Apparently I offended you and nihil with the comment about hubris, ineptness, unethical.
Oh no, not at all my dear penni. There was, and probably still is, quite a modicum of utter stupidity and lack of ethics. And too, the cloak and dagger mentality and the monolithic view of Communism among many operatives led to a kind of feeling that anything could be justified in the name of fighting the good fight. Historically the CIA, as is the case with most intelligence agencies worldwide, has been short on genuine controls among the rank and file, especially in cases where they have hired "contract help." All I was saying is that the nature of the "public" record tends to accentuate the negative, the dimbulb, often on an anecdotal basis (the Castro cigar stuff etc.). There were also many important successes in the early days, and much as is the case with Truman and the Bomb, it is difficult to put oneself in those shoes in the day of Stalinist Russia and say how was the best way to act.
And I think it is also safe to say that for the most part, we in no way, shape or form approximated the utter inhumanity, viciousness and duplicity of the Soviets, who murdered hundreds of thousands in Eastern Europe after the war. I was shocked, for example, to find that after the Soviets took over their part of East Germany, they actually re-opened Buchenwald and maintained it as a concentration camp for quite awhile, and many anticommunists were sent there, never to return. |
