![]() | 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. |
Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | → | Archive 12 |
The below comment was put directly into the article and then reverted by another editor, so I'm moving it to the discussion page for comment. ( Morethan3words ( talk) 11:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC)) -P.S., I'll work on the war criminals article over the weekend, sorry for not responding earlier:
"The above says that the primary function of the CIA is to "The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. Its primary function is collecting and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers." THIS IS NOT CORRECT. The primary function of the CIA is to prevent strategic surprise. For a fantastic book on the CIA read THE MAIN ENEMY by Milt Bearden and James Risen. - 71.167.4.142"
I really don't want to get into a revert war, but I believe there is a consensus among several editors that the detailed material on transnational terrorism needs to be in the sub-article created for that purpose, CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 10:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I moved your material to CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities, deleting no content, but breaking out by date so it can merge. Please try to work with several of us in getting the detailed material off the main CIA page. You have good content there, and there is good content in the sub-article. Please work with us, and not get into a revert war. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 10:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The sub-article has a general introduction, and then a chronology of Agency involvement with terrorism and counterterrorism. An introduction, and then a chronological presentation, has worked well for other transnational issues, and for country-specific issues.
Again, I plead that you work with us. If you are dissatisfied with the move, perhaps a third party reading this will comment. I'd really hate to distract us with mediation or arbitration, but, for practical reasons, we have to think very carefully before adding substantial text to the CIA main page. I'm hoping to get it to be 100K once the media/opinion sections and inappropriate domestic surveillance/security sections move; there is a draft of the first, very rough, in my sandbox; it was written before the need to split the two became more obvious, but feel free to look at User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-Influencing.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 10:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I am abridging the 3rd post of your verbatim material, in good faith, and don't consider this 3RR because it is editing with at least some discussion. Any other editors familiar with this material, please, please add your input.
I am not completely clear what you mean by having a "summary of each topic", since the CIA has worked with terrorism beyond al-Qaeda. If the details of al-Qaeda stay on the main page, then, logically, there should be a summary of every terrorist organization that the Agency has tracked, supported, or attacked.
Please work with me to have what you consider fair abridgement, within the goal of keeping all your contributions but to put them in a place with much more space and contex. Please work with several of us in our efforts to reduce the size of the main CIA article, without losing content. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 11:02, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I believe it fair to say there is a consensus to reduce the size of the main page, without losing any content, by moving material to sub-articles. Again, however, the terrorism section of the main page had new material added to it by an editor with whom there had been an exchange here, indicating how the material was moved.
In the previous attempt, the other editor was very concerned there was a summary of the material on the main page. I accepted that as a compromise (see #Abridging at your request above. That still left more characters, on the main page, than for any other sub-article. Today, I again found new material added to the main section, although the sub-article had been discussed with the editor who made the changes. Regretfully, I consider this a change, without discussion on the article talk page (not my talk page, as this is an issue affecting all interested in this account), of what I believed to be a consensus.
My own opinion is that under the spirit of the consensus of using sub-articles, there is too much text in the main article on CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities, for which there is a sub-article in which the topics here are discussed at greater length. If we cannot come to a consensus of basic summary on the main page and expansion in the sub-article, I could be bold and simply cut down the main page summary.
It seems more in the spirit of Wikipedia, however, to mention this, and get opinion from the community. I had planned on making the next move and main page conversion to summary, in a few days to allow comment, to CIA influence on public opinion.
I really think there is some level of consensus that the main article is still too long, although we have made significant improve it. My goal is to get it, minimally, under 100K, because new topics may arise and need to be posted. It's possible, for example, that some of the history needs to move into a subarticle.
Please, let's work together for the NPOV goal of reducing page size. I don't think anyone is doing POV-pushing by trying to put details on the main page, although that was an issue before and worked out through dialogue.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 15:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
May I ask why this material, already in the sub-article, keeps moving back to the main page? A wide variety of Agency activities are in sub-pages, and the main page is mostly links to them plus agency-wide history and organization? Repeating not just terrorism in general, but mostly the material about al-Qaeda in the U.S., seems to violate WP:WEIGHT, since things of much larger scope (Second Place, Southeast Asian War Games, 1945-1975) manage successfully in their sub-pages?
