Talk:Central Intelligence Agency

Updated link to sandbox

User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-IntelOversight

Too many references to one dubious source...

Named "some". When a reporter or analyst makes a claim and publishes it, use their names, not "some". Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 05:23, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

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)