That's an awfully generous "max", pal. Residual Christmas spirit?

Ever since Felix Leiter got partially chomped by a shark, things at the CIA haven't been going so well.

Um...it's not even THAT complicated.

There's that little known function called turning the phone off.

You can even leave the battery in!. (Unless its one of those freakin blackberry's that you CAN'T turn off.)

Eh. I read a novel not long ago where the super-secret Special Forces guy cuts a bloody swathe across Europe and finally realizes the bad guys keep tracking him down because he's using a credit card. I believe I taught the book to fly. Perhaps I was too hard on the author.

(I particularly like the part in the link where the CIA agent registers in hotels using her frequent flyer number so she gets the extra credit. That's spycraft, that is).

fyi - post is by dorkafork. Thanks for link.

Serious question--Does it help if you just turn the cellphone off or do you have to take the battery out?

I have to kidnap a terrorist in Italy next week, so I need an answer as soon as possible.

Thanks!

I don't know. The article says take the battery out. "Off" might not be completely off.

Good luck with your kidnapping. Bring duct tape. Not just for the kidnapping; you should just always carry around duct tape.

I used to hang out with a guy who had done a lot of military intelligence work over the years and had consequently had to deal with CIA spooks quite a bit. He didn't have a very high opinion of their skills: "C- students in international affairs," he called them. His point was that -- apart from certain highly-trained field agents -- not many of these folks were all that bright. Few had any military background at all, which I found astonishing. Lots of the domestic "analysts" were taken from the halls of academe, which basically guaranteed that they were leftist in outlook (if not outright Marxists).

Lots of people over the years have theorized that it was the academic/civilian "lean" of the CIA that has contributed to its downfall. There is a built-in animus towards certain military and diplomatic solutions that is more ideological than practical (I'd love to see a breakdown of how many senior CIA staff are registered Democrats).

It's an inbred problem that probably cannot be solved by re-organizations -- the agency is probably too defective to save. It has fallen far behind in the areas that matter most: recruiting field agents (foreign spies), covert military ops (increasingly handled by military SOG units), and PSYOPS (also increasingly military). And the less said about their "analysis" the better; they've missed virtually every major upheaval in the last twenty years: the fall of East Germany, the fall of the Soviet Union, Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, etc.

The military SOG units can take over HUMINT functions; the NSA already handles ELINT and SIGINT, with military personnel doing the "collection". At this point in time, the CIA seems more a liability than a benefit (always understanding that we never hear about their successes, because their ops are generally classified).

Wow, that last post was Tubino-length! I'll try to arrest my logorrhea with a sensible application of rhetorical principles--urk.

I mean, I'll try to keep it brief.

I think Monty's right about the institutional culture at CIA. All of the old OSS cowboy ethos have been drummed out of it by agenda driven political oversight, cover-your-ass timidity, and laziness. A lot of this is due to the fact that they don't recruit from the military like they should and from the general talent suckfest that is DC. However, I think the State Department is far worse, and the military too hidebound and bureacratic to handle all intelligence activity. The CIA is necessary, but it needs a thorough unfucking.

My experience with CIA personnel was Viet Nam '68-'69. Dumber than four o'clock!! I certainly am not tarring all CIA personnel with this brush, just those that I was personally acquainted with. This story simply reinforces my personal experience.

If not for the Vietnamese and Hmong assistants that traveled with them, they would have been a net deduct.

UGAdawg:

My idea would be to merge the functions of the CIA and the FBI. I understand the motivation for keeping them separated, but the old notion that you could cleanly separate domestic affairs from international affairs is just silly nowadays. (I'm not a huge fan of the FBI either, for the record.) I say: merge the two bureaus into a single, and much smaller, investigation-only entity. For "enforcement" you'd have the military (for international issues) or the U.S. Marshals (for domestic issues). You'd then put this bureau under the control of the SecDef or the U.S. Attorney General's office.

Bring duct tape. Not just for the kidnapping; you should just always carry around duct tape.