Indeed, even some of the sub-pages are getting large enough to consider hiving off the larger subjects, but that works neatly: a region or a country can become a sub-article without breaking the flow.
On other topics, there was no complaint on moving CIA and public opinion, or US intelligence and war criminals, to their own articles. No information has been lost in these moves.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 00:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
In my userspace, there is a draft User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-Influencing, which deals with CIA activities to influence news, labor and cultural organizations, etc., which started in the Cold War context of providing a balance to Communist opinion-molding groups. This draft article does not:
I do, however, invite review and talk page comments -- or, if you want to make inline edits, please explain them with inline comments. In particular, I am looking for more opinion-influencing activity after 1967.
If we can get consensus on the draft, I propose to move all but a summary of these events off the mainpage, replacing it with a wikilink to this subarticle.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 02:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Should this subarticle deal with:
There is coverage of the McCoy matter in the transnational drugs article, but, as I think about it, this might belong either in both places or here. I didn't yet cover things such as Marchetti & Marks, but I can't think of another place to put such material than this subarticle.
Also, what about the report of CIA editing to Wikipedia? My personal opinion is that there is more smoke than fire here, for two reasons. First, there are people at CIA that are experts in various subjects and could make legitimate contributions. I don't know CIA's policies, but I would guess there are at least three categories:
Case 3, to me, is the only one that is problematic. Does anyone know of edits that seem to be in that category?
I'd also note that CIA IP addresses can be spoofed.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 13:17, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
My initial reading reminded me I need new glasses, since, at first, I saw "Lust fiction". James Bond, certainly, but I can't think of even a fictional CIA character that does so well with lust.
In any event, I interpret "influence" as limited to situations where CIA actually takes a role. For example, the U.S. Navy certainly influenced public opinion with its support of the movie Top Gun.
Are there works of fiction that received official CIA support? That I've never heard of any doesn't mean they don't exist, but the assistance would need to be sourced.
Fiction that involves the CIA, but where there was no CIA involvement, doesn't seem to be a form of influencing public opinion by the CIA, the focus of this section. Clearly, if Remo and Master Chiun were on the staff, there would be far fewer operational problems. :-)
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 17:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I have created CIA influence on public opinion. It should not have any significant loss of content from what is now in the main article, and indeed has a good deal more information.
I welcome additions and comments. If there are no objections after a few days, I propose to delete other than a Wikilink to this from the main article, in the continuing effort to manage the size of the main article.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 01:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
While the writing style is rather dramatic and clearly has an anti-CIA POV, does anyone have a sense of how reputable they are as a source? Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 19:35, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
This is already noted in CIA activities in the Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia#Iran 2007, but I will add the additional MSNBC reference deleted from main page.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 22:05, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 23:03, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 23:48, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to make "CIA activities in <country X>" articles and a sub-template and sub-category for each region, unless somebody wants to have a cow about it. (I'm being WP:BOLD here.) I'll move the text for each country into it's own article and point to that article in the geographical article.
These articles have become infrequently updated and I think this is due to size.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 22:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Information recently added to the terrorism section in the main article, citing, for example, George Tenet's warnings about the impact of errors, is factually correct, to the best of my knowledge. In a very restricted way, I am suggesting WP:UNDUE, but please listen to my reasoning for that concern. The same issues were brought up a month or so ago, in #Terrorism sub-article.
Over six months or so, quite a few people have worked hard in reducing what was a poorly flowing article of over 300K, which was breaking browsers and causing edit conflicts, to a much more manageable one of a little over 100K. I personally am looking at the lengthier sections in the main article, such as the various external reports and investigations of the agency, and asking myself if they are at too detailed a level for the main article -- should they have a brief intro, but then be in a separate article, wikilinked as we did for the article on the individual stamps on CIA placed by the various DCIs?
