Talk:Central Intelligence Agency/Archive 6

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Request for comment 1

Should the Central Intelligence Agency page include a history which is controversal such as the Church committee, senate committees and covert operations in other countries, or should this be absent from the page, only talking about the positive aspects of the CIA?

Yes controversial items should be on the CIA page, to meet NPOV. Trav (talk) 18:58, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
The question is loaded and can't lead to a balanced discussion of the issues.
Yes the portfolio of articles can consider all of the activities of the agency, using appropriate and reliable sources to support each discussion. The nature of the sources is reasonably a source of significant discussion, the existence of a reference does not mean that it is inherently representative, reasonable and doesn't place undue weight on a single topic when considering nearly sixty years of history through an extremely active cold war.
Balance should be retained in the article, and emphasising only those conspiracy theory aspects fails to meet the requirements of the NPOV policy.
ALR (talk) 19:07, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
The Church Committee, the Rockefeller Commission, the "Family Jewels", and other investigations are all still there, unless they've been removed in the last 24 hours or so. I know I added some detailed documentation of some fairly damning things, such as Indonesia 1965.
What I have changed, usually only after requests for sourcing were not added in a month, were things that were simply unsourced "allegations", or things from emphatically POV sources. There is no question in my mind that CIA personnel have done inappropriate and illegal things, although, on a number of occasions, these were at the direct orders of the White House. Where, for example, the 303 Committee authorized a questionable covert action, that needs to be there with the actions, or one has to agree with a conspiracy theory that the CIA is a completely rogue activity.
I am absolutely willing to agree that a number of activities of the United States government were illegal or inappropriate, but let's deal with the full responsibility. Kennedy gave the orders, against Joint Chiefs of Staff advice, for the Bay of Pigs, and JFK and RFK wanted Castro killed. Johnson falsified the US policy on responding to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, hiding the OPPLAN 34A activities against North Vietnam and (Masterman's analysis is probably best) creating, for reasons of ego, a much enlarged war. George W. Bush, also apparently for ego, attacked Iraq. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 19:17, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
RfC response - There clearly is a need to have some content relate to these controversial matters. However, I too acknowledge that the way the question is phrased is inherently biased. I am not at all sure that there needs to be a "history of controversy" section which details the issues to any degree. I tend to think that such a section would probably, certainly eventually, violate WP:Undue weight rules. However, a short summary section in the main article with a link to a separate article CIA controversies or some other, similar title, would almost certainly be acceptable. John Carter (talk) 19:36, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
RfC response =is Kaor the correct salutation to John Carter of Mars, or is that just with Dejah Thoris? :-) Seriously, you make very good points. It is perfectly appropriate to say there have been controversies, it is perfectly appropriate to say there have been improprieties, and it is also appropriate to say that there are allegations for which there is not a great deal of substantiation. The "Family Jewels" are hardly complimentary. Nevertheless, one of my major concerns is that there is a confusion between things that were decided and ordered at White House level, and carried out by CIA, military, or other organizations, and what I do consider a conspiratorial view of the CIA as an "invisible government". I would hope the goal, in Good Faith, is to try to find a way that identifies all these areas, and still follow NPOV. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 19:51, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
How can I reword the question? Trav (talk) 06:39, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
There may be several related questions. The first, I believe, is whether the history should cover all aspects of the agency. The "core" of this include its internal organization, its supervision, its leadership, and its broad mission statements--these are the things one needs to understand the history.
As to the history itself, another question is whether the history should cover all aspects of CIA operations -- not just covert action, but the approval or issuing orders for covert action from a higher level, the production of intelligence reports and estimates (which may lead to a choice of covert action), those aspects of clandestine (as distinct from covert) intelligence gathering that remain assigned to the CIA, etc.
Another question, and I use the example of the various subordinate, more-detailed, linked articles of a country or a major war, is how the history should physically be arranged. I love Vietnamese cold salad rolls, but I wouldn't expect to find them in the main Vietnam article. They'd probably be reached via a link from the main article to "culture of Vietnam", and from there, "cuisine of Vietnam". In some countries, an item under cuisine might have its own article, as with barbecue styles in the US.
As you have seen, my preferred approach is to be complete as long as items have reasonable sourcing and notability, but organize them into geographic/functional categories (e.g., as is done with theaters of warfare and organizations for war), and then go chronologically within the categories. Every so often, some event or period of time might justify its own article.
This doesn't mean any verifiable material should be deleted, good or bad. I do not, however, consider some things eligible when they can't be verified by reliable and accessible sources. Verification can include there being more than one view and set of sources. An allegation that the CIA did something, but with no source or sources that when read, really don't address the content, is not verifiable. A statement that the CIA predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall would need some impressive sources, since that is usually considered one of the CIA failures in intelligence analysis. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 11:36, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I haven't had time to review the specific content issues, but as policy matter, and to answer the question, yes, controversial history is necessary for the article, provided its notable, and from reliable sources--and yes--this includes any notable allegations. To do otherwise is to whitewash the article, and this is certainly not permitted. I will also comment that it does not matter if any individual editors here agree that the CIA was involved in various illegal or unethical activities; its not for us to have an opinion on such matters on WP when editing its content. Its only for us to report all encyclopedic knowledge from notable and reliable sources. If the controversy or critical sections get too big, we can have the section point it a larger article that can get into great depth on the subject.Giovanni33 (talk) 08:49, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

As you say, it is appropriate to have controversial history that is notable and from reliable sources. I continue to believe, supported by guidelines on article length, that it is no more possible to have the full history of something covering 60-plus years in one article, and needs to have more detailed related article. This is routine when the article is about country "foo", where you will have a main article, but also "politics of foo", "economy of foo", and "culture of foo". When reading culture, you may indeed find "music of foo" and "cuisine of foo".
Wars, certainly that are worldwide or take more than a few years, also are organized in broad levels (e.g., phases in time and/or theaters of operations), and the finer details go into appropriate sections. There needs to be some balance as to the significance of items in the main article. In the CIA article, for example, the organization and the history of directors (and perhaps oversight organizations) is especially notable and belongs in the main article. That the US and Iran call each others' organization "terrorists" is less notable, but perfectly appropriate for full inclusion, or expansion, in an associated article about the lengthy history of CIA and Iran.
In the history, it's important that all types of activity are covered, not just covert action. These other activities include intelligence analysis and the preparation of estimates, the White House level approval or directies for covert action, clandestine intelligence collection, and significant support activities such as proprietary airlines. It is my belief that the detail on some issues in the history, by year, country/region, etc., are sufficiently detailed that multiple linked articles are required, not because of historical paper limits of a traditional encyclopedia, but that it is much harder to navigate a single volume of an encyclopedia. It's split into volumes for reasons of easy access, not just that a single volume might weigh fifty kilos. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 11:24, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Request for comment 2

Right now this page is a mess. I suggest that we

  • 1. re-delete "Clandestine history" and "Recent controversies" to the extent that these are fully covered in the 10 subsidiary articles
  • 2. re-promote a mention of the 10 subsidiary articles to the top of the page. Right now you have to know to expand the box at the bottom to see those articles -- only the editors of the page will know to do this, on average
  • 3. Maybe put the Director's History in a separate page like CIA History by Director
  • 4. do the above in such a way that re-occurrences of trav* and IP 68.89.131.187 will not result in reverts of these edits. I suggested raising this up to Wiki administrator level vigilance e.g. RFC or whatever, and also protecting the page so that only logged-in users can edit it (there's a tag for that). Note that trav* after going on his deletion orgy did not respond to any of my comments regarding his allegations about my intentions. Trav*: remember WP:OWN and the fact that you were gone for 2 weeks before you went on deletion/regression orgy. Erxnmedia (talk) 15:48, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Extremely Tentative Agreement --

