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Comment

The below comment was put directly into the article and then reverted by another editor, so I'm moving it to the discussion page for comment. (Morethan3words (talk) 11:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC)) -P.S., I'll work on the war criminals article over the weekend, sorry for not responding earlier:

"The above says that the primary function of the CIA is to "The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. Its primary function is collecting and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers." THIS IS NOT CORRECT. The primary function of the CIA is to prevent strategic surprise. For a fantastic book on the CIA read THE MAIN ENEMY by Milt Bearden and James Risen. - 71.167.4.142"

I'm sorry, but while that single book may say that, it is flatly wrong. Such a statement would be correct for the United States Intelligence Community or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, but the CIA, before and after the formation of the ODNI, was neither the only agency that could detect potential surprises, nor do the analysis leading to it. As an example, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, it had been impossible to confirm agent reports, but the first solid evidence of a Soviet buildup came from NSA intercepts. It was then a joint military-CIA decision to ask for Presidential permission for U-2 and RF-8 overflights, which brought back the critical photographic evidence, analyzed by the National Photointerpretation Center (NPIC), run by the CIA but an interagency group. The State Department Bureau of intelligence and research has an outstanding record for predicting political trends, although it has no intelligence collection capability of its own. Pat Lang, who held a DIA job comparable to a CIA National Intelligence Officer, was the analyst that put together the smoking guns that Iraq was going to invade Kuwait, and tried to get the US government moving beforehand. DIA is the central agency for MASINT, just as is CIA for HUMINT, NSA for SIGINT, and NRO/NGA for IMINT.
How, incidentally, does the function of collection and analyzing information exclude the possibility of warning of strategic surprise? At least some of the current intelligence functions of CIA have moved to the ODNI (at least the Office of Current Intelligence people that do the President's Daily Brief and other high-level documents, as well as the National Intelligence Council that does NIEs.). Still, the CIA seems to have kept its main Watch Center. The national counterterrorism, counterproliferation and counterintelligence centers are in the ODNI, although they get analytic support from CIA and other agencies.
I suggest you look into NOIWON, and why it would exist if CIA was the agency solely responsible for warning. Also, I suggest you get an account rather than posting anonymously such that there is no place to send comments to you. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:46, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Terrorism sub-article

I really don't want to get into a revert war, but I believe there is a consensus among several editors that the detailed material on transnational terrorism needs to be in the sub-article created for that purpose, CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 10:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Moves to CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities

I moved your material to CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities, deleting no content, but breaking out by date so it can merge. Please try to work with several of us in getting the detailed material off the main CIA page. You have good content there, and there is good content in the sub-article. Please work with us, and not get into a revert war. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 10:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The sub-article has a general introduction, and then a chronology of Agency involvement with terrorism and counterterrorism. An introduction, and then a chronological presentation, has worked well for other transnational issues, and for country-specific issues.

Again, I plead that you work with us. If you are dissatisfied with the move, perhaps a third party reading this will comment. I'd really hate to distract us with mediation or arbitration, but, for practical reasons, we have to think very carefully before adding substantial text to the CIA main page. I'm hoping to get it to be 100K once the media/opinion sections and inappropriate domestic surveillance/security sections move; there is a draft of the first, very rough, in my sandbox; it was written before the need to split the two became more obvious, but feel free to look at User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-Influencing.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 10:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Abridging at your request

I am abridging the 3rd post of your verbatim material, in good faith, and don't consider this 3RR because it is editing with at least some discussion. Any other editors familiar with this material, please, please add your input.

I am not completely clear what you mean by having a "summary of each topic", since the CIA has worked with terrorism beyond al-Qaeda. If the details of al-Qaeda stay on the main page, then, logically, there should be a summary of every terrorist organization that the Agency has tracked, supported, or attacked.

Please work with me to have what you consider fair abridgement, within the goal of keeping all your contributions but to put them in a place with much more space and contex. Please work with several of us in our efforts to reduce the size of the main CIA article, without losing content. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 11:02, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

New material again placed on main page, moved to terrorism sub-article

I believe it fair to say there is a consensus to reduce the size of the main page, without losing any content, by moving material to sub-articles. Again, however, the terrorism section of the main page had new material added to it by an editor with whom there had been an exchange here, indicating how the material was moved.

In the previous attempt, the other editor was very concerned there was a summary of the material on the main page. I accepted that as a compromise (see #Abridging at your request above. That still left more characters, on the main page, than for any other sub-article. Today, I again found new material added to the main section, although the sub-article had been discussed with the editor who made the changes. Regretfully, I consider this a change, without discussion on the article talk page (not my talk page, as this is an issue affecting all interested in this account), of what I believed to be a consensus.

My own opinion is that under the spirit of the consensus of using sub-articles, there is too much text in the main article on CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities, for which there is a sub-article in which the topics here are discussed at greater length. If we cannot come to a consensus of basic summary on the main page and expansion in the sub-article, I could be bold and simply cut down the main page summary.

