it's funny to me that the CIA had enough confidence that the latest Cuba operation would succeed that they burned the reputation of a bunch of faux-leftist assets by having them try to "both sides" it
I think a big part of how Cuba has survived is how well it has penetrated the US intelligence apparatus with double agents
MIAMI (Reuters) - For almost three decades after Fidel Castro took power, Cuba’s budding intelligence service fielded four dozen double agents in a world-class operation under the nose of the CIA, according to a new book by a veteran CIA analyst.
reminds me of this interview of this Cuban professor who was recruited by the CIA for a color revolution but was a double agent working for Cuba the whole time:
I think a big part of how Cuba has survived is how well it has penetrated the US intelligence apparatus with double agents
The CIA is the most dangerous entity in the room, but because of that they think anything they do will work out because who the fuck is gonna stop them
You've got a bunch of guys who think they're civilized geniuses fighting against brainless barbarians, tricking them wouldn't be hard with enough study
It seems too dumb for reality, but the fact of the matter is that the best and brightest of the imperial core got outplayed by the Viet Cong, said "never again," then got outplayed by the Taliban the same way, and all they can do is blame the Afghan people for not worshiping America enough
If you can get away with declaring war over fake WMDs, at that point, you've deluded yourself into believing you control reality. You control American reality, but the rest of the world will push back; you see this with China already
It seems too dumb for reality, but the fact of the matter is that the best and brightest of the imperial core got outplayed by the Viet Cong, said “never again,” then got outplayed by the Taliban the same way, and all they can do is blame the Afghan people for not worshiping America enough
So much of this really does boil down to chief executives not really giving a shit about the historically decently-effective CIA playbook. Like, Bush Jr wasn't sending Top Brains into Iraq to oversee his empire. He was sending in Liberty University drop-outs, because their parents were some of his biggest campaign donors. Afghanistan was target practice for a few years and only became a serious concern when Obama ran on fixing it (largely driven by the Neoliberal pivot to war with China). Even then, Obama's best and brightest were... who? Rahm Emanuel? Hillary Clinton? Chuck Hagel? It was patronage all the way down.
The entire US Empire has become guys giving their friends' nephews jobs. And those nephews giving their friends' nephews jobs. Now we're three generations in and its nephews all the way down.
If you can get away with declaring war over fake WMDs, at that point, you’ve deluded yourself into believing you control reality. You control American reality, but the rest of the world will push back; you see this with China already
We're seeing it with Venezuela and Iran and Pakistan and France. China's the biggest fish in the room, but check out Germany green-lighting the Nordstream 2 because fuck Ukraine and fuck this Cold War bullshit with Russia already. Europe is Going Its Own Way. East Asia seems primed to follow. And after that...
The entire US Empire has become guys giving their friends’ nephews jobs. And those nephews giving their friends’ nephews jobs. Now we’re three generations in and its nephews all the way down.
Every single country on Earth has run like this since States began.
What happened in America is that the nephews switched from being Exeter alumni and Ivy Leaguers to the "dumb" reactionary hicks - first southern local gentry under Bush, then loud, crass ethnics like Rudy Giuliani and Scaramucci under Trump. Historically, the type of ghouls you see in the modern GOP would have been staunchly anti-war, unless it was to capture booty or more land for their plantations (adjacent land, not some foreign land). It was the progressives who were determined to spread the light of American values world wide.
Vietnam really did a number on the progressive movements ability to drum up consent for war, but Biden and "Blue MAGA" have been fixing that.
You’ve got a bunch of guys who think they’re civilized geniuses fighting against brainless barbarians, tricking them wouldn’t be hard with enough study
This sums up the American foreign policy project in general. People assume it's because of the Conservatives/modern GOP but it's actually deeply part of the "Progressive" movement. "Woke imperialism" has been then game of the game for 400 years because we Americans are morally righteous, a shining beacon of hope for all mankind, and we're gonna come save you and make sure you live a moral life too.
