President's Foreign Intelligence Board Quotes
The manner in which intelligence indicators were handled in the Cuba situation may well be the most serious flaw in our intelligence system, and one which, if uncorrected, could lead to the gravest consequences
President’s Foreign Intelligence Board, Report after investigating the poor Central Intelligence Agency performance before the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
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 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.
His concern was well placed. For over half a century thereafter, the tail did wag the dog, and while there have been many successful covert operations, the risk and current pressure siphoned off talent and management attention from intelligence—the Central Intelligence Agency’s primary job.
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.