(1) I don't think any changes should be made until we make a sandbox and start punting around ideas. I am not part of a cabal, and i am not here to sling mongoloid weight around, and with that in mind i hope that my suggestion is taken at face value. Basically, before deleting anything i think we should get a head start on the summaries and things we'll be replacing those sections with; once there is a consensus on the basic structure and content of the new sections i'll have no problem watching those things disappear. But we should take it one step at a time. It's not like we're facing any sort of deadline, here.
I'm not sure what you mean by (2). Please elaborate -- my browser doesn't have any collapsed boxes that i can see, and the articles listed at the bottom of the page seem like they're a lot more then 10 and would only clutter up an already unsightly article header.
To see that there are 10 branches, you have to scroll to the bottom of the (very long) page and press "show" on the purple box marked "Central Intelligence Agency". It's elegant if you know the interface; opaque if you don't. The previous version went as follows:

Prior to December 2004, the CIA was literally the central intelligence organization for the US government. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 created the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who took over some of the government and intelligence community(IC)-wide function that had previously been under the CIA. Among those functions were the preparation of estimates reflecting the consolidated opinion of the 16 IC agencies, and preparation of briefings for the President. When discussing the CIA, it is critical to understand when one is speaking of the older IC-wide responsibilities, or its present set of responsibilities.

To make the topic manageable, it is split into sub-articles:

The geographic divisions are:

The initial set of transnational sub-articles are:

The geographic sub-articles roughly follow the geographic divisions of the CIA Directorate of Intelligence, which publishes its general structure. It is probable but not definitive that the clandestine and covert side of the Agency uses roughly the same geographic areas, but a different transnational and support organization.

This is clear and logical and all of the information that was re-inserted by Trav* can be found in those articles, plus a lot more. Hcberkowitz challenged the references on many items and balancing perspectives were added in some cases. Rather than deleting everything en masse after not doing anything for weeks, Trav* should have challenged edits made in his absence on a topic-by-topic basis. He didn't do that, he just swept all the dishes off the table. Erxnmedia (talk) 18:03, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, well -- honestly i can understand how he might get so frustrated with this place that he would act out in such a manner. He hangs on some pretty hairy pages.  ;-) Thanks for the explanation, and i must say that i agree as well: the interface is opaque and that needs to be addressed. Are you suggesting that we move those three bands up to the top of the page, where it would be easier to expand them -- but they would otherwise remain collapsed? That sounds like a pretty good idea. Haven't i seen other pages actually move big "This page is part of the COLD WAR wiki!" and then followed by a link to that page? Or is that just on the talk pages?Stone put to sky (talk) 18:15, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Moving the band to the top might work, though I'm not sure of the aesthetics. Also it would be better open rather than closed as a default, just for the CIA part (there are other bands besides CIA on the bottom.) Erxnmedia (talk) 21:21, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Once it's at the top i'm not sure it'll need to be open. Let's try it that way, first, and see how it works out. It's not as if this thing is ever going to reach a final state, yeah? Stone put to sky (talk) 04:58, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
(3) per (1) -- let's make a sandbox, start working, and then start deleting and re-creating; not the other way around.
(4) This is just way too extreme. In my experience Trav has always been a sincere and conscientious editor; it's just that he's suffered a lot of wiki-harassment at the hands of some consciencelss and very well organized people -- the kind who tend to go around and delete content when they don't like it -- and so he sometimes goes off the handle. He's also young and headstrong. He knows all this; he's taking a break right now, and tho' he may return some time in the next couple of days, it maybe a couple more weeks before he feels comfortable again. Last week he asked me to come in as an informal mediator and help out, but i'm quite busy and it took a while before i could show up. With y'all's gentle sufferance i'm sure we'll be able to make some productive headway on this. I am his advocate, but certainly not his puppet, and i'm sure that we can all come to an amenable arrangement. Stone put to sky (talk) 17:44, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Request for consensus

Really, I'm trying to understand what is a matter of agreement going forward. I thought, perhaps incorrectly, that there was agreement not to keep adding even past posts to the covert action section on the main page. True, false, or something inbetween?

I thought the reason for a sandbox was to try to deal with some early parts of the article, such as oversight, reasons for actions we consider inappropriate today, and, in general, trying to get consensus on some of the things that logically are front matter in the main article.

It was my understanding there was some consensus on splitting off some articles, as long as substantive content was not lost. This is the hardest problem, as some material in the current article can be argued is not substantive or well sourced.

This is really an informal RfC to find out if I misunderstand. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 09:54, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I think, Howard, you are confused. Yes, we have agreed not to add any new information to the article -- and no, Erxnmedia hasn't added anything. I've looked at the edits in question -- those by Erxnmedia -- and they appear to me as nothing more than a small formatting alteration and a change to the citation, moving it from an implicit footnote to an explicit declaration that "THIS IS AN OPINION SITE!!!!" Am i wrong about that?
These are things we can remove or alter at a later date, aren't they? Of course, this is the big problem with Wikipedia -- everyone wants the page cleaned up today, now, immediately, and so they create edit-wars. My suggestion is -- and always has been -- that people who are serious about getting real information up onto the page need to band together and take a long-term view of it.
The main thing is to get a strong foundation up onto the page. If we can do that, then i think we'll have already made a great leap forward out of the mess that's currently there. What do you think?Stone put to sky (talk) 12:20, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not trying to re-vet and re-edit everything in Covert Ops on main page. I am simply trying to establish concordance with what is already in branches. In some cases I am "concording" things which Howard eventually "disproved and deleted" once they were in branch page. I think Howard is experiencing my attempt at concordance as a request to replow old ground. It's not. Once I'm done I just want to delete the text in Covert Ops page in favor of wikilinks to the branch articles. As it happens, sometimes in concordance I discover things which are effectively copyright violations. I know to do this because I got dinged yesterday by a robot for doing the same when I pulled some text without quoting it from Ultracomputer project website into a page about Ultracomputer that I created. The robot dinged me, so I rewrote the overview, and actually I think added some value in the process.
This idea of concord-and-contract is not meant to supplant your Sandbox work. I am simply trying to fix one part on this moving airplane prior to an agreed-upon renovation of other parts of the airplane or of the entire airplane. For example, I expect somebody to create the "CIA History by Directors" page and move most of that text there, after putting in some of the introductory motivation which is already on the Discussion page. I would do it myself, but I know somebody would yell at me for jumping the gun or for pulling other people's discussion onto the main page rather than letting them do it themselves.
For my part other than that, I have a pile of CIA-related books to read and as I read them, to the extent they are CIA-related, I will plug more stuff into the branches. On my list are Ghost Wars, Charlie Wilsons War (the book, not the movie), Three Cups of Tea, and the two Chad books -- an instance where I pulled some discussion into the branch and got yelled at for it -- now I have the books, I read French, I'll read them, and I'll sort it out from the horse's mouth.
Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 14:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, that's precisely how i perceived your efforts. I really think that this is excellent stuff that you're doing, and -- most importantly -- i want you to understand that i'm not here to work against you. When i say i'm going to agree to something, i will; and if i wind up not acting in accordance to what you thought my words implied i will give you a solid, down-to-earth, no-bullshit reason for it -- not some sort of capricious wiki-lawyering nonsense, and certainly nothing that's going to fellate a transparently extremist companion.
However, after having said all that i also would like you to understand that three people working together on one of these pages makes for a really solid team. Much, much more solid than just two. Now, i haven't gone back into the diffs on this page to research you and Berckowitz' interaction, but my suspicion is that both of y'all are rather new to Wikipedia -- as in weeks or months, but not years -- and don't really understand how, exactly, unscrupulous people can make pages like this really, really ugly. I can say, however, that after reading over the edits both of y'all have made in the last few weeks that you both seem like conscientious editors trying to work out a valuable page, and in that regard i think it's a minor tragedy that neither of y'all can seem to come to grips with the other.
Finally, i'd just like to add that if you think working with Berkowitz and me is a terrible burden, then you're in for an extremely rude and unpleasant awakening. There are groups of people who run around Wikipedia preying on people like us, and they are utterly unscrupulous in their methods. If you'd like more information, then feel free to e-mail me privately -- i'll give it out that way, links and everything. But let's just say that this topic is an extremely involved one, from whatever standpoint one comes at it, and that a man like Berkowitz -- who has a clearly encyclopedic knowledge of the subject -- and a guy like me -- who is undeniably adverserial in his comportment towards ANY topic -- and a guy like you -- who is a stickler for detail and balance -- well, that's just a kick-ass combination that is virtually guaranteed to produce a quality page.
And that's something that i think we could all be proud of. Stone put to sky (talk) 14:43, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, Stone put to sky (muses on screen names, but thinks about how I was known as AD03, my system ID at the US Labor Department) and recognizes it could be worse. Let me assume good faith by all, and try to explain some of my reactions/philosophies/whatever. To answer your speculations, I've been working with Wikipedia on the order of months -- might have been last June, might have been earlier. I'm looking at the earliest date of things such as my userpage, but I also recognize that in any online situation that will involve cooperation, I follow one of the IETF's pragmatic suggestions: lurk on a mailing list and learn something about the personalities and issues before posting. Unfortunately, there are a lot of difference between a professional mailing list, with real names, basically common goals, but also knowing that your personal reputation is important -- you may be working with an "adversary" at any given time. One of the IETF rules of thumb is that when there are fundamental differences, they really should be tried in the real world, and the equivalent of a content fork takes place in the research and development.