It seems more in the spirit of Wikipedia, however, to mention this, and get opinion from the community. I had planned on making the next move and main page conversion to summary, in a few days to allow comment, to CIA influence on public opinion.

I really think there is some level of consensus that the main article is still too long, although we have made significant improve it. My goal is to get it, minimally, under 100K, because new topics may arise and need to be posted. It's possible, for example, that some of the history needs to move into a subarticle.

Please, let's work together for the NPOV goal of reducing page size. I don't think anyone is doing POV-pushing by trying to put details on the main page, although that was an issue before and worked out through dialogue.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Let's avoid a revert war

May I ask why this material, already in the sub-article, keeps moving back to the main page? A wide variety of Agency activities are in sub-pages, and the main page is mostly links to them plus agency-wide history and organization? Repeating not just terrorism in general, but mostly the material about al-Qaeda in the U.S., seems to violate WP:WEIGHT, since things of much larger scope (Second Place, Southeast Asian War Games, 1945-1975) manage successfully in their sub-pages?

Indeed, even some of the sub-pages are getting large enough to consider hiving off the larger subjects, but that works neatly: a region or a country can become a sub-article without breaking the flow.

On other topics, there was no complaint on moving CIA and public opinion, or US intelligence and war criminals, to their own articles. No information has been lost in these moves.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 00:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Subarticle on influencing opinion, to receive text from main page influencing opinion/law enforcement

In my userspace, there is a draft User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-Influencing, which deals with CIA activities to influence news, labor and cultural organizations, etc., which started in the Cold War context of providing a balance to Communist opinion-molding groups. This draft article does not:

  • Deal with tactical psychological operations, as, for example, to start rumors that would help a coup attempt. I propose that such operations be discussed under the country and year of the event; the discussion here is about strategic efforts in multiple countries and/or the US
  • Deal with CIA interaction with domestic law enforcement or invading the privacy of US citizens. There is a less well-developed draft on that topic, also in my userspace, User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-invasion. There is more I want to do to that before a general review.

I do, however, invite review and talk page comments -- or, if you want to make inline edits, please explain them with inline comments. In particular, I am looking for more opinion-influencing activity after 1967.

If we can get consensus on the draft, I propose to move all but a summary of these events off the mainpage, replacing it with a wikilink to this subarticle.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Other questions about material that should or should not go into this article

Should this subarticle deal with:

  1. Censorship of works by former CIA employees that signed a secrecy agreement?
  2. Attempts to censor other works, such as McCoy's work on the politics of drugs in Southeast Asia?

There is coverage of the McCoy matter in the transnational drugs article, but, as I think about it, this might belong either in both places or here. I didn't yet cover things such as Marchetti & Marks, but I can't think of another place to put such material than this subarticle.

Also, what about the report of CIA editing to Wikipedia? My personal opinion is that there is more smoke than fire here, for two reasons. First, there are people at CIA that are experts in various subjects and could make legitimate contributions. I don't know CIA's policies, but I would guess there are at least three categories:

  1. Editor, a CIA employee, makes an edit in his or her generic field of expertise (e.g., early immunization by Jenner and Pasteur), or in an academic area that bears on it (e.g., epidemic infectious disease). If the individual were an analyst in the branch that does medical intelligence, this might be acceptable to do on the job, and would be treated much as would be a letter to the editor of a journal. I assume here that the boundaries of what needs review, under the employment contract, are maintained. If not, that is an internal CIA matter, not one for Wikipedia
  2. Editor, a CIA employee, with authorization to publish (e.g., someone in the office of the historian) contributes objective material about US intelligence, especially historical material where the sources have just been declassified and made available. This also would include cases of citing, with an accessible reference source, a CIA policy.
  3. Editor, a CIA employee, makes changes that reflect a position the CIA, on a policy level, wants to push, a policy that may or may not call for complete verifiability and source reliability.

Case 3, to me, is the only one that is problematic. Does anyone know of edits that seem to be in that category?

I'd also note that CIA IP addresses can be spoofed.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 13:17, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