Everything, as far as I know, that is covered in the main article terrorism activities section is in the much lengthier article on CIA activities relating to terrorism. It appears, however, that this main article section keeps growing, a sentence here, a paragraph there, and another sentence somewhere else.
Ernxmedia just observed that the regional articles were also growing too large for easy updating. While I might not agree with every sub-article spawned as some are close to stubs, his basic idea is sound.
CIA, even before getting into larger issues of US rather than CIA policy, is extremely complex. I note, in the context of agency-vs.-government position, that the Tenet comments are being given to a Cabinet-level committee, which is an example of how difficult it can be to draw the line about scope.
I welcome all suggestions on keeping the main article at a useful length. It has been said, with respect to physical fitness, that the price of agility is eternal diligence. More to the point at size control, a waist is a terrible thing to mind. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 15:34, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
For many years, the estimate of CIA size has been in the 15,000-25,000 range. Recently, a figure of 2,000 has been introduced, sourced to Tim Weiner. Harper's Magazine has been cited, but if you actually look at http://www.harpers.org/subjects/CIA/SubjectOf/Fact, their number in the 2500 range is the number of presumably overt employees that they could find in databases.
Perhaps more revealing is http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/washington/20lawyers.html?pagewanted=print, which identifies the number of employees, not CIA alone, but in the community, who buy legal insurance to protect them in job-related activities.
In his various exposes, Philip Agee has identified a total of around 2,000 employees. Did he get them all?
If I may be permitted a personal observation about realities, I've been at CIA Headquarters, and I'm fairly confident there are considerably more than 2,000 spaces in the parking lot. NSA's parking lot is larger than that, and it is possible to see much of it from the National Cryptologic Museum just outside the fence, where only a small part of the CIA lot can be seen from the ground outside (a bit from the Route 123 side, none from the George Washington Parkway). There are numerous references to the number of personnel in military intelligence, usually in the tens of thousands but described as "several times" larger than CIA. See Bamford's The Puzzle Palace, Kahn's The Codebreakers, etc. One can simply go through military organizational charts and find large SIGINT organizations.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 19:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
I believe the ~2,700 number is more accurate...the large number of parking spaces could be indicative of days when the CIA was far larger. Furthermore, the insurance data proves nothing because CIA employees are just one of many groups in the Federal Government that takes out these kind of policies. Finally, Weiner's book indicates that the CIA's numbers have been plummeting over the years from the Cold War figures in the tens of thousands.
Chattanoogan ( talk) 21:46, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Reliable sources, please. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 22:25, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
What is more reliable than the CIA's own databases? With all due respect, are we to engage in "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" speculations or arguments about unknowables such as the number of covert agents the CIA employs?
Chattanoogan ( talk) 22:50, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
are we to engage in ...arguments about unknowables such as the number of covert agents the CIA employs?
These should have, on a historical basis, entries that are identified as:
I know there are potential 150 articles. Other than the general Wikipedia community, maybe the kids at Mercyhurst could join in to clean these up.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 13:57, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Hi Howard,
You have to look at the sub-sections of the pointers above. Because of Wikipedia's namespace for links, I can't actually use the sub-sub-head because only one sub-sub-head link with the same name will get picked up, and the same title like Covert action is used repeatedly for subheads throughout an article. Perhaps a better sub-sub-head would be something like 1954 Covert Action.
Also I forgot to add, under Psychological Operations, White, Gray and Black, under your classification in CIA influence on public opinion.
Beyond that, if you read down to the sub-heads, it's interesting that they don't convey anything to you, because you are the one that came up with those sub-heads, and those edits. Can you not even please yourself?
By the way I did raise the issue of creating sub-articles before doing it. Now I am raising the issue of uniform structure for the sub-articles. I am proposing the structure that you actually used.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 14:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Ultimately I would like to see a fair, disciplined and complete (encyclopedic?) guide to the above, so that each country can be read separately, each region can be read in "executive summary", and, to the extent that public information is available, you get a full picture for each country.
It is easier to fill in the matrix when you have a style guide such as the sub-heads listed above. This gives an organization and classification scheme for dropping in the bits of history available.
