A never ending goat rope!
What should the CIA do in Egypt?
By Jeff Stein
The ghost of the 1979 Iranian revolution is very much on the minds of veteran intelligence officials as Egypt explodes in street protests.
Most historians agree that the CIA was largely in the dark when anti-American students, radical Islamists and mullahs ignited street protests in Tehran because the U.S.-backed shah had forbidden the CIA to have contact with opposition groups.
Read the rest of this empty article….
Phi Beta Iota: Stein is a low-rent version of Ignatius, and most of his sources rarely have anything substantive to contribute. This is puffery. CIA is in the liaison business, not the espionage or the analytics business. The Safari Club (the fifth CIA that does rendition and torture) is built around Egyptian intelligence officers whose idea of a good time is sodomizing drugged kids and taking photos to turn the kids against their fathers. Not only is CIA worthless in Egypt and across the region, but the minute they are asked to do something they will out-source it because they have no internal bench–indeed, the place looks like a geriatric ward now, with annuitants all over the place.
