CIA

In the news today it was reported that a Hamas leader was killed by Jewish agents while he was visiting in Dubai. This reminded me of the US in the early days of the cold war. We were fighting the Soviets and in the process we made friends with many bad guys. As long as a country was opposed to the Soviets we were for them and thus we sided with a lot of unsavory characters. To quote former Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, “he may be a dictator but he is our dictator”. The CIA was going around the world attempting to overthrow governments and assassinating unwanted individuals and making use of criminal types to get information.

When these types of operations were revealed the senate formed the Church committee to investigate. The result was the trimming of the powers of the CIA. When the CIA could no longer make deals with international criminals they lost much of their information sources. Not much was said until 9-11 and then the questions came up. How come we didn’t know or at least have some warning.

Today we are not permitted to go into a foreign country and assassinate someone but we are allowed to use drones to kill enemies in foreign countries, specifically Pakistan. Apparently high tech assassinations are OK. Odd how times change.