By extension I would also like to see this for ISI, Mossad, KGB, etc., in the same framework. It's a lot of work. The pages for other-country services are not nearly as developed as the CIA page. I thought if I went to another country-centric Wikipedia like France, that the French pages on French services would be more detailed than the US pages on French services. However, the French Wikipedia pages on French services are very limited and the "portal" has a Spy Museum kind of feel rather than an industrial-strength feel.
I would like to see an industrial-strength history of all the services. We are starting closer to home here but really I think it would be tremendously useful to have a guide for all of them.
Separately, for foreign relations in general, we look at pairs like US-Iran and US-Israel and US-Cuba and forget cross-pairs like Iran-Israel and Iran-Iraq and so on. You don't get the full matrix of sensitivities when you eliminate the cross-pairs. I am reading Trita Parsi's book now so I have a renewed sensitivity to the cross-pair issue.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 14:55, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Should Outsourcing Intelligence be merged into here? Comments? -- John Nagle ( talk) 15:22, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was no move. JPG-GR ( talk) 06:02, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I suggest moving Central Intelligence Agency to CIA. See Wikipedia:Requested moves#10 May 2008. Brian Jason Drake 05:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
My reason is (as noted on Wikipedia:Requested moves): The organization is almost exclusively referred to using the abbreviation (Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Use common names of persons and things). Brian Jason Drake 06:04, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
FYI, a recent similar move request (but in reverse) was made at Talk:BBC. Also mentioned were ITV, CNN, NBC, HBO, RTL, NASA, FIFA, and UEFA standing at their abbreviations. — AjaxSmack 01:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Why was this controversy removed from the article ? 65.173.104.109 ( talk) 03:30, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
The Mandela Affair
It might be worth adding that the CIA were responsible for the capture of Nelson Mandela during his early ANC days. He ended up serving a long prison sentence. This fact is also mentioned in the Wiki article on Mandela. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.141.60.131 ( talk) 22:07, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
![]() | 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. |
Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | → | Archive 12 |
The below comment was put directly into the article and then reverted by another editor, so I'm moving it to the discussion page for comment. ( Morethan3words ( talk) 11:39, 13 March 2008 (UTC)) -P.S., I'll work on the war criminals article over the weekend, sorry for not responding earlier:
"The above says that the primary function of the CIA is to "The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. Its primary function is collecting and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers." THIS IS NOT CORRECT. The primary function of the CIA is to prevent strategic surprise. For a fantastic book on the CIA read THE MAIN ENEMY by Milt Bearden and James Risen. - 71.167.4.142"
I really don't want to get into a revert war, but I believe there is a consensus among several editors that the detailed material on transnational terrorism needs to be in the sub-article created for that purpose, CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 10:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I moved your material to CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities, deleting no content, but breaking out by date so it can merge. Please try to work with several of us in getting the detailed material off the main CIA page. You have good content there, and there is good content in the sub-article. Please work with us, and not get into a revert war. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 10:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The sub-article has a general introduction, and then a chronology of Agency involvement with terrorism and counterterrorism. An introduction, and then a chronological presentation, has worked well for other transnational issues, and for country-specific issues.
Again, I plead that you work with us. If you are dissatisfied with the move, perhaps a third party reading this will comment. I'd really hate to distract us with mediation or arbitration, but, for practical reasons, we have to think very carefully before adding substantial text to the CIA main page. I'm hoping to get it to be 100K once the media/opinion sections and inappropriate domestic surveillance/security sections move; there is a draft of the first, very rough, in my sandbox; it was written before the need to split the two became more obvious, but feel free to look at User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-Influencing.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 10:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I am abridging the 3rd post of your verbatim material, in good faith, and don't consider this 3RR because it is editing with at least some discussion. Any other editors familiar with this material, please, please add your input.
I am not completely clear what you mean by having a "summary of each topic", since the CIA has worked with terrorism beyond al-Qaeda. If the details of al-Qaeda stay on the main page, then, logically, there should be a summary of every terrorist organization that the Agency has tracked, supported, or attacked.
