The Obama Administration has announced that it will seek the expansion of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to include a wider range of espionage operations. The move which has attracted little attention would create a large spy network in the Pentagon as the same time that the CIA is moving to build more of an independent air force and military operational capacity.
There seems little concern that we are eliminating the long tradition of keeping military and intelligence operations separate — to avoid the concentration of power in these agencies. We will now have largely duplicative operational capacities in the Pentagon and CIA, which each able to launch large military or intelligence operations.
The DIA expansion will include as many as 1,600 “collectors” in positions around the world to expand clandestine operatives in the Pentagon. They want to monitor large Islamist militant groups in Africa, weapons transfers by North Korea and Iran, and military modernization underway in China — areas overlapping with the CIA.
The agency’s director, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, admitted recently that “This is a major adjustment for national security.”
The DIA expansion also adds to a burgeoning security state both domestically and internationally. The Obama Administration has expanded national security powers and actively sought the establishment of a Nixonian “Imperial Presidency.” With the Administration’s opposition to transparency and increase in security forces, the concern is that the center of gravity in our system is shifting dramatically toward clandestine and national security services. Once again, there is little opposition under a civil liberties movement which has been eviscerated under Obama. Congress is unlikely to present much opposition with most Democratic members seeking to protect Obama from such criticism rather than maintaining any check or balance on the Executive Branch. The result is the appearance of a runaway security system that is both adding operational abilities and reducing oversight pressures. A dangerous combination.
Source: Washington Post
Obama is attending to save the body . Jesus is concerned about saving souls. Would Jesus be thinking about national security or would Jesus be thinking of soul security?
CornholeBob:
right on that. and too many stupid politicians who dont read their history.
Feeling safer one erosion at a time….. Why not…
Deny the Pentagon a spy agency and deny the CIA military force. Never the Twain shall meet. As one who used to frequent the bar in the Hilton Hotel at El Tahir Square in Cairo I can tell you that there were too many people working for Bell Helicopter. Hint. Too many Brits running about “working” for British Air. Between M-I6 and the CIA one could not belly up to the bar to get a drink. I guess now the Pentagon spys will work for ConAgra and the CIA guys for Northrup Grummand. This particular bar was the brain trust and organizing centre for the grand plan to recruit Muslim Brotherhood members to go to Afghanistan to run the Russians out. Some of them came back to bite. They bit Anwar Sadat. Now they are making Egypt into a holy Muslim Republic like Iran. Too many spies spoil the broth.
Swarthmore mom
1, December 3, 2012 at 11:18 am
raff, We had a CIA head become president.
——————————————————-
BINGO That’s where it all started!
Blouise, Brava!
SwM,
And let’s not forget that neither the intelligence agency in the Defense Dept nor the CIA were good enough to protect us from the swing dick sex lies of Petraeus and the incredible vulnerabilities inherent in that man and his lady friends.
raff, We had a CIA head become president.
Swarthmore and Blouise,
The CIA has become another section of the military. We shouldn’t be surprised when we have military officers becoming CIA heads and NSA heads.
Blouise, It now appears that the Petreaus scandal is not going to widen. Do you agree?
Great historical perspective, Blouise. You are the blog expert in this area.
http://www.americanspecialops.com/images/operations/sof-afghanistan/cct-horseback.jpg
I remember early on in the war against the Taliban (I want to say Oct 2001) pictures of troops on horseback described by Rumsfeld as CIA. I was somewhat surprised at that time that the CIA had “troops”.
Fast forward to 2012 and the Petraeus scandal where once again I wondered how in the world the CIA allowed a new director to be put in place without proper vetting but then read that the vetting wasn’t done because the Army had recently vetted the dude for a top security clearance. Twenty years ago the CIA would never have accepted some other agency’s vetting nor would they have had enough combat troops on the books to mount on horseback … even if you count Roland, the Headless Thomson Gunner.
I suspect the Petraeus event ignited a constantly simmering war between the different intelligence agencies, a battle the CIA had been successfully prosecuting in its favor, and the DIA is now taking back ground, which is most interesting considering the fact that Petraeus came from the Defense Dept.
As to the civil liberties movement … where were they for the last 2 decades as the CIA was building its military force field … a field well enough established to ride into war on horseback in Oct. 2001?
Global mini wars around the world and intelligence agency wars in Washington … all paid for with our tax dollars and none of them, not a one, were good enough to protect us on Sept. 11, 2001
Chee, and HOW MUCH is this going to cost? Haven’t they heard of the fiscal cliff? I guess not. WE’RE the ones that have to learn about that, not them!
It would take a really gullible polyanna not to recognize that this increased surveillance and paramilitary activity overseas will eventually be reflected in the fabric and operational character of these governmental institutions footprint domestically. It already is.
