The Central Intelligence Agency, the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence aren't commenting on press reports that eight CIA officers were killed when a suicide bomber detonated at a military base in the province of Khost.
The death of eight CIA officers would be the agency's worst toll since the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, when at least six officers were killed. Robert Baer, the now ubiquitous former CIA officer who spend years hunting down the Beirut bombers, has written that the agency never recovered from the loss of life that day. In an environment where the CIA is under extreme pressure from all corners, the Afghanistan massacre begins history as a tragedy that even under ordinary conditions the agency would find it hard to bear. Leon Panetta, the CIA director, must now add, to the mountain of pressing concerns, the grief counseling for thousands of employees.
The CIA's semi-covert Predator drone strike program, targeting Al
Qaeda and Taliban operatives who cross back and forth from Pakistan,
has killed hundreds -- a number of which were most likely innocent
civilians by any definition.
This is not to
suggest an equivalence -- just to say that the agency's American
operatives are most definitely combatants in this war, which is also to
say that the rules of war and the legal understandings that the CIA is
using to fight terrorism in Pakistan are not clear and not easily
explicable to the American people. With the CIA's massive footprint in
Afghanistan, some sort of tragedy was probably inevitable. (In 2001,
officer Johnny Spann, a member of the CIA's Special Activities
Division, was killed in action in Afghanistan.)
It
is tempting to associate the three publicly known CIA-related mass
murders -- the Beirut bombings, the 1993 shootings near CIA
headquarters in Virginia and today's events -- with America's 30-plus
year struggle against Islamic extremism. It is worth noting, however,
that the CIA's two major traitors, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, directly caused the deaths of dozens of people who risked their lives to protect American lives.
One
also wonders how many CIA contacts -- people who helped provide
actionable intelligence against Al Qaeda -- have been killed.
"the CIA's two major traitors, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen,"
While Hanssen did compromise CIA agents (mainly Russian citizens spying for the U.S.), he actually worked for the FBI.
Grief counseling? We're talking about the same CIA, right?
Right because everyone that works at the CIA is a cold-blooded killer with ice in their veins. I pray nobody in your office gets killed in a bomb attack because I bet there won't be flowers sent to the widows.
You may not agree with the war or the tactics empoloyed but 8 AMERICANS DIED in a horrific bomb attack and all you have is contempt as you sit here protected in your home. What have you done to help lately other than throw around your opinion like its worth a damn!?!
What about the hundreds of thousands of women and children that DIED under the hands of CIA ops? For example, South America, Indonesia, Iran where CIA cooperated with their SAVAK secret service, etc. CIA doesn't give a damn about democracy, they installed Saddam in power by assassinating his democratic and popular opponent because he wanted to nationalize and sell Iraq's oil to Russia, and then giving him lists of the political opponents he should execute. CIA has regularly supported and installed brutal dictators into power during its history. In fact it was the CIA who trained and created the same jihadists from which Al Qaeda originated, and who threw Afghanistan into chaos.
I'm sorry but what, exactly, are you trying to say? You're saying that because the people in the CIA were doing their jobs, as directed by government officials (many of whom were elected by you and me), and were killed in a bomb attack we should crucify the organization?
"The CIA doesn't give a damn about democracy"
I'm guessing you think this is some autonomous collective, independent from the United States Government that just goes around killing people and installing dictators on a whim.
You don't agree with the CIA tactics? Fine. Write this president and every president before him since the CIA was created and tell them so. You have that right in this republic, thanks to democracy.
But please don't take away from the fact that, along with the other deaths in our armed forces, this is a tragic event and not a time for your smug contempt.
this seems to be an article of a much sadder tone. 8 ppl lost their lives doing their job, and you're talking about "history." those 8 agents probably had nothing to do with those events or anything close to the degree of cruelty of those events, and yet here you are shooting your mouth off about history. your comments would fit perhaps another article, but not this one.
