Underground Knowledge — A discussion group discussion

Shortly before his November, 1963 assassination, President John F. Kennedy once said:

“I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds”.

Since JFK's death, no US President has even remotely challenged the CIA's position, let alone threatened to dismantle the world's most powerful intel. agency. In fact, some presidents even had CIA backgrounds like President George H.W. Bush who was of course formerly Director of Central Intelligence (DCI).


Cut to late 2016: President Donald J. Trump visits the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia shortly after his election victory and says:

“I want to say that there is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump. There’s nobody.”


So, if officially speaking, the President is supposedly the most powerful person on the planet, and calling the shots on all U.S. affairs...Then why the hell would a U.S. President (JFK) wage war on the CIA?? Does that remotely add up according to official history?
Could it be because the CIA is effectively a breakaway group that is on some level actually ABOVE the President/White House/Congress?
Are the CIA, or splinter groups of the CIA, part of what's known as the Deep State, Shadow Government or even Breakaway Civilization?

And what if JFK had lived and succeeded in dismantling the CIA and all it stands for? What if he'd replaced it with a fairer intelligence-gathering organization that was actually for the American people and for global peace? An entity that was actually under the President's domain as its supposed to be...

Can we still achieve Kennedy's dream?

Are there any good books on the CIA? I wonder what Chomsky knows.

The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government is a good one on the CIA. Also Whiteout: The CIA,Drugs and the Press.

It would be difficult. I saw a history channel program on the CIA, and here are a couple of gems. During the time when the Shah was on the decline in Tehran, the CIA wrote off Khomanei as a nobody, and on the Iranian desk and in the Embassy, nobody spoke Farsi. How you think you can gather intelligence when you cannot understand a thing anyone there is saying is just weird. Then as Carter was preparing for re-election, he was negotiating with Tehran to get back the hostages, and apparently someone in his inner circle leaked the information to Reagan. Reagan made the strategy public, the hostages were not released, and Carter was history. Quite number of the inner circle were then given high positions in the inner circle under Reagan. Subsequently, apparently Reagan took almost no interest in foreign policy, leaving it largely to his CIA appointments. So it seems the CIA can dislodge presidents, which may make it difficult for presidents to dislodge them.

I read Legacy of Ashes. Very good on how they balls things up from time to time.

Ian wrote: "So it seems the CIA can dislodge presidents, which may make it difficult for presidents to dislodge them. ,..."

Yep.
We can probably throw the NSA into the mix too.
The NSA was of course quite new back in JFK's time, but have expanded a lot since.

Secret Wars of the CIA - John Stockwell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmYZ_...

A lecture by former CIA operations agent John Stockwell given in December, 1989 on the inner workings of the national security council and the CIA's covert actions in Angola, Central America and Vietnam.

In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story

[The United States’ goal in Angola] was not to keep out the Cubans and Soviets but to make their imperial efforts as costly as possible to prove that, after Vietnam, we were still capable of response, however insane. It is the story that has been told, and in impressive and convincing detail, by John Stockwell, the former chief of the CIA’s Angola ‘task force.’ His book should not be missed. Since strategic thought survives by ignoring experience, it has a highly professional interest in avoiding accounts such as this. By the same token, all who are alarmed about the tendency toward such strategic thinking should strongly welcome Mr. Stockwell’s book.” ―John Kenneth Galbraith, New York Review of Books

In Search of Enemies is much more than the story of the only war to be found when the CIA sought to recoup its prestige after the Vietnam debacle. Though no American troops were committed to Angola, only “advisors,” many millions were spent, many thousands died, and many lies were told to the American people, in waging a war without purpose to American vital interests and without hope of victory.

John wrote: "I read Legacy of Ashes. Very good on how they balls things up from time to time."

I heard the British spies have a nickname for the CIA: Christians In Action. (their words, not mine)

Could be reflective of the CIA interfering with world politics from the standpoint of American values, perhaps, I'm not sure.

Anyway, the British intel agencies are no better and we should splinter MI6 into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds while we are at it :)