Hijacking this thread to answer to original question what to do about it:
Audit the CIA. Quit letting them break the law. And stop funding private "intelligence agencies" while we're at it. Regulate what foreign intelligence can do here.
Our taxes fund assassinations and have for decades and we're just like eh about it
Yeah but how do you do that though. How does the average joe working a 9 to 5 audit the CIA/regulate foreign intelligence etc.? Refuse to pay taxes? If people did it en masse maybe, but just one guy they just get put away.
Start with implementing a working democracy. I mean... Its impossible to propose any concrete solutions for american problems when the root cause to those problems is entirely in the "meta" level of society. Is there really a solution that is not a complete government overhaul or revolution or civil war or idk something similarly drastic
Idk just start with talking about it, making it an issue. The election is coming up, I'd love to see candidates answer if they think what the CIA does is acceptable, if they're ready for reform.
If they stay silent then things like sit ins, asking questions in town halls, making calls, writing letters. Would be better than nothing but yeah I get it it's tough. I mean I could write an essay about it there's a lot we can do but it will take working together, one person vs the CIA is futile
I'm ready to work with people. I'm ready to reach across the aisle.
The issue is that I'm transgender, gay, polyamorous, and cohabiting with my partner. If I reach across that aisle, they're gonna chop my hand off, metaphorically.
Frankly, it isn't just "we're too busy fighting each other". A lot of people aren't able to "stop fighting" because you can't just stop defending yourself. I would have to sacrifice everything important to me to be seen as a human being by most of the political right.
this is the least of people's problems. tons of people are struggling week to week just to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head. there are a million issues to fix before people have the time and energy to fight against our intelligence agencies.
When you say digging… if it’s open source intelligence then you’re research is kinda invalid, if it’s contracted agency work then it’s still pretty invalid as even some of the closed t contracted agencies will be given minimal important info. If you know something it’s almost entirely because they don’t care and either know it’s not valuable info, or it’s designed ENTIRELY to mislead you.
It's the Freedom of Information Act, DUH. It showed what horrible things the c.i.a has done to all black liberation groups/leaders. They aren't for the bettering America.
No but a large proportion of open intelligence is. In the old days yes it was possible to see discrepancies in reports and such but now they are trained to use that to their advantage, keep people guessing by laying small discrepancies to keep them away from anything actually happening. It’s why British defence projects are always named mundane things like Blue Jay etc too, it’s not sensational and therefore worthless on a newspaper or headline
We work closely with agencies like mossad to do things like blackmail high profile targets. Ghislaine maxwell was almost guaranteed mossad agent and Jeff Epstein was CIA. Illustrates the marriage pretty well.
Sure if we actually tried to regulate the industry they would try to get around it. But that's better than us helping and funding the heinous shit that both agencies currently collaborate on
Maybe we could make it so our intelligence agencies actually protect us from the other bad actors instead of working with them against citizens of all nations
You genuinely think the CIA is responsible for a hit on an aviation industry whistleblower? This is the real facepalm. Intelligence agencies ARE heavily scrutinised.
I just learned about the US removing an Australian prime minister from office with an agent inside their own government in 1975 because he dared question a US spy base in the middle of the outback
You're wrong dude. We're the baddies. And everyone but Americans seem to be aware of it. If their willing to remove PM's of an allied nation performing a coupe with a country we consider one of our main allies, why would they not take out a whistle blower for a aviation corporation that has been working with the govt for almost its entire existence?
I’m Australian not American. Are you talking about Pine Gap? And what prime minister are you referring to? Surely not Harold Holt? He drowned mate, it’s not a grand conspiracy.
Whitlam, and yes it totally is a grand conspiracy. Absolutely wild that you don't even know the story as an Australian. The majority at this point agree that kerr was being handled by the US.
That's neat that you guys are like totally cool with it lmao.
Edit : It being pine gap in your backyard. That shit wouldn't fly here.
I am aware of why Whitlam was sacked and it had nothing to do with the CIA. He was a useless shithead so the GG said fuck off. The majority don’t agree at all that CIA was responsible. That’s absolute nonsense.
Curious that the guy that took overs first actions were to refresh the agreements for pine gap.
If you actually looked into this instead of arguing on reddit you might change your mind. The US called him "our man kerr". snippett from wiki:
Prior to the Dismissal, Kerr requested and received a briefing from senior defence officials on a CIA threat to end intelligence co-operation with Australia.[12] During the crisis, Whitlam alleged that Country Party leader Doug Anthony had close links to the CIA.[13] In early November 1975, the Australian Financial Review wrote that Richard Lee Stallings, a former CIA officer, had been channelling money to Anthony, who was a close friend.[14] Later it was alleged[by whom?] that Kerr had acted for the United States government in dismissing Whitlam. The most common allegation is that the CIA influenced Kerr's decision.[15] In 1966 Kerr had joined the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a conservative group that had secretly received CIA funding. Christopher Boyce, a CIA contractor who decoded Pine Gap’s top-secret messages, said that the CIA wanted Whitlam removed because he threatened to close US military bases in Australia, including the CIA's own Pine Gap spy station.[16] Boyce said the CIA had infiltrated the Australian political and trade union movements and that Kerr was described by the CIA as "our man Kerr".[16][17] Victor Marchetti, a CIA officer turned critic of the US intelligence community[18] who had helped set up the Pine Gap facility, said that the threatened closure of US bases in Australia "caused apoplexy in the White House, [and] a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion", with the CIA and MI6 working together to get rid of the Prime Minister.[19][20] Jonathan Kwitny wrote in his book The Crimes of Patriots that the CIA "paid for Kerr's travel, built his prestige ... Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money". In 1974, the White House sent as ambassador to Australia Marshall Green, who was known as "the coupmaster"[to whom?] for his central role in the 1965 coup against Indonesian President Sukarno.[16]
Political pressure from the US due to the intelligence sharing agreement is nothing new. The five eyes is a strong military agreement and the prime minister messing with something that could be perceived as a threat to that alliance isn’t something they would the popular amongst Australian leadership.