Please work with me to have what you consider fair abridgement, within the goal of keeping all your contributions but to put them in a place with much more space and contex. Please work with several of us in our efforts to reduce the size of the main CIA article, without losing content. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 11:02, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I believe it fair to say there is a consensus to reduce the size of the main page, without losing any content, by moving material to sub-articles. Again, however, the terrorism section of the main page had new material added to it by an editor with whom there had been an exchange here, indicating how the material was moved.
In the previous attempt, the other editor was very concerned there was a summary of the material on the main page. I accepted that as a compromise (see #Abridging at your request above. That still left more characters, on the main page, than for any other sub-article. Today, I again found new material added to the main section, although the sub-article had been discussed with the editor who made the changes. Regretfully, I consider this a change, without discussion on the article talk page (not my talk page, as this is an issue affecting all interested in this account), of what I believed to be a consensus.
My own opinion is that under the spirit of the consensus of using sub-articles, there is too much text in the main article on CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities, for which there is a sub-article in which the topics here are discussed at greater length. If we cannot come to a consensus of basic summary on the main page and expansion in the sub-article, I could be bold and simply cut down the main page summary.
It seems more in the spirit of Wikipedia, however, to mention this, and get opinion from the community. I had planned on making the next move and main page conversion to summary, in a few days to allow comment, to CIA influence on public opinion.
I really think there is some level of consensus that the main article is still too long, although we have made significant improve it. My goal is to get it, minimally, under 100K, because new topics may arise and need to be posted. It's possible, for example, that some of the history needs to move into a subarticle.
Please, let's work together for the NPOV goal of reducing page size. I don't think anyone is doing POV-pushing by trying to put details on the main page, although that was an issue before and worked out through dialogue.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 15:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
May I ask why this material, already in the sub-article, keeps moving back to the main page? A wide variety of Agency activities are in sub-pages, and the main page is mostly links to them plus agency-wide history and organization? Repeating not just terrorism in general, but mostly the material about al-Qaeda in the U.S., seems to violate WP:WEIGHT, since things of much larger scope (Second Place, Southeast Asian War Games, 1945-1975) manage successfully in their sub-pages?
Indeed, even some of the sub-pages are getting large enough to consider hiving off the larger subjects, but that works neatly: a region or a country can become a sub-article without breaking the flow.
On other topics, there was no complaint on moving CIA and public opinion, or US intelligence and war criminals, to their own articles. No information has been lost in these moves.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 00:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
In my userspace, there is a draft User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-Influencing, which deals with CIA activities to influence news, labor and cultural organizations, etc., which started in the Cold War context of providing a balance to Communist opinion-molding groups. This draft article does not:
I do, however, invite review and talk page comments -- or, if you want to make inline edits, please explain them with inline comments. In particular, I am looking for more opinion-influencing activity after 1967.
If we can get consensus on the draft, I propose to move all but a summary of these events off the mainpage, replacing it with a wikilink to this subarticle.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 02:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Should this subarticle deal with:
There is coverage of the McCoy matter in the transnational drugs article, but, as I think about it, this might belong either in both places or here. I didn't yet cover things such as Marchetti & Marks, but I can't think of another place to put such material than this subarticle.
Also, what about the report of CIA editing to Wikipedia? My personal opinion is that there is more smoke than fire here, for two reasons. First, there are people at CIA that are experts in various subjects and could make legitimate contributions. I don't know CIA's policies, but I would guess there are at least three categories:
Case 3, to me, is the only one that is problematic. Does anyone know of edits that seem to be in that category?
I'd also note that CIA IP addresses can be spoofed.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 13:17, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
My initial reading reminded me I need new glasses, since, at first, I saw "Lust fiction". James Bond, certainly, but I can't think of even a fictional CIA character that does so well with lust.
In any event, I interpret "influence" as limited to situations where CIA actually takes a role. For example, the U.S. Navy certainly influenced public opinion with its support of the movie Top Gun.
Are there works of fiction that received official CIA support? That I've never heard of any doesn't mean they don't exist, but the assistance would need to be sourced.
