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User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-IntelOversight
Named "some". When a reporter or analyst makes a claim and publishes it, use their names, not "some". Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 05:23, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
May I suggest a more NPOV way of describing the high-level history in this article, understanding there will be more detail in other articles? The CIA, before and after the DNI reorganization, did more than covert and clandestine operations, which are different. Some of its activities, or at least the products of them, are overt. Others may not be public, but are analytical or logistic rather than action-oriented.
One model of the history might organize it by the four major directorates plus the executive office. The executive office part would address approval (or not, as in Iran-Contra and MKULTRA) of activities, budget and the battle to get it disclosed, the role of the inspector general and other internal monitoring, and brief changes mention of changes in strategy with changes of director/president.
A discussion of Intelligence History would include some of the more important correct and incorrect reports and analyses.
A discussion of Operations would include covert action, clandestine intelligence collection not by technical means (e.g., IRONBARK/Penkovsky), paramilitary and psychological programs, and, not to be forgotten, counterintelligence -- as far as I'm concerned, some of Angleton's actions, especially the Nosenko-Golitsyn molehunt, nearly paralyzed parts of the CIA. An equivalent molehunt, not unrelated to Angleton, had similar effects on the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, MI-6).
Science and Technology would include the obvious U-2, SR-71, and satellite intelligence, but other technical collection innovations. MKULTRA and other mind control, while some were done under Operations, logically belong here. Until the National Open Source Enterprise was established, a good deal of OSINT was here.
I would note that there are some activities that involve joint CIA and NSA operations for the clandestine placement of SIGINT and MASINT sensors. Over the years, there have been different names for the CIA component of this, or the merged organizations, such as Division D or the Special Collection Service.
It is not unreasonable to mention specific Directorate of Support activities, because some were controversial, and may or may not have been justifiable. The proprietary airlines were support activities, and may have been justifiable. The "Family Jewels" include a number of transgressions by the Office of Security in the Directorate of Support, in the general area of forbidden participation in domestic law enforcement.
The "Controversies" section, to appear a little more NPOV, should follow the History section, perhaps with internal Wikilinks in the History section. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 16:24, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I've moved the controversy section, without deletions of any content, after the history proper. There was some duplication of text, as, for example, with "outsourcing", and I have it only in one place. At this point, I have not deleted anything else, or moved more than a paragraph or so, with even more detailed sourcing, to the Pakistan section. I'm appealing first for organization and editing; it's a second question if some of the allegations are adequately sourced as US policy, and a third question if there is a clear relationship between the act and the CIA (as opposed to US military or other organizations).
The essence of some of the controversies, such as human rights violations in interrogations, can be covered in a few paragraphs here, with the details in the transnational human rights article. Frankly, if I had a POV to damn the Agency as strongly as possible, I'd want to hit the reader with a range of offenses, written tightly. If, for example, one was reading about interrogation manuals, by the time one got through all the details, one might have glazed eyes by the time one got to extraordinary rendition.
I am not proposing deletion of content; I am proposing tightening the main page coverage of content and still having the details linked.
In some cases, however, some of the "controversies" are unclear. The section "Developing world", for example, has a paragraph of unsourced general allegations, followed by a rather sweeping statement of deaths caused by CIA -- yes, that devil CIA, apparently without any White House or other orders -- by John Stockwell, but without any real detail on Stockwell's analysis. Stockwell, IMHO, is quite a good source on CIA involvement in Africa, and in giving a flavor of headquarters politics. Broad statements like this are not up to his writing style in In Search of Enemies. Even a fervent opponent of the very existence of CIA really should ask, "are these controversies/accusations wandering prose, or do they slam home point after point?"
Again, were I in the role of POV enemy of CIA, I would ask myself, as I did with the details of interrogation and rendition, "does all the detail of the drug trafficking really contribute to a message about evil deeds, or would it be more effective to present the key elements and link to even more details in an article about transnational crime and drug trafficking?" That transnational article, incidentally, starts to explore issues of blood diamonds and the associated conventional arms proliferation, slavery, child soldiers, and other issues that are not even mentioned here. Those issues may not have a clear cause and effect with respect to CIA activities, but, again if I were an enemy, would I not want a brief list in the main part and details elsewhere?
Some of the subheadings are not to the point. I thought it was George W. Bush that liked vaguenesses like "War on Terror"? There is a legitimate discussion, with substantial legal arguments on both sides, about the issue of targeted assassinations of suspected terrorists. It would strike me that the key issue is legality, and the individual acts belong in the geographical sections on Pakistan, Yemen, etc.
I believe, and with substantial sourcing, that there were major failures of both intelligence reporting and intelligence consumption related to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Given that, and trying rather hard, I fail to detect the scandal in the vague leading paragraph about an anonymously sourced allegation of a covert operation aimed for 2002, by the CIA -- unless it was by Special Forces.
The bureaucratic turf wars that led to the creation of the DNI, and the possible legal loopholes for military covert action, are covered in at least two places in this article. Combine and tighten. I would do this in the interest of readability and objectivity, but I don't want to do this without some discussion.
There are other matters. Again, one of the old rules of giving an effective speech is relevant here: tell your audience what you are going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them. I would ask anyone who thinks, for example, that the rather vague descriptions of the family jewels, of the highly illegal activities, or other allegations are showing that much literary focus. Yes, I recognize Wikipedia is written by committee, but, every so often, pure editing, not editing in the sense of content, is necessary for quality. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 05:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I put a proposal on CIA Drug Trafficking to merge it into CIA Activities by Transnational Topic: Crime and Illicit Drug Trade. Since people may not yet be looking at the latter subsidiary page, I thought it would be appropriate to let people here know about the proposal, if the proposal would not be seen at the new page. A fast glance suggests that the Drug Trafficking page is fairly short, and, while it would add some content to the "Transnational" article, it would be a fairly clean merge. I haven't yet looked in detail at least one other drug-related CIA page, specifically about cocaine trafficking, but getting the drug information into one place would, I think, make things more user-friendly.
