The C.I.A.: A National Liability?
Michael Brenner
Senior Fellow, the Center for Transatlantic Relations; Professor of International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh
Huffington Post, 22 April 2013
The errant actions of the C.I.A. are by now so evident that they are a staple of Washington conversation. Like the weather, though, it is the topic everybody talks about, but does nothing about. The drone revelations, and the administration's stonewalling, that coincided with John Brennan's confirmation hearings created a stir. That incident struck a nerve because the White House looked ready to extend its claim to a right to kill Americans abroad to the domestic scene. The prospect of moves to bring the Agency to heal quickly died down once he made a vague promise to downsize the drone program. Moreover, no elected official voiced concern about the implications of killing lots of foreigners — even innocent civilians — as we are doing routinely in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
That may change. Now we have the graphic account of a maverick C.I.A. conducting its own clandestine war against the government of Pakistan without a stipulated authorization. And doing so in a ham-handed manner that helped to ruin whatever small chance remained of extricating ourselves from Afghanistan and neighboring frontier areas of Pakistan without leaving behind a dangerous chaos on both sides of the Durand Line. The detailed picture painted by two authoritative accounts of the notorious Raymond Davis affair, and its clamorous aftermath, provides us with a fine-grained view of studied ignorance and appalling incompetence among C.I.A. leaders in Langley and Islamabad (Mark Mazzetti, Jeremy Scahill). It also describes National Security Council sessions for which ‘dysfunctional' would be a generous term. The slanging matches among cabinet members on matters of sensitivity and importance took place with an absent commander in chief failing to exercise the policy guidance and operational oversight that are his mandate as president.
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