I freely admit that I am still studying the nuances of Wikipedia sourcing. First, when I'm preparing a Wikipedia post/article, my preference in sources are what I consider "authoritative", which I think are different than primary sources. In the case of network engineering, I go to the IETF or other documents that are the formal specification for what is being discussed. In intelligence, I first try to find any declassified documents on the subject, any interviews or autobiographical statements by participants; things I consider having specific knowledge but perhaps with bias. Next, I'm apt to look for things that have gone through some sort of review process, such as documents from a reputable policy think tank, peer-reviewed journals, or reports that, even if from a government, are going to go through some sort of adversarial review, such as by another branch of government or the press. There are some lesser-known but very thoughtful sources, such as the publications of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

I'm struggling with expanding an article on TECHINT, in that I am not sure it needs to split into tactical and national articles. That article came onto my radar as a result of working on the Farewell Dossier, which is in much better shape -- one thing I'll do is follow every link suggested as internal, and, if there is useful information and there are no copyright problems, I'll bring the material and cite inline.

Press reports, and popular books like Weiner's, are some of my last-resort resources, as they often either sensationalize or oversimplify. I've published four technical books, and they might have sold better with more sensation, so I understand the economic realities. Still, let me offer the paradigm that is in the back of my mind when evaluating any source: Intelligence collection management#Ratings by the Collection Department. I apply "smell tests" to reports, such as the cui bono test, or whether it fits the dates of known historical events, or the author has a known bias or a reason he'd like the article to be believed. I'd also suggest looking at least at Heuer's, Johnson's, and perhaps Krizan's online books on intelligence analysis--I'll go put in the links here after I do more on my coffee deficiency. Bad cough last night and didn't get a good rest. Another reference is the analytic tradecraft notebook, http://www.i2inc.com/Products/Analysts_Notebook/. Some material from Davis -- https://www.cia.gov/library/kent-center-occasional-papers/pdf/OPNo5.pdf

Here's a chapter from Heuer, but IIRC, it takes you to the table of contents: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/psych-intel/art5.html. Krizan is http://www.scip.org/2_getinteless.php. Johnston is https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/analytic-culture-in-the-u-s-intelligence-community/full_title_page.htm As a result of this, I'm putting a reading list on my userpage.

Does this give an idea why I'm very hesitant to put up fragmentary material, take single-sourced claims from POV sources, or, even more, unsourced POV claims? I think a difference between Ernx and myself, which he's commented on, is I am much less likely to post fragments.

Fragments are seeds which can grow into large topics. You didn't know about Casey and Tajikistan -- at all, judging from your reaction -- until I put a fragment in. Is the page better off without the fragment? If so, why did you bother to make me revise it 3 times? Why not just delete it?Erxnmedia (talk) 21:33, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

If I do have fragments -- I would encourage all interested to join the Military History Task Force's Intelligence Task Force -- I call for help, perhaps on a talk page. When, as in the Chad or JACK

Joint Advisory Commission, Korea is still not referred to on CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific page, just deleted. Is that better? The person who deleted it, are you ever going to put a reference to JACK on that page? If not, would you care to AfD the Joint Advisory Commission, Korea stubErxnmedia (talk) 21:33, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the CIA page is better because JACK was deleted. No, I don't want to AfD the JACK page, but simply do not want to link it, given the sources I have consulted, including the recently declassified Clandestine Services history of Korean covert operations, suggest JACK may not have been an operation, but a cover name. Psywarrior.com, a site I have found generally reliable, however, suggests JACK may indeed have had its own existence.
You and I seem to have some fundamentally different styles. When I find a fragment, I cross-check as much as possible before putting it into a page, as my best understanding of the subject. There are a few pages, not in the CIA series, where I started putting in fragments, and now I have a mess that I feel ethically obligated to clean up. In some cases, that may mean doing things like preparing graphics of conflicting timelines from different sources, so the reader can clearly see there is a conflict and be prepared for it in the text.
Speaking for myself, I will put a reference to JACK on the CIA page once I feel reasonably comfortable that I understand the reference, and it represents careful work.

examples, there is recognition, on the talk page, that there are things that are not reconciled, they aren't ready for the main page. That's why I was annoyed by having talk page comments pasted into the main article, since subject matter experts, on the talk page, agreed that further data was needed and the situation was ambiguous. I'm not opposed to writing a main page section that discusses the ambiguity and arguments, but that's a different form of writing.

Now, I have to confess I really don't know why there is a need to bring the covert action of the main page back to where it was.

For the 4th or 5th time: I am not bringing it back to where it was. Trav* brought it back on 04 Jan 08 to a mid-December state, thus trashing 2 weeks worth of work. That is where it is. I am simply annotating where it is, not reverting it. How many different ways can I explain that? It's not really that complicated. Still not clear? OK, let me try again. Referring to the current Covert Ops subsection of the CIA page:
  • There is Version(mid December), Version(03Jan08) and Version(04Jan08).
  • Version(04Jan08)=Version(mid December).
  • Version(03Jan08)=Version(mid December) - Inconsistent and Unsourced Content + Pointers to Branch Pages with New Material and surviving Version(mid December) content
  • Branch Pages = Version(mid December) + Additional Content - Deleted Inconsistent and Unsourced Content.
  • I am establishing a mapping between Branch Pages and Version(04Jan08) which = Version(mid December).
  • When it is clear that there is a reasonable mapping between Branch Pages and Version(04Jan08), I will replace Version(04Jan08) with pointers to Branch Pages. I define reasonable as "everything that was there in mid-December that didn't get booted for some unassailable reason is still there in the branch page".
No, I really don't understand what you are doing and why. I fully expect there is material in the branch pages that is not in the main page version of 04Jan08, and I believe that to be a very good thing. On 04Jan08, there was a good deal of material on the main page that was unsourced, and, after having a FACT tag on it for a month, no source was offered.
On 04Jan08, there were things that were fundamentally inaccurate due to terminology. If the article was title "US Intelligence", I would, for example, have no objection to saying the CIA tried to destabilize Albania in 1947. The article title, however, is about CIA, and CIA had no control over covert operations in 1947. That function was carried out by the Office of Policy Coordination, under Frank Wisner. Wisner was listed, somewhat confusingly, as a CIA official as well, but as is well documented in FRUS and other sources, he essentially could make his own rules -- if the DCI didn't like what OPC was doing, he had direct access to the Secretaries of State and Defense, and, as long as one agreed, he'd use that as authority. It was in 1952 when DCI Walter Bedell Smith found this intolerable from the standpoint of US government responsibility, and demanded and won that OPC, and the separate OSO for clandestine intelligence collection, were brought clearly into the CIA chain of command. Those two offices, with some other miscellaneous groups, formed the Division of Plans.
  • If you get a Sandbox out that reasonably replaces Version(04Jan08) before I get to the previous step, then I don't need to do the previous step. Also, feel free to delete any edit I make while following the above program.
My understanding was that the Sandbox wasn't dealing with covert action at all, but was a starting point to go through issues such as US government direction of CIA operations, the appropriate level of mentioning director management styles (but not biographies), and the role of other parts of the US government. That, in turn, would set a context for the branch articles that would include the responsibility of other parts of the US government for covert action, as well as making it clear CIA does other things besides covert action -- and those other things would be in the branch pagess.
Is that clear enough? Erxnmedia (talk) 21:33, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