One of the advantages to moving the drug information to a slightly more general article on transnational crime is that the potential relationships between the drug market and arms purchases would be in the same article, just as arms purchases funded through blood diamond sales also would be there.
Thoughts? Comments? Trav, got any more pictures of the cute pig? :-)
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 16:00, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
That claim is made in the main article, but is unsourced. I'd have no trouble believing that number for the intelligence community as a whole, since, AFAIK, the greatest number of intelligence personnel are in the military cryptologic/COMSEC organizations that both support military operations and collect national-level information.
For the CIA itself, that's an awfully high estimate, implying a lot more people in the field than I think they actually have. Does anyone know the source of that number? Could it have been based on the CIA when it still headed the intelligence community?
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 16:09, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Suggestions are welcome in where to put the details of assassination attempts, which, due to sheer length, probably should be referenced but not detailed in the main article. Where should the basic material about the Church Committee, which looked at multiple assassination attempts, go?
I started looking at this with respect to the coup in Iraq in 1963. On actually following the source citations, Feldman did not mention the CIA at all other than as "apparently", with a fourth-hand link to a Roger Gates article. The Roger Gates article about Robert Gates (sorry about all the swinging gates). Another article, by Morris, was of a page that did refer to former DCI Robert Gates, but not to Iraq. Unfortunately for citation purposes, a number of Morris citations link to specific pages of individual Asia Times articles. It could well be that appropriate material is on another page of the same article, but the forward-back links don't work on the page.
In general, I'm going to go more to the Church Committee than the journalistic accounts, as there is much more in very specific evidence citation. Where possible, I'm going to search for other references to documents the Committee considered strongly evidentiary. In this specific case, for example, there is an account of a poisoning attempt against an unnamed Near East "colonel", presumably General Qassim , but the action officer said it was no longer needed after a coup in Baghdad. The detail in the committee report, frankly, is much more detailed and plausible than Gates.
I'd very much appreciate comments about sourcing when it turns out that multiple listed sources are either personal accounts without detail and with much rhetoric, accounts of the accounts, or accounts of accounts of accounts. I'll put the specifics under Iraq in the talk page for CIA Activities by Region: Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia, but there are books cited to which I have no access. If anyone does have them, I'd appreciate verification. In addition to the material I'll put into the talk page for this article, (look at text in edit mode to see questionable citations commented out but not deleted) (signed the next day) Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 20:39, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi,
Due to the fact that almost all of the edits coming in from IP-only-identified users have been vandalism, I threw an sprotected2 tag on the page. I don't know if this will stick or work (I am not an administrator). If an administrator reads this and agrees and knows how to make it stick, please do so.
At the least, if people want to make crank edits, they should go to the trouble of making up an idea and putting in edits to the Frogurt page for 3 or 4 days before having a go at the CIA page.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 22:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi,
Howard B has been consistently pushing a philosophy of
In Howard's defense and as a bit of nostalgia, I now quote from a book I got for 50 cents at the library book sale, written exactly 40 years ago, which curiously echos all of Howard's points:
When I resigned from the Central Intelligence Agency, thus concluding a career of nearly twenty-three years in intelligence, the furthest thing from my mind was to write a book about the CIA or the United States intelligence system. But then, I had led a cloistered life for more than two decades.
What I did not realize was how little is actually known about the CIA and the American system for keeping our policy makers advised of the threats to the nation's security. Nor did I understand the depth of suspicion, if not hostility, that exists toward the CIA in some sectors of our society, particularly in academic life. I had been aware that some of the American press had been hostile, but perhaps erroneously had attributed this to a natural aversion to anything secret.
My contact with the American public during the years with the agency had been primarily in the area of personnel recruitment, and here there seemd to be not only understanding, but enthusiasm as well. The CIA, over the years, has always been able to recruit outstanding men and women, and perhaps I interpreted this as representing a general understanding on the part of the American people of what the Central Intelligence Agency is and what it does. I have learned since leaving the government that the success in CIA recruitment represents an interest on the part of young men and women in serving the government and not any real understanding of CIA.
The CIA, the White House, and Congress must all share the blam for this lack of accurate information on the agency and the United States intelligence system. For many years the CIA has had a myopic view of its public image and has assumed that the American people would accept it solely on the basis that it had been created by Congress, reported directly to the President, and that the top two officials, the director and the deputy directory -- the only two appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate and therefore known to the public -- were men of stature with international reputations. Even in this the agency has been in error, because not many people even know these basic facts about the CIA.
...
The American people have a deep concern, indeed fear, over the concentration of too much power in any area of our society. When this power is in the government and cloaked in secrecy, then their concern is even greater...It is not a concern about secrecy as such, which the people will accept as a necessity for national security. Nor is it a concern about intelligence activity, which the public recognizes as a necessary government function during a period of international tension and strife. It is a concern about secret power and the possibilities of its abuse.
...
Communist psychological warfare units never fail to take advantage of the discovery of any American intelligence activity. They invariably advertise it to the world in the worst possible light. Not content in just dealing with facts, the Communists have also proved to be adept in fabrication and forgeries designed to discredit the American intelligence and security services and have found willing audiences in this country, but even more so in the uncommitted areas of the world.
The James Bond syndrome, with its emphasis on cloak and dagger adventures, fast cars, and faster women, hasn't helped the CIA image. Most people now look in intelligence as all espionage and action, and fail to realize that the bulk of the work is the painstaking assembly of information.
The Central Intelligence Agency has been hurt by the fact that it combines intelligence and operations, action and information. The advantages of combining these responsibilities in one central organization have been lessened, if not negated, by the emphasis in the public mind on clandestine operations and the failure on the part of the government to describe the organization in perspective.
