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WHAT:  Digging Deeper XXXVI: The History of the CIA
WHO:  Led by Mark Jensen
WHEN:  Monday, September 24, and October 1 & 8, 2007 -- 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
WHERE:  Mandolin Café, 3923 South 12th St., Tacoma, WA 98405

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United for Peace
of Pierce County (WA)
Study Circle:
September 24 and October 1 & 8, 2007
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DIGGING DEEPER XXXVI:  The History of the CIA

"Since everything the CIA writes and does is secret, including its budget," writes Chalmers Johnson in his most recent book, "accountability to the elected representatives of the people or even an accurate historical record of actions is today inconceivable. Congressional oversight of the agency . . . is, at best, a theatrical performance designed to distract and mislead the few Americans left who are concerned about constitutional government. In fact, the president's untrammeled control of the CIA is probably the single most extraordinary power the imperial presidency possesses — totally beyond the balance of powers intended to protect the United States from the rise of a tyrant" (Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic [New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006], p. 91).

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote a generation ago: "Truman rather diffidently founded the CIA, and Eisenhower made it a major foreign policy tool. Reluctant to send regular forces into combat aborad, Eisenhower silently turned the CIA into the secret army of the executive branch. Covert action displaced intelligence collection and analysis as the main charge on the CIA budget. . . . The CIA's great innovation was to concentrate on covert action. Instead of contenting itself with finding out what is happening, the CIA surpasses other intelligence services in trying to make things happen" (The Imperial Presidency [Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004], pp. 450-51; orig. published 1973).

What is it, precisely, that the CIA has done in the course of the sixty years since it was created? What role does it play in the U.S. national security state? In what ways has its ability to escape from the balance-of-power logic of the Founders undermined constitutional government in the United States? And how has the Bush Administration made use of the CIA? Digging Deeper XXXVI will address itself to these and other related questions while discussing two recent volumes:

—Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007). "Is the Central Intelligence Agency a bulwark of freedom against dangerous foes, or a malevolent conspiracy to spread American imperialism? A little of both, according to this absorbing study, but, the author concludes, it is mainly a reservoir of incompetence and delusions that serves no one's interests well. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent Weiner musters extensive archival research and interviews with top-ranking insiders, including former CIA chiefs Richard Helms and Stansfield Turner, to present the agency's saga as an exercise in trying to change the world without bothering to understand it. Hypnotized by covert action and pressured by presidents, the CIA, he claims, wasted its resources fomenting coups, assassinations and insurgencies, rigging foreign elections and bribing political leaders, while its rare successes inspired fiascoes like the Bay of Pigs and the Iran-Contra affair. Meanwhile, Weiner contends, its proper function of gathering accurate intelligence languished. With its operations easily penetrated by enemy spies, the CIA was blind to events in adversarial countries like Russia, Cuba, and Iraq and tragically wrong about the crucial developments under its purview, from the Iranian revolution and the fall of Communism to the absence of Iraqi WMDs. Many of the misadventures Weiner covers, at times sketchily, are familiar, but his comprehensive survey brings out the persistent problems that plague the agency. The result is a credible and damning indictment of American intelligence policy." —Publishers Weekly.

—James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (New York: Free Press, 2006). "Lucid, balanced and brimming with surprises, this is a-to borrow a notorious phrase-slam dunk exposé of the CIA's recent snafus. New York Times reporter Risen is broadly sympathetic to the CIA, and his tactful use of inside sources shifts much of the blame away from field agents and toward the brass in Washington, where CIA Director George Tenet's eagerness to please his political masters and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's bureaucratic skills create the conditions for a perfect storm of intelligence failures. The book's disclosures about secret prisons, "renditions"-the transfer of suspects to countries which may torture them-and domestic wiretaps are likely to be talking points for some time, but its lasting value will be as a record of how the CIA came so tantalizingly close to the truth about Iraq's nonexistent nuclear arsenal. The retelling of one undercover operation shows the agency had direct evidence that there was no nuclear program in Iraq, but chose to doubt its source. Other scenes from the secret war on terror make novelist John Le Carre look like a timid plotter: a single misdirected message in 2004 brings down the agency's entire spy network in Iran, four years after a harebrained scheme had given Tehran flawed blueprints for a nuclear weapon-hoping to sow confusion, but possibly helping Iran to arm itself faster. Risen has written a thrilling, depressing and worrying book." —Publishers Weekly.

MEETING SCHEDULE — Mondays from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Mandolin Café, 3923 S. 12th St., Tacoma, WA.

No charge for participation. Some copies available for loan or sale. Contact: Mark Jensen (jensenmk@plu.edu; 253-756-7519).

Regular meetings of United for Peace of Pierce County are held at 6:30 p.m. on 1st Thursdays and at 7:00 p.m. on 3rd Thursdays at First Congregational Church, 209 S. “J” St., Tacoma, WA.

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United for Peace
of Pierce County (WA)
Study Circle:
September 24 and October 1 & 8, 2007
***********************************