Page 221 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 221 of 237

become a source of acute embarrassment to the United States, notably in Vietnam, where CIA-financed
special forces raided the Buddhist pagodas.

Despite these wide-ranging clandestine activities, and despite the importance, the power and the vast sums at
the disposal of the CIA and the other agencies of the Invisible Government, there has not been enough intelligent
public discussion of the role of this secret machinery.

In general, critics of the CIA have been hobbled by a lack of sure knowledge about its activities. By and
large, their criticism falls into three categories: that the CIA conducts foreign policy on its own, that it runs
its affairs outside of presidential and Congressional control, and that it warps intelligence to justify its
special operations.

There is a sophisticated notion that the problems raised by a hidden bureaucracy operating within a free society
can be resolved by limiting the CIA to intelligence gathering and setting up a separate organization to conduct
special operations. The argument is that when the two functions are joined, as they are now, the intelligence
gatherers inevitably become special pleaders for the operations in which they are engaged.

There is little question that this has happened in the past and that it poses a continuing, basic problem. But the
difficulty is that an agent who is running a secret operation often is in the best position to gather secret
information. A CIA man involved in intrigues with the political opposition in a given country will very likely
know much more about that opposition than an analyst at Langley or even the ambassador on the scene.

If the CIA were to be prohibited from carrying out secret operational activity and that task were to be turned over
to another agency, it might be necessary to create another set of secret operatives in addition to the large number
of CIA men already at work overseas. Such a situation would probably reduce efficiency, raise costs and increase
the dangers of exposure. The Taylor committee grappled with the problem after the Bay of Pigs and came to the
conclusion that the present arrangement is the lesser of two evils.

This problem, as important and complex as it may be, is secondary to the larger question of whether the CIA sets
its own policy, outside of presidential control. While this accusation contains some truth, it, too, is oversimplified.

There are procedures which call for the approval of any major special operation at a high level in the executive
branch of the government. The public comments of Eisenhower on Guatemala and Kennedy on the Bay of Pigs
demonstrated that they not only approved these operations, but took part in the planning for them.

However, many important decisions appear to have been delegated to the Special Group, a small and
shadowy directorate nowhere specifically provided for by law. But because the Special Group is composed of
men with heavy responsibilities in other areas, it obviously can give no more than general approval and guidance
to a course of action. The CIA and the other agencies of the Invisible Government are free to shape events in the
field. They can influence policy and chart their own course within the flexible framework laid down by
Washington.

In Costa Rica, for example, CIA officers did not see fit to inform the State Department when they planted a fake
Communist document in a local newspaper. In Cairo, "Mr. X" slipped in to see Nasser ahead of the State
Department's special emissary. In the Bay of Pigs planning, the CIA men selected the political leadership of the
Cuban exiles.

Yet because of the existence of the Special Group and a generalized mechanism for approving operations,
intelligence men have been able to claim that they have never acted outside of policy set at the highest level of the
government. In short, even when a clear policy has been established, a President may find it difficult to enforce.