The above quotes are from "The Real CIA" by Lyman Kirkpatrick, MacMillan & Co, 1968. He was an Executive Director of the CIA (not sure what that is versus Director or Deputy Director).
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 22:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Here is another quote from Real CIA by Lyman Kirkpatrick, about the "foreign agency liaison" function, the details of which probably haven't changed in 40 years (like the details of his other comments that I quoted above):
My initial assignment was to be a sort of general handyman to Maddox, who at that point was pretty much trying to do everything himself. This involved liaison with the British Intelligence Service, certainly the most important part of our work.
...
The liaison work was interesting and those magnificent men working for the liberation of their countries were fascinating, each in his own way, but, after six months or so, I didn't give up the work with too much regret because it was tiring and a strain on the liver. Successful liaison in intelligence is achieved only through the development of close personal relations in which there is complete and absolute confidence on both sides. Almost immediately on my arrival in London I found myself plunged into a series of lunches that would last from 1 P.M. through a good part of the afternoon, and dinners that lasted well past midnight. Our European friends were formidable consumers of alcoholic beverages, with apparently little effect, and I always wondered whether they also put in the same long office hours that we did.
Erxnmedia 12:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
USA has "Ministers" ???????? Ministries are only present in Monarchies and/or President/Parliamentary systems. Please fix this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.34.98.154 ( talk) 02:45, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I deleted a section that was repeated exactly later on in the article. The deleted section was called Wikipedia, and the exact copy is called "Wikipedia and CIA". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.100.218.210 ( talk) 15:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
The description of the Heraldic image used by the CIA (perhaps it's referred to as a seal) is strange. It explains the meaning of each element without citation but it's doubtful that each element has a meaning, let alone the meaning attributed to it. Many people are mystified by heraldry and imagine that everything must mean something, but that's rarely the case. One of the most doubtful parts of the description is that the field (viz., the "sheild") has a meaning. The elements on the image were obviously a, somewhat, inept immitation of the heraldic tradtion. In that tradition the sheild, itself, is standard. To say it has a meaning is an odd claim. It's like saying that, not only the symbol on a football player's helmet has a meaning, but the helmet too is meaningful... it's not really. It just protects the dude's head. In heraldry, the only meaning of the sheild is to provide a place to put the charges. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.87.57.63 ( talk) 07:22, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm without my library at present. For many years (and possibly now), the early and less sensitive parts of CIA Junior Officer Training (JOT), before new employees had full security clearance, was given away from Headquarters. Any Arlington, Virginia cab driver could take you to the CIA "blue building" at the corner of Glebe Road and what is now Route 66. The Office of Training subsequently moved to another Arlington location, but the 1000 Glebe Road facility deserves a historic note.
This facility was identified in at least one book, IIRC Frank Snepp, although it could have been Marchetti & Marks. Does anyone have access to the reference?
I did edit a section on "operative training", which dealt only with advanced operations training at Camp Peary and elsewhere. The term "operative", in any case, is not used. That training may or may not be under the NCS rather than the Office of Training. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 18:48, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
My goal is for the main article to serve as an overview in understanding the organization and its supervision, with issue details in clearly-linked subordinate articles.
For example, I'd like to move the details of interrogation manuals, renditions, etc., to the human rights article, expanding them there and having a clear link in the main article.
I'm still thinking about the intelligence failures, as I don't want to make the intelligence technique series of article specific to any given organization. Nevertheless, there is general information about analytic pathologies and inadequate information technology elsewhere, which may have had a role in some of the more recent failures. Suggestions welcome.
The detailed drug accusations should move to transnational drugs and crime, not hiding the existence in any way but minimizing the details in a paragraph in the main article, which links to the detailed one.
I'd like to see more detail on where some of the external links apply, having just removed several that are dead. The Harold Pinter speech, for example, never mentions the Central Intelligence Agency; why was it there? Where, specifically do comments from Noam Chomsky go, which are specific to CIA rather than general US policy.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 16:39, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
First, I think it's more accurate, less sensational, and more in keeping with related material to refer to "human experimentation" rather than "mind control". One can point, for example, to the Declaration of Helsinki and the Nuremberg Code being in effect long before the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention. Not all of the experiments were to increase suggestibility or willingness to talk; some dealt with incapacitation. In taking a broader term, yet another problem is that the general program of chemical research under Gottlieb included toxins for assassinations, which, AFAIK, were never tested on humans, although there is reasonable information that they were given to operational staff at least in an assassination attempt against Castro.
Second, while these did take place in the Americas, I think the main discussion belongs in Human Rights rather than the geographical piece. Torture and inappropriate interrogation took place on several continents, and I think the human experimentation really should be under a common header. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 14:34, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Will anyone have any serious problem if the fictional references move to their own article, possibly a more general one that includes other fictional US intelligence agencies from the Man from UNCLE to Maxwell Smart?
I'd appreciate it if people would look through the "See also" section, and decide if the links there need to be in the article as a list of links, as inline cites in the main article, or in subarticles.
I say this with more hesitation, but I wonder if there might be a reasonable article that deals with US intelligence failures, not limited to the CIA. With respect to the Battle of Pearl Harbor, the problems of intelligence being misinterpreted or not gotten to operational personnel have probably been analyzed in greater detail than in any other case. There was no involvement, however, by the CIA or OSS, neither one of which had yet been formed.
As has been suggested, it might be appropriate to have a separate article dealing with US intelligence and war criminals. A substantial number of Nazi and Japanese war criminals, for example, made deals with pre-CIA organizations. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 20:07, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I have restored deletions made by an editor yesterday, on the grounds that the material was copyrighted. The text, however, came from US government documents not subject to US copyright.
