Matt Yglesias

CIA Blocking Access to Lee Harvey Oswald Files

I try really hard not to be a JFK assassination theorist, but the CIA is not really helping matters:

For six years, the agency has fought in federal court to keep secret hundreds of documents from 1963, when an anti-Castro Cuban group it paid clashed publicly with the soon-to-be assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The C.I.A. says it is only protecting legitimate secrets. But because of the agency’s history of stonewalling assassination inquiries, even researchers with no use for conspiracy thinking question its stance.

The files in question, some released under direction of the court and hundreds more that are still secret, involve the curious career of George E. Joannides, the case officer who oversaw the dissident Cubans in 1963. In 1978, the agency made Mr. Joannides the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations — but never told the committee of his earlier role.

It’s extremely hard to believe that 40 year-old documents would compromise present-day operational security. It’s also elementary public choice reasoning to understand that the CIA is going to be inclined to massively overstate its need to keep things secret. Presumably they’re just trying to cover up some minor source of institutional embarrassment rather than concerned that these files reveal that Oliver Stone was right all along. One way or another, people should see these files.

Yes, Virginia, Intelligence Agencies Mislead People

Of all the ridiculous pseudo-controversies I’ve witnessed in politics, the one between Nancy Pelosi and the CIA from earlier this year was surely the dumbest. Pelosi alleged that she’d been misled by the CIA regarded the details of some illegal orders that CIA personnel had carried out. The right then began to savage Pelosi, not based on specific information that she was wrong about this, but based on the lunatic notion that it’s just outrageous in general to claim that the CIA would ever lie to congress. Even more preposterously, the political press decided to treat these attacks very seriously as if we’re a nation of naive children that doesn’t realize intelligence agencies sometimes help presidents cover up illegal activities.

At any rate, here’s Spencer Ackerman with the news that six members of congress report that Leon Panetta conceded in testimony that the CIA has, in fact, misled congress:

I’ve said this before, but a lot of the structure of the current set-up of the CIA is basically designed to give presidents an outlet for illegal orders. It needs to change. There’s room for government secrecy, but there’s no good reason for the government to be keeping secrets from congress. That’s what you do if the president is trying to get you to help him cover up something that’s illegal.

The Case Against The Case Against the CIA Proves Too Much

Amy Zegart and Spencer Ackerman stick up for the CIA against those who muse about scrapping the agency and both do so, in part, in terms that I think prove too much. Zegart says “If you’re looking for culprits, look higher. Interrogation techniques weren’t dreamed up by rogue CIA case officers lacking adult supervision. They were developed, justified, and ordered by senior administration officials.” And Spencer says “the failures of the CIA are failures of American policymaking, which is to say the belief that you can launch all these zipless activities and get away it with it in the dark.”

That’s all fine. And I think it’s a great counterargument to the proposition that eliminating the CIA and re-assigning its legitimate responsibilities to other agencies will be a magical cure-all for America’s woes. But I don’t think it works at all as a general argument.

To look at a different example, New York City used to have an agency called The New York City Transit Police. New York City also used to have a ton of crime. And some people thought it would be good to eliminate the NYCTP as a separate institution and fold its responsibilities into the general responsibilities of the NYPD. Now I think it would have been fair to say in 1995 things like “if you’re looking for culprits, look higher” and “the failures of the NYC Transit Police are failures of New York policymaking.” But none of that means that realigning the institutional set-up of the city government wasn’t an important part of the improved policing of the 1990s.

In other words, sure, it’s hard to think of a problem that you can solve purely through institutional tinkering. But that’s no reason to just stick with the status quo. The fact of the matter is that the CIA is, in part, an institution whose purpose is to allow the president to do stuff that’s illegal. Ultimate culpability still rests, of course, with presidents who order illegal things to be done. But I think it’s bizarre to deny that the existence of an institution with a long track-record of official illegality plays any role in facilitating the issuance of illegal orders.

Do We Need a CIA?

I seriously doubt that anyone in the Obama administration or the congress is going to seriously consider abolishing the CIA, but I think John Judis is correct to say that the idea should probably get more consideration:

The question that Congress might ponder, but won’t, is whether the structure of our foreign policy apparatus – the power and responsibility vested in a secret branch of government — invites abuse. That was the position of the late Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan who argued for abolishing the CIA. He didn’t want to eliminate intelligence, but he wanted to return it to the purview of the State Department, while giving the armed forces the responsibility for overseas intervention.

I’m not saying I favor this, but it’s certainly worth discussing. One need only consider George Tenet’s reign as CIA chief. Tenet came in with a reform portfolio; and he initially did well as a manager; but by the time he had been forced out of office, the CIA itself had committed more war crimes, and bollixed more critical intelligence inquiries than ever before. Was that because Tenet was deeply incompetent? Or was there something about the agency’s structure in government that invited presidents to twist it for their own sordid political ends? Could the armed services have as easily complied with these torture memos? I think not.

The CIA, as currently constituted, has basically two responsibilities—intelligence analysis and covert operations. But analysis is already being done at the State Department, and seemingly done better, so one could simply beef up the resources involved in the State Department. The military, meanwhile, already has the capability to do some covert operations and there’s a general consensus in favor of shifting resources out of heavy weapons platforms and toward special operations.

The picture of the torture situation that’s emerging counts, I think, as a strong point in favor of the Moynihan position. It’s not just that CIA personnel were involved in doing something bad, it’s that the specific institutional structure of the government really does seem to have played a role. After all, why were CIA personnel involved in this at all? Pre-Bush, the CIA didn’t have any interrogators. The FBI had interrogators, and the military had interrogators, but the CIA didn’t. But responsibility for interrogations wound up gravitating toward the CIA not because the CIA had relevant expertise but precisely because the CIA has an institutional history and track record of law-breaking and war crimes.