My impression was Trav was cooling off and also was taking a break.

I thought, Stone, that there was some consensus to leave the main page alone

How are you going to leave a main page alone on such a central subject when it is full of nonsense, and the only reason it is full of nonsense is because someone reverted work done to vet nonsense and replaced it with old nonsense? Erxnmedia (talk) 21:33, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't think the main page, in its present form, can be fixed in the specific area of chronological history. Part of the problem with the existing main page is its use of bullets and dates, not Wiki headings, so there's no way to link internally, as well as link back from other articles, such as psychological operations (with the colors of propaganda), a possible article on US intelligence and WWII war criminals, director biographies, etc. I believe the only reasonable editorial hope is doing careful branch pages, with correct attribution of responsibilities to various US agencies, the inclusion of intelligence analysis and estimates, as well as covert action. Further, those branch pages would use Wiki headings by country/topic, date, and type of action, so they could reasonably be Wikilinked. When the branch pages are in reasonable shape, the main page "covert action" would be deleted. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 22:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

until some consensus came together in the sandbox, probably on content that would precede the split of CIA activities on the main page, to reasonably and obviously linked subordinate pages. There is content being added to those pages, and I was glad to see, for example, someone making the distinction between OPC and CIA in the 1945-1952 timeframe; CIA couldn't have done something if an autonomous group had the covert action authority.

OK, where do we go next? Incidentally, as far as adversarial -- one of my other areas is medicine, but sometimes I'm in the hospital bed rather than monitoring it. At that point, I tell people I'm an impatient, not a patient. It does help that I speak Doctor at a native level of proficiency, and, when I challenge a diagnosis or treatment, I usually can cite relevant studies that support my argument. At the very least, when I objected to a drug being prescribed, I had biochemical and pharmacological arguments. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:44, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

@Howard: I think what would be best right now is if you let me and Erxn work out the differences on this page. Right now, you and i have the sandbox. All i'm trying to do is persuade Erxn to get over to the sandbox and join in our collaborative effort. Does that sound cool with you? Stone put to sky (talk) 17:00, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Cool. One question: what about the subordinate historical/functional pages? I'm working on what I hope are noninterfering articles, such as fleshing out the Farewell Dossier, and also struggling with TECHINT -- the struggle there is whether or not "tactical" technical intelligence, and "national" science and technology intelligence (and possibly economic intelligence) can fit in the same article.
I mention these because research for that has turned up material quite relevant to things such as the transnational crime/drugs page, and I'd prefer to add that information while I'm working with it. At the same time, I'm trying to avoid conflict between the subordinate "general" pages and the "covert action" section on the main page.
As you have mentioned, there are people with agendas and people who want to do accurate research. Ernx and I both probably want to do the latter, but our methodologies are very different. I don't need additional heartburn, although it's frustrating when I see material going on a page, material that I can see is incorrect -- not incorrectly cited, but incorrect and possibly POV in the original.
Something to be thinking about, for which, perhaps, the idea of a "US intelligence and war criminals" page (or some title like that) is a start. Quite a number of things that were policies at the highest level of US government, often using military, economic, and other measures not under CIA control, that coexisted with CIA clandestine collection and covert action. It's terribly misleading, I believe, to say "the CIA" did something when, variously, it was part of an overall government program, or at least under higher-level orders. There are cases where the CIA indeed ran rogue, which, I suspect, happened a fair bit in MKULTRA. OTOH, there are a number of things where CIA is blamed but Army Intelligence might have done it, or a predecessor to the CIA. While I doubt many would like the term, the reality is that many sources, and contributions, don't make the distinction among the CIA proper, the US intelligence community, the national security policy of the United States (i.e., White House/NSC level), and predecessors to CIA.
Where did you want to start in the sandbox?

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 17:25, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

You can dress up a pig however you want...

You can dress up a pig however you want, it is still a pig

Wow, you guys have wrote a novel here. A couple of points:

  1. Any removal of information should go to an existing article, and be referenced in this article. This worked fine until morethanwords began deleting the entire section.
  2. Three editors different viewpoints here can be summed up in one sentence:
    The deletion of critical information on the main CIA page for POV reasons. I have a POV too, I want to keep this information for my own POV reasons. The difference between myself and these three is that I want to add and retain material to this page, whereas these three want to delete information from this article.
    What is the saying: You can dress up a pig however you want, it is still a pig.
    These three can dress up there edits however they want, but underneath it all, it is still deleting.
    I predict if I wouldn't have restored these edits, then eventually the 8 or 9 links at the top of the page would be removed, without a protest. This is exactly what happened with the Ford article, which has no mention of the Ford rollover controversy now.

It is a wonderful, tried and true way to silence dissent in wikipedia articles.


I don't have the energy to argue about this article.

For years I have defended encyclopedic and extremely well researched material from all variations of justifications for those who simply want to silence criticism.

Please, lets all show we truly want a NPOV article, and add some content to these controversial sections, with cited, sourced information, which just happens to support your own POV, [thats okay!].

  1. I suggest condensing all of the four of five CIA regional articles into one, then removing the section Covert Operations from this article, retaining a brief paragraph.
  1. I suggest redirecting the other four non-regional articles to this page.
  1. I appreciate everyones tact and courtesy. It is a really refreshing, pleasant change.

