The History Book Club discussion

For the week of April 11th - April 17th, we are reading approximately the next 20 pages of Legacy of Ashes.

This thread will discuss the following chapters and pages:

Week Fifteen - April 11th - April 17th -> FORTY-THREE, FORTY- FOUR, and FORTY-FIVE p. 423 - 453
FORTY-THREE - What are We Going To Do When the Wall Comes Down? - Part Six| The Reckoning - “The CIA Under Clinton and George W. Bush, 1993 to 2007”and FORTY-FOUR - We Had No Facts and FORTY-FIVE - Why In The World Didn’t We Know?

Remember folks, these weekly non spoiler threads are just that - non spoiler. There are many other threads where "spoiler information" can be placed including the glossary and any of the other supplemental threads.

We will open up a thread for each week's reading. Please make sure to post in the particular thread dedicated to those specific chapters and page numbers to avoid spoilers. We will also open up supplemental threads as we have done for other spotlighted reads.

We kicked off this book on January 3rd. We look forward to your participation. Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other noted on line booksellers do have copies of the book and shipment can be expedited. The book can also be obtained easily at your local library, on iTunes for the ipad, etc. However, be careful, some audible formats are abridged and not unabridged.

There is still a little time remaining to obtain the book and get started. There is no rush and we are thrilled to have you join us. It is never too late to get started and/or to post.

Welcome,

~Bryan (Backing up Bentley)

Week of April 11th (Week Fifteen of our Discussion)

Week Fifteen - April 11th - April 17th -> FORTY-THREE, FORTY- FOUR, and FORTY-FIVE p. 423 - 453
FORTY-THREE - What are We Going To Do When the Wall Comes Down? - Part Six| The Reckoning - “The CIA Under Clinton and George W. Bush, 1993 to 2007”and FORTY-FOUR - We Had No Facts and FORTY-FIVE - Why In The World Didn’t We Know?

This is a link to the complete table of contents and syllabus thread:

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/4331...

We are off to a good beginning.

TO SEE ALL WEEK'S THREADS SELECT VIEW ALL

Tim Weiner

Remember this is a non spoiler thread.

I just started last night and so far so good. It seemed bitter sweet that George HW Bush came into his presidency fully believing in the CIA, only to see there incompetence with Panama. Knowing how the CIA worked, he could have tried to push for reform.

Up until now, I did not know it was the CIA's inaction that forced a full invasion. I believe Chairman Colin Powell was not eager for an invasion.

Thanks for the help Bryan. Appreciate it.

I agree with your assessment above Bryan. I think it was a situation where he could of but chose politically not to.

It was crazy; the CIA was so scared of a trial in the U.S. and in the end, what did it get? A trial in the U.S. with more U.S. casualties with an invasion.

I think if these folks thought more of the country and the people in it versus the effects on their career or past relationships and nepotism maybe we could right things in this country. But George Senior was not one to rock the proverbial relationship boat.

The CIA was at a loss when it could no longer identify a concrete enemy. Rules and enemies were changing from countries to transnational ideologies. It seems to me, that the agency 's failure to adapt to the new world dynamics created a weakness which was exasperated by the neglect of the 1st Clinton administration.

Hmmm, not sure I would blame Clinton for that one but I respect your view. I do not think Clinton was neglectful (and I am not talking about the Lewinsky scandal where I think he was). I think he had a different philosophy about how much he wanted to be involved with regime change and covert ops. I think from what we have been reading that this neglect, turning a blind eye or being unable to manage and handle the CIA has been with us since the beginning. Some of the presidents aided and abetted the CIA and even seemed to like all of the covert activities and regime change shenanigans and surprisingly I learned that Ike, Kennedy, Johnson, Bush etc. were among them. But I can't say that I lay the blame for failing to adapt to the new world dynamics at Clinton's feet; goodness knows we had that failure with so many other previous conflicts including Vietnam. The CIA seems to have had a long and tortured existence and I am sure that there are probably some beneficial aspects that this author has not shared and I certainly would like to hear about those maybe from another author; but let us acknowledge I guess; that even though all of these bad situations seem to be culled from the released data; they were still part of the intelligence released. I think all of the presidents seem to be at fault and the CIA seems now to be a living and breathing entity that needs to be reined in but for some reason overpowers all who try and even ruins the reputation of others. A real dirty political and worse situation. Wish I could feel prouder of this organization - I really do.