Foreign Relations of the United States is published by the Department of State, as a permanent record of foreign relations-related actions of multiple government agencies, including the CIA, its supervisory organizations, State, etc. The documents directly published by CIA are also not subject to copyright. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 17:00, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
This article is insanely long. 177KB is 5-6 times the length specified by the manual of style. Please trim this article and/or move into subarticles. 64.178.96.168 ( talk) 20:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
There's been a growing consensus, since perhaps November or December [2007], that the main CIA article is far too long. As a result, there are a set of sub-articles, and even some of those are getting unwieldy.
To see the list of subarticles, scroll to the bottom of the main CIA page and click on "Central Intelligence Agency". In many cases, the text (e.g., on drug trafficking) has been copied to the subordinate article (e.g., Transnational Crime & Drugs). I had thought it appropriate to wait a week or two more before replacing some of the main article text with Wikilinks to the subordinate pages, but I'd like to hear any concerns soon. A number of editors are adding material to the main article, in areas covered by sub-pages, and it's getting hard to keep the sub-pages synchronized.
Sub-pages often have additional information that is not in the main article; the only reason any content from the existing main page would be lost would be duplication or citations missing for several months.
If there are no objections, I'd like to start the major moves (e.g., human rights violations, drugs, etc.) within a day or two.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 20:11, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I think that the 2003 invasion of Iraq belongs under the regional section that contains Iraq, but some might suggest that it was rationalized as part of the war on terror. I believe the sections in the current CIA article talking about such things as the Bin Laden Station and the Worldwide Attack Matrix belong in the transnational article about CIA and terrorism.
An argument can be made in either direction, but I'd like to hear any objections, which may be very good ones, to my proposal.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 00:57, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
There is a link to "CIA and the Media", but that is mostly a stub. Again trying to get details out of the main article, this section could go in at least two places.
First, it could go with some other domestic things, such as Operation MOCKINGBIRD, now in the regional section on the Americas.
Alternatively, the "CIA and the Media" section, the US activities in the Americas regional article, and "Influencing public opinion and law enforcement" could go into a new article on CIA domestic activities -- which would also include some of their legitimate domestic operations, such as debriefing travelers.
Both places have arguments for and against. While I might lean slightly toward the second, I really would not object to either placement, as long as the "CIA and the Media" stub gets merged.
Thoughts? Preferences?
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 03:03, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
CIA page is > 100 KB
NCS article in CIA page is longer than NCS standalone article
Solution: Move bulk of NCS article in CIA page into NCS standalone article
Any objections?
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 18:49, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
In the first few lines, "IC" is defined as "Intelligence Community" which I would have expected. However, a pointer to the DNI managing the IC takes one to an article which seems to redefine IC as "Intelligence Cycle." While we are not responsible for that article, it doesn't seem right and is confusing. Note that the "IC" abbreviation is used throughout the article. Student7 ( talk) 02:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Structure, and GAO plus a wide range of other oversight organizations, really do need to be at the beginning. First, unless one understands the structure, how can the history be explained? We've had a long problem of "history" just being covert action, without the approval process that did or didn't work, which leads to some justified but a lot of unjustified claims of a rogue organization. As Harry Truman's sign read, "the buck stops here", so if a President authorized an action, that's important -- and without the structure of the approval mechanisms, how can that be explained?
As an aside, I very much want to read structure about any organization I'm going to study, or my studies become chaotic because I have no context. You mention, I hope jokingly, "spies". That isn't even the term intelligence people use for espionage, but there is much more to intelligence than espionage and covert action. With all due respect, your comment "But we expect this agency to act. Like Special Forces or an Army or any group that actually performs rathers than talks or shuffles paper" is not a realistic expectation of the way the system is supposed to work. I can point you to a long series of Special Forces, to say nothing of the Army as a whole, about the paperwork necessary in planning a mission. Even a raid that lasts a short time, such as Son Tay, took months of planning, much of which was paperwork. One lengthy effort requiring much reading of paper, requesting more paper, and analyzing paper to produce a plan was a detailed study of North Vietnamese radar coverage so the raiders could thread through it without detection.
Remember this is an encyclopedia and not Tom Clancy. There is no compelling need to have a "hot" opening, although it needs to be clear. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 16:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Howard,
Please try to keep the history of the CIA more entertaining.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 17:57, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
You said, "And maybe a history of structure is there and is of interest because the organization grew that way for a reason. But this history could be intertwined with a general history. The agency had this failure so they then set up this separate group to make sure that didn't happen again."
If none of that works try watching this punched-up video of Live at the Pentagon. Erxnmedia ( talk) 23:15, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
It has been my impression that a reasonable number of editors have concluded that the main CIA article is too long to be practical to edit, and sometimes even to render. The solution, without losing valuable information, is to move text to the set of sub-articles identified in the navigation box at the bottom.
In moving, it is sometimes necessary to add a small amount of text to the main article in order to explain what has moved, and occasionally to add definitions. In general, however, am I correct that there is a consensus not to add any significant new information to the main article? A possible exception could be with truly general material, such as agency-wide history or organization. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 15:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Is the "Office of Military Affairs" still in existence?
The citation about it in this section points to [3], which does not seem to be accessible at this point, so I'm updating it (the citation) to the only page at CIA that seems to say much about it: [4] (OMA is at the very end of that page). (I hope that was OK, hc! ;)
Anyway, that office may now be called "Military Support" or something instead -- I'm not sure though, and didn't find too much under that name, either, at the CIA website. → Wikiscient→ 16:49, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
After working on the draft in my userspace, and getting some useful comments, there is now an article, not limited to the CIA, with an awkward but accurate title: U.S. Intelligence involvement with German and Japanese War Criminals after World War II.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 15:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
The title is awkward because US intelligence involvement with war criminals was not limited to CIA, since a number of the recruitments were either before the CIA was formed, or before it had control of clandestine/covert operations. Yes, the CIA later ran some of these, sometimes witting of the war crimes status of people working for them.