First of all, I'm sure that spoofing of the IP address would actually be too much of a hassle here. But the report is pretty pointless anyway — It only notes edits done by "anonymous" editors, who either have no account or are not logged in. It does not count any edits by CIA employees who are logged in, nor those by CIA employees who are not logged in but post from a computer with an IP address outside the range assigned to the CIA.
If the CIA wanted to manipulate Wikipedia in some way by bad faith edits, I would expect them (of all people) to just get one (or several) account(s) from a Gmail (or similar) address and make the changes with some finesse, not like some boob stationed in, say, Gitmo or some politician running for an office (or his aide) trying to smear his opponent, thinking nobody could ever track them down if they didn't give their name.
IOW any of those edits shown by Wikiscanner either were not done "by the CIA" but by somebody who merely works at the CIA — or by somebody who shouldn't be working for the CIA because he blew his cover. Lars T. (talk) 15:44, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I think we are in general agreement; I don't see CIA using or contributing to Wikipedia as a major scandal. There are highly inappropriate activities that have taken place, and, frankly, I don't see either CIA-Wikipedia or CIA-UFO as in the same league as the Warren Commission, domestic collection other than from witting and cooperative subjects, or MKULTRA. I'd be inclined to delete it unless someone can come up with a notability argument for it. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 18:34, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
This was debated last year, with a similar consensus emerging.[1] Plausible to deny (talk) 00:03, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Did that apply to Wikipedia, UFOs, or both? Excuse me. I am being teleported away from my keyboard. There is a strange shining light in the night sky... Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 00:08, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

"Lost fiction section"

My initial reading reminded me I need new glasses, since, at first, I saw "Lust fiction". James Bond, certainly, but I can't think of even a fictional CIA character that does so well with lust.

In any event, I interpret "influence" as limited to situations where CIA actually takes a role. For example, the U.S. Navy certainly influenced public opinion with its support of the movie Top Gun.

Are there works of fiction that received official CIA support? That I've never heard of any doesn't mean they don't exist, but the assistance would need to be sourced.

Fiction that involves the CIA, but where there was no CIA involvement, doesn't seem to be a form of influencing public opinion by the CIA, the focus of this section. Clearly, if Remo and Master Chiun were on the staff, there would be far fewer operational problems. :-)

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 17:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

CIA cooperated in the making of the feature films Patriot Games, The Sum of All Fears, In The Company of Spies and The Recruit. It also officially aided and abetted the production of the television series The Agency and Alias. Here is a link to a relevant news story about CIA's public relations liason to Hollywood: http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,563283,00.html Plausible to deny (talk) 00:53, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll put that into the working draft, which I'll move to mainspace soon. Let me do some searching to find the motivations for these.
It occurs to me that their in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, often reviews nonfiction, but sometimes fiction. Whether this would be called "influencing" is a separate issue, as that journal isn't exactly newsstand material. While my only concern about fiction that had no sponsorship is one of space.
Now, would you believe I saw a Cone of Silence in the basement of the Old Headquarters Building? The DCI, however, did not like being called Chief, but when I interviewed the chief of security about KAOS, he just smiled. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 01:22, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Article now in mainspace

I have created CIA influence on public opinion. It should not have any significant loss of content from what is now in the main article, and indeed has a good deal more information.

I welcome additions and comments. If there are no objections after a few days, I propose to delete other than a Wikilink to this from the main article, in the continuing effort to manage the size of the main article.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 01:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

How well does Third World Traveler check their facts? Is it reliable?

While the writing style is rather dramatic and clearly has an anti-CIA POV, does anyone have a sense of how reputable they are as a source? Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 19:35, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Iran designation of US as terrorist state

This is already noted in CIA activities in the Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia#Iran 2007, but I will add the additional MSNBC reference deleted from main page.

Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 22:05, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Please do not add it to the main page. It is in the regional sub-article where it belongs. I thought there was a consensus to reduce the size of the main page, without losing any information because that information goes into sub-pages. Even some of the sub-pages are growing large enough to consider having country-specific pages.
Putting a relatively insignificant event -- pique at mutual namecalling between the US and Iran -- sets a precedent for putting every claim on the main page and reverses an effort that has been going on for six months or so. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 22:29, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
to 82.183.224.40 Please take this matter to the talk page to reach consensus. The matter is thoroughly covered in the geographic page on Iraq. For at least six months, there has been a very serious attempt to reduce the size of the main CIA page, without losing information because the information goes to regional or topic pages. Individual country announcements do not belong, within the consensus, on the main page.
There is no need to get this into a 3RR matter, which I will take to an Administrator if one is not already monitoring. Please look at the regional page where this is covered, and, if you still thing what essentially is an exchange of insults between countries belongs on the main page, give your reasons. The information is not being thrown away, but, along with full-scale wars, has been moved to the regional page where there is much more room for detailed discussion.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 23:03, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

