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May 23, 2002
Uri Avnery
Sharon the Great Reformer?
Behzad Yagahmaian
Travails
of a Middle Eastern Migrant: Accosted at the Border
May 22, 2002
Brian J. Foley
Dick Cheney's Obscenity
Gavin Keeney
Bete Noire
Enron & the Great Game
Fran Shor
Follow the Money
Bush, bin Laden & Carlyle
May 21, 2002
George Monbiot
Riddle
of the Spores:
The FBI and Anthrax
Yulie Khromchenko
Displaced Reality:
Impressions from Jenin
Bernard Weiner
Kenny
Boy to Bush:
"Welcome to the Club"
Ron Jacobs
Confusing the Face
of the Enemy
Gary Leupp
"War
on Terrorism" in Yemen
May 20, 2002
Rep. Ron Paul
Say No to Military Draft
Dave Marsh
Music Monopolies
Jordy Cummings
Israel, Jews and the Left
Francis Boyle
In Defense
of a Divestment
Campaign Against Israel
Christian Salmon
The Bulldozer War
Edward Said
Crisis for
American Jews
May 19, 2002
Philip Farruggio
Where's Twain's Protector Government
Now?
Norman Madarasz
Canada,
NAFTA and Kyoto
May 18, 2002
M.G. Piety
Economic Fiction:
From Here to Annuity?
Michael Colby
Bush Fiddled
While
New York Burned
May 17, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Fox News Flashback:
Defending McKinney
James T. Phillips
Ceasefires
and Terrorists
Phillipe Dambournet
The Truth at Last:
Bush as the Energizer Bunny
Lori Berenson
In Defense
of Political Prisoners
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Terrorist Warnings
Hussein Ibish
Clarifying
the Obstacles
to Peace in Palestine
Alexander Cockburn
Israel and "Anti-Semitism"
May 16, 2002
Marylin Robinson
A Garden
in Tent City, But Where Do You Bathe?
Paul de Rooij
Worse than CNN?
The BBC and Israel
David Krieger
The Bush/Putin
Agreement:
Nuclear Dangers Remain
Steve Perry
Unsafe at Any Speed:
Youth, Sex and the Heresies
of Judith Levine
May 15, 2002
Ahmad Faruqui
Revisiting
Camp David
Rick Giombetti
Spiderman v. Pentagon:
Working Class Hero Battles Corrupt Defense Contractors
Stanton / Madsen
When the
War Hits Home:
Planning for Martial Law, Telegovernance and Suspension of Elections
May 14, 2002
Jacob Levich
Leaving the Truth Out?
Alternative Online Publication
Tells the Big Lie about Palestine
Michael Colby
Bush's
Cuba Blunder
Dave Marsh
Scapegoats: the Music Industry's War
on Cassettes
Jensen / Mahajan
US Power
Mideast Power Plays
May 13, 2002
Robert Fisk
Why Does John Malkovich
Want to Kill Me?
Mokhiber / Weissman
IMF
and World Bank:
Out of Control
Dean Baker
Will Darth Vader do Time?
The Enron Saga Continues
Nelson Valdés
American
Democracy:
A Lesson for Cubans
May 12, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Why Is America Acting Like This? A
Letter to European Friends
John Patrick Leary
Aiding Colombia
Kathleen Christison
Israel
and Ethics
May 11, 2002
Joady Guthrie
The Holy Lands:
A Peace Vision
Patrick Cockburn
Bombing
Iraq:
the Pentagon Prepares a Prolonged Campaign
George Sunderland
CounterPunch Special
Our
Vichy Congress: Israel's Stranglehold on Capitol Hill
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published March 15, 2002
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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This Explosive
New Book at an
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Reviews of Gore:
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May
23, 2002
Former top
CIA analyst on 9/11 intelligence failures, says
Big Changes
Needed
by Bill Christison
The CIA was established 55 years ago. The entire
U.S. intelligence community today includes at least a dozen agencies
and, contrary to general perception, the CIA does not actually
control any of the others. Over these 55 years, the multiplicity
of agencies has led to inefficiencies, duplication, waste, and
internal rivalries. Everyone should remember that the CIA was
created for the express purpose of preventing a second Pearl
Harbor from ever happening. Half a century later, last September
11, a second one occurred, and it occurred because of an inexcusable
failure to exchange information within the intelligence community.
As far as I can see at the moment, there
is no "smoking gun" that would clearly point to dereliction
of duty personally by President George W. Bush, although it is
possible that evidence will appear in the future to change this
judgment. But the evidence emerging this past week makes it clear
that the U.S. government has suffered a massive intelligence
failure. If the CIA report delivered to the President on August
6 had been supplemented, either then or at any later time before
September 11, with other information that was available to the
FBI, the president would have a more direct responsibility. The
evidence available today is that the CIA did not receive that
additional information until long after September 11. So the
massive failure, as far as we can tell at this point, is within
the intelligence community itself.