My next CIA-related goals deal with what I now think should be separate articles:
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
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User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-IntelOversight
Named "some". When a reporter or analyst makes a claim and publishes it, use their names, not "some". Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 05:23, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
May I suggest a more NPOV way of describing the high-level history in this article, understanding there will be more detail in other articles? The CIA, before and after the DNI reorganization, did more than covert and clandestine operations, which are different. Some of its activities, or at least the products of them, are overt. Others may not be public, but are analytical or logistic rather than action-oriented.
One model of the history might organize it by the four major directorates plus the executive office. The executive office part would address approval (or not, as in Iran-Contra and MKULTRA) of activities, budget and the battle to get it disclosed, the role of the inspector general and other internal monitoring, and brief changes mention of changes in strategy with changes of director/president.
A discussion of Intelligence History would include some of the more important correct and incorrect reports and analyses.
A discussion of Operations would include covert action, clandestine intelligence collection not by technical means (e.g., IRONBARK/Penkovsky), paramilitary and psychological programs, and, not to be forgotten, counterintelligence -- as far as I'm concerned, some of Angleton's actions, especially the Nosenko-Golitsyn molehunt, nearly paralyzed parts of the CIA. An equivalent molehunt, not unrelated to Angleton, had similar effects on the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, MI-6).
Science and Technology would include the obvious U-2, SR-71, and satellite intelligence, but other technical collection innovations. MKULTRA and other mind control, while some were done under Operations, logically belong here. Until the National Open Source Enterprise was established, a good deal of OSINT was here.
I would note that there are some activities that involve joint CIA and NSA operations for the clandestine placement of SIGINT and MASINT sensors. Over the years, there have been different names for the CIA component of this, or the merged organizations, such as Division D or the Special Collection Service.
It is not unreasonable to mention specific Directorate of Support activities, because some were controversial, and may or may not have been justifiable. The proprietary airlines were support activities, and may have been justifiable. The "Family Jewels" include a number of transgressions by the Office of Security in the Directorate of Support, in the general area of forbidden participation in domestic law enforcement.
The "Controversies" section, to appear a little more NPOV, should follow the History section, perhaps with internal Wikilinks in the History section. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 16:24, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I've moved the controversy section, without deletions of any content, after the history proper. There was some duplication of text, as, for example, with "outsourcing", and I have it only in one place. At this point, I have not deleted anything else, or moved more than a paragraph or so, with even more detailed sourcing, to the Pakistan section. I'm appealing first for organization and editing; it's a second question if some of the allegations are adequately sourced as US policy, and a third question if there is a clear relationship between the act and the CIA (as opposed to US military or other organizations).
The essence of some of the controversies, such as human rights violations in interrogations, can be covered in a few paragraphs here, with the details in the transnational human rights article. Frankly, if I had a POV to damn the Agency as strongly as possible, I'd want to hit the reader with a range of offenses, written tightly. If, for example, one was reading about interrogation manuals, by the time one got through all the details, one might have glazed eyes by the time one got to extraordinary rendition.
I am not proposing deletion of content; I am proposing tightening the main page coverage of content and still having the details linked.
In some cases, however, some of the "controversies" are unclear. The section "Developing world", for example, has a paragraph of unsourced general allegations, followed by a rather sweeping statement of deaths caused by CIA -- yes, that devil CIA, apparently without any White House or other orders -- by John Stockwell, but without any real detail on Stockwell's analysis. Stockwell, IMHO, is quite a good source on CIA involvement in Africa, and in giving a flavor of headquarters politics. Broad statements like this are not up to his writing style in In Search of Enemies. Even a fervent opponent of the very existence of CIA really should ask, "are these controversies/accusations wandering prose, or do they slam home point after point?"
Again, were I in the role of POV enemy of CIA, I would ask myself, as I did with the details of interrogation and rendition, "does all the detail of the drug trafficking really contribute to a message about evil deeds, or would it be more effective to present the key elements and link to even more details in an article about transnational crime and drug trafficking?" That transnational article, incidentally, starts to explore issues of blood diamonds and the associated conventional arms proliferation, slavery, child soldiers, and other issues that are not even mentioned here. Those issues may not have a clear cause and effect with respect to CIA activities, but, again if I were an enemy, would I not want a brief list in the main part and details elsewhere?
Some of the subheadings are not to the point. I thought it was George W. Bush that liked vaguenesses like "War on Terror"? There is a legitimate discussion, with substantial legal arguments on both sides, about the issue of targeted assassinations of suspected terrorists. It would strike me that the key issue is legality, and the individual acts belong in the geographical sections on Pakistan, Yemen, etc.
I believe, and with substantial sourcing, that there were major failures of both intelligence reporting and intelligence consumption related to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Given that, and trying rather hard, I fail to detect the scandal in the vague leading paragraph about an anonymously sourced allegation of a covert operation aimed for 2002, by the CIA -- unless it was by Special Forces.
The bureaucratic turf wars that led to the creation of the DNI, and the possible legal loopholes for military covert action, are covered in at least two places in this article. Combine and tighten. I would do this in the interest of readability and objectivity, but I don't want to do this without some discussion.
There are other matters. Again, one of the old rules of giving an effective speech is relevant here: tell your audience what you are going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them. I would ask anyone who thinks, for example, that the rather vague descriptions of the family jewels, of the highly illegal activities, or other allegations are showing that much literary focus. Yes, I recognize Wikipedia is written by committee, but, every so often, pure editing, not editing in the sense of content, is necessary for quality. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 05:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I put a proposal on CIA Drug Trafficking to merge it into CIA Activities by Transnational Topic: Crime and Illicit Drug Trade. Since people may not yet be looking at the latter subsidiary page, I thought it would be appropriate to let people here know about the proposal, if the proposal would not be seen at the new page. A fast glance suggests that the Drug Trafficking page is fairly short, and, while it would add some content to the "Transnational" article, it would be a fairly clean merge. I haven't yet looked in detail at least one other drug-related CIA page, specifically about cocaine trafficking, but getting the drug information into one place would, I think, make things more user-friendly.