travb 10:44, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

So stick Ford rollover back in and keep reinserting it, but don't assume that your experience with other people on a different page automatically means that the same thing will happen on this page. Erxnmedia (talk) 05:42, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
You are imputing motives to me. What have I done other than add information while you have been actively deleting information?Erxnmedia (talk) 05:42, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
So take a multivitamin. Erxnmedia (talk) 05:42, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Pissing on the motives of people you don't know who have been adding lots of content to this page is not a good way to establish your credibility or add weight to your arguments.Erxnmedia (talk) 05:42, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
It is impractical to condense the regional articles into a single one. Wiki-preferred max length is around 80KB. CIA front page is way beyond that and needs to be trimmed by carefully thought out branching. Branching does not equal deletion. You can add branches to your watch list and guard against deletion. Or you can add them to your watch list and wipe and REDIRECT them every few hours if you like -- other people will guard against vandalism. If fully detailed by country with all publically available information, each country alone would expand to more than 80KB. Erxnmedia (talk) 05:42, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes you've implemented that suggestion by force numerous times without bothering with an AfD. Erxnmedia (talk) 05:42, 14 January 2008 (UTC
Tact is a two-way street. Your actions have not been tactful at all. What people do matters more to me than what they say. Erxnmedia (talk) 05:42, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I respectfully claim that describing all the activities of the CIA, including its orders from higher levels, its intelligence collection both overt and clandestine, its counterintelligence activities, its intelligence analysis, its role in coordinating estimates before the formation of the DNI, and its role in technology, in addition to covert action, is NPOV, not POV. Making half the main page criticism of the agency is non-neutral POV.
There is a very practical reason for moving things off the main page: sheer size. The argument that this is not restricted by the the factors that limit paper encyclopedias are valid up to a point; let me make observations here that are practical and logistical, and have nothing to do with POV.
  1. The more material in the main article, the longer it takes to load and save, which is inconvenient when using preview to check one's edits before committing them.
  2. The more material in the article, the more editors are likely to be working on it, and the higher the probability of edit conflicts.
  3. Wikipedia does not have the world's greatest text editor, and bots can do strange things. I spent an hour yesterday, on a much smaller article, reverting after a combination of edit conflict and some strange thing done by a bot. As it was, I had to save and re-edit at least three times before I got rid of all the text that was duplicated, sometimes in fairly random places (e.g., things that had been at the end were now in the middle and at the end.
For the size reason alone, I cannot see condensing the regional articles. Indeed, some are well over 100K, and may need to split further for the practical reasons immediately above.
It has been my observation that when one wants to be more detailed than "CIA did foo", the section describing it can get lengthy. If the discussion of a topic is to be NPOV, and I think I have demonstrated that I will bring up some incompetent or illegal things done by the Agency, this additional material needs to be there. I don't think it's POV, however, to mention some successful things, which are most often on the intelligence reporting and analysis side, as these are more likely to have significant declassified content.
Similar factors apply to the transnational articles. They certainly can point back to the main article, but, if they do that, it is appropriate for the good and bad about a topic, such as human rights, to be in the same article. It is not balanced to put KUBARK, without context, on the main page, but relegate Congressional controls and Inspector General investigations to the subordinate article. For the record, I am not pleased with the amount of redaction done on some of the IG reports, and I'm perfectly willing to put in as NPOV as possible sources to fill in some of those blanks. Sometimes, I think, those doing the redaction assume their White-Out or black pen is more powerful than they may think--I've seen redactions that only needed crossword puzzle thinking to fill in the blank ("let's see. SIGINT monitoring site in East Africa, six letters long").
Without even starting on covert action, may I suggest that intelligence, like laws and sausage, is one of the things where the details may be necessary but ugly? One reality is that some of the sources that have the information may be very bad people. To go into formal ethics, it is not unreasonable to consider Aquinas' Principle of Double Effect to decide whether one even talks to a given nasty source, with immunity a separate matter. Some of the decisions for immunity, when we saw what was handed over, were bad deals in retrospect. To take something before the CIA existed, I do not think there was enough potential benefit, even in an amoral sense, immunize a monster like Shiro Ishii.
In most cases, the controversial intellligence and covert action decisions were made by a National Security Level committee, not unilaterally by the CIA. Iran-Contra is probably the most rogue action since the covert action services came under firm CIA control in 1952. While I believe certain CIA officers should have resigned in protest, or sought Congressional intervention, over things like the Bay of Pigs, the reality is that proposal started under Eisenhower, but was then a much more viable military option. Kennedy watered it down to avoid controversy until it was suicidal. Bush and Cheney, and their ideologues, manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq, an overt act, but the point is the same: many of the "Family Jewels" started in the White House. Others, such as MKULTRA, did not.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 05:53, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Please Trav, in the interest of keeping things civil, please just stop refering to the edits I made previously, you have consistantly mischaracterized me. I made absolutely no deletions, I moved everything I edited. I admittedly did not do a good job with it, but in any case I think it would be best if we just drop that whole episode and move on. Thanks. (Morethan3words (talk) 06:40, 14 January 2008 (UTC))
User:Erxnmedia, please edit below my comments, do not break them up. Thank you. I fixed the section. Trav (talk) 16:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

O.k. -- So...

Up until now it appears that we've got a consensus on some basic issues (in no particular order):

  • Stop the random deletion of material until consensus is reached on how to proceed with it.
  • Maintain encyclopedic standards for the source material
  • Condense and link
  • Establish factual and historical consistency.
  • Ensure both adverserial AND sympathetic treatments of the subject are included (contingent on their factuality!)

That seems to cover pretty much everything we've been discussing so far, yah?

The method i have suggested is this: Howard (since it appears he has the most comprehensive grasp of the subject) will help us get a new framework to operate on; we'll develop it in the sandbox and go from there. Right now, i believe we're focusing on the Oversight, Budgeting, and bureaucratic chain-of-command. The real meat of the sandbox starts here, and it would be nice to hear what everyone thinks about it.

For my part i haven't gotten through it, yet. It is amazing work, though, and i think it's clearly a solid addition to the article. I worry, in fact, that its attention to detail and thoroughness means that it's going to go right over my head. I'll be looking at it carefully tomorrow and Tuesday. I look forward to seeing comments from you all. Stone put to sky (talk) 12:48, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey, that's a cute pig!
I agree, in principle, that it would be best simply to reference covert action from the main page, as long as the article(s) to which the links are made:
  • Contain all CIA and closely related action, such as approval (or lack thereof) of covert action, clandestine and overt intelligence collection, and intelligence analysis & estimating. In other words, the article should cover the full range of intelligence activity, not just covert action, as long as the article is about the CIA. Different guidelines would follow if the article was titled, for example, "US Government Actions in Regime Change", since an overt war certainly is a means of regime change.
  • Recognize that many actions attributed to the CIA involved other branches of the US government, jointly or independently. There's a good deal of declassified material showing that some of the worst offenses started in the White House.
  • Are of manageable size. I'd be concerned in trying to put all the regional articles in one page, simply due to size and the resultant technical problems. 200K-plus articles are visibly slow to load and save, and the more text in one article, the more likely an edit conflict. Just last night, on a peripherally related article, TECHINT, I almost lost an hours' work due to a bot conflict. While my edit summaries may be no more than "work-in-progress snapshot", I save more and more frequently, and often copy longer work to files on my own computer. This protects both against inadvertent edit conflicts, but also things like redirection.
  • Do you have thoughts on what is in the "sandbox"? User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-IntelOversight‎
  • Seriously, I'd like to understand your POV, interest, or whatever. If I understand, your POV is not so much political, as the saving of information. I hope my POV -- we all have them -- is that material needs to be consistent and verified as much as possible. A couple of examples: something attributed to the CIA before the agency, or at least its covert action section, existed. Another involved merging the geography and participants of two different conflicts.
  • Maybe as a continuation of the point above, I believe, without whitewashing, that the article should clearly distinguish between what was done by the CIA acting alone, under orders from higher levels, or was done by other government agencies. For example, one of the worst war criminals of WWII was given immunity in exchange for scientific data, but the agency involved was Army Intelligence, prior to the formation of the CIA. The US government has done, as have most other government, bad things. If this article was about US policy as a whole, I wouldn't be as concerned with attribution, but, as with an article on Soviet policy, it is historically important to differentiate among what was done by the Party, the Army, and the "Organs of State Security".
Thank you for your courtesy, and I dearly hope that even the strongest disagreements on content can avoid personalities and concentrate on substance. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 12:57, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

68.89.137.174 and Disputed Material in "Developing World"