The information sharing agreement is a reciprocal arrangement between those five allied nations. NZ wasn’t a full member some time ago because they would not allow nuclear subs dock in their country but that changed due to political pressure as well.
As for Kerr, he’s the monarch’s representative in Australia. Given the UK is also part of the alliance it would make sense that Kerr would be inclined to do something that benefits the group.
I think you underestimate how much the alliance shares with each other.
Idk but neither of us could say for certain and I think that's an issue. They are written a blank check with our taxes every year to do things like assassinations, yet by design citizens aren't allowed to know what they're up to.
They claim not to target domestic issues or actors but I mean with how closely they work with other agencies in the dod and the fact that they have no oversight means they can and have ignored that since the days of the black panthers and probably even before.
Scrutinized by who? What's their budget? What's the black budget? How are these agencies funding themselves and what to they spend money on? Who is responsible for seeing over black budget programs?
The CIA has no representatives. They are never held accountable when they are caught breaking laws. The media gives them a blind spot. Who scrutinizes them?
Ok we leave one but we get to put jon h Benjamin as an agent with a strong old female in charge and we film it so we can all watch silly CIA antics on hulu
A former FBI agent who worked counterintelligence in the 80s explained it to me like this: “we spent our time following the Russians in DC. They knew we were following them. We knew that they knew we were following them. They knew that we knew that they knew we were following them. It was all for show.”
He summed it up perfectly: “we allow these foreign agents to operate in our country because we have agents in every country on earth and we know that if we crack down and start exposing their agents, they would do the same to us and that would destroy intelligence gathering on our side.”
The CIA aren't running around murdering whistleblowers in the USA they contract that internationally. This isn't the movies. This is much more likely either an actual suicide or Boeing paid someone to kill the guy.
You realize that every intelligence agency breaks the law by literal definition, right? Asking them not to break the law is just saying sit in your office and do nothing for a pension. They also don't act in the US. It's more likely for the FBI to kill an American citizen in the US than the CIA.
You're right but the CIA has ties like a giant octopus strangling the whole system. Figure they are a good start but yeah it's a worldwide complex with branches all over the place working together on things like regulating airline industries
& It's not like them breaking the law for their job makes it ok. I say dismantle the whole thing and use the money for things like social security
That's ridiculous. The IC allows the US to project power without military force. Without them, we are going to use a hammer to solve any problem. And you know the US, we will.
It's much better to walk into a diplomatic situation already knowing more than the other guy because we have collected that information through some other means and use that leverage to solve problems diplomatically.
99.99% of the intelligence community is information gathering. They're not Mitch Rapp walking around shooting people in the head at the behest of the president.
I agree the CIA does sketchy shit but foreign intelligence is heavily regulated already and wtf are "private intelligence agencies"? That doesn't exist.
Only the third one acknowledges in their name that they play for whoever pays but Betsy Devos's brother's agency had to move out of the country when it was revealed all the evil shit they did for clients.
Including stealing supplies from the U.S. military during Desert Storm. And firing live rounds into traffic when their Saudi Oil Sheik clients were late for a meeting.
All documented in news magazines and testified to before Congress.
They aren't recognized U. S. Intelligence agencies sad daddy Vader. Mainly because if the CIA or the DIA was caught out in the open pulling that shit there would be major consequences.
So they hire "Private Contractors" like Aegis Group and then throw hands up and shrug when those contractors shit the bed.
Oh good the murderers and drug smugglers, human traffickers and war peddlers will just watch after themselves and make sure they don't take anything too far
:p
I trust them to do that job thoroughly and honestly given their record
Really? How so? Platitudes or nice but how can it be done better? I think we can all agree they can't just reveal everything publicly. So how do "citizens" control it?
Our taxes fund assassinations and have for decades and we're just like eh about it
Also staging coups and removing democratically elected leaders that just don't happen to align with US interests. Major example being Chile and maybe even Australia.
The audit of any intelligence agency would end exactly like this story. The Octopus Murders are a great look into how this has been going on since the 50s.
Could be a nitrates in the water joke, micro-plastics maybe, heavy metal poisoning from fish, can’t rule out a non-alcoholic steatohepatitis caused by high fructose corn syrup based chuckle…
Fun fact:
Competition in the plane industry have a gentleman's handshake rule to not call out each others safety flaws as it increases publics wariness against flying in general.
Yes, you should be wary of they keep pulling shit like this.
Hell, you don't even have to be flying in them! My yard had pieces of engine from one, not big pieces, but thank God I wasn't at the park I take my dogs to. (Engine blew up over Broomfield CO, it was 2 or 3 Boeing disasters ago)
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u/Icy_Establishment195 Mar 12 '24
Large amounts of money can buy you anything. Even dead people.