Yeah, it was interesting to see how the CIA flopped around like a fish out of water when the Soviets fell. As Bentley says, the CIA never had any in-roads to Moscow, so it makes sense they never saw it coming.

And the whole world changed and I think many large institutions are slow to adapt, so I think part of it is bureaucratic behavior. It makes it worse when you don't have great leadership, either. Bush was pretty conservative in handling the Berlin Wall falling, keeping the CIA at bay.

I'm still not sure about Clinton. It could be possible, since he was focused on his health plan and Somalia.

There seems to be enough blame to go around in terms of this organization unfortunately.

Bentley, exactly.
With the CIA it didn't take long for it to get to a big lumbering out of touch organization, and a lot of contributing factors and people.
I too am not sure I know what Clinton was really doing or not doing re the CIA. I was surprised that Bush 41 was not stronger in his dealings with them when he was President.

There is nothing you have posted that I do not agree with Alisa... a sad commentary and a lot of money spent and from MHO wasted. I was thinking of this organization when both of our illustrious political parties were jousting as to where to cut money in the recent governmental budget shut-down frenzy. I wanted to shout...gee - I know where you could cut a little and save the remainder for programs that would benefit the people.

I remember in this section that Bush cut a lot of money out of the CIA. You can see this was going to be a problem as a lot of agents left, leaving a gap where intelligence in the Middle East was still needed.

There are a lot of missed opportunities like post Soviet period in Afghanistan and how we left all those connections hanging, too. A what if...

Bryan you are correct but it probably was a drop in the bucket...remember we do not know what we do not know. I just shake my head and wonder whether DC isn't still the swamp in many figurative ways. I am joking here of course.

To defend my statement " neglect of Clinton"
Clinton never visited Langley, place little importance in appointing the director, and even less in meeting with that director. Woolsey never had a one to one meeting with Clinton during his first full year in office.
Source:
Steve Coll

Mary, my feeling is that if I were president and if I knew then what I know now; I might distance myself from these shenanigans too. But that is really not what Clinton was all about; although there are reports that others did.

However, after reading the CIA's own account (link provided below) the CIA presented a very different picture. They said he was gracious, participated in their briefings with the briefer, didn't care for their maps much but asked a lot of questions and was engaged. Other presidents did not get as high marks. So since I decided to go straight to the CIA site and see what they had to say; I respectfully feel that Clinton was not neglectful, he had his own style as each president did or does but not being interested did not seem to be one of them.

Please feel free to read the seven part report which is on the CIA site:

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-fo...

Note: I also want to share with the group that I have personally not read the book cited by Mary as her source. That book may present another viewpoint; but the CIA certainly knows I would imagine.

Mary, one other thing, I have always found that every author has an angle (Steve Coll's seems to be more Republican oriented) = The Washington Post, etc; he has won the Pulitzer for his work and obviously is a good writer. But since biases are hard to separate from one's writing, I suspect that maybe he was not a Clinton aficionado. I just think that in this case maybe the CIA was more neutral when discussing all of the presidents since Truman. Not to say that what Coll said should not be verified. Clinton and Woolsey were not prior pals but they obviously established a working relationship. I am very interested in finding out more about this subject and will probably pick up Coll's book as another interesting source.

Steve Coll

Our author seems to put Clinton in with Steve Coll. This is all very contradictory. I wish I could shed some light from the Clinton Oral History project, but this was before my time. We interviewed Tony Lake and Woosley. (Woosley's interview happened about the time I joined and apparently he had a team of people with him; I'm not sure how productive the interview really was.)

