From: Ralph McGehee Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy Subject: A CIA Public Relations Coup Message-ID: Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 09:32:56 -0800 (PST) /* Written 9:31 AM Mar 16, 1997 by rmcgehee in igc:alt.pol.org.ci */ /* ---------- "A CIA Public Relations Coup" ---------- */ A CIA Public Relations Coup -- An Out-of-Control Bureaucracy Recently both the Washington Post and the New York Times received information obviously from the CIA about the results of an "Agent Scrub." What we received, of course, is the result of a CIA Public Relations effort having very little to do with actual events. That it succeeded can be seen in the praise of the Agency's efforts by Representative Maxine Waters, until then a vehement critic. Why does the CIA advising that it has scrubbed agents amount to public relations? The papers reported that the CIA severed its ties to roughly 100 foreign agents, about half in Latin America, whose value was outweighed by their acts of murder, assassination, torture, and terrorism. In 1994, the story continues, the CIA for the first time began to balance the quality of information against agents' criminal histories. The CIA's purge was part of a larger review that resulted in the dismissal of hundreds more agents. These agents may also have committed crimes, but they were let go primarily because the quality of their information. (Former DCI William Webster challenges the impression that "it was only [after the Cold War] that CIA undertook a systematic review" of its agents. He wrote that the Directorate of Operations beginning in 1988 established the Agent Validation Program, upon which all subsequent "scrubbing" was based. The number of agents dropped for ineffectiveness or unreliability during this earlier scrub equaled or exceeded all subsequent periods). These two scrubs undoubtedly were not the only agent scrubs -- but the latest is the only one that may have been used as propaganda to cleanse the CIA's image. Another deception occurred when the papers further reported that the current scrub affected about one fourth to one third of all CIA agents. This of course is false, we know from other reporting that the CIA has tens of thousands of agents. This scrub only caused a small ripple in its agent supply. What in fact happened, is the CIA removed the most marginal of its agents, those that were of little or no value or who had been out of contact for an extended period or who had other problems -- that some were torturers, assassins or terrorists was inevitable given the CIA's proclivity to hire these despicable types. But the story of the dismissal of torturers, assassins and terrorists, gives impact to the image of the CIA "cleansing" itself. So the CIA or its spokespeople, passes on this information to the media and now the CIA emerges with a tabala rasa, a clean slate, exonerated from all past misdeeds and crimes -- a fictional vision it sells to us all via the media -- a successful if illegal domestic propaganda operation. What the CIA has not done, however, is scrub those in Directorate of Operations (DO) -- officers who recruited these torturers, assassins and terrorists in the first place. The problem was commented on by DCI John Deutch when he said the deep rot of the DO in Guatemala is a core sample of the deep rot of the overall DO. The DO's curse is patrimony of an elite secret society that degenerated into an elitist bureaucracy, an inbred tribal culture. Rules and laws were not for them. Deutch continued saying the curse of old boys has so damaged the morale and reputation of the CIA that it is hard to find good people. "The CIA has been imprisoned by its own lies." Another spokesman said the DO is out of control and we have witnessed even the President's fear of this out-of-control bureaucracy. Below is my earlier post re the agent scrub. Ralph McGehee CIABASE CIA Agents - Torturers, Assassins and Terrorists Over the past year I have posted examples of human rights abuses by people employed by the CIA -- examples I have gathered over the past 15 years. Now the CIA, as reported in the Washington Post and the New York Times, has been forced to examine its record and not surprisingly -- it confirms my reporting. I and others had also noted that it is standard operating procedure for the CIA to compile Watch Lists of critics or enemies of CIA-supported governments and then pass these lists to the local security services. On a number of occasions such became arrest and assassination lists. The two articles do not mention the overriding problem -- the Directorate of Operations leadership, variously described as out of control, in a state of deep rot, and where laws and rules do not apply. This is where the real problem lies -- no scrubbing of agents will solve this problem. The New York Times reported CIA's purge of the CIA severed its ties to roughly 100 foreign agents, about half in Latin America, whose value was outweighed by their acts of murder, assassination, torture, and terrorism. In 1994, the CIA for the first time began to balance the quality of information against agents' criminal histories. its informers in the last two years focused heavily on its Latin American Division, which has had on its payroll hundreds of military officers and government officials in countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Panama (and the Middle East, Africa and Asia). CIA's purge was part of a larger review that has resulted in the dismissal of hundreds more agents. These agents may also have committed crimes, but they were let go primarily because the quality of their information. The "scrub," was resisted by some station chiefs and covert operators. CIA officers had always been rated for quantity, not quality, of the foreign agents they recruited. As many as 1,000 foreign agents -- somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of all the agents on the CIA's payroll in 95 -- failed to meet the new test. The Latin American Division was the one most riddled with foreign agents who were killers and torturers. Throughout Central America, the CIA had been deeply involved in operations in support of pro-American governments and military regimes from the early 1950s onward. Throughout Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, CIA has long-standing official liaisons with military, intelligence and security services. Some of these services are violent or corrupt, but they are among the CIA's most valued informers. New York Times 3/3/97. Per the Washington Post -- in past two years, the CIA has dropped more than a thousand informants because they were largely unproductive or had likely been involved in serious criminal activity or human rights abuses. About 90 percent were poor sources. But the group also included more than a hundred informants who were implicated in major crimes, such as killings, assassinations, kidnappings or terrorism -- and who also provided inadequate intelligence. A high number of informants dropped for such abuses were employed in Latin America during 1980s and early 1990s, but some were employed in the Middle East and Asia. Under a policy Deutch established early last year, CIA's officers must submit annual reports assessing quality of their informants and are prohibited from recruiting new sources implicated in human rights abuses or criminal behavior. Senior CIA managers can approve recruiting such persons, but only for national security reasons. Of all the informants secretly employed by the agency -- a number widely held to be in the thousands -- the total dropped was roughly one-third. Roughly a tenth of the entire group was discharged for criminal or abusive behavior, although in Latin America the share dropped for that reason approached 50 percent. Washington Post 3/2/97 a1,19. I dispute one claim -- the articles state that somewhere between one third or one fourth of all agents have been dropped. I believe this number to be deceptive. I would multiply the number of agents still being used and believe only a tenth or a twentieth have actually been dropped. Ralph McGehee CIABASE