AHC: Disband the CIA

Wallet

Banned
Completely disband the CIA after 1960. In this scenario have the CIA try to recess. The later the better.

Bonus if it's by JFK
 
Completely disband the CIA after 1960. In this scenario have the CIA try to recess. The later the better.

Bonus if it's by JFK

we did that once before.... when Truman got rid of the OSS, and as it turned out the Cold War made it necessary

modern world powers need intelligence agencies particularly in the age of nuclear weapons. Technically the DIA, NSA etc are independent agencies anyway, but the they all work in partnership

Because there are bad guys out there
 

Japhy

Banned
JFK was massively pro CIA. His only problem with them was that he was bummed out that they weren't like the guys in James Bond novels and didn't go around assassinating people like he wanted.

IMO the best guy to use is Frank Church being as he did everything in his power to gut them after Vietnam/Watergate and could theoretically be the Democratic nominee in 1976. Get him in and he probably finishes his purge by burning the whole thing down and starting from scratch with a new agency, or agencies, or theoretically a cabinet office.
 
Could something go really belly up in the Iran-Contra affair? Like, weapons given to Iran are used in an attack on the US and it's traced back to a CIA drop off of some kind?
 
As the first comment really. If not the CIA as we know it then SOMETHING had to come about as the different intelligence agencies were not talking to each other and often working at cross-purposes. I've always felt the biggest failure of the CIA was getting away with far to much that was not really in their portfolio and getting to the point of believing their own press to much. Cuba was their most famous and obvious failure, (and the majority can in fact be laid at their doorstep as their analysts with actual knowledge of the area were pointing out that Castro's support was wide spread and those that were saying that the population was ripe for a counter-revolt were not reliable sources, but were ignored in favor of managements "theory" that once started NO US President would allow a coup to fail) but some pretty simple butterflies could have cause Guatemala and Iran to blow up in their faces easily as well. With that kind of history in regime-change and all the anti-US backlash that would follow I can see just about any President drastically cutting back and re-defining the CIA's overall power.

Randy
 

Ryan

Donor
have some of their hare-brained schemes happen and come to light, such as the Castro hair loss plan, therefore making it look like a ridiculous and incompetent organization. congress and the public thus get pissed at the waste of money and it gets disbanded, or at least rebranded, into a new organization.
 
The Church Committee could have done in 1975-1976. But you probably would have needed a more egregious screw up discovered during the hearings to cross the threshold between curtailing/chastising, which they did, and shutting down.
 

Cook

Banned
Completely disband the CIA after 1960.

And replace them with what, a Federal Intelligence Agency or a Central Intelligence Bureau? Whatever comes next is just going to be a rebadged CIA anyway; you can't not have an intelligence gathering organisation.
 
And replace them with what, a Federal Intelligence Agency or a Central Intelligence Bureau? Whatever comes next is just going to be a rebadged CIA anyway; you can't not have an intelligence gathering organisation.

The CIA suffers (suffered) from some issues that could potentially be improved with reorganization. One of them being that intelligence services like MI6 had existed for decades, developed in a developing world, and had built vast networks of contacts and resources, and the CIA was inexperienced, trying to play big man on campus, and failed time and again, often tripping over it's own ego. But regardless, the United States needs a global intelligence agency. You cannot be a world power, let alone a superpower without it. It exists in an awkward position in a democracy, but you cannot go without it.
 
You're going to have an intelligence organization no matter what but the point is to have a different institution, with different values, aka an intelligence agency that isn't a rogue deep state.
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
It would have to come during the Church Committee hearings. The CIA was a public pariah at the time.

The only other chance is I guess after the Cold War is ended. Bush believed in the idea of a peaceful New World Order without competition between the US and other powers, but he was also a former CIA director with loyalty to the intelligence committee. Perhaps Clinton would disband the agency at some point.
 

Minty_Fresh

Banned
have some of their hare-brained schemes happen and come to light, such as the Castro hair loss plan, therefore making it look like a ridiculous and incompetent organization. congress and the public thus get pissed at the waste of money and it gets disbanded, or at least rebranded, into a new organization.
Hare brained schemes aren't really an issue. The DoD has plans for the Girl Scouts of America attempting a coup. It just goes with the territory of a governmental organization investigating all contingencies and making plans accordingly, no matter how far fetched.

What would be an issue is if there is solid proof of seditious activities seen to be putting the US in danger, like assassination of American government officials or false flag attacks on American military facilities.

Trying to put cyanide in Castro's hair gel or whatever the fuck happened is more of a quirky failure than anything.
 
Hare brained schemes aren't really an issue. The DoD has plans for the Girl Scouts of America attempting a coup. It just goes with the territory of a governmental organization investigating all contingencies and making plans accordingly, no matter how far fetched.

There is definitely an interesting AHC in there.
 
Note that the challenge is to disband the CIA, not to kill US intelligence gathering, intelligence analysis and assesment, or to kill the idea of a central intelligence clearinghouse. In fact, considering how far off the mark from what it's supposed to be, disbanding the CIA and rebuilding from the ground up an organization that actually can do that rather than focusing on paramilitary and covert operations would arguably serve the country much better.
 
Note that the challenge is to disband the CIA, not to kill US intelligence gathering, intelligence analysis and assesment, or to kill the idea of a central intelligence clearinghouse. In fact, considering how far off the mark from what it's supposed to be, disbanding the CIA and rebuilding from the ground up an organization that actually can do that rather than focusing on paramilitary and covert operations would arguably serve the country much better.

Every Great Power intelligence agency does covert ops. Information isn't very useful if you can't act on it. You don't collect intelligence just to collect intelligence but to formulate policy and actually do something.
 
Every Great Power intelligence agency does covert ops. Information isn't very useful if you can't act on it. You don't collect intelligence just to collect intelligence but to formulate policy and actually do something.
Yes, but there's an enormous difference between doing the job one was set up for and focusing on something different to the detriment of that job. The CIA is an OSS style covert ops agency with a remit to be an intelligence clearinghouse. Acting on bad or nonexistent intel leads to mistakes that hurt the national interests.
 
Yes, but there's an enormous difference between doing the job one was set up for and focusing on something different to the detriment of that job. The CIA is an OSS style covert ops agency with a remit to be an intelligence clearinghouse. Acting on bad or nonexistent intel leads to mistakes that hurt the national interests.

True, but every intelligence agency in the world gets bad intel. That is the nature of reality. Sometimes you get it wrong.
 
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