtel Group, an engineering and services company. In the 2010s, Shultz was a prominent figure in the scandal of the biotech firm Theranos, continuing to support it as a board member in the face of mounting evidence of fraud.