Could you help me understand how the material concerns you, and what you think should be changed? I would ask only that we try to be clear about what was done by the CIA acting independently, under White House or equivalent orders, or by other agencies of the US government. As an example of the latter, the invasions of Grenada and Panama certainly were forms of regime change, but that did not especially involve covert action or even the CIA.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 13:10, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I dunno who made that edit but i consider it relatively minor. I see nothing wrong with the section, myself, but no doubt there will soon be calls for us to provide reliable sources to support the statements made there. Stone put to sky (talk) 13:55, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't mind losing the box completely, especially if the principles mentioned are clearly in the overall history, since the statement, as it stands, has a POV feel. It's perfectly valid to mention a militant anticommunism being at work, at least through Dulles, a reflexive anticommunism that was at the base of many of the support of dictators and things like the overthrow of Mossadegh -- but people in authority really thought that way. Later on, Casey had a goal of destroying the USSR government. Putting this information in historical context, however, is much better. Also, it should be clear that some of this caused major overt action by other parts of the US government. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:32, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

CIA history by director

This should go in page Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and that page should be added to purple CIA wiki box. Agree or disagree? Erxnmedia (talk) 14:40, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Agree with a qualification. If we are going to have a history of the agency, there are director actions or changes in management policy that affected the agency. For example, Turner and Schlesinger purged a lot of HUMINT people from the agency, some deadwood, some not -- and that affected CIA coverage in certain parts of the world. Casey definitely ran operations without permission. Smith forced the semi-autonomous clandestine and covert groups under the clear control of the DCI. Woolsey made economic information gathering, possibly for industry, a very high priority. There are other examples, but these should give the sense.Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:21, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
That would be a very good note to make on the Director... page itself. I think that page should then link to a list of former directors, each linking up to the appropriate page. How does that sound? 61.231.11.146 (talk) 20:46, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Ideally, I'd like to get some progress on the high-level history now in the sandbox, but I can move the directors now. Part of the reason is that I don't want to lose complete sight, in the main article, that certain individuals had substantial personal responsibility for problems, rather than the generic "CIA". By problems, I don't refer only to covert action; the Turner and Schlesinger purges of the Clandestine Service hurt HUMINT, although the degree of which isn't going to be obvious for a long time. Helms did get convicted of lying to Congress, although the Wiki article is pretty balanced -- he was in a situation where he probably would have told Congress the truth in a closed hearing, not the show they were demanding. OTOH, I find it fairly unforgivable that he ordered destruction of the MKULTRA records. If you don't count pre-CIA covert operators like Wisner, Casey probably qualifies as the most rogue director. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 21:50, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Moving Director Profiles

Does anyone have a problem with moving the section on the specific actions of CIA directors, as directors, to the page Director of Central Intelligence? Was anyone thinking of a completely new page, which I wan't? That page would look as it does now, but under the table of directors, which has links to the individual detailed biographies, I would put a heading that refers to their "style" (for want of a better term) under the table, and move the material in the main article to that heading.

There's a minor problem in that Goss and Hayden need to go into Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Goss would actually need to be in both DCI and DCIA.

I'd still want to reserve the ability to put director-specific information (e.g., the purges of the clandestine service by Turner and Schlesinger), perhaps Helms' criminal conviction, the rogue operations (e.g., Iran-Contra Affair under Casey) into the high-level Agency history, which I would assume would be on the main page. Such a history would include the major organizational changes (e.g., gaining control of OPC and OSO under Smith), things on oversight and budget, etc.
It would be best if I knew someone experienced with templates might put "directors" (and maybe types of propaganda?) in the template box. Does it need a "miscellany" section? Have we decided if it should move to the beginning of the article(s)? There's a similar, but shorter, navigation template in the MASINT series, and it works well near the beginning.
Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:35, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
OK, I have moved all the directors to the DCI article, and will sort out DCI/DCIA Goss and DCIA Hayden tomorrow. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 05:25, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree, and with the same caveat that Howard has, another example being the use of the CIA to attempt a block of the FBI Watergate investigation, which was a move made by top people at the CIA (most notably Helms himself), at the behest of Nixon. Also, on a side note, wasn't Wisner in charge of covert ops even after CIA was officially established? He was not DCI or even DCIA, I don't think, but I think it could be useful to have examples of guys like him that abused their position. Before anyone gets upset about watering down actions of the CIA by blaming it on the individual, I would point out that providing examples of abuse of power is not just a criticism of the individual, but of the system in which the individual operates (i.e., in this case, the CIA) that allowed such an abuse of power to occur. "Legacy of Ashes" is a particularly good resource on this point. (Morethan3words (talk) 08:17, 14 January 2008 (UTC))
After OPC, Frank Wisner was the first deputy director for plans (euphemism for operations, now National Clandestine Service). Richard Helms, incidentally, had been director of OSO, but was subordinate to Wisner.
Various parts of intelligence are stressful, and it's surprising how relaxed the agencies are about spotting an impending breakdown, getting help for someone, and rehabilitating them. I wish the military did as good a job on PTSD. Cryptanalysts, as one might reasonably think, tend to be obsessive, and one problem is that their legitimate job of finding patterns in apparent nonsense can spread to daily life. There's an informal test at NSA, where if you put a phone book in front of a cryptanalyst, he or she looks at the numbers trying to find a pattern but starts screaming or shaking, you make them comfortable and call the Office of Psychiatric Services. William Friedman, probably the greatest cryptanalyst in history, never could do operational cryptanalysis after his breakdown in 1940, but continued a distinguished career in other areas, including teaching.
CIA operations people can get very involved, emotionally, with agents or countries. It's not necessarily the best tradecraft, but it's human. Wisner was very involved with Hungary, and broke down after 1956. After treatment, he returned to a less stressful but prestigious job as chief of London Station, but still had his demons. He retired in 1958 and committed suicide in 1962.
BTW, I hope people don't mind, but sometimes, the talk page is an interesting place to share anecdotal background.Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 22:11, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I know I certainly don't mind, I think it's a good way of making sure everyone who is working on a page is, well, on the same page about certain facts that may come up in the editing process.

Also, related to the above, Weiner's book makes a lot of references to tolerance of rampant alcoholism in the early days of the CIA, Wisner and Dulles being provided as some of the more high level examples. I'm wondering what you guys think about this, should it be something that's included in our work here? If so, where?

I will say that Weiner does not really explicitly document this in any organized or exact kind of way, more simply in the descriptions of character of some of the people he talks about (e.g., "So-and-so was a clean-cut, well dressed, drunk who had greater talent for deceiving his superiors than the enemy," or some similar statement). (Morethan3words (talk) 11:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC))

