Articles with the Tag CIA

Wrestling pigs

Imperialism, wingnuts
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There’s supposedly a new wingnut meme doing the rounds of rightwing blogs, that the Church Committee, the 1975 senate comittee set up after Watergate revealed some of the dirty tricks the CIA had engaged in both at home and abroad. The idea being that this oversight committee destroyed the CIA and left it helpless to stop 9/11 yada yada. Over at Edge of the West, guest poster Kathy Solmsted quickly demolishes these lies, setting the fact straights. There’s only problem with this.

The facts are irrelevant.

These memes are not fact based, but do rely for some considerable extent on gaining wider circulation by being taken seriously enough by liberals or leftists to offer refutations. Instead of something to be ridiculed, the idea that the CIA was destroyed by teh lieberuls becomes a serious proposition worthy of debate — gaining a false legitimacy. And once an idea is treated seriously, there are always non-partisan bystanders who’ll fall the lies or, because that’s what they’ve been taught all their lives, think that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Another disadvantage of attempting to refute lies is that it’s so much more difficult than telling the lie was. It takes time and energy away from stating your own case, puts you on the defense and as we’re again taught by the newsmedia — not to mention countless courtroom dramas — makes you look bad.

Countering these crackpot ideas is difficult therefore, as you have to take them seriously to refute them and if you take them seriously you allow the crackpots to frame the debate. Which is why I prefer the Alicublog method of treating these memes with the seriousness they deserve, by pointing and laughing.

Apart from that, there may also be something of a difference between liberals and leftists playing a role in this particular case. Liberals historically have never had any real problems with the existence of the CIA, just with the abuses of its power revealed by the Curch committee and similar investigations. It was under Truman, a Democratic president that the CIA was founded and under the ur-liberal president Kennedy that it played some of its dirtiest tricks, the difference being that these tricks were directed at foreign socalled enemies and not Americans as much and so perfectly fine. For those liberals therefore who still think the CIA is a valid institution, defending the Church committee in particular and the idea of congressional oversight over it in general is much harder than it is for leftists like me who’d rather see it disappear sooner than later. Once you admit the CIA is a necesary evil by its very nature it becomes harder to argue for strict oversight.

Personally therefore I’d argue that the Church committee didn’t go far enough, was pivotal into bringing to light certain clasess of abuses, largely those against US citizens, but largely ignoring the raison d’etre of the organisation, which is to make the world safe for American business, the first line of defence against any unwelcome development that would harm their interests.

Chipping away at Stone

Manufacturing Consent, wingnuts
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It’s downright fitting that it’s Commentary Magazine (or what’s left of it), that Cold War CIA warhorse, that’s started the latest round of retroactive redbaiting, with the claim that I. F. Stone was a Soviet agent. Despite the end of the Cold War being almost twenty years behind us, redbaiting s still alive and well in America, with claims like this still having the potential to ruin reputations.

Few people my age or younger will have more than a vague idea who I. F. Stone was, but many of the people he annoyed in his lifetime are still around and more than willing to take their revenge posthumously. As you can see from the Wikipedia article linked above, already the allegations of espionage take up most of the space. Just another little rewrite of history in which an independent leftwing critic of America is turned into a two dimensional Soviet stooge. It may not look important in the great scheme of things, but its all part of the continuing marginalisation of critics of American foreign policy. Smear the man and you smear his reporting; obviously you can’t trust what a commie spy wrote about America’s motives for fighting the Korean War. Stone’s reputation needs to be defended, and I’m glad to see Brad Delong and other liberals do so, even if their defence can be as wrong as the original redbaiting, as it operates on the same flawed assumptions that anybody who was supportive of the USSR was ignorant, wrong or a traitor, but that there are special circumstances that can excuse this support.

Now I called Commentary a CIA warhorse because while it may be a liberal or even leftist magazine, many of its more influential writers and editors (e.g. Irving Kristol and Sidney Hook) have been deeply involved in the CIA’s Cold War Kulturkamp, as documented in Frances Stonor Saunders’ Who Paid the Piper and elsewhere. As part of the socalled “anticommunist left” Commentary was as much an agent of the CIA as Stone is accused of being of the KGB.

The real crime I. F. Stone committed therefore was not that he may or may not have supported a brutal and ruthless regime that oppressed millions of its citizens and brutally subjugated its neighbours, but that he may have supported the wrong one. It doesn’t matter whether or not Stone was a supporter of the USSR, as his influence on that country was nihil: what mattered was that he was critical of his own country and its rulers.

Socalled respectable journalists meanwhile can always be found cheerleading the latest US invasion of a third world country, the latest dictator installed by the CIA to “fight communism” (or “terrorism”) or the latest interference in a supposedly sovereign country’s elections for the sake of “democracy”, happily excusing murder, rape, torture or worse, but since they’re on the right side they’re rarely held to account. A journalist like Judith Miller could lie and lie about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction for years before she finally “retired”.

For anybody who doesn’t operate on the principle of “my country, right or wrong”, it’s obvious that the behaviour of Miller and generations of journalists like her, enabling and supporting American imperialism is much worse than what somebody like Stone could ever do. We shouldn’t excuse Stone for his allegiance as pillorate his critics for supporting a country that has been and still is a far greater menace.