re: #411 Dark_Falcon

Eh, that’s actually for the better. Easier to keep key details a secret as well. It’s also put fresh blood on the CIA’s hands and fresh iron in its spine. In a dangerous world, those are good things for an intelligence agency to be seen as having.

No. Oh, god, no. Sorry, DF, but that’s as poor a reason as the defenses of torture. (note, I’m not accusing you of being in favor of torture. I’m correlating the argument.)

The job of intelligence agencies is intelligence gathering. Some intelligence agencies double-hat as counterintelligence agencies, where the job is denying enemy intelligence in ways that include misdirection and elimination.

There’s a long history of this last ability getting blurred and broadened; of expanding to assassination of leaders and poisoning of food supplies and dropping bacteria in water supplies and a host of other things. They’re moving from counterintelligence to what today we call asymmetrical warfare, and at war-crime levels at that.

Intel and counterintel are not enhanced with a reputation of blood and iron any more than interrogation are enhanced by fear and pain.