While I could agree that the designation is symbolic, it is far from insignificant. Please, explain why you think so. I believe it is absolutely relevant to the article, partly because Iran is a very large country, has a large and growing influence in the Middle East and also because the designation reflects views of the CIA in much the Muslim world quite well. --82.183.224.40 (talk) 23:28, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
First, it it is a question of the organization of the set of CIA articles. About six months ago, the main page was over 300K, unreadable in some browsers, having frequent edit conflicts, and was terribly hard to navigate. The consensus solution was to make regional sub-pages with countries and dates inside them, and, for issues transnational in character (e.g., human rights, drugs & crime, terrorism), to have sub-articles on those topics. While there may be a few country-specific things that have not moved off the main page, I believe it fair to say that the consensus is that everything should go to sub-pages, with the narrow restriction of British and other closely allied intelligence agencies that served as an organizational model for the CIA.
There is abundant room to discuss regional opinions of the CIA in the regional pages, as well as at a country-specific level, which this is: it is a formal action of the Iranian parliament; the Muslim World has not voted on it but Iran has done so. That is the appropriate place for the discussion of the designation -- and that discussion is there, under CIA activities in the Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia#Iran 2007, with more detail than was on the main page.
Even in the case of Iran, are you suggesting this is more important than the role of the CIA in overthrowing Mossadegh? In other Muslim countries, are you suggesting this is more important than the complex situations in Indonesia, which may have involved half a million deaths rather than an exchange of labels, or the CIA assistance to Afghans bloodily resisting the Soviets? Other non-Muslim issues, such as the partial failures in intelligence analysis relating to the Soviet bloc, are in regional pages. Violations of human rights in Latin America are covered both in the regional article, and in the transnational article on human rights. Is the Iranian Parliament's action more deserving of main page space than destabilization of Latin American governments? Is it more important than the CIA's analyses and estimates of the future of the Maghreb, or of transnational disease on the world, all of which are in sub-articles?
Iran is an important regional power, but it is not as large as Russia, China, or India, all of which are discussed in regional pages, with the caveat that some Soviet-related issues pertain to the organization of the CIA and are in the CIA organizational history on the main page.
If you can source those views, feel free to do so in the Middle East/Southwest Asia sections. Truly, I encourage you to put sourced material that pertains to the CIA (i.e., not general American foreign policy or perceptions of the US) into those sections. It simply doesn't belong on the main page, just as other, bloodier country-specific things are not on the main page.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 23:48, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I think it's remarkable that while most articles about militant Muslim organisations presents the terrorism accusations in the introduction of the article, it's not »significant» enough to even mention it on the CIA main article. And this despite that the Iranian view of the CIA may very well reflect the view of a majority of the world population: that the CIA is a ruthless organisation which uses terrorism on a grand scale to achieve it's objectives around the world. Although, that is of course nothing that I can support empirically. --82.183.224.40 (talk) 00:28, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
You mention articles about militant Muslim organizations. The CIA articles start out in a non-POV manner, describing an agency of the U.S. government. There are no particular ideological views of the US or of other nations in the main page.
"Iranian view of the CIA may very well reflect the view of a majority of the world population" Have you verifiable or reputable sources for this, as is required for Wikipedia? The fact that the Iranian parliament passed a resolution is verifiable and comes from a reputable source. George Bush makes very little sense with his "Axis of Evil"; are you suggesting that his statements have more substance than rhetoric?
Unless you can document that the world view of the CIA matches the Iranian parliamentary resolution, at best, you have WP:OR. I find it interesting that you are concentrating on the Iranian resolution, as opposed to the large numbers of Muslims who died, perhaps willingly, in a CIA-supported operation against the Soviets in Afghanistan. There is considerable documentation of that U.S. support creating "blowback" for the U.S., but it remains that there were far more deaths -- Soviet and Afghan -- than in Iran. In the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, it was principally Muslim against Muslim, with U.S. assistance, not limited to the CIA, to the Northern Alliance.
Again, I encourage you to put properly sourced material into the place where everything else about the Iranian nation is discussed. If you can source such assertions for the Middle East or Southwest Asia, by all means write that up for the region. I simply ask that you do not push a POV, without sourcing, onto the main page of a series of articles that are trying to be NPOV. There are many things the CIA did that were wrong, although I will note that many of them (e.g., trying to assassinate Castro) were done with Presidential orders. In the detailed articles, when it is possible to identify when White House orders were given to the CIA, there is documentation. Many people find it surprising how often the CIA was not operating as a rogue, but at orders of the White House/National Security Council. In some cases, it can be verified that a Presidential Finding was given at least to 8 members of Congress.
There are clearly cases that there may be an opinion of the "CIA" that should be applied to the US Administration of the time. There are, indeed, cases where the CIA did inappropriate things without proper authorization, such as Sidney Gottlieb's human experimentation without informed consent. These are things that can meet WP:RS and WP:V. If you have material that meets the same verifiability requirements, by all means include it. I have opinions about quite a few things, but if I can't document them, I will present them in places other than Wikipedia. Incidentally, may I suggest you create a user account, so comments and your responses can be left in a consistent place? Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 00:47, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't think that my wording in the article was especially slanted.
I have an account, but I don't use it anymore. Goodnight. --82.183.224.40 (talk) 01:12, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I was far less concerned with slant as far as the Iranian statement, which accurately represents the notable POV of a nation, perhaps in response to a specific US action. My concern was with where the material was going to be placed. I myself took your words, put them in the page and section where I believe they belonged, and even expanded on them.
For talk page comments about your opinions, they can be as slanted as you like, although slant doesn't always accomplish much. I personally try to stay NPOV even on talk pages, but others don't. We seem to differ only about whether the Iranian position can be verified as representative of a larger group of people, and where the Iranian material should go -- if it should get placement that no other national issue receives. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 01:37, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

CIA geographical articles are too big

I'm going to make "CIA activities in <country X>" articles and a sub-template and sub-category for each region, unless somebody wants to have a cow about it. (I'm being WP:BOLD here.) I'll move the text for each country into it's own article and point to that article in the geographical article.