Remember the time you are talking about with Wisner and Dulles. It was manly to smoke and drink heavily; no one was particularly aware of health risks, and people in stressful jobs would indulge even more. At some point, the US military woke up to the fact that all the "happy hours", the paratrooper initiation ritual in which one would drink at least a fifth of hard liquor, etc., were establishing a force full of alcoholics. Anecdotally, I had inlaws with some scary combat duty, and they drank to forget, while I worked in an office where most of the managers were retired Navy chiefs. If you needed their focus, you needed to be in there in the morning, before they went out and drank their lunches. Getting things signed was a problem, because they had the shakes in the morning -- and this was early seventies, so they were active in the fifties and sixties.
What you say doesn't surprise me, although I can't speak specifically to Wisner and Dulles. There's only a stub entry for William King Harvey, who was well known for not merely being drunk, but waving a gun in the office while drunk. If you read some of the more personal accounts of Bay of Pigs and other planning, you'll learn that Harvey both was a respected operations specialist and scared everyone. On the British side, Kim Philby, who had the US liaison job for a time, was an alcoholic, as well as several of the other Soviet assets of the "Cambridge five". The Wikipedia article is interesting because it does mention the Soviets getting him into rehabilitation. Gorbachev didn't make himself popular with an anti-vodka campaign, observing that by Western medical standards, a significant portion, even a majority of his population were alcoholics.
So, you've raised an interesting point that I hadn't considered in the overall behavior of that era. While I doubt there is any available research on alcoholism and mental illness in CIA, there are military studies that started making the high command aware there was a problem. As an aside, senior officers have commented that the Middle East deployments are rough on troops in many ways, but they specifically say that the Muslim ban on alcohol makes for better soldiers.
As I mentioned with some analysts, especially NSA, mental illness wasn't that uncommon, wasn't necessarily career-ending, but also wasn't necessarily well-treated. Counterespionage people, to some extent, needed to be somewhat paranoid, but when they went too far in that direction, you got the US and British molehunts, paralyzing the agencies involved.
It would be very interesting to see if there are some reputable sources here, and to see if there are any serious suggestions that mental illness and substance abuse may have contributed to some of the "family jewels". Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:34, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, that's a pretty good point, I suppose these things do have to be taken in context. I mean, time was that sailors got a daily ration of liquor, but they still managed to do some pretty impressive stuff for their time, not all of which was purely by luck.
Weiner, so far, seems more to imply that alcohol was affecting people's decision making abilities, but he doesn't come straight out and say it. To me this means that there is no concrete evidence of a specific abuse affecting a specific decision, rather an understanding of practice and assumption of effect. However, for encyclopedic purposes, I think we should only really concentrate on specificly documented cases, if any come up. If we go with the assumption that alcoholic practices universally affect decision making abilities, then nearly every article on sailing in Wiki would have to mention this issue, and nearly every article of historical events that take place between 1940 and 1980 would as well. (Morethan3words (talk) 07:24, 17 January 2008 (UTC))
Having woken up suddenly with a cough I thought was gone, I can offer some links, mostly managers well below director level, of whom I had heard had problems. Not sure how this could be brought in. Several of these related to Cuba, for which I found some rather interesting analysis, in the CIA journals, of the various internal investigations and counterclaims.
  • E. Howard Hunt: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1642197.ece (Rolling Stone article)
  • William Harvey. First source is something I find dubious, because he's mentioned as the representative of Division D, which is called the asssassination squad, but Division D (probably now called Special Collection Service, if that hasn't changed) was the Clandestine Service unit, rather technical, that was joint with NSA. NSA, or sometimes CIA Science & Technology, and later DoD, would build some sensor that had to be placed in a "denied area", so the CIA operations people would infiltrate and place it where it neeed to be. http://www.counterpunch.org/mazur01292005.html
Here's another example, and I can easily believe that Harvey was involved in assassinations, and, where poison was involved, it came from Sidney Gottlieb's chemistry branch in the Technical Services Division. http://www.crimemagazine.com/olson.htm
Unfortunately, most of my books are in storage, and I can't dig up accounts that I more or less remember. I did find that Norman Mailer's new novel, Harlot's Ghost, has Harvey as a main character -- but that's a novel.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 09:13, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, another thought on this. We'd have to be careful about the context in which someone is accused of making poor judgement as a result of alcohol abuse. For example, when an issue becomes a scandal, and efforts are made to discredit someone, alcohol abuse is an easy way of doing so. I think I remember that, during the Watergate scandal, someone actually testified before Congress that the Director of the FBI made a call to Nixon or some of his aides late at night and while obviously drunk. And then call records at both the White House and the FBI Headquarters clearly showed the call was made at about 10 AM or something like that, and others testified later that the director was perfectly lucid at that time. Obviously I'm not remembering the details too clearly, but that's the basic idea. In other words, we would have to make sure that when someone is being accused of alcohol abuse, it is not for political reasons, even if the accusation could meet some wiki standards on a credible source (such as Congressional testimony). (Morethan3words (talk) 08:38, 18 January 2008 (UTC))

Activities in Americas, not yet moved.

I put some comments inline, but there is a paragraph that seems to be editorializing without sources, and sourcing is available. My suggestion is we agree whether this is to be fixed

"The limitations of large scale covert action became apparent during the CIA-organized Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961" . Either the above needs sourcing, or clarification. As a brigade-sized amphibious landing, it was hardly covert. The location had been changed, and the force reduced, below what had been recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but that made Kennedy nervous. It is a matter of research to find out if the CIA managers understood and protested Kennedy's restrictions, or, which would be a limitation of covert planners dealing with a far larger operation than they necessarily understood. If they understood, they probably should have resigned in protest.

Without getting into a detailed analysis, some of the incredible mistakes made was that the ships were "administratively loaded", not "combat loaded", and critical equipment was not distributed among the ships. I recognize that I am using terms of art in amphibious doctrine, but if the CIA people didn't understand those nuances, they had no business planning a significant amphibious operation.

The issue of air support, especially when it was determined that at least two T-33's had survived the covert airstrike, is more straightforward -- Kennedy either needed to add US air, or order a retreat. To do otherwise was to have certain defeat and bloodshed.

One could argue that it was covert in the sense that US involvement was deniable, which was a JFK goal, but such things as overflights of US naval aircraft from the USS Essex make it hard to deny. The key limitation is that if you try a military -- hardly paramilitary -- operation, you either use the force deemed needed by military professionals, not politicians. It didn't work when Kennedy et al. changed the location and size of the Bay of Pigs, and it didn't work when Rumsfeld overrode military recommendations about force size needed in Iraq.

"The failed para-military invasion embarrassed the CIA and the United States world-wide. Recently de-classified documents show in written confirmation that President Kennedy had officially denied the CIA authorization to invade Cuba.[fact] Cuban leader Fidel Castro used the routed invasion to consolidate his power and strengthen Cuba's ties with the Soviet Union.[fact]. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:24, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Most of those quotes probably come from me reading Weiner, I will go back and quote Weiner directly if that's what I did. (Probably a weekend project as I left the book somewhere I get to on weekends.) Erxnmedia (talk) 15:13, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
It's worth checking the quote just for accuracy -- I can read the phrase "Kennedy had officially denied the CIA authorization" in several different ways. One is that "official" meant public and he was looking for plausible denial, which I think is probably accurate although I don't immediately remember what he said in public. It's also possible, however, to read the phrase is that he didn't authorize the CIA to have anything to do with the invasion, which is incorrect to the best of my knowledge.
Kennedy did keep cutting back what support the invaders would get, pretty much in real time. From my perspective, there was a point, perhaps not grasped if JFK wasn't listening to military advisors, that the plan was doomed, and CIA, JFK, or someone should have told Brigade 2506 to pull back anything not landed. Even if their landing had been completely successful, the location, and the level of popular support for Castro, would, IMHO, have had the operation fail, but later. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:05, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Improving flow

Realizing that the "History" section was without subheads, I started putting them in, although I need to think about the appropriate ranges of dates. The ranges, in any case, will overlap, due to what some people might like to call "domestic blowback": domestic operations triggered by the Vietnam War spread into politics and thus abuses.

As to abuses, I would suggest many of them logically drop into a history, probably as their own headings and marked CONTROVERSIAL or something like that -- but right now, there's no particular flow, or consistent level of detail, among the controversy items. Some link to more detailed articles, either CIA specific or not.

Some puzzle me as to why they have risen to the main article, such as supporting warlords in Somalia. Somalia is certainly not the only place this happens, and there is a much more detailed explanation of who, what, when and why in the Africa article. Much of the drug issues in Southeast Asia involved what could easily be called "warlords", not that the term has any consistent meaning beyond "large gang leader" or "somebody we don't like". I guess warlords stop being such when they take over countries, and then usually become "dictators". I am not proposing that any detail be lost, but just to be editorially consistent about level of details.

Others of the controvesies, I believe, are different sides of the same issue and can be combined. For example, Watergate-related activities and the Warren Commission matters are both aspects of interference in public/governmental affairs. Several deal, in one way or another, with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, both the intelligence issues leading up to it and the operations after it started. There are other examples where I believe items can be combined without loss of information, but with better flow. In some cases, a controversy may have much more text than others in the main article, and it may not be more significant ones with a shorter writeup. Indignation doesn't substitute for reasonable editing.

