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Why Hasn't the CIA Been Abolished?
• https://www.lewrockwell.comIf Ron Paul were president, he would get the ball rolling immediately to abolish the CIA. That's because he strongly disapproves of most of what the CIA does and has done in the past. He'd expend the time, energy and political costs to see the process through. He'd fight this fight with his heart in it. He'd take the risk.
However, no president, including Trump, has decided to abolish the CIA or even broached the idea in public because each one has found the agency useful and/or each did not want to expend the political capital to abolish or drastically reshape the agency. If the CIA has at times been an antagonist to a president's agenda or position, a president has found a workaround or tolerated the discomfort and problem. Presidents have calculated that the personal costs of abolishing the CIA exceeded the personal benefits of doing so.
Libertarians who are outside the presidency and speak with other interests and constituencies in mind can document the high costs to the public of having the CIA continue. Presidents do not make this calculation. They ignore costs that fall upon others whose votes do not matter. They wish to maintain and extend their power. They have other items and programs to push, and they don't want to sacrifice them for the sake of a battle against the CIA, which is actually a battle against Congress.
The process of abolition is actually easy to understand in theory, but it is far from an easy matter in practice because it involves some serious changes in the status quo and the enlightenment of many people. The CIA depends strongly on legislation from Congress that created it in 1947. The CIA depends upon the funding by Congress, the amount being kept secret. Committees in Congress monitor the CIA. They'd stand up for it, by and large. Because the Congress brought forth the CIA and has funded it, a fight to abolish the CIA is primarily a fight against Congress. The way to fight that fight is to go over the heads of Congress to the American people; and the way to do that is by publicizing every possible fact about the CIA. This has to be done fairly and squarely, and that means undoing the secrecy in which the CIA hides its activities.
Secrecy sustains the CIA. To abolish it, it is essential that a president inform the public of every bad thing that the CIA has ever done, even as ordered by past presidents and endorsed by past Congressmen. Their connections have to be made known. Many documents need to be declassified. Many secrets have to be made public. This is going to ruffle a great many people who've been in power, because their reputations will undergo reappraisals. Certainly, all documents relating to the Kennedy assassination should be immediately declassified and so should documents relating to 9/11. But that's only a very small part of what needs to be declassified. If all of this seems unlikely, it is. But suggesting it serves a purpose. It shows how far away from where we the people stand are those in power who purport to represent us.
Both parties would surely shout "NATIONAL SECURITY" as an argument against declassifying and revealing even very old secrets. This hypothetical shows that the fight against the CIA is a fight against the bogeyman of national security, and that's a fight against 70 years of government rhetoric. Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan were not alone among presidents in worrying about foreign communists in Vietnam and Nicaragua, respectively, and in characterizing American allies, no matter how dastardly, as freedom-fighters. All their speeches have to be overcome and seen for mistaken rhetoric and ideas, at best.