by Brian Tomlinson

Created on: July 06, 2008

The Central Intelligence agency is tasked to provide national security intelligence to senior US policymakers. It is our first line of defense, its job is to accomplish what others cannot and go where others dare not.
From the days of William "Wild Bill" Donovan and the early days of the OSS, to the official creation of the Central Intelligence agency in 1947 with signing of the National Security Act by President Harry Truman, the CIA has been correlating, evaluating and disseminating intelligence that affect national security. We will never know all the good that the CIA has done for our nation and around the world, because they don't do it for the medals or the TV time. Its agents do not get large ceremonies celebrating a job well done; they do the job and silently get back to doing the nations business.

There are threats to this nation and our allies every day, and everyday our CIA and the rest of our government agencies go to work to protect us without any fanfare. The CIA has to get its job right every hour of everyday. There are thousands of bits and pieces of information that comes across their desk every day, and it must be disseminated, and categorized so that it can be dissected and used in order to help the analysts, operators, and station chiefs to do their jobs.
Does the CIA get it right all the time? No. Have there been mistakes made along the way? Of course. But the Unites States of America is 232 years old, have we gotten it right all the time? No. Have there been mistakes made along the way and throughout our history? Of course, and many more to come. But every day we strive to be better than we were the last day, and the next day we will strive to be better than we were the last.
We cannot be proud of our entire history, as Americans, as we cannot be proud of the entire history of the CIA, through times of human experimenting with LSD, and other mind altering drugs and methods, there were hundreds of American citizens killed as a result of these tests. The CIA has had a history of going outside the box to perform its mission. The Agency has broken the law many times, and they have paid the price for those mistakes. I cannot tell you that if it was not for the CIA specific events in history would or would not have happened, because in most instances we will never know.
There have been many failures, from security failures when Mir Kansi killed two CIA officers in Maryland in 1993, to counter intelligence failures of many career CIA officers falling under career-ending suspicion during the Angleton mole hunt, and the largest failure in the agency's history, the Aldrich Ames spy case.
The CIA has done outstanding work in the analysis of issues like emerging diseases, and the detection of WMD's. Again when we wake up in the morning, and we wake up to see the sun, it is not only because of the sacrifices our men and women of the armed forces make every day, but the selfless sacrifices that our men and women of the CIA make in the world of intelligence. We have to get it right every time, the bad guys only need to get it right once.

excubo -bare -bui bitum

Learn more about this author, Brian Tomlinson.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.