One of the advantages to moving the drug information to a slightly more general article on transnational crime is that the potential relationships between the drug market and arms purchases would be in the same article, just as arms purchases funded through blood diamond sales also would be there.
Thoughts? Comments? Trav, got any more pictures of the cute pig? :-)
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 16:00, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
That claim is made in the main article, but is unsourced. I'd have no trouble believing that number for the intelligence community as a whole, since, AFAIK, the greatest number of intelligence personnel are in the military cryptologic/COMSEC organizations that both support military operations and collect national-level information.
For the CIA itself, that's an awfully high estimate, implying a lot more people in the field than I think they actually have. Does anyone know the source of that number? Could it have been based on the CIA when it still headed the intelligence community?
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 16:09, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Suggestions are welcome in where to put the details of assassination attempts, which, due to sheer length, probably should be referenced but not detailed in the main article. Where should the basic material about the Church Committee, which looked at multiple assassination attempts, go?
I started looking at this with respect to the coup in Iraq in 1963. On actually following the source citations, Feldman did not mention the CIA at all other than as "apparently", with a fourth-hand link to a Roger Gates article. The Roger Gates article about Robert Gates (sorry about all the swinging gates). Another article, by Morris, was of a page that did refer to former DCI Robert Gates, but not to Iraq. Unfortunately for citation purposes, a number of Morris citations link to specific pages of individual Asia Times articles. It could well be that appropriate material is on another page of the same article, but the forward-back links don't work on the page.
In general, I'm going to go more to the Church Committee than the journalistic accounts, as there is much more in very specific evidence citation. Where possible, I'm going to search for other references to documents the Committee considered strongly evidentiary. In this specific case, for example, there is an account of a poisoning attempt against an unnamed Near East "colonel", presumably General Qassim , but the action officer said it was no longer needed after a coup in Baghdad. The detail in the committee report, frankly, is much more detailed and plausible than Gates.
I'd very much appreciate comments about sourcing when it turns out that multiple listed sources are either personal accounts without detail and with much rhetoric, accounts of the accounts, or accounts of accounts of accounts. I'll put the specifics under Iraq in the talk page for CIA Activities by Region: Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia, but there are books cited to which I have no access. If anyone does have them, I'd appreciate verification. In addition to the material I'll put into the talk page for this article, (look at text in edit mode to see questionable citations commented out but not deleted) (signed the next day) Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 20:39, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi,
Due to the fact that almost all of the edits coming in from IP-only-identified users have been vandalism, I threw an sprotected2 tag on the page. I don't know if this will stick or work (I am not an administrator). If an administrator reads this and agrees and knows how to make it stick, please do so.
At the least, if people want to make crank edits, they should go to the trouble of making up an idea and putting in edits to the Frogurt page for 3 or 4 days before having a go at the CIA page.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 22:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi,
Howard B has been consistently pushing a philosophy of
In Howard's defense and as a bit of nostalgia, I now quote from a book I got for 50 cents at the library book sale, written exactly 40 years ago, which curiously echos all of Howard's points:
When I resigned from the Central Intelligence Agency, thus concluding a career of nearly twenty-three years in intelligence, the furthest thing from my mind was to write a book about the CIA or the United States intelligence system. But then, I had led a cloistered life for more than two decades.
What I did not realize was how little is actually known about the CIA and the American system for keeping our policy makers advised of the threats to the nation's security. Nor did I understand the depth of suspicion, if not hostility, that exists toward the CIA in some sectors of our society, particularly in academic life. I had been aware that some of the American press had been hostile, but perhaps erroneously had attributed this to a natural aversion to anything secret.
My contact with the American public during the years with the agency had been primarily in the area of personnel recruitment, and here there seemd to be not only understanding, but enthusiasm as well. The CIA, over the years, has always been able to recruit outstanding men and women, and perhaps I interpreted this as representing a general understanding on the part of the American people of what the Central Intelligence Agency is and what it does. I have learned since leaving the government that the success in CIA recruitment represents an interest on the part of young men and women in serving the government and not any real understanding of CIA.
The CIA, the White House, and Congress must all share the blam for this lack of accurate information on the agency and the United States intelligence system. For many years the CIA has had a myopic view of its public image and has assumed that the American people would accept it solely on the basis that it had been created by Congress, reported directly to the President, and that the top two officials, the director and the deputy directory -- the only two appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate and therefore known to the public -- were men of stature with international reputations. Even in this the agency has been in error, because not many people even know these basic facts about the CIA.
...
The American people have a deep concern, indeed fear, over the concentration of too much power in any area of our society. When this power is in the government and cloaked in secrecy, then their concern is even greater...It is not a concern about secrecy as such, which the people will accept as a necessity for national security. Nor is it a concern about intelligence activity, which the public recognizes as a necessary government function during a period of international tension and strife. It is a concern about secret power and the possibilities of its abuse.
...
Communist psychological warfare units never fail to take advantage of the discovery of any American intelligence activity. They invariably advertise it to the world in the worst possible light. Not content in just dealing with facts, the Communists have also proved to be adept in fabrication and forgeries designed to discredit the American intelligence and security services and have found willing audiences in this country, but even more so in the uncommitted areas of the world.
The James Bond syndrome, with its emphasis on cloak and dagger adventures, fast cars, and faster women, hasn't helped the CIA image. Most people now look in intelligence as all espionage and action, and fail to realize that the bulk of the work is the painstaking assembly of information.
The Central Intelligence Agency has been hurt by the fact that it combines intelligence and operations, action and information. The advantages of combining these responsibilities in one central organization have been lessened, if not negated, by the emphasis in the public mind on clandestine operations and the failure on the part of the government to describe the organization in perspective.