Basically. The Soviets got a lot of double agents and moles through both ideological sympathizers and cynical opportunists they paid off to pass info to them, while the CIA pretty much just got the odd defector out for a payday (and the CIA usually set them up for life and shielded them from consequences for it) and had a functionally limitless budget to throw at high-tech engineering projects for surveillance. Apart from that, the CIA's foreign policy strategy of "find the absolute worst people in a country and throw truckloads of cash and guns at them in the hopes that it would turn the country into an exploitable or ignorable bloodbath" was fairly successful.
it's funny to me that the CIA had enough confidence that the latest Cuba operation would succeed that they burned the reputation of a bunch of faux-leftist assets by having them try to "both sides" it
I think a big part of how Cuba has survived is how well it has penetrated the US intelligence apparatus with double agents
Fidel Castro, spy master, bedeviled U.S., says former analyst
reminds me of this interview of this Cuban professor who was recruited by the CIA for a color revolution but was a double agent working for Cuba the whole time:
CIA Stories: The Cuban Who Conned the CIA
The CIA is the most dangerous entity in the room, but because of that they think anything they do will work out because who the fuck is gonna stop them
You've got a bunch of guys who think they're civilized geniuses fighting against brainless barbarians, tricking them wouldn't be hard with enough study
It seems too dumb for reality, but the fact of the matter is that the best and brightest of the imperial core got outplayed by the Viet Cong, said "never again," then got outplayed by the Taliban the same way, and all they can do is blame the Afghan people for not worshiping America enough
If you can get away with declaring war over fake WMDs, at that point, you've deluded yourself into believing you control reality. You control American reality, but the rest of the world will push back; you see this with China already
So much of this really does boil down to chief executives not really giving a shit about the historically decently-effective CIA playbook. Like, Bush Jr wasn't sending Top Brains into Iraq to oversee his empire. He was sending in Liberty University drop-outs, because their parents were some of his biggest campaign donors. Afghanistan was target practice for a few years and only became a serious concern when Obama ran on fixing it (largely driven by the Neoliberal pivot to war with China). Even then, Obama's best and brightest were... who? Rahm Emanuel? Hillary Clinton? Chuck Hagel? It was patronage all the way down.
The entire US Empire has become guys giving their friends' nephews jobs. And those nephews giving their friends' nephews jobs. Now we're three generations in and its nephews all the way down.
We're seeing it with Venezuela and Iran and Pakistan and France. China's the biggest fish in the room, but check out Germany green-lighting the Nordstream 2 because fuck Ukraine and fuck this Cold War bullshit with Russia already. Europe is Going Its Own Way. East Asia seems primed to follow. And after that...
Every single country on Earth has run like this since States began.
What happened in America is that the nephews switched from being Exeter alumni and Ivy Leaguers to the "dumb" reactionary hicks - first southern local gentry under Bush, then loud, crass ethnics like Rudy Giuliani and Scaramucci under Trump. Historically, the type of ghouls you see in the modern GOP would have been staunchly anti-war, unless it was to capture booty or more land for their plantations (adjacent land, not some foreign land). It was the progressives who were determined to spread the light of American values world wide.
Vietnam really did a number on the progressive movements ability to drum up consent for war, but Biden and "Blue MAGA" have been fixing that.
This sums up the American foreign policy project in general. People assume it's because of the Conservatives/modern GOP but it's actually deeply part of the "Progressive" movement. "Woke imperialism" has been then game of the game for 400 years because we Americans are morally righteous, a shining beacon of hope for all mankind, and we're gonna come save you and make sure you live a moral life too.
Didn't the Soviets also run fucking circles around the CIA or is that a leftist feel good factoid
Basically. The Soviets got a lot of double agents and moles through both ideological sympathizers and cynical opportunists they paid off to pass info to them, while the CIA pretty much just got the odd defector out for a payday (and the CIA usually set them up for life and shielded them from consequences for it) and had a functionally limitless budget to throw at high-tech engineering projects for surveillance. Apart from that, the CIA's foreign policy strategy of "find the absolute worst people in a country and throw truckloads of cash and guns at them in the hopes that it would turn the country into an exploitable or ignorable bloodbath" was fairly successful.
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