These articles have become infrequently updated and I think this is due to size.

Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 22:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Moooooooooooo. I'd start gradually, and do it on a regional basis. In certain regions, especially Latin America, there were cross-border issues, and indeed issues where third countries used the equivalent of extraordinary rendition to avoid U.S. restrictions on interrogations.
Clearly, there are countries such as Vietnam that warrant their own articles -- but there is still value to branching those from the Southeast Asian regional level. During the Vietnam War, especially before 1964, the focus on Agency paramilitary action, as opposed to political covert action, was Laos, not Vietnam. McCoy's book, for good reason, is titled The politics of heroin in Southeast Asia.
For other countries, there's only a stub's worth of material. To reiterate, by all means create country-specific articles when there is enough material, but link it from the regional level to deal with regional issues rather than lose that information. As an example, there were major National Intelligence Estimates about the Maghreb. If you go straight to a country level, where does that information, comparing and contrasting the situations in countries of the region, go?
I think we agree. I would leave the regional context in the regional article and, when there was enough text not to create a tiny stub, create a branch article for the country, and point to the branch in the regional summary.
Also I can create a footer for each region article that lists the countries in the region and their branch articles when the branches exist, and also a category for each region that is a sub-category of CIA.
Thanks,
Erxnmedia (talk) 02:52, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
That's fair. I'd suggest starting with Southeast Asia or North Africa, to get regional issues without the complexity of the Middle East and Southwest Asia, or, for that matter, the Americas. After a time, I just stopped adding to Vietnam as it was so huge -- IIRC, there are 150+ National Intelligence Estimates alone. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 03:03, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Again concern about the size of the terrorism section in the main article, with the concern being size more than subject.

Information recently added to the terrorism section in the main article, citing, for example, George Tenet's warnings about the impact of errors, is factually correct, to the best of my knowledge. In a very restricted way, I am suggesting WP:UNDUE, but please listen to my reasoning for that concern. The same issues were brought up a month or so ago, in #Terrorism sub-article.

Over six months or so, quite a few people have worked hard in reducing what was a poorly flowing article of over 300K, which was breaking browsers and causing edit conflicts, to a much more manageable one of a little over 100K. I personally am looking at the lengthier sections in the main article, such as the various external reports and investigations of the agency, and asking myself if they are at too detailed a level for the main article -- should they have a brief intro, but then be in a separate article, wikilinked as we did for the article on the individual stamps on CIA placed by the various DCIs?

Everything, as far as I know, that is covered in the main article terrorism activities section is in the much lengthier article on CIA activities relating to terrorism. It appears, however, that this main article section keeps growing, a sentence here, a paragraph there, and another sentence somewhere else.

Ernxmedia just observed that the regional articles were also growing too large for easy updating. While I might not agree with every sub-article spawned as some are close to stubs, his basic idea is sound.

CIA, even before getting into larger issues of US rather than CIA policy, is extremely complex. I note, in the context of agency-vs.-government position, that the Tenet comments are being given to a Cabinet-level committee, which is an example of how difficult it can be to draw the line about scope.

I welcome all suggestions on keeping the main article at a useful length. It has been said, with respect to physical fitness, that the price of agility is eternal diligence. More to the point at size control, a waist is a terrible thing to mind. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 15:34, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Number of CIA personnel

For many years, the estimate of CIA size has been in the 15,000-25,000 range. Recently, a figure of 2,000 has been introduced, sourced to Tim Weiner. Harper's Magazine has been cited, but if you actually look at http://www.harpers.org/subjects/CIA/SubjectOf/Fact, their number in the 2500 range is the number of presumably overt employees that they could find in databases.

Perhaps more revealing is http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/washington/20lawyers.html?pagewanted=print, which identifies the number of employees, not CIA alone, but in the community, who buy legal insurance to protect them in job-related activities.

In his various exposes, Philip Agee has identified a total of around 2,000 employees. Did he get them all?

If I may be permitted a personal observation about realities, I've been at CIA Headquarters, and I'm fairly confident there are considerably more than 2,000 spaces in the parking lot. NSA's parking lot is larger than that, and it is possible to see much of it from the National Cryptologic Museum just outside the fence, where only a small part of the CIA lot can be seen from the ground outside (a bit from the Route 123 side, none from the George Washington Parkway). There are numerous references to the number of personnel in military intelligence, usually in the tens of thousands but described as "several times" larger than CIA. See Bamford's The Puzzle Palace, Kahn's The Codebreakers, etc. One can simply go through military organizational charts and find large SIGINT organizations.

Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 19:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I believe the ~2,700 number is more accurate...the large number of parking spaces could be indicative of days when the CIA was far larger. Furthermore, the insurance data proves nothing because CIA employees are just one of many groups in the Federal Government that takes out these kind of policies. Finally, Weiner's book indicates that the CIA's numbers have been plummeting over the years from the Cold War figures in the tens of thousands.

Chattanoogan (talk) 21:46, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

What sources, besides Weiner, do you have that suggests the CIA size has reduced by 90 percent? So far, I hear Weiner, who is sensational but not always precise. The Harpers/Chicago Tribune work was for identifying overt employees, which isn't terribly hard since a fair number of analytic and scientific personnel routinely participate in research and technology conferences.
People such as Steven Aftergood or Jeffrey Richelson have been exploring these issues for years. Now, it is understood that a fair number of personnel transferred to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which would lower the total. Other positions were outsourced. One could go through the published organization chart and estimate the minimum numbers needed to staff certain functions. The intelligence community is not immune to intelligence analysis. While commercial U.S. observation satellites might or might not blur the area, there is imagery from Russian, French, and possibly other photographic satellites, which again give the useful figure of the number of cars.

Reliable sources, please. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 22:25, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

What is more reliable than the CIA's own databases? With all due respect, are we to engage in "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" speculations or arguments about unknowables such as the number of covert agents the CIA employs?

Chattanoogan (talk) 22:50, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

You just wrote,

are we to engage in ...arguments about unknowables such as the number of covert agents the CIA employs?

Pardon my confusion, but isn't that exactly what you are arguing? I have cited a number of long-term, nonconfrontational analysts such as Steven Aftergood or Jeffrey Richelson. Their works, over a couple of decades, have spoken of sizes in the 15,000 to 25,000 range (CIA proper), with 3 to 4 times that in Department of Defense national intelligence agencies, primarily NSA and the Service Cryptologic Elements under CSS. You have not refuted any of those reports, but put in two popular press reports that, if correct, show a massive decrease, a bit strange considering the Bush Administration's drive to strengthen security organizations.
You speak of "the CIA's own databases". I saw nothing in the Harpers article suggesting that they used CIA databases? Again, I am hearing generalities. If it's a CIA database, then there is a URL, or a name. Please cite it.
Everything I saw in Harpers suggested it was an update of something done, years ago, by John Marks. a former State Department officer, in the November 1974 Washington Monthly. Marks called his method "How to Spot a Spook." At that time, the State Department Biographical Register was freely available, but some open source analysts came up with a series of rules that had a high probability of indicating that a given listing was for a CIA officer under diplomatic cover.
Over the years, I've seen other open-source techniques to estimate headquarters personnel size, as elementary as getting the yearbook of Langley (VA) High School, and working backwards from student names to parental address. Often, the closer the residence to CIA, the higher the probability that someone worked there. CIA contractors tend to concentrate more to the northwest of Langley, in the Tyson's Corner area.
The size and budget of the intelligence community have been major issues for a number of years, with Aftergood filing numerous Freedom of Information Act requests. More and more information has come out, but I don't hear your analyses of some of the dull, boring, and often informative declassified documents, Congressional testimony, and commentary from well-established research organizations. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 23:08, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Structure of CIA activities in country X articles

These should have, on a historical basis, entries that are identified as:

I know there are potential 150 articles. Other than the general Wikipedia community, maybe the kids at Mercyhurst could join in to clean these up.

Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 13:57, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but those examples really don't convey anything specific to me, other than the first. It also should be clear that there should be no heading for an activity didn't happen, such as the mercenary army in the jungles of Liechtenstein. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:03, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Howard,

You have to look at the sub-sections of the pointers above. Because of Wikipedia's namespace for links, I can't actually use the sub-sub-head because only one sub-sub-head link with the same name will get picked up, and the same title like Covert action is used repeatedly for subheads throughout an article. Perhaps a better sub-sub-head would be something like 1954 Covert Action.

Also I forgot to add, under Psychological Operations, White, Gray and Black, under your classification in CIA influence on public opinion.

Beyond that, if you read down to the sub-heads, it's interesting that they don't convey anything to you, because you are the one that came up with those sub-heads, and those edits. Can you not even please yourself?

By the way I did raise the issue of creating sub-articles before doing it. Now I am raising the issue of uniform structure for the sub-articles. I am proposing the structure that you actually used.

Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 14:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not referring to the subheads themselves. The definition of analysis is fine, but the others just point to articles or sections without any explanation.
Why would you want to have subheads for white, gray and black under psychological operations? CIA doesn't do white and only limited gray.
When you first mentioned creating country articles, I had the impression you would start with a trial of a few countries, such as Afghanistan, Laos, Iraq, Cuba, etc., where the material had clearly grown too large for the geographical article. I had no idea you would do it, at once, for every country. My preference is to try a few test cases to work out any problems, before converting everything. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:31, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Ultimately I would like to see a fair, disciplined and complete (encyclopedic?) guide to the above, so that each country can be read separately, each region can be read in "executive summary", and, to the extent that public information is available, you get a full picture for each country.

It is easier to fill in the matrix when you have a style guide such as the sub-heads listed above. This gives an organization and classification scheme for dropping in the bits of history available.

By extension I would also like to see this for ISI, Mossad, KGB, etc., in the same framework. It's a lot of work. The pages for other-country services are not nearly as developed as the CIA page. I thought if I went to another country-centric Wikipedia like France, that the French pages on French services would be more detailed than the US pages on French services. However, the French Wikipedia pages on French services are very limited and the "portal" has a Spy Museum kind of feel rather than an industrial-strength feel.

I would like to see an industrial-strength history of all the services. We are starting closer to home here but really I think it would be tremendously useful to have a guide for all of them.

Separately, for foreign relations in general, we look at pairs like US-Iran and US-Israel and US-Cuba and forget cross-pairs like Iran-Israel and Iran-Iraq and so on. You don't get the full matrix of sensitivities when you eliminate the cross-pairs. I am reading Trita Parsi's book now so I have a renewed sensitivity to the cross-pair issue.

Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 14:55, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Outsourcing Intelligence possible merger

Should Outsourcing Intelligence be merged into here? Comments? --John Nagle (talk) 15:22, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

That's a good question. I'm wondering, however, if the CIA article is the place for it, rather than Director of National Intelligence or United States Intelligence Community, given that the CIA has a lesser scope since the creation of the ODNI.
Thinking out loud, wherever this winds up might be a place to address some of the issues relating to how much human intelligence and direct action should be under the military rather than the National Clandestine Service. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 17:25, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no move. JPG-GR (talk) 06:02, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I suggest moving Central Intelligence Agency to CIA. See Wikipedia:Requested moves#10 May 2008. Brian Jason Drake 05:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

My reason is (as noted on Wikipedia:Requested moves): The organization is almost exclusively referred to using the abbreviation (Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Use common names of persons and things). Brian Jason Drake 06:04, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Disagree. Some people, especially those that do not deal routinely with its publications or functions, may colloquially call it CIA, but it certainly is not called that in U.S. law, starting with the National Security Act of 1947. The full name is used in professional and academic publications.
If intelligence professionals are speaking formally, they tend to use the full name, but, in colloquial use in small organizations such as the U.S. military, probably the most common usage is "the Agency", and not infrequently "Langley". In official documents that try to be euphemistic, the generic term is "OGA" -- Other Government Agencies. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 06:27, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Concur with Howard in disagreeing with the move/rename of the article, for the same basic reasons. It shows up just fine as is if someone does a Wikipedia or Google search for 'CIA'. Plausible to deny (talk) 20:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Oppose per Howard's comments. As Plausible points out, there is the necessary redirect in place for those who will search for "CIA". Parsecboy (talk) 22:24, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Oppose per above comments and those re the similar proposal re FBI. Although the acronym may be common it is by no means "almost exclusively" used. Also, CIA sometimes refers to other entities (e.g., the Culinary Institute of America). Station1 (talk) 01:35, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

FYI, a recent similar move request (but in reverse) was made at Talk:BBC. Also mentioned were ITV, CNN, NBC, HBO, RTL, NASA, FIFA, and UEFA standing at their abbreviations. — AjaxSmack 01:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Comment - so with thousands of organizations being spelled out those are the only exceptions that anyone could find? You all know the i before e except after c rule, right? Well my recollection is that I once found more exceptions to that rule than words that followed the rule. My point being, don't just go out looking for exceptions, because it really doesn't prove anything. As far as I can see, there are some that the preference is to use initials, some where the preference is to not use initials, there is no one size fits all rule that can be applied. 199.125.109.105 (talk) 06:52, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
If I may clarify, then, I see no reason why having the formal name of an organization, as it appears in authorizing legislation and the like, is a problem, as long as there is a redirect page for common initials. If one went to search the United States Code (i.e., the body of laws), for "CIA", one would have far less hits than on "Central Intelligence Agency". Colloquial usage alone does not substitute initials for the content of legal and historical material. Is there a problem I do not see that is solved by changing the article name?
As an aside, when I do Google searches for material on this subject, I deliberately use the search term "Central Intelligence Agency" rather than CIA, unless I have -- and may have -- a specific reason to do otherwise. Using the full name tends to reduce the number of hits on less authoritative sources. For that matter, I do know someone who is an alumnus of the CIA and the CIA, one of those being the Culinary Institute of America. If one is to use abbreviations, the Culinary Institute was established before the Intelligence Agency, so it would seem to have seniority for the initials.
In other words, what problem is going to be solved by changing the article name, as opposed to leaving it as-is and having a redirect (and disambiguation) page for CIA? There are lots of little organizations that play on the well-known initials -- for example, there is a Consolidated Insurance Agency, a small business, in Washington, DC. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 13:29, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm not supporting or opposing this move and was not trying to "prove" anything but was merely pointing out that a number of similar major entities are located at their acronyms evidently without great harm. And the arguments about the Culinary Institute of America &c. are somewhat specious. CIA currently redirects to Central Intelligence Agency so, whether the article is moved to CIA or not, anyone seeking the culinary school still must click twice to get there. Finally, none of those opposed to the move have addressed the basis of the nomination (WP:COMMON — Use common names of persons and things) with evidence that CIA is not the common name. (The "legal" name is of less relevance — cf. NASA, Amtrak). — AjaxSmack 19:28, 11 May 2008 (UTC)