It's not about history, this is CIA policy today, and its reason for existence. It is expanding its reprehensible drone operations which are a form of terrorism on civilians that kill and maim mostly civilians in a random manner. This remote Afghan CIA base and the others on the border were in the news briefly when they were exposed as illegal interrogation and torture centers. The CIA funds much of its operations through illegal activities such as the drug trade. If you noticed Afghanistan had virtually no opium trade before the invasion and now supplies 97% of the world's opium, and the CIA participates in the profits from Afghanistan's drug cartels. The CIA is and always has been a renegade organization and should be disbanded. Aside from the CIA's murderous activities, the invasion of Afghanistan itself is a farce-like Iraq, Afghanistan never had anything to do with 911. The trade center bombing was carried out and planned by Saudi groups and their ex CIA trained ops in Europe. Afghanistan's so called "training camps" used as an excuse for invasion were used to train Pakistanis in Kashmir fighting and the only reason Bin Laden was invited there was because he helped the taliban in their fight against the Northern Alliance-a local conflict. Bin Laden, as an outcast from Saudi Arabia roaming the Afghan desert, although the favorite mass media cartoon villain, was not involved in planning 911 and in no position to plan any such operation; he simply took credit after the fact for status reasons. Afghanistan is one the scedule of the countries in the CIA's long term plans of world hegemony which was its policy long before 911.
Very sad news. Tragic all around.
This is very bad news. But, I did find the grief counseling part a little too-much. Surely all employees of the CIA must know the massive death & destruction the agency has inflicted on the World.
The numbers of deaths at their hands & will is sobering & touches every Continent on our planet. Losing 8 agents is very,very bad & I honestly pray for their souls & families. But the CIA is not a paper business. & All employess should be realistic in the business they signed up for.
I have never understood why some people can extoll the virtues of the American armed forces on one hand and take nasty swipes at the CIA with the other. All the intelligence branches work together to help implement foreign policy, and each has its flaws. One can't point to the "massive death & destruction the agency has inflicted" without recognizing that its decisions are signed off on and made at the behest of our elected officials.
Feel free to disagree with our foreign policies, feel free to deplore their consequences, but we all bear the blame. The implication that CIA operatives lack a moral compass is unfounded; these are people who are brave enough to struggle with difficult decisions in the hopes that they will make the world a safer place. You may not admire them, but let's not deny their humanity by suggesting that their coworkers won't or shouldn't grieve for them. The fact that they were aware of the risks and still did their jobs makes their deaths courageous, not "realistic."
JFK certainly didn't sign off on his assasination in Dallas.
"Leon Panetta, the CIA director, must now add, to the mountain of pressing concerns, the grief counseling for thousands of employees."
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Thousands of employees will need grief counseling? Really?
I can understand, perhaps, if a few people who worked closely with those killed might need some counseling, but it seems that you are anticipating that thousands of people in various field office and back and headquarters who have never even met those affected will be laid up with grief because of this. I sure hope not.
Marc, I expect a better quality of journalism out of you. Robert Hanssen was a mole within the FBI not the CIA.
according to BBC, its actually 7 officers
Press reports are stating that the bomber was allowed onto the CIA base without going through the usual security checks because he was an informant. Other reports are stating that the Detroit Christmas Day airplane bomber attracted no particular attention in Amsterdam because the CIA had failed to recognize the importance of the information that was passed on by the Nigerian embassy. Yes, there is a serious systemic problem in the CIA, which extends even to protecting its own.
While this is a good article the errors, essentially lack of fact checking, are difficult to ignore. They point to a possible lack of understanding.
Walter James above has pointed out mistaking the CIA for the FBI.
I'll point out another that is much more important: The first man to die in 2001 was MIKE Spann. Not Johnny. Come on Marc at least we can honor our warriors, overt or covert, by using the correct name.
The CIA paramilitary is an effective element of the counterinsurgency strategy. We beat, as most don't know, the Taliban in 2002. Beat them. Then we let them come back.
Our initial 6 CIA paramilitary and 24 Spec Ops rode to war against modern weaponry on horseback. They rode with the Afghans. They lent American airpower and helped with leadership. It was an Afghan war not a USA war.
If you want to read a history of those early months, the difference they made and the price paid by the men who were there read "Horse Soldiers". Mike Spann went down fighting, quite literally, in a prisoner uprising. He deserves our respect.
There are stars on the war of the CIA for the men, and I would assume women, who have died in CIA service. If you are in the paramilitary or in NOC you know the price you may pay as does the thousands at the Agency.
Grief counseling for thousands? Sorry, I believe you haven't met too many real warriors. They grieve but not at someone's office.