Seriously Consider Abolishing the CIA

The lame duck sends 'em quacking away again:

"President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency’s latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques."

First off, I give the Democratic-controlled US Congress credit, they were willing to stand up for their beliefs and challenge the president on his own. They have't proven willing or able to do this on suspending payment for the Iraq occupation. On the other hand, I believe they are wrong.

"Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using interrogation methods like waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad. Many such techniques are prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies."

The issue before us is remarkably simple for a national security debate: we need only ask if the CIA is the same type of organization as the US military or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). If you believe so, then support for this bill, which mandates the much-celebrated Army Field Manual for all entities of the US government, is crucial. On the other hand, evidence is strikingly thin for this claim.

We have covered this terrain before and I am willing to consider abolishing the CIA in the future, but until that time Langley will remain a horse of a different color. Undoubtedly, the CIA has become something of a law onto itself (sometimes presidentially-directed, other times of its own accord), or an inherently illegal entity. Do we dispute this? Why do we think that the CIA charter prohibits domestic operations? Could it be because very little the CIA does would pass international law muster?

In other words, in my view, if you support the Democratic bill, intellectual honesty demands that you also clamor for the abolition of the spy service. If you're not willing to countenance at least the power of the CIA to use waterboarding and other techniques, why should any "black bag" job not give you great pause and trigger moral outrage? Does not the existence of the CIA hurt our "image" abroad as well?

Of course, Democrats view the problem of terrorism as a police action, and strongly urge the president to consent to civilian courts for detainees. Republicans view the matter as a war, and do not believe detainees are entitled to the rights of prisoners of war, Geneva Conventions or otherwise. Democrats, at least on the issue of CIA interrogation policies, seem to have the support of the FBI and General David Petraeus, not to mention perhaps the rest of the world.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid cited the General in his typically unimpressive response to the White House. My answer is why should we care about the opinions of the FBI and others relative to the issue? We're not talking about affording these powers to the FBI (I would strongly oppose that) or the Army (ditto), but to intelligence agencies.

Even though I awarded them credit earlier in this post, I continue to believe Democrats are not terribly serious about the issue and simply aim to score political points. We will see if a President Clinton (Part II) or Obama truly would reduce presidential power, something last seen in the Ford administration. If so, I would commend them for their political courage, knowing what vitriol would cascade down on them from the Right, and expect them to begin dissolving the CIA, guardian of the nation since its OSS days of WWII, in short order.

If the CIA does not have "special status" to commit what in the US would register to many as crimes, all in the name of national security, then what purpose does it serve? Do we, as Americans, claim an inherent right to spy on our allies, friends, and enemies? Even to "eliminate" them as we see fit? In the absence of international force, I think we could make a decent argument in the affirmative. What I'm advocating may strike some as "throwing out the baby with the bathwater," but I don't think so.

We should either have a fully-empowered, save for domestic operations, CIA or none at all. A CIA that is even more risk-averse than our current, politically-motivated NIE on Iranian nuclear program model, still alienates our neighbors whilst diminishing our ability to capture and access information. If we cannot at least authorize the CIA to do whatever it needs to do to elicit information from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed then why shouldn't wait for him to commit a crime and then attempt (ha ha) to arrest him?

My position is that we should not have Gitmo, nor allow civilian courts. The solution to people like KSM is not an easy one. We desperately need his information, yet may have no way of getting it without coercive interrogations and a base in Cuba. If we deem them dangerous, attempt to kill them. If we deem then useful, then the CIA should conduct black-ops to capture them. Otherwise we bumble our way into something not unlike our current predicament, where we confine a host of dangerous or just unlucky individuals because we can't figure out what to do with them.

The best answer is to abolish the CIA, which has more than a few black marks and more than a few erroneous conclusions (Several hundred Cuban activists can fell Catro; the Soviet Union is not close to failing; Iraq '91 does not have a nuclear program, etc) with some hits to its credit. That's considerably unimpressive for all the money and effort of sixty-plus years. The upshot is to empower the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor communications that enter and/or leave the US, irrespective of FISA. If the CIA showed any inability to penetrate Al-Qaeda, or some variant, I would have greater hesitation.

We need not speculate the political ramifications of arguing for CIA abolition, especially if from the Democratic Party (incidentally, the father of the agency during the Roosevelt-Truman administrations), perhaps worse than (heaven forbid) advocating a national same-sex marriage law. Nonetheless, it is time to face facts, the CIA didn't get the job done in Korea or Vietnam, and it shows little sign of doing any better in the 21st Century.

If we are entering twilight for CIA, it is better to dismantle it all at once than piecemeal, and make no mistake, this Democratic bill is a means toward that end. I'm almost there.