When judging WP:COMMON, what is the criterion for who is doing the common use? I'm not sure, for example, if people that have no more exposure, to worldwide intelligence, and then to the U.S. Intelligence Community, than what they hear on television news, are really the standard of reference of how a term is used. Further, there is a strong distinction between how something might be used in informal speech and in written documents. In the U.S. military, for example, "CIA" would be rare in either case, especially assuming that the person is not in a pure intelligence organization. The average soldier might say "the agency" or "the spooks", but, if necessary to write outside intelligence channels, would probably say "OGA". Most diplomats I've known would say "Langley" but write either "Central Intelligence Agency", or, as seen in the Pentagon Papers, a well-understood euphemism such as "CAS".
WP also has a policy on breaking rules, and, again, if the nomination is addressing an actual problem. Typing CIA into the search engine, as you point out, will redirect to "Central Intelligence Agency". Changing a name of a heavily used page can break a great many external and internal links -- unless, I suppose, you have "Central Intelligence Agency" redirecting to "CIA". If the latter, exactly what has been accomplished?
I'd like the nominator to explain what is broken by CIA as a redirect and Central Intelligence Agency as an article name. This is not a linguistic argument, but a quite serious one regarding changes of URL of high-traffic web pages. The First Law of Plumbing is "if it don't leak, don't fix it." That Law can be extended to URLs. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 19:57, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant to type WP:COMMONNAME instead of WP:COMMON but, in either case, there is no one "criterion for who is doing the common use." However, the audience of a comprehensive encyclopedia such as Wikipedia is assumed to be made of generalists, not specialists in the field with which the article deals. This is spelled out at WP:NAME: "The names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors, and for a general audience over specialists." This is why I say the legal name of an entity is less important than the common name. Articles such as South Korea and United Kingdom are located at common rather than legal names for such reader convenience. Likewise, as WP:NAME points out, convenience of editors or incoming links should not trump that of readers. As you point out, if "Central Intelligence Agency" redirects to "CIA," this is of no concern anyway.
Having said all of that, I agree that the nominator should "explain what is broken by CIA as a redirect and Central Intelligence Agency as an article name" not because of the incoming links issue but as it relates to the need of Wikipedia readers. WP:COMMONNAME says: "When choosing a name for a page ask yourself: What word would the average user of the Wikipedia put into the search engine?" I think "CIA" is likely to meet that test but is it enough to warrant use of the acronym over the full name? So far, such a case has not been made. — AjaxSmack 21:27, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Robertson Panel Controversy removed - WTF

Why was this controversy removed from the article ? 65.173.104.109 (talk) 03:30, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

If you could cite from the history when this information was removed, and what information was provided previously, that would be helpful. This article has undergone some massive changes since the end of 2007, with much of the previously provided information being re-examined and, in most cases, moved to sub-articles that went into greater detail on the subject at hand. I would recommend you examine some of the sub-articles referenced throughout in order to make certain the information you are referring to was truly removed. The reason for moving most of the information was most often in an effort to make this article more concise, as it was getting just too massive and readers were having trouble loading it into their browser (I note that this is actually still a problem, but not nearly as bad as it was). Therefore, we have had to make some tough decision about what information is important enough to make it onto the main article here, and what information more appropriately belonged on a relevant sub-article. (Morethan3words (talk) 10:41, 13 June 2008 (UTC))

The Mandela Affair

It might be worth adding that the CIA were responsible for the capture of Nelson Mandela during his early ANC days. He ended up serving a long prison sentence. This fact is also mentioned in the Wiki article on Mandela. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.141.60.131 (talk) 22:07, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

If you can provide citations to a good source on this subject, I would encourage you to add it to the appropriate regional article for CIA activities, as linked towards the bottom of the article. We are trying to limit the number of new additions to this main article because it is so vast already. (Morethan3words (talk) 11:37, 30 June 2008 (UTC))
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