Numerous well-documented cases of CIA misbehavior in the past has resulted in basically nothing, so my money is on "no".
Edit: To clarify, I am advocating against this behavior -- it's not worth compromising our ethics for the sake of accomplishing goals in the short term. Cynicism is no way to run a country.
This makes it impossible to generalize fairly about "most of the operations". You're working from a data set so heavily filtered as to be useless for that.
There is no way a government with a million people with Top Secret clearances is operating with the consent of the governed.
What I said was not vague.
I'm not entirely sure about that. I believe the CIA has committed atrocities, but I find it difficult to believe that you could not justify every action they took in the name of national security - all the coups of communist / non-Western-aligned nations especially. In fact, almost anything that may harm the federal government (regardless of impact to the general population) can be designated as a matter of national security (perhaps by design).
The point I am making is that it is easy to spin atrocities as necessary undertakings to agents with good intentions, all the way up to the top even (Operation Northwoods for example). Evil people are not necessary to build an evil organization.
The general population is something that can harm the federal government, are you fine with the CIA ruining your life to ensure that doesn't happen?
That was my point.
Regular people sharing the burden with many others will not feel it. How do the actual people involved in this deal with it I have no idea. They might be a special breed and either don't see this as a moral failing, or simply can withstand huge pressure from their own conscience.
It's tempting to think that, but do you have any evidence to support it? Look at the list of examples from the parent comment:
Iran-Contra - We sold a bunch of weapons to a country that we're now apparently enemies with. The funded Contras committed a series of human rights violations and then fizzled out.
Operation Condor - Thousands and thousands of innocent civilians killed, numerous South American countries still unstable and suffering the consequences of it.
28 Mordad - Maybe gave us access to oil we didn't really need. Created long-standing entirely valid resentment of the US and democracy which likely led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, rise of theocracy in Iran, and today's current trouble with them.
MKUltra - Thousands of US and Canadian citizens, many already marginalized or mentally unwell were unwittingly drugged without their consent. Harrowing accounts like "they administered LSD to a mental patient in Kentucky for 174 days" and drugging deputy U.S. marshal Wayne Ritchie" who ended up having "a bad LSD trip that culminated in his holding up the bar at gunpoint." Afterwards, the CIA admitted the entire project was essentially useless.
It seems to be that any organization allowed to perform morally-compromised acts as a honeypot for the kind of people who want to perform amoral acts, which are exactly the people we should not be letting make any of these kinds of choices.
The CIA has done good things for the US too, but these events show that having a group of people doing bad things might not be good for the US in the short term either.
Our current attorney general was involved in pardoning a bunch of the people behind this.
Not just now, but at the time we sold weapons to them they were an enemy; we had imposed an arms embargo on Iran and were backing Iraq’s brutally repressive regime in a war (of naked aggression aimed at territorial aggrandizement) with Iran specifically because Iran was supposedly a critical threat, and within a year of the last Iran-Contra arms transfer our military was actively engaged directly against Iran (the Tanker War.)
> The funded Contras committed a series of human rights violations and then fizzled out.
Funding the Contras, it is also worth noting, was specifically prohibited by Congress.
Statecraft is messy business. If you don't get your hands dirty you either don't matter or you don't last.
It is hard to judge these things fairly. Acting like we live in a perfect world and everyone who doesn't match that needs to be burned at the stake... well that's not helpful. Acting like the state gets a free pass for everything it does because being a government is hard makes us more and more terrible until something breaks.
Yes, a state in a leading world position needs to have a morally flexible arm to get things done, but that arm also needs to be regularly held in check, even if it's just for show.
The CIA and related agencies need pressure to keep them on their toes and doing the "right thing", but not expectation that everything they do will be entirely honorable. If you want that kind of thing, you have to move to somewhere small without much attention which has the luxury of honest opposition to all disreputable state behavior... because it is not in the position to be obligated to respond. (looking at you, smaller western Europe nations)
How is that pressure supposed to happen when the referenced case, Nixon's "plumbers," shows them directly interfering with politics? No matter how vital you view an organization able to control foreign states, what you're building is an organization to control your state.
It is a legitimately a difficult problem, perhaps among the most difficult problems in governing. How do you create and maintain a government for centuries which keeps its primary goal of serving the people. The US founders thought about this very much drawing on philosophers modern and ancient and they did a pretty good job setting up checks and balances, or more bluntly, competition.
How do you keep the CIA and its like in check? Create opposing government entities specifically immune to its actions and allow them to compete for prestige. This is why we have three branches of government, two houses of congress with different election strategies, etc. Set up separation of powers, imbue the population to value and cherish that separation, and honestly, hope for the best.
Sulla already existed, the idea that "tradition" will keep us safe from ambition has been disproved.
>How do you keep the CIA and its like in check? Create opposing government entities specifically immune to its actions and allow them to compete for prestige
What kind of organization is immune to an intelligence agency?
>honestly, hope for the best
Again, we have conclusive proof that this failed with the Nixon plumbers.
There isn't anything else besides tradition. Government in all of its forms ultimate exists and runs in a manner compatible with the consent of the people. Documents, laws, institutions, policy, what have you... they all derive out of that consent, that tradition, that mythology. You have to maintain the mythology as it grows and transforms over time. Tradition can't rule with a dead hand, it is alive with each citizen, each generation. Nothing is forever.
>What kind of organization is immune to an intelligence agency?
Nothing is perfect. Intelligence agencies aren't all-powerful, and the legislators, judges, executives, and population aren't hopeless. An independent judiciary, senators with long election cycles, and a population with freedom of the press are all resistant to the influence an intelligence agency has.
>Again, we have conclusive proof that this failed with the Nixon plumbers.
Did it? Nixon was forced out of office, he didn't win. Checks and balances aren't about preventing misbehavior, they're about fixing it when it happens. How it worked with Nixon was, as far as I can determine, satisfactory.
It takes one person ignoring tradition to make it worthless.
>An independent judiciary, senators with long election cycles, and a population with freedom of the press are all resistant to the influence an intelligence agency has.
Intelligence agencies are made to control countries even if they have all those things. They aren't a meaningful resistance. Plus, the best resistance listed, a free press, is directly under attack in the Assange case.
>Did it? Nixon was forced out of office, he didn't win. Checks and balances aren't about preventing misbehavior, they're about fixing it when it happens. How it worked with Nixon was, as far as I can determine, satisfactory.
The CIA however had one of their own elected vice president in 1980, and the spying they did to get elected then was completely overlooked. Oh, and Nixon was only caught as part of a power struggle in the FBI. If that's "satisfactory" I don't think you care what the CIA does.
Unless I'm missing something, that hardly seems relevant in regards to the question presented by the article.
How many criminal prosecutions have those people have proceeded after the torture? I mean, since we're talking about consequences on extradition for criminal prosecution and criminal prosecution itself, that would seem to be the relevant measure.