Bryan, what do you mean by your first sentence. And did you mean that the CIA version was contradictory or Coll's version in the source cited by Mary. I agree that the CIA version and what Mary cited are not in sync.

It sounds like Woosley was uncooperative from your last sentence. If you could provide some explanation, I probably would understand better.

Bentley wrote: "Bryan, what do you mean by your first sentence. And did you mean that the CIA version was contradictory or Coll's version in the source cited by Mary. I agree that the CIA version and what Mary c..."

I just finished the chapter in LOA that paints the same picture that Coll does: the lack of understanding or desire to understand or get advice from the CIA. So, the CIA and Weiner versions are not in sync.

Regarding the Woosley part, we welcome anyone the respondent wants to bring with them into the interview. At times it is easier to work with just the respondent, more focused with less people sometimes.

The good news is that Lake and I hope Woosely's interview will be public in 5 years or so, so we can get a better idea of things.

I guess I disagree after reading the CIA report but time will tell about Woolsey. It doesn't sound like W was cooperative but I will leave it at that.

I wonder if the author liked anybody.

I have been trying to find out more about Woosley. This was on Wikipedia:

Relationship with President Clinton

As Director of Central Intelligence, Woolsey is notable for having a very limited relationship with President Clinton. According to journalist Richard Miniter:

Never once in his two-year tenure did CIA director James Woolsey ever have a one-on-one meeting with Clinton. Even semiprivate meetings were rare. They only happened twice. Woolsey told me: "It wasn't that I had a bad relationship with the president. It just didn't exist."[11]

Another quote about his relationship with Clinton, according to Paula Kaufman of Insight on the News:

Remember the guy who in 1994 crashed his plane onto the White House lawn? That was me trying to get an appointment to see President Clinton.[12]

David Halberstam notes in War in a Time of Peace that Clinton chose Woolsey for CIA director because the Clinton campaign had courted neoconservatives leading up to the 1992 election, promising to be tougher on Taiwan, Bosnia, and human rights in China, and it was decided that they ought to give at least one neoconservative a job in the administration.

I am wondering where they are getting this information if it is not from Woolsey.

I am not a fan of Woolsey, I have decided.

Here are some other things that supposedly are tied to Woolsey: (Wikipedia)

Woolsey is also a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signatories to the January 26, 1998 letter sent to President Clinton that called for the removal of Saddam Hussein.[6] That same year he served on the Rumsfeld Commission, which investigated the threat of ballistic missiles for the US Congress. (At least Clinton did not act on doing this although somebody else did)

Within hours of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Woolsey appeared on television suggesting Iraqi complicity.[7] In September 2002, as Congress was deliberating authorizing President Bush to use force against Iraq, Woolsey told The Wall Street Journal that he believed that Iraq was also connected to the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.[8] In July 2006, he called on the US to bomb Syria.[9] (So this is where all of the misinformation started)


On a January 14, 2009 interview by Peter Robinson in the program Uncommon Knowledge, Woolsey described the CIA's intelligence about alleged Iraqi chemical and biological weapons as a "failure" before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

He criticized the Bush administration for lumping together many different materials with different capabilities under the broad category of 'weapons of mass destruction'. He also stated that the Iraqis engaged on "red on red deception" in which Generals were led to falsely believe that their rival Generals had weapons, and he described the American intelligence failure as a reasonable mistake rather than an act of incompetence.[1]

Woolsey is supportive of current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Leon Panetta, whom he has compared to Kennedy-era CIA head John McCone.

Along with six other former directors, Woolsey was one of the signatories to the September 18, 2009 letter sent to President Obama[10] urging The President to exercise authority to reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.

All of the above make me not so keen on Woolsey.

Source: Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._James....

From this bio, I would not meet with him either!

I agree Mary.

This I think is an interesting article about Clinton and Bush Senior cutting the intelligence budget; but it appears that Clinton wanted to cut the intelligence budget as a campaign promise.

