When Harry Truman created the CIA in 1947 out of the Office of Strategic Services that had been formed during WW II to coordinate espionage activities against the Axis Powers, Truman wanted a civilian intelligence organization that would bring raw data to him as President, unadulterated by the bias that wouldn’t be “slanted to conform to established positions of a given department.”

It appears that the following year Congress expanded the role of the CIA to include "sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures...subversion [and] assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation movements, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world” [snip]  including “an active Black operations mission has been launched deep under cover into Bolivia.  (Wikipedia asks for citation for the expansion claim.)

By 1963 Truman expressed public dismay at the directions the CIA had evolved:

“Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being "upset."

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 part 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 mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.  [snip]
But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be 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 that we need to correct it.”

(The full text of his WaPo op-ed is here.)

We now know