Fiction that involves the CIA, but where there was no CIA involvement, doesn't seem to be a form of influencing public opinion by the CIA, the focus of this section. Clearly, if Remo and Master Chiun were on the staff, there would be far fewer operational problems. :-)
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 17:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I have created CIA influence on public opinion. It should not have any significant loss of content from what is now in the main article, and indeed has a good deal more information.
I welcome additions and comments. If there are no objections after a few days, I propose to delete other than a Wikilink to this from the main article, in the continuing effort to manage the size of the main article.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 01:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
While the writing style is rather dramatic and clearly has an anti-CIA POV, does anyone have a sense of how reputable they are as a source? Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 19:35, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
This is already noted in CIA activities in the Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia#Iran 2007, but I will add the additional MSNBC reference deleted from main page.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 22:05, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 23:03, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 23:48, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to make "CIA activities in <country X>" articles and a sub-template and sub-category for each region, unless somebody wants to have a cow about it. (I'm being WP:BOLD here.) I'll move the text for each country into it's own article and point to that article in the geographical article.
These articles have become infrequently updated and I think this is due to size.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 22:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Information recently added to the terrorism section in the main article, citing, for example, George Tenet's warnings about the impact of errors, is factually correct, to the best of my knowledge. In a very restricted way, I am suggesting WP:UNDUE, but please listen to my reasoning for that concern. The same issues were brought up a month or so ago, in #Terrorism sub-article.
Over six months or so, quite a few people have worked hard in reducing what was a poorly flowing article of over 300K, which was breaking browsers and causing edit conflicts, to a much more manageable one of a little over 100K. I personally am looking at the lengthier sections in the main article, such as the various external reports and investigations of the agency, and asking myself if they are at too detailed a level for the main article -- should they have a brief intro, but then be in a separate article, wikilinked as we did for the article on the individual stamps on CIA placed by the various DCIs?
Everything, as far as I know, that is covered in the main article terrorism activities section is in the much lengthier article on CIA activities relating to terrorism. It appears, however, that this main article section keeps growing, a sentence here, a paragraph there, and another sentence somewhere else.
Ernxmedia just observed that the regional articles were also growing too large for easy updating. While I might not agree with every sub-article spawned as some are close to stubs, his basic idea is sound.
CIA, even before getting into larger issues of US rather than CIA policy, is extremely complex. I note, in the context of agency-vs.-government position, that the Tenet comments are being given to a Cabinet-level committee, which is an example of how difficult it can be to draw the line about scope.
I welcome all suggestions on keeping the main article at a useful length. It has been said, with respect to physical fitness, that the price of agility is eternal diligence. More to the point at size control, a waist is a terrible thing to mind. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 15:34, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
For many years, the estimate of CIA size has been in the 15,000-25,000 range. Recently, a figure of 2,000 has been introduced, sourced to Tim Weiner. Harper's Magazine has been cited, but if you actually look at http://www.harpers.org/subjects/CIA/SubjectOf/Fact, their number in the 2500 range is the number of presumably overt employees that they could find in databases.
Perhaps more revealing is http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/washington/20lawyers.html?pagewanted=print, which identifies the number of employees, not CIA alone, but in the community, who buy legal insurance to protect them in job-related activities.
In his various exposes, Philip Agee has identified a total of around 2,000 employees. Did he get them all?
If I may be permitted a personal observation about realities, I've been at CIA Headquarters, and I'm fairly confident there are considerably more than 2,000 spaces in the parking lot. NSA's parking lot is larger than that, and it is possible to see much of it from the National Cryptologic Museum just outside the fence, where only a small part of the CIA lot can be seen from the ground outside (a bit from the Route 123 side, none from the George Washington Parkway). There are numerous references to the number of personnel in military intelligence, usually in the tens of thousands but described as "several times" larger than CIA. See Bamford's The Puzzle Palace, Kahn's The Codebreakers, etc. One can simply go through military organizational charts and find large SIGINT organizations.
Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 19:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
I believe the ~2,700 number is more accurate...the large number of parking spaces could be indicative of days when the CIA was far larger. Furthermore, the insurance data proves nothing because CIA employees are just one of many groups in the Federal Government that takes out these kind of policies. Finally, Weiner's book indicates that the CIA's numbers have been plummeting over the years from the Cold War figures in the tens of thousands.
Chattanoogan ( talk) 21:46, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Reliable sources, please. Howard C. Berkowitz ( talk) 22:25, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
What is more reliable than the CIA's own databases? With all due respect, are we to engage in "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" speculations or arguments about unknowables such as the number of covert agents the CIA employs?
Chattanoogan ( talk) 22:50, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
are we to engage in ...arguments about unknowables such as the number of covert agents the CIA employs?
These should have, on a historical basis, entries that are identified as:
I know there are potential 150 articles. Other than the general Wikipedia community, maybe the kids at Mercyhurst could join in to clean these up.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 13:57, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Hi Howard,
You have to look at the sub-sections of the pointers above. Because of Wikipedia's namespace for links, I can't actually use the sub-sub-head because only one sub-sub-head link with the same name will get picked up, and the same title like Covert action is used repeatedly for subheads throughout an article. Perhaps a better sub-sub-head would be something like 1954 Covert Action.
Also I forgot to add, under Psychological Operations, White, Gray and Black, under your classification in CIA influence on public opinion.
Beyond that, if you read down to the sub-heads, it's interesting that they don't convey anything to you, because you are the one that came up with those sub-heads, and those edits. Can you not even please yourself?
By the way I did raise the issue of creating sub-articles before doing it. Now I am raising the issue of uniform structure for the sub-articles. I am proposing the structure that you actually used.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 14:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Ultimately I would like to see a fair, disciplined and complete (encyclopedic?) guide to the above, so that each country can be read separately, each region can be read in "executive summary", and, to the extent that public information is available, you get a full picture for each country.
It is easier to fill in the matrix when you have a style guide such as the sub-heads listed above. This gives an organization and classification scheme for dropping in the bits of history available.
By extension I would also like to see this for ISI, Mossad, KGB, etc., in the same framework. It's a lot of work. The pages for other-country services are not nearly as developed as the CIA page. I thought if I went to another country-centric Wikipedia like France, that the French pages on French services would be more detailed than the US pages on French services. However, the French Wikipedia pages on French services are very limited and the "portal" has a Spy Museum kind of feel rather than an industrial-strength feel.
I would like to see an industrial-strength history of all the services. We are starting closer to home here but really I think it would be tremendously useful to have a guide for all of them.
Separately, for foreign relations in general, we look at pairs like US-Iran and US-Israel and US-Cuba and forget cross-pairs like Iran-Israel and Iran-Iraq and so on. You don't get the full matrix of sensitivities when you eliminate the cross-pairs. I am reading Trita Parsi's book now so I have a renewed sensitivity to the cross-pair issue.
Thanks, Erxnmedia ( talk) 14:55, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Should Outsourcing Intelligence be merged into here? Comments? -- John Nagle ( talk) 15:22, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was no move. JPG-GR ( talk) 06:02, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I suggest moving Central Intelligence Agency to CIA. See Wikipedia:Requested moves#10 May 2008. Brian Jason Drake 05:59, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
My reason is (as noted on Wikipedia:Requested moves): The organization is almost exclusively referred to using the abbreviation (Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Use common names of persons and things). Brian Jason Drake 06:04, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
FYI, a recent similar move request (but in reverse) was made at Talk:BBC. Also mentioned were ITV, CNN, NBC, HBO, RTL, NASA, FIFA, and UEFA standing at their abbreviations. — AjaxSmack 01:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Why was this controversy removed from the article ? 65.173.104.109 ( talk) 03:30, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
The Mandela Affair
It might be worth adding that the CIA were responsible for the capture of Nelson Mandela during his early ANC days. He ended up serving a long prison sentence. This fact is also mentioned in the Wiki article on Mandela. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.141.60.131 ( talk) 22:07, 27 June 2008 (UTC)