A quote:

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton promised that if elected he would slash the intelligence budget by $1.5 billion every year for 5 years from 1993-1997. That represented something like an annual cut of 5% for 5 years, or 25% total. Ouch.

And this is most interesting:

The Sanders amendment was defeated, and the budget ended up slightly less than the previous year. Democratic Senator Dennis DeConcini warned:

Last year, the cut imposed by Congress was particularly severe, the largest percentage cut in at least 20 years. In addition to these funding cuts, Congress levied an across-the-board 17.5-percent reduction in personnel in all intelligence agencies, including the CIA, by 1997.

So, there should be no mistake, Mr. President, intelligence has been cut and cut severely over the last 5 years.

For FY1995, it was noted that Clinton's goal of cutting intelligence by $7.5 billion in 5 years had been realized in only 3!

As Rep. Larry Combest (R-TX) said:
There is no shortage of facts and figures I can cite to demonstrate the rather remarkable, indeed reckless, slope of decline on which we have put the intelligence community. Despite a consensus of informed opinion that intelligence cuts should be avoided or at least minimized in a period when we are cutting our defense capabilities, we are again this year cutting intelligence more than defense at large. It is downsizing at a rate twice that recommended by the President's National Performance Review for the Government. President Clinton made a campaign promise in 1992 to cut the Bush administration's proposed intelligence budget over a 5-year period by $7 billion. This was an incredibly ambitious--and many would say a foolhardy--goal. Yet, as Director Woolsey has stated publicly, this has been accomplished with 2 years to spare, and it appears the cuts over the 5 years will likely be more than $14 billion. This irrational urge to keep cutting intelligence has taken on a life of its own and it will, unless stopped, inevitably lead to disaster.

So Clinton was doing something about this organization in the only way possible: cut its budget. And it appears that Bush Sr. actually initiated some of this; but Clinton really put the agency on the chopping block. Probably another reason Woolsey never ceases to chat.

Source: http://blog.stephenleary.com/2008/09/...

I agree, the author really slams just about everyone, leaving few survivors.

Interesting campaign promise; I think the end of the Cold War gave politicians the green light to slash defense budgets, and the CIA's as well. A double edge sword.

I guess I remember the promise to cut back on government and I guess that meant the CIA as well.

considering all the discussion here of Clinton - lack of attention to Ames & the question of management etc in the cia i have to wonder how active the discussion of the upcoming "my life" will be



the cia seems to have been at a high level of govt arrogance in that failure to control their dept was incredibe - that (pg 520) "no one would be dismissed or demoted" is a luxury we couldn't afford - it is so typical of too many govt agencies

i also see a lot of Clinton fanism in the preceeding paragraphs - i think that Bentley calling Clinton "neglectful" on Lewinsky is far off base. it was in my view selfish, incompetent and (even if for whatever reason personally uncontrolable) it changed his power for the rest of his presidency - diluted what he could accomplish and helped pave the road for the Bush victory in my view.

Vince: we will a great opportunity to discuss Clinton outside of the CIA in our Presidential Series.

I got the impression Clinton did have a hard time getting and holding onto a Director, nothing too unusual there, but in a way, I was disappointed. Maybe his foreign affairs inexperience showed? Who knows, maybe a great CIA director could only do so much.

I wouldn't blame Clinton on Ames; I think it could fall under any presidential administration. It just shows you how bad the CIA had become in the core. I do wish it was covered even more in the book, though.

Vince wrote: "considering all the discussion here of Clinton - lack of attention to Ames & the question of management etc in the cia i have to wonder how active the discussion of the upcoming "my life" will be
..."

Vince you are quite hard on Clinton and Bryan is correct about when and how that book will be covered. Thank you for trying to add the correct citation but the author's link is missing

Bill Clinton

Also Vince I stand by my assessment of Clinton and the situation and feel that the other matter should not define his presidency although it did

I do think he helped Gore lose because of the backlash however. But oddly enough if he had been able to run for a third term himself I think he still would have won.