At the recent American Library Association’s annual conference in D.C., the CIA had a booth set up to entice librarians into a new role as intelligence analysts. Pretty smart, I’ll admit, but many ALA members were very unhappy with the agency’s presence. Raw Story reports, “Citing CIA’s Dark History, Librarians Protest Agency’s Recruiting at their Conference.” Protestors cited the CIA’s history of foreign-government overthrows, support of dictators, reliance on torture, and tendency to spy on everyone else while maintaining opacity for itself. They maintain that supporting the agency in any way runs counter to the American Library Association’s stated values.
ROBERT STEELE: This is interesting for two reasons. First, it tells me the CIA is getting desperate for analysts able to think critically, our universities are clearly not producing them, and what does come out of our universities lacks a work ethic and is over the cliff stupid on reality. Second, the librarians are right. CIA is a disgrace. While it is living up to its Deep State founders intent, it should have morphed long ago — as I began suggesting within CIA in 1986 and outside CIA from 1988 onward — into a true all source INTELLIGENCE (decision support) agency, rather than a DIRTY TRICKS agency. I continue to believe that we must a) create an Open Source Agency; b) reduce all secret agencies including CIA by up to 70%; and c) consolidate what is left of all secret agencies at CIA as directorates (for signals, imagery, etcetera). Somewhere in there we teach and enforce the Constitution and ethics.