The above quotes are from "The Real CIA" by Lyman Kirkpatrick, MacMillan & Co, 1968. He was an Executive Director of the CIA (not sure what that is versus Director or Deputy Director).
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 22:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Here is another quote from Real CIA by Lyman Kirkpatrick, about the "foreign agency liaison" function, the details of which probably haven't changed in 40 years (like the details of his other comments that I quoted above):
My initial assignment was to be a sort of general handyman to Maddox, who at that point was pretty much trying to do everything himself. This involved liaison with the British Intelligence Service, certainly the most important part of our work.
...
The liaison work was interesting and those magnificent men working for the liberation of their countries were fascinating, each in his own way, but, after six months or so, I didn't give up the work with too much regret because it was tiring and a strain on the liver. Successful liaison in intelligence is achieved only through the development of close personal relations in which there is complete and absolute confidence on both sides. Almost immediately on my arrival in London I found myself plunged into a series of lunches that would last from 1 P.M. through a good part of the afternoon, and dinners that lasted well past midnight. Our European friends were formidable consumers of alcoholic beverages, with apparently little effect, and I always wondered whether they also put in the same long office hours that we did.
Erxnmedia 12:34, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
USA has "Ministers" ???????? Ministries are only present in Monarchies and/or President/Parliamentary systems. Please fix this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.34.98.154 ( talk) 02:45, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I deleted a section that was repeated exactly later on in the article. The deleted section was called Wikipedia, and the exact copy is called "Wikipedia and CIA". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.100.218.210 ( talk) 15:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
The description of the Heraldic image used by the CIA (perhaps it's referred to as a seal) is strange. It explains the meaning of each element without citation but it's doubtful that each element has a meaning, let alone the meaning attributed to it. Many people are mystified by heraldry and imagine that everything must mean something, but that's rarely the case. One of the most doubtful parts of the description is that the field (viz., the "sheild") has a meaning. The elements on the image were obviously a, somewhat, inept immitation of the heraldic tradtion. In that tradition the sheild, itself, is standard. To say it has a meaning is an odd claim. It's like saying that, not only the symbol on a football player's helmet has a meaning, but the helmet too is meaningful... it's not really. It just protects the dude's head. In heraldry, the only meaning of the sheild is to provide a place to put the charges. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.87.57.63 ( talk) 07:22, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm without my library at present. For many years (and possibly now), the early and less sensitive parts of CIA Junior Officer Training (JOT), before new employees had full security clearance, was given away from Headquarters. Any Arlington, Virginia cab driver could take you to the CIA "blue building" at the corner of Glebe Road and what is now Route 66. The Office of Training subsequently moved to another Arlington location, but the 1000 Glebe Road facility deserves a historic note.
This facility was identified in at least one book, IIRC Frank Snepp, although it could have been Marchetti & Marks. Does anyone have access to the reference?
I did edit a section on "operative training", which dealt only with advanced operations training at Camp Peary and elsewhere. The term "operative", in any case, is not used. That training may or may not be under the NCS rather than the Office of Training. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 18:48, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
My goal is for the main article to serve as an overview in understanding the organization and its supervision, with issue details in clearly-linked subordinate articles.
For example, I'd like to move the details of interrogation manuals, renditions, etc., to the human rights article, expanding them there and having a clear link in the main article.
I'm still thinking about the intelligence failures, as I don't want to make the intelligence technique series of article specific to any given organization. Nevertheless, there is general information about analytic pathologies and inadequate information technology elsewhere, which may have had a role in some of the more recent failures. Suggestions welcome.
The detailed drug accusations should move to transnational drugs and crime, not hiding the existence in any way but minimizing the details in a paragraph in the main article, which links to the detailed one.
I'd like to see more detail on where some of the external links apply, having just removed several that are dead. The Harold Pinter speech, for example, never mentions the Central Intelligence Agency; why was it there? Where, specifically do comments from Noam Chomsky go, which are specific to CIA rather than general US policy.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 16:39, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
First, I think it's more accurate, less sensational, and more in keeping with related material to refer to "human experimentation" rather than "mind control". One can point, for example, to the Declaration of Helsinki and the Nuremberg Code being in effect long before the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention. Not all of the experiments were to increase suggestibility or willingness to talk; some dealt with incapacitation. In taking a broader term, yet another problem is that the general program of chemical research under Gottlieb included toxins for assassinations, which, AFAIK, were never tested on humans, although there is reasonable information that they were given to operational staff at least in an assassination attempt against Castro.
Second, while these did take place in the Americas, I think the main discussion belongs in Human Rights rather than the geographical piece. Torture and inappropriate interrogation took place on several continents, and I think the human experimentation really should be under a common header. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 14:34, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Will anyone have any serious problem if the fictional references move to their own article, possibly a more general one that includes other fictional US intelligence agencies from the Man from UNCLE to Maxwell Smart?
I'd appreciate it if people would look through the "See also" section, and decide if the links there need to be in the article as a list of links, as inline cites in the main article, or in subarticles.
I say this with more hesitation, but I wonder if there might be a reasonable article that deals with US intelligence failures, not limited to the CIA. With respect to the Battle of Pearl Harbor, the problems of intelligence being misinterpreted or not gotten to operational personnel have probably been analyzed in greater detail than in any other case. There was no involvement, however, by the CIA or OSS, neither one of which had yet been formed.
As has been suggested, it might be appropriate to have a separate article dealing with US intelligence and war criminals. A substantial number of Nazi and Japanese war criminals, for example, made deals with pre-CIA organizations. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 20:07, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I have restored deletions made by an editor yesterday, on the grounds that the material was copyrighted. The text, however, came from US government documents not subject to US copyright.