No kidding! It has tons of uses.

I always duct-tape my woman during ovulation to keep her in the house. Every man should--but that's a little fact Ace won't tell you!!!

The problem, Monty, is that the institutional cultures and SOPs of the two are so different that combining them would destroy them. Believe me, there is no idea, no matter how well thought out, that the federal government cannot screw up. I agree that the two agencies' duties are overlapping more and more. Hell, criminal investigation is built on the recruitment of informants, the same as intelligence. But law enforcement, especially federal law enforcement, must operate within the guidelines of laws and jurisdictions. Federal investigations are also run by US Attorneys, so the layers of oversight are much different for each function. Foreign intelligence gathering is more of a grey area, and thankfully so. In theory, government guidelines for recruiting a foreign agent are different than recruiting a criminal informant. As far as enforcement, no self respecting cop is going to work an investigation and then let the Marshals make the arrest.

Isn't this just the kind of thing (tracking via cell phone, tracking numbers dialed) that is the NSA's latest "evil"?

You would think that when Langley buys cell phones, they'd check the specs, and then wire them so that they either a) aren't pingable when shut off, or b) return a ping with misinformation, or c) squelch a ping. Or did Plame, Valerie Plame just forget to turn off her cellphone again? Amateur hour?

Cell phones, run over a commercial network, seems to me to be poor tradecraft. If we can use commercial cellphone networks to spy on Al Qaeda, then it certainly ought to be feasible for foreign intelligence services to monitor our guys if we're using the same commercial networks. Or do we no longer regard any nation as a threat to us? Kumbaya, and all that? Everyone's our friend?

Even if they are, last time I checked, there was nothing that the Russians weren't willing to sell for the right price, including nuclear technology, their own sisters, etc. Even if Putin doesn't know about it, it doesn't mean intelligence transfers to Al Qaeda aren't taking place. Does anyone think that a mid-level French crypto guy can't be bought? Or an Italian? I'd assume that anything our friends can know, our enemies will know.

But I guess that's either too old fashioned or too difficult for the geniuses at Langley to figure out.

It's clear the CIA is incompetent. At least we still have the NSA, with all its secret programs, to protect-

D'OH!

I swear, if it's not broke, the MSM will try their best to make it so.

Yeah, sure, fold them into the State Department. Because we can completely trust the non-partisan bureaucrats of the state department not to emasculate inteliigence gathering and counter-intelligence, right? If you're looking to start an all-out civil war against any Republican administration and to cripple entirely our ability to wage war against terrorists and effectively resist countries seeking our destruction, then by all means, fold the CIA into the State Department.

Does that mean the Italians have been illegally eavesdropping on people in their country? Good God, call the New York Times?

I like the book add over to the right: Jawbreaker - the Book the CIA Doesn't Want You To Read!

Probably published by CIA Printing Services, Langley, Virginia.

John, the CIA seriously doesn't want you to read it. I got a copy and started to read it last night, and a bunch of CIA goons broke down my door, roughed me up a bit, and took the book from me. It was very rude.

h/t Sue Dohnim

Totally off-topic...

Ace, for all the effort you spent satirizing Atrios, this has gotta hurt.

The real problem with the CIA is that they are still suffering from a Cold War mentality. During the cold war, the CIA was supposed to recruit sources, gather information, but in no way act on that information if it would compromise the source. Now we are telling them that as soon as they get a source, and it can ID bad guys, we are going to use it as actionable intel and kill people and break things (that;s what the military is for...)

This new paradigm is so beyond their groupthink that it is nearly an impossible mission for them. The idea that you might burn a source that it took you a year to cultivate, just to kill some IED makers, doesn;t fit in with their institutional worldview.

It's kinda the same reason the State Dept is such a wreck. They think all problems can be solved with diplomacy...it's the only hammer they've got, and they believe all problems are nails. Same thing with the CIA, all you really need to due is gather knowledge, and you should waste your capability to gather knowledge by using it...

AngusB