One of the key arguments for rehabilitating Muammar Gaddafi during the Bush presidency was advanced by the Central Intelligence Agency, which claimed that the Libyan government had good access to information on al-Qaeda which it would share if Washington were to restore relations. Even those making Gaddafi’s case conceded, however, that the Libyan leader was a ruthless killer and an international pariah by any normal standards. Well, the results are in: Colonel Gaddafi was so appreciative that he has in fact provided absolutely no useful information whatsoever on al-Qaeda, which has led some former senior officials at CIA to wonder where they went wrong in their analysis. Intelligence officers are supposed to be masters of deception and manipulation but they are often blinded by ambition and the desire to obtain information on “hard” targets. In this case they were fooled by a man that they knew to be a world class rogue.
Gaddafi Manipulates the CIA
8 Responses to Gaddafi Manipulates the CIA
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Raashid says:
This is hilarious. Many Westernern establishment “analysts” like to ridicule the stupidity of Arabs, their military inptness, their inabilty to produce anything useful etc. Yet those same supposedly half-wits seem to keep fooling the mighty US with all its reason-based culture and system time and time again.
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TomT says:
If it’s about “boots on the ground”, and “lack of information”, why doesn’t the CIA team up with FOX NEWS and the AP?
That is, in a world of Gaddafi paying $1,000 a day to any citizen who takes up arms for him, and where cel phones have cameras and mikes…
Why can’t we export “special cel phones” to “amateur correspondents”, and suitably reward reliable intel? With a reliable satellite coverage of the whole world, for phone-comm?
All in the name of “global news”… With one of these special “UN-approved” “global news phones”, kids could make a class project of “investigative journalism”…
Couldn’t be any more disastrous than sending out the Valarie Plames and Joe Wilsons that characterize our CIA at the present…
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Jim Dooley says:
Ah, yes. Why am I not surprised? How many rogues world wide, with motivations spanning the range from sublime to ridiculous, do you suppose have gulled poor Uncle Sam by playing the al-Qaeda card?
The pity is that there has been so little collateral humor to be derived from all this. Other than Chase Madar, I can think of no one, no Peter Sellers, who has consistently been able to make me laugh at the outrageous bumbling we have for years been witnessing in all the ministries of the empire.
I mean the spectacle of this triumvirate of Sarkozy (compare to deGaulle) Cameron (compare to Churchill) Obama (compare to anyone save Bush II) sending in the jets to chase Colonel Eyeware from his tent would be priceless, if it weren’t for the fact that a whole lot of people are going to get killed so that the leaders of the free world can, well, act like they are leaders.
Now if this Osama bin Laden feller would only stay put… -
RebWing says:
Some of those attracted to this business – especially the ones wandering in from the political side – like to think of themselves as having shed the ignorance and illusions of soft stateside upbringing, that they are the tough-minded, clear-eyed ones, able to make that hard, shrewd cost-benefit calculation, the bargain that “saves American lives” in exchange for paying off or protecting some unmitigated bastard. Deals with the devil afford them the little thrill that validates that self-conception. And they’re playing with somebody else’s money, so who cares?
Too many hard-guy naifs, in other words, easily gulled, as Mr. Dooley put it. This has been shown so often and so well by so many capable historians (including ex-agency people), even novelists, that we you’d think we’d be cured of it by now.
But the Ghaddafys, Chalabis, Noriegas, Thieus, Karzais – and above all the Israelis – still laugh up their sleeves as they fill out the deposit slips.
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gcochran says:
“like to ridicule the stupidity of Arabs, their military ineptness, their inabilty to produce anything useful etc. ”
They’re correct.
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Phil wrote, “In this case they were fooled by a man that they knew to be a world class rogue.” I agree but in Gaddafi we had a rogue who could be intinidated. No one knows what a successor government would be like.
It’s dismal to think that Obama is one of those fools who always thinks one has to do something in response to every third world barbarity. Perhaps the French have better intelligence on the ground than we do. It is after all, their sphere of influence after all. The Brit’s used to have a lot of influence there as well under King Idris.
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Fran says:
Well at least the defense contractors now have a reason to keep fighter jets on the Pentagon’s budget.
My reading on the subject is limited, but it seems like the CIA has NEVER been successful at what it was created to do, which is to consistently provide accurate, actionable information about what’s going on in the world.