"The Hazards of Private Spy Operations"

February 2, 2005 9:14 PM

The Pond is the history of a secret, independent US intelligence-gathering group which preceded (and outlasted) the OSS. Shuffled from Cabinet to Cabinet to the CIA, it eventually ran aground against the infighting of McCarthy's Red Scare hearings and was no more by 1955.
posted by trondant (8 comments total)

The CIA studius journal is pretty rad, isn't it?
posted by ph00dz at 5:20 AM on February 3, 2005

Nice post, thanks.
posted by atchafalaya at 6:37 AM on February 3, 2005

Great post trondant - my uncle was in OSS in WWII in China & subsequently in CIA. Tihs kind of stuff makes great reading. Am currently reading "A Different Kind of War" by Adm. Milton Miles, under whom my uncle served - also a very good read.
posted by Pressed Rat at 7:12 AM on February 3, 2005

[this is good]
posted by gd779 at 8:15 AM on February 3, 2005

Good post.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 2:11 PM on February 3, 2005

Thanks for the great post.
posted by nj_subgenius at 5:18 PM on February 3, 2005

I was saying to trondant last night on #mefi how interesting the politics of this article is. Clearly there are issues of present concern obliquely referenced, and clearly there are ideological battles within the Agency today wherein the article is playing some sort of role, though what exactly is difficult to see. The same caution reading this is warranted when reading a Seymour Hersh article: though the content is more often than not largely reliable, there's a subtle slant in its mere publication, and you wonder whose ox is being gored.
posted by dhartung at 9:44 PM on February 3, 2005

Excellent point, dhartung; I had been wondering exactly the same thing myself. I read the article as a warning of the dangers of stovepiping intelligence, i.e. a very indirect and coded criticism of Rumsfeld, Cheney and their minions, written from the perspective of a CIA insider. (In other words, it suggests that some people in the CIA are extremely pissed off with the current administration -- but then we knew that already, from Seymour Hersh's articles.) The author makes one glancing allusion to current affairs, right at the end of his article, where he mentions the Iraqi National Congress as one of the organisations "that have been able to peddle tainted intelligence because their operations were insufficiently transparent in Washington" (meaning: "because their information wasn't properly channelled through the CIA").
posted by verstegan at 1:38 AM on February 4, 2005