Foreign Relations of the United States is published by the Department of State, as a permanent record of foreign relations-related actions of multiple government agencies, including the CIA, its supervisory organizations, State, etc. The documents directly published by CIA are also not subject to copyright. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 17:00, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
This article is insanely long. 177KB is 5-6 times the length specified by the manual of style. Please trim this article and/or move into subarticles. 64.178.96.168 ( talk) 20:19, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
There's been a growing consensus, since perhaps November or December [2007], that the main CIA article is far too long. As a result, there are a set of sub-articles, and even some of those are getting unwieldy.
To see the list of subarticles, scroll to the bottom of the main CIA page and click on "Central Intelligence Agency". In many cases, the text (e.g., on drug trafficking) has been copied to the subordinate article (e.g., Transnational Crime & Drugs). I had thought it appropriate to wait a week or two more before replacing some of the main article text with Wikilinks to the subordinate pages, but I'd like to hear any concerns soon. A number of editors are adding material to the main article, in areas covered by sub-pages, and it's getting hard to keep the sub-pages synchronized.
Sub-pages often have additional information that is not in the main article; the only reason any content from the existing main page would be lost would be duplication or citations missing for several months.
If there are no objections, I'd like to start the major moves (e.g., human rights violations, drugs, etc.) within a day or two.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 20:11, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I think that the 2003 invasion of Iraq belongs under the regional section that contains Iraq, but some might suggest that it was rationalized as part of the war on terror. I believe the sections in the current CIA article talking about such things as the Bin Laden Station and the Worldwide Attack Matrix belong in the transnational article about CIA and terrorism.
An argument can be made in either direction, but I'd like to hear any objections, which may be very good ones, to my proposal.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 00:57, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
There is a link to "CIA and the Media", but that is mostly a stub. Again trying to get details out of the main article, this section could go in at least two places.
First, it could go with some other domestic things, such as Operation MOCKINGBIRD, now in the regional section on the Americas.
Alternatively, the "CIA and the Media" section, the US activities in the Americas regional article, and "Influencing public opinion and law enforcement" could go into a new article on CIA domestic activities -- which would also include some of their legitimate domestic operations, such as debriefing travelers.
Both places have arguments for and against. While I might lean slightly toward the second, I really would not object to either placement, as long as the "CIA and the Media" stub gets merged.
Thoughts? Preferences?
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 03:03, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
CIA page is > 100 KB
NCS article in CIA page is longer than NCS standalone article
Solution: Move bulk of NCS article in CIA page into NCS standalone article
Any objections?
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 18:49, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
In the first few lines, "IC" is defined as "Intelligence Community" which I would have expected. However, a pointer to the DNI managing the IC takes one to an article which seems to redefine IC as "Intelligence Cycle." While we are not responsible for that article, it doesn't seem right and is confusing. Note that the "IC" abbreviation is used throughout the article. Student7 ( talk) 02:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Structure, and GAO plus a wide range of other oversight organizations, really do need to be at the beginning. First, unless one understands the structure, how can the history be explained? We've had a long problem of "history" just being covert action, without the approval process that did or didn't work, which leads to some justified but a lot of unjustified claims of a rogue organization. As Harry Truman's sign read, "the buck stops here", so if a President authorized an action, that's important -- and without the structure of the approval mechanisms, how can that be explained?
As an aside, I very much want to read structure about any organization I'm going to study, or my studies become chaotic because I have no context. You mention, I hope jokingly, "spies". That isn't even the term intelligence people use for espionage, but there is much more to intelligence than espionage and covert action. With all due respect, your comment "But we expect this agency to act. Like Special Forces or an Army or any group that actually performs rathers than talks or shuffles paper" is not a realistic expectation of the way the system is supposed to work. I can point you to a long series of Special Forces, to say nothing of the Army as a whole, about the paperwork necessary in planning a mission. Even a raid that lasts a short time, such as Son Tay, took months of planning, much of which was paperwork. One lengthy effort requiring much reading of paper, requesting more paper, and analyzing paper to produce a plan was a detailed study of North Vietnamese radar coverage so the raiders could thread through it without detection.
Remember this is an encyclopedia and not Tom Clancy. There is no compelling need to have a "hot" opening, although it needs to be clear. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 16:17, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Howard,
Please try to keep the history of the CIA more entertaining.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 17:57, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
You said, "And maybe a history of structure is there and is of interest because the organization grew that way for a reason. But this history could be intertwined with a general history. The agency had this failure so they then set up this separate group to make sure that didn't happen again."
If none of that works try watching this punched-up video of Live at the Pentagon. Erxnmedia ( talk) 23:15, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
It has been my impression that a reasonable number of editors have concluded that the main CIA article is too long to be practical to edit, and sometimes even to render. The solution, without losing valuable information, is to move text to the set of sub-articles identified in the navigation box at the bottom.
In moving, it is sometimes necessary to add a small amount of text to the main article in order to explain what has moved, and occasionally to add definitions. In general, however, am I correct that there is a consensus not to add any significant new information to the main article? A possible exception could be with truly general material, such as agency-wide history or organization. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 15:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
Is the "Office of Military Affairs" still in existence?
The citation about it in this section points to [3], which does not seem to be accessible at this point, so I'm updating it (the citation) to the only page at CIA that seems to say much about it: [4] (OMA is at the very end of that page). (I hope that was OK, hc! ;)
Anyway, that office may now be called "Military Support" or something instead -- I'm not sure though, and didn't find too much under that name, either, at the CIA website. → Wikiscient→ 16:49, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
After working on the draft in my userspace, and getting some useful comments, there is now an article, not limited to the CIA, with an awkward but accurate title: U.S. Intelligence involvement with German and Japanese War Criminals after World War II.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 15:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
The title is awkward because US intelligence involvement with war criminals was not limited to CIA, since a number of the recruitments were either before the CIA was formed, or before it had control of clandestine/covert operations. Yes, the CIA later ran some of these, sometimes witting of the war crimes status of people working for them.
My next CIA-related goals deal with what I now think should be separate articles: