This is most clearly evinced by CIA hiring practices… They intentionally search for blackmail and anything in an agent’s history they can use against them… From their description of the interview process it seems as if they were rejected for lacking the required ideology. Both friends are decidedly un-ideological, but that is not enough for the US intelligence agencies, you must be willing to toe the line or they won’t accept you.
If you are suggesting that the CIA intentionally accepts people with dark secrets, I think you are badly mistaken about something you heard about the top secret clearance process, namely that they filter out those people. Everybody in the U.S. government, no matter what department, that has to get a top secret security clearance is checked for blackmailability. The CIA needs officers that are invulnerable to blackmail from the foreign intelligence agencies that attempt to do that to officers as a full time job. They don’t actively look for people with huge debts or a sexual fetish for children and then somehow ensure their loyalty by promising not to snitch; that would be insane.
Ideological loyalty to the United States is also an unironically important trait to have in your intelligence analysts and service members more generally. I know that’s an unpopular thing to say, but at some point in the chain every country has to have a department full of people who are reliably not going to jump the fence because of some galaxy brain argument about how the they’re the real global villains.
When the CIA violates the US constitution most CIA officials side with the CIA and are not working to protect US from the attacks of the CIA on the constitutionally guaranteed freedom. There’s little loyalty towards the constitution.
The ideological loyalty that CIA analysts have is loyalty to CIA orthodoxy.
When the CIA violates the US constitution most CIA officials side with the CIA and are not working to protect US from the attacks of the CIA on the constitutionally guaranteed freedom. There’s little loyalty towards the constitution.
I agree.
The ideological loyalty that CIA analysts have is loyalty to CIA orthodoxy.
To some degree, yes. To some degree, no. Every government bureaucracy possesses a moral maze-like loyalty to itself. But you’re making broad-based statements about the motivations of all CIA officers that I am fairly certain don’t happen to be true.
Second comment to respond to footnote:
If you are suggesting that the CIA intentionally accepts people with dark secrets, I think you are badly mistaken about something you heard about the top secret clearance process, namely that they filter out those people. Everybody in the U.S. government, no matter what department, that has to get a top secret security clearance is checked for blackmailability. The CIA needs officers that are invulnerable to blackmail from the foreign intelligence agencies that attempt to do that to officers as a full time job. They don’t actively look for people with huge debts or a sexual fetish for children and then somehow ensure their loyalty by promising not to snitch; that would be insane.
Ideological loyalty to the United States is also an unironically important trait to have in your intelligence analysts and service members more generally. I know that’s an unpopular thing to say, but at some point in the chain every country has to have a department full of people who are reliably not going to jump the fence because of some galaxy brain argument about how the they’re the real global villains.
When the CIA violates the US constitution most CIA officials side with the CIA and are not working to protect US from the attacks of the CIA on the constitutionally guaranteed freedom. There’s little loyalty towards the constitution.
The ideological loyalty that CIA analysts have is loyalty to CIA orthodoxy.
I agree.
To some degree, yes. To some degree, no. Every government bureaucracy possesses a moral maze-like loyalty to itself. But you’re making broad-based statements about the motivations of all CIA officers that I am fairly certain don’t happen to be true.