So far, I've deleted nothing, added some explanatory text in the history, and moved some things around. Suggestions and comments are appreciated. There are other areas for editorial balance, such as how much covert operation approval belongs in the "organization" section, and how much in the "history" section. My first impression is that the older details should be moved to the appropriate history section, but with enough internal wikilinking to make it clear there is an approval process. Interestingly, no one has really brought out that Casey (e.g., Iran-Contra) probably ignored oversight more than any DCI after 1952, when covert operations and clandestine intelligence came clearly under DCI authority. Now, Casey was a dying man during the latter parts, but I find it ironic that the only DCI ever convicted of something was Helms, and that had some political quality -- he lied in an open Congressional hearing, but there's a good deal of opinion that he was trying to maintain security, and would have given the full details in closed session. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:12, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Sandbox

I see 5-10 edits discssed in the above 3-4 sections which are being referred to Sandbox.

I'm not sure how Sandbox works. My sense is that it is a bunch of people working on a massive edit, which will then go in one gulp into the page. Meanwhile as this massive edit is being pondered, the page will slowly move away from the edit with changes from other people not in the Sandbox group.

So then when the massive edit is put in, stuff put in the page between the Sandbox branch and the edit will need to be merged or get lost.

At which point the people not in the Sandbox will get mad at the Sandbox edit and start another revert war.

It doesn't seem like an efficient or convergent process to me.

How about (since I didn't get response from anybody except the 3 of us to my RFC above), just continuing to have a go at the real page?

As it is now I am afraid to touch the real page for fear of disturbing somebody's aesthetic or political or referential sensibilities, but I don't like leaving the page in a junky state. Erxnmedia (talk) 05:19, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Heh. I share your trepidation. Thanks to my experiences on another page I, unfortunately, completely understand what you mean; but i really do believe the sandbox is the best way to go with this. I think that if we start off with the suggestion above -- HCB's first crack -- then it'll be an easier thing to move to other parts of the page. As i said before: i dont' think the first part of the article is all that bad (certainly not in comparison to some other WP articles!). My sense is that you're most disturbed by the lower part of the article, the list of covert actions; might i suggest that you start up a sandbox there, and elicit feedback in that way? As i've indicated above, there are competing cabals of editors here who seek to out-do one another for immaturity (though, oddly enough, some of them are led by clearly middle aged men and women - go figure).

Oh, I find them on political blogs as well, and in other venues. One funny one is watching a friend of mine, who is a retired Air Force Senior Master Sergeant parajumper, now teaching college history and working on his doctorate in East Asian studies. His politics are on the radical-liberal side of the political spectrum, yet he went back to Iraq for two tours as a private military company VIP escort, as much for his medical than for his combat skills. His injuries on the last tour finally got the desire out of his system. He just doesn't fit anyone's stereotype, but tends to be very impatient with historical accuracy on blogs.

These groups fall on two sides of this issue -- the "Let it be defined by its obscenities!" crowd, and then the "Amur'ca first! We're the best, DOOD!" crowd. For my part, i am an unwilling expatriate whose experiences have led him to a fierce distate for the latter group; consequently, i tend to get lumped into the first by default, but in truth i am really only interested in sound historical and political analysis.

I think we are getting to agreement that I don't especially fit in either of those groups. Sound analysis is also my goal. In this and some other areas on Wikipedia, I have both the benefit and problem of personal knowledge of the subject matter, which means I may know something, but I have to find sourcing. This happens almost as much in computer networking as with the CIA, with certain people insisting on things that I've heard beginners make, in classes I've taught, for many years. In most cases, though, I can source my argument, not necessarily with an explicit counter to theirs, but with authoritative documents. If, in some cases, I am an author or coauthor of the document or book, they are sufficiently peer-reviewed not to need peer review.
Here, though, I may know the exact document that addresses the subject, but it exists only in hard copy, and I may not be able to cite it with enough precision. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:43, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Several questions. You are correct that the covert action emphasis in the article, covert action without context, bother me most. My first thought was that I could copy the subsidiary geographic articles into sandboxes, since they partially address the covert-action-only approach. I say partially, as there are still allegations that are no more than "CIA installed president; CIA overthrew president", or "CIA trained police", without any context or often sources. I have had FACT tags on some of these for over a month.
Then, it occurred to me that perhaps what should go into the sandbox is the section, on which I've been working locally, on oversight and approval of operations. No whitewash here; I thing Congress has shown no courage, and the Executive, in multiple administrations, even with Presidents I respect, has pushed that to the limit (see, for example, Eisenhower's meeting with legislators after the U-2 incident, and how he was reluctant to accept any Congressional oversight).
Such a section also might include the notes I made yesterday about the influence of directors on operations, avoiding OR as best as I can. What do people think of moving the director history page now in the main page to a new article, and then putting the working notes on director effect into the sandbox article, or perhaps a separate sandbox, about directors? While I'm hesitant to touch the main page very much, you will find that I moved the definitions of white/gray/black propaganda to Psychological operations (United States), which I then updated significantly.
I agree Director History should go to its own page with a wikilink in main page and short summary in main page and add CIA Hist by Directory to CIA purple box template. Erxnmedia (talk) 16:27, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

What i mean by all of that is simply that if we start making big deletions on the page without giving a clear indication of the direction we'll be moving it then it's sure to spark a fierce and unpleasant edit war. I'd much rather approach this thing gradually and peacefully and would really, really like to avoid all that; at the same time, should a really fierce edit war erupt it's likely to do nothing to help the page and a lot to hurt it -- and as my first example, i hold up the page as it currently exists. That's the result of edit-wars. With HCB here, i think we've got a balanced person who's open to rational exposition, and i'm very happy to work with him to change this page in a gradual fashion. Yeah, it looks like hell now - but pecking and pawing at it without first establishing where we want it to wind up at is not likely to do any good. What say you? Stone put to sky (talk) 09:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

One thing I could do is wikilink point-by-point the elements of covert ops section which are in branches now. This is tedious but demonstrates the point that the information was not lost (and was greatly expanded upon -- which point was apparently lost on Trav* who must not have read the pages at all prior to emptying them of content and redirecting back to main page).

Alternatively I am willing to let the LIBDBIO contingent claim victory by default (I admit to being in the middle-aged contingent), because, even though this is just cyberspace, I really have no desire to get into pissing contests via delete key with agenda-mad reading-averse Wikidenizens. Erxnmedia (talk) 12:23, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

(the following was inadvertently deleted!) -- Heh. Yeah, i'm part of the middle-aged group, too, and i totally know where you're coming from. Long ages ago i knew a fella called those folks "pecker stretchers", and i always thought it an apropos term. But regarding the stuff about redirects, etc: i really don't follow what you mean. Could you explain more clearly what you're trying to say? I'm not trying to be obtuse, it's just that sometimes all this wiki-terminology just goes right over my head. Stone put to sky (talk) 13:24, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
By "Redirect" I mean that someone editing under an IP address (no account name) has been systematically blanking the branch pages and adding a Wiki instruction of form curly-curly-hash REDIRECT Central Intelligence Agency close curly-close curly which causes you to jump to main page. This is wholesale vandalism and has been quickly reverted when it happens by vandal bots and humans. (Don't ask me what a vandal bot is but they're out there.)
Without deleting anything, I am going to put a wikilink to same info in branch pages.
Note that I have discovered a number of instances where info currently in main page was deleted in branch page. In those cases I have restored the info in the branch page.
The result looks like a CDC 6400 assembly language dump on the main page, but what can you do? Erxnmedia (talk) 14:35, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Call Seymour Cray? :-( ?Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 01:38, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Updated link to sandbox

User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-IntelOversight

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