In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

Postscript
never secret for long. Inevitably they are exposed, by our press, by
whistleblowers in our government, by our healthy compulsion to
know the truth. Covert operations are incompatible with our system
of government and we do them badly. Nevertheless, a succession of
presidents and Henry Kissingers have been lured into questionable
adventures for which, they are promised by the CIA, they will never
be held accountable. Generally they are not, they move on to sinecures
before the operations are fully exposed. Our country is left to
face the consequences.
Claiming to be our Horatio at the shadowy bridges of the international
underworld, the CIA maintains three thousand staff operatives
overseas. Approximately equal to the State Department in numbers
of staff employees overseas, the CIA extends its influence by
hiring dozens of thousands of paid agents. Operationally its case
officers "publish or perish"-an officer who does not generate operations
does not get promoted. The officers energetically go about
seeking opportunities to defend our national security.
The CIA's function is to provide the aggressive option in foreign
affairs. The 40 Committee papers for the Angolan operation, written
by the CIA did not list a peaceful option, although the State Department
African Affairs Bureau and the U.S. consul general in Luanda
had firmly recommended noninvolvement. In 1959 the CIA did not
recommend to President Eisenhower that we befriend Fidel Castro
and learn to live with him in Cuba. No, it presented the violent
option, noting that it had the essential ingredients for a covert action:
angry Cuban exiles, a haven in Guatemala, a beach in the Bay of
Pigs, intelligence (later proven inaccurate) that the people of Cuba
would rise up in support of an invasion. Presidents Eisenhower and
Kennedy were persuaded. The operation was run, and it was bungled.
Today we are still haunted by it.
At the end of World War II, we were militarily dominant,
economically dominant, and we enjoyed a remarkable international
credibility. With a modicum of restraint and self-confidence we could
have laid the foundations of lasting world peace. Instead, we panicked,
exaggerating the challenge of a Soviet Union which had just
lost 70,000 villages, 1, 710 towns, 4. 7 million houses, and 20 million
people in the war. *We set its dread KGB as a model for our own
•Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace (Boston: Houghton Miffiin, 1977) p. 64.