That brings us to a dilemma. If the United
States wants an intelligence apparatus of maximum efficiency,
it would require a CIA, or some new organization with a different
name, that would be truly "central" and have real control
over all the components. The danger would be that the resulting
organization could be a monster--a body too powerful to accept
within what is supposed to be a democracy.
My own belief is that the country does
need an intelligence service, but that there should be a lot
more public discussion of how big and how "centralized"
it should actually be. My own vote would be against creating
a CIA organized as it now is that would dominate and control
the rest of the U.S. intelligence community. I also believe that
the big increases in the amounts of money that seem to be going
to the CIA and other intelligence agencies (reportedly rising
from some $29/$30 billion to $35 billion annually) are not necessary.
In any event, the U.S. intelligence community,
and specifically the CIA, should be changed in a major way. The
most serious problem facing this "community" today
is that the individual agencies far too frequently provide biased
analyses that reflect the preferred policies of the agencies.
It's difficult for the intelligence components of the Defense
Department, for example, to present analyses of foreign military
capabilities that might undercut the desires of Defense budgeteers
for more money. To one degree or another, similar difficulties
face analysts in the intelligence components of the State Department,
the FBI, the Energy Department and elsewhere.
Even the CIA analytical components, which
sometimes pride themselves on having the only intelligence analysts
without policy axes to grind, cannot claim pure objectivity.
They can be influenced by their own superiors and by White House
officials who want analytical backing for both overt policies
and covert actions they desire to pursue. You should add to these
pressures the turf rivalries and differing agency cultures that
at their best and with no malice can make th4e exchange of information
imperfect, and at their worst can make one or another agency
deliberately selective in such information exchange..
The CIA itself, not having one of the
government's major established departments (State, Defense, etc.)
behind it, flourishes or fades depending on its relations, and
particularly the relationship of its director, with the incumbent
president and his national security advisor. Very important in
this regard is the fact that the CIA has two halves: a covert
collection and action half and an overt analytical half. Of the
two, most recent presidents have regarded the covert half as
the more important. It is the half that allows an action-oriented
president--and what president wants to be identified in any other
way?--to "take action". That tends to make many directors
of central intelligence (DCIs) reluctant to present analyses
to the president that differ from the president's policy and
covert action preferences. There have been exceptions; a few
DCIs have been very strong. But I do not think the evidence supports
a conclusion that the present DCI is one of those exceptions.
I'd like to see new legislation that
would completely split the analytical half of the CIA from the
operational, or spooky, half. Even without control over
the other intelligence agencies, the CIA with its two halves
is, in my opinion, too powerful. The operational half should
become a body with a new name and be run directly out of the
White House, and by law every covert operation should require
written approval of the president, designated committee chairmen
of the Congress, and the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
All three branches of the government should be represented here.
No covert intelligence operations abroad, other than high-altitude
reconnaissance and certain other technical intelligence functions,
which should remain Defense Department responsibilities, should
be carried out by any other intelligence agencies.
The analytical half of what is
now the CIA could either keep the present name--CIA--or not.
It doesn't matter. But the new "director of central intelligence,"
or give him a different title if you like, would be the head
only of this analytical body. A key and critical change here
should be that under new legislation the head of this analytical
body should be appointed for a 10-year term. This would give
a new "director of central intelligence" a higher degree
of independence than the present and previous incumbents have
had. Senior officers of this new agency would be assigned to
every other intelligence agency, and should by statute have access
to every substantive piece of paper produced by the other agency.
Other intelligence agencies should have
the right to produce and disseminate any intelligence analyses
they wished, but the new government-wide analytical intelligence
agency, with access to all sources, would produce any reports
it wished, and would be responsible for answering any and all
requests for analyses from the White House, the Congress, and
the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
My sense is that such independence
is the most important thing now lacking in the analytical components
of the intelligence community. Obviously I have no access to,
or any detailed information about, the hundreds of specific things
that the present DCI tells the president and other top leaders
of the government. But I have read very carefully the unclassified
parts of the present DCI's recent briefings to committees of
the Congress. As far as I can see, he has not said anything that
President Bush would not have liked to hear. In a world as complex
as the one we live in today, I find that somewhat alarming.
Bill Christison
joined the CIA in 1950, and served on the analysis side of the
Agency for 28 years. From the early 1970s he served as National
Intelligence Officer (principal adviser to the Director of
Central Intelligence on certain areas) for, at various times,
Southeast Asia, South Asia and Africa. Before he retired in 1979
he was Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political
Analysis, a 250-person unit. His wife Kathy also worked in the
CIA, retiring in 1979. The Christisons are regular contributors
to CounterPunch.
Other CounterPunch articles by Bill and
Kathleen Christison:
Kathleen Christison,
Israel,
A Light Unto Nations?,
May 11, 2002
Bill Christison: The Disastrous Foreign
Policies of the United States,
May 10, 2002
Kathleen Christison: Before There
Was Terrorism, May 2, 2002
Bill
Christison: Oil and the Middle East, April
6, 2002
Bill
Christison:
Why
the War on Terror Won't Work,
March 5, 2002
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