Truman had it right: good info, good decisions

The greatest problem our country now faces is the increasing refusal of our leaders and chief government officials to do their own thinking. Naturally, their judgments result in waste, scandal and government failure.

For example, modern national security secrecy practices — directed by un-elected bureaucrats more or less influenced by lobbyists (foreign and domestic) — control the information available to Congress, the media, Americans and the president. This is a natural recipe for national security/foreign relations corruption. Consider the manipulated intelligence scandals behind the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. Or consider the intelligence “failures” that obviously lengthen the Afghan war.

Anybody can prove that the quality of the data accumulated for problem-solving determines the quality of thinking, judgment and actions. President Harry S. Truman oversaw the creation of the CIA. Consider his words from his 1963 Washington Post essay “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence:” “I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President’s performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West.”

To see how far its activities have strayed from the CIA’s intended purpose, consider Truman’s further words: “The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior, and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work. But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to the established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what’s worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.

“Therefore I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department ‘treatment’ or interpretations. I wanted and needed the information in its ‘natural raw’ state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or lead the President into unwise decisions — and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.”

Yet current presidents are given “intelligence briefings,” prepared from filtered compilations from “intelligence community” experts that are pre-coordinated with chief advisors. So a president doesn’t get intelligence in its “natural raw” state to do his own thinking and evaluating, but is forced to use pre-digested, slanted information from “trusted” sources. As Truman implied, poor judgment has become inevitable.

Worse yet, consider how CIA bureaucrats have interpreted the 1947 National Security Act provision “such other functions and duties related to intelligence … as the National Security Council may from time to time direct.” It’s used to legalize and glorify barbaric covert action in disregard for American values. Examples include assassinations (example: over 700 attempts on Castro), covertly assisting the overthrow of often democratically elected governments perceived as unsupportive of American special interests (1950s Iran, Guatemala, 1970s Chile, 1980s Nicaragua), directing acts of war using mercenaries and bombers (recently robot drones) in countries we weren’t at war with (1960s-70s Laos and Cambodia, 2009-10 Pakistan) covertly supporting dictatorships in exchange for sweetheart deals ( Indonesia’s Suharto, Shah of Iran, Chile’s Pinochet, Haiti’s Papa Doc Duvalier, Panama’s Noriega, Philippine’s Marcos, etc); and kidnapping and torture (recent Italian trial over CIA “renditions”).

Relevantly, Truman’s essay continued: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas. I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in fact attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and foreign intrigue — and subject for cold war enemy propaganda” (update using “Muslim fanatic enemy propaganda”).

This intelligence and decision-making corruption has got to stop. I suggest America implement Truman’s recommendation that is even more justified today than when he made it in 1963: “I, therefore, would like to see the CIA restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field — and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere. We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel we need to correct it.”

Stuart Thompson lives in Wasilla.