(Borrowing part of what onprior thread) budgets and programs could be brought under control but for the conspiracy of political calculus in the 21st century, and the political-miitary-K Street-corporate-financial revolving door. But we can’t talk about that in our ‘center-right’ country because ’911 changed everything’.
I would like to see the CIA returned to its historical operations and leave the military operations to the military. The increase in these operations internationally is symtomatic of the fact that there does not seem to be a need for any president to declare war to make it lega!
U.S. Drone Strikes Are Causing Child Casualties: Video and Report
By Robert Greenwald
Posted: 12/01/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/us-drone-strikes-are-caus_b_2224627.html
Excerpt:
During my recent trip to Pakistan as part of our upcoming documentary film, Drones Exposed, I was struck most by the stories told to me by children who had experienced a U.S. drone strike firsthand. The impact of America’s drone war in the likes of Pakistan and Yemen will linger on, especially for the loved ones of the 178 children killed in those countries by U.S. drone strikes.
War Costs’ latest video (with accompanying report) brings attention to the children who have died as a result of drone strikes. The video names some of the children who perished in these strikes, and points out the obfuscation tactics of American officials who will not own up to the significant amount of civilian casualties that have occurred due to this legally- and morally-dubious policy.
This is about profit and control of populations around the world. Cities which have no money for schools, or like Detroit, which may be liquidated, are starved while war and surveillance never seem to be part of the equation in what needs to be cut. There’s always money for war and surveillance, yet few seem to wonder why and where that money comes from while accepting that children and the elderly and the poor can bugger off.
As a people this nation has really screwed up value systems. Things won’t change unless enough of our population actually chooses life affirming values. Instead, those who voted for Obama chose a culture of death and destruction of the social fabric.
The CIA runs whole military operations which are not subject to civilian control. In fact, all the agencies do this and they have just again, openly expanded their powers. Until people will face honestly what is happening in this govt. and get cracking on stopping it, it will continue. We have a plebiscitory military dictatorship. We worship it through its funding and the lionization of “leaders” such as Obama and the real powers, his generals and clandestine officers. The answer is to stop worshiping at the cult of death, power and personality. At least then we have a chance of turning things around.
He’s undoing the good steps taken by JFK in the 60’s. Quite ironic.
Jeremy Scahill had an interesting piece on the CIA in The Nation recently:
The Petraeus Legacy: A Paramilitary CIA?
Jeremy Scahill
http://www.thenation.com/article/171247/petraeus-legacy-paramilitary-cia
Excerpt:
While much of the media focus on l’affaire Petraeus has centered on the CIA director’s sexual relationship with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, the scandal opens a window onto a different and more consequential relationship—that between the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command. In a behind-the-scenes turf war that has raged since 9/11, the two government bodies have fought for control of the expanding global wars waged by the United States—a turf war that JSOC has largely won. Petraeus, an instrumental player in this power struggle, leaves behind an agency that has strayed from intelligence to paramilitary-type activities. Though his legacy will be defined largely by the scandal that ended his career, to many within military and intelligence circles, Petraeus’s career trajectory, from commander of US military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to the helm of the CIA, is a symbol of this evolution.
“I would not say that CIA has been taken over by the military, but I would say that the CIA has become more militarized,” Philip Giraldi, a retired career CIA case officer, told The Nation. “A considerable part of the CIA budget is now no longer spying; it’s supporting paramilitaries who work closely with JSOC to kill terrorists, and to run the drone program.” The CIA, he added, “is a killing machine now.”
As head of US Central Command in 2009, Petraeus issued execute orders that significantly broadened the ability of US forces to operate in a variety of countries, including Yemen, where US forces began conducting missile strikes later that year. During Petraeus’s short tenure at the CIA, drone strikes conducted by the agency, sometimes in conjunction with JSOC, escalated dramatically in Yemen; in his first month in office, he oversaw a series of strikes that killed three US citizens, including 16-year-old Abdulrahman Awlaki. In some cases, such as the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, commandos from the elite JSOC operated under the auspices of the CIA, so that the mission could be kept secret if it went wrong.
One current State Department liaison who has also worked extensively with JSOC describes the CIA as becoming “a mini-Special Operations Command that purports to be an intelligence agency.” For all the praise Petraeus won for his counterinsurgency strategy and the “surge” in Iraq, he says, his real legacy is as a “political tool,” an enabler of those within the national security apparatus who want to see a continuation of covert global mini-wars. Pointing to the “mystique that surrounds JSOC” and Adm. William McRaven, commander of the Special Operations Command, the liaison says, “Petraeus was trying to implement that kind of command climate at the CIA.”