The type of people Intelligence agencies need and use to accomplish their goals are also the type of people who tend to do these things.
I’m sure the CIA could come up with a better excuse.
Only under the incentive structures you’re used to considering.
It’s reasonable to assume they knew it from the start he was getting money illicitly from the Navy and they might have enabled it. This was part of the leverage they had on him, to be used if he ever became a liability.
Iran–Contra? Their cyber espoinage tools getting swiped? The self-admission from the US administration that the CIA failed to properly recognize and prepare for the tactics used in 9/11, in spite of ample forward warning?
Like most intelligence agencies, their unaccountable power often gets mistaken for actual intelligence. That power makes them dangerous, but it doesn't make them smart.
U.S. Intelligence and India's Nuclear Tests: Lessons Learned
August 11, 1998 98-672
The U.S. Intelligence Community did not have advance knowledge that India intended to conduct nuclear tests beginning on May 11, 1998.
Although intelligence agencies cannot have foreknowledge of every significant development in world affairs, many observers (and senior intelligence officials) believe that, in view of the election of an Indian government committed to "inducting" nuclear weapons, much greater attention should have been given to indications of impending nuclear tests
Pretty sure that was some of their own more-corrupted people leaking those tools - at least, one of the occasions.
If the people in the CIA who do hiring want the talent who are excellent at lying and compartmentalizing their ethics, then that’s what the organization becomes over a generation.
but yeah, I imagine that a job which requires keeping secrets and breaking laws tends to attract people who keep secrets and break laws.
You can't be a nice balanced guy doing work which often dips in shady stuff, sometimes being responsible for killing innocents, or in extreme cases one's failed actions can send some region into death spiral of some small or larger conflict. No, you need (relatively) smart folks for whom emotions are just a tool to use on others to achieve your goals.
And this obviously has various side effects, some quite negative.
But on the other hand, being a useful fool that blindly does anything for profit, Do seem in line with the people working in tech for the last decade.
Yes, the CIA is a corrupt today as "tech". And no that is not ok nor required, or it ever was like that.
My point was about the populous eating up the inevitability of those entities being above the law by default.
* but is is sad we destroyed the most important part we can't even catch lowly thieves like this
So, I agree: All spies are bastards.
think about it: shell companies, lockpicks, bribes, theft, blackmail, hacking, forgery. two kinds of people do those things: spooks, and the mob. the difference is why you're doing it and to whom.
also, if anything the CIA is far tamer today than it was in the '60s.
I think using the 60s as a comparison unfairly implies the CIA rehabilitated sooner than should be implied.
It’s likely the cocaine originating from Colombia was going to end up in the US with or without the CIA’s help.
Also, it’s worth reading about the journalist who broke the story about Contra-sourced cocaine making it to LA. That journalist is very often misquoted and when he was still alive he tried to fix the missing several times.
Check out the book "The Fort Bragg Cartel". Tl;Dr, the US military and special ops were holding up the poppy industry in Afghanistan, something like 80% of the world's supply of Heroin came out of US occupied Afghanistan. The DEA would look the other way on shipments intercepted over a certain size.
The special ops guys brought the drug trafficking home, now i95 through the southern states is a major drug trafficking route.