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Comment by Crito | Hacker News Reader

The CIA working with cartels abroad is not mere rumor. There is substantial evidence that this takes place.

Unfortunately, nobody in this world has the combination of power, opportunity, and desire to take the CIA down for its crimes. They are the closest thing to a god that has ever existed; and organization that is profoundly beyond the grasp of society at large. They smite as they see fit, and there is nothing that can be done about it. Even if the American democratic system were functioning as designed/desired, the CIA would have ample opportunity to burn all of their records (as the Stasi unsuccessfully attempted). Black budgets (see:their involvement in the drugs trade) is one of their many insurance policies against accountability.

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>Unfortunately, nobody in this world has the combination of power, opportunity, and desire to take the CIA down for its crimes.

That's assuming they are something like a rogue agent, and not a coherent part of an overall national strategy (not for the common folks of course).

Black budgets alone are enough to make them a rogue agent for all practical intents and purposes.

How do you audit an organization like the CIA without the CIA's cooperation? In order to audit the CIA you must first trust the CIA, but the purpose of the audit would be to establish trust in the first place.

Trust of the CIA cannot be bootstrapped. They cannot be audited without trust. Since we cannot trust them, it would be foolish to believe that they are subservient to us.

It's not like those giving the black budgets don't know what they get in return.

It might be like that. First, anyone approving a budget knows what they're told, but probably has the capacity for very little first-hand verification. Second, not all budgets are "given" - we've previously seen the CIA raise money independently to fund illegal operations.

Let's put it this way: the president, and the congress could squash that in a second if there was a will.

Plausibly. I'm not sure how we'd tell. And there being "a will" may be dependent on an understanding of what's going on whose absence could - in principle - persist indefinitely.

> There is substantial evidence that [the CIA works with cartels abroad].

Would you be able to point out some references?

read about dark alliance -- the cia was running cocaine and fueled the crack epidemic to help kill women and children in south america. Yay 'murica!

edit: maybe start here [1]. Reagan's administration was complicit after congress cut off funding for their war crimes in south america.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_traffic...

This is the funniest shit I've ever heard in my life. The CIA that can't run human intelligence worth shit from Amman to Kabul? The CIA that took 10 years to find Bin Laden after being led around by the nose by the ISI (_nath dalna_, as they say in Urdu/Hindi)?

Mother of all selection biases. We only know their failures. Their victories, by definition, are unknown to us.

In what possible scenario could we ever hope to learn the full extent of their crimes? Intelligence agencies burn their records when they are threatened. The Stasi had to destroy paper records, which they failed to do rapidly enough to prevent the public from physically seizing them. The CIA watched this happen. They learned from those mistakes. And this time, only encryption keys need to be shredded to put those documents beyond our reach.

> The CIA watched this happen. They learned from those mistakes.

They didn't only watch; in the chaos they also broke-into Stasi offices and made off with sackloads of documents.

The CIA must be the most organized part of our government to carry on decades long conspiracies and liaise with every nefarious group in the world! If only they could redirect some of this management "excellence" to the more deserving and productive areas of the government that could actually use it.

I just highly doubt the effectiveness and existence of any long running conspiracy. See:

http://www.thisisnotaconspiracytheory.com

> "decades long conspiracies and liaise with every nefarious group in the world!"

I made no such claim. There is much that the CIA is not involved with. Clearly you have zero interest in civil discourse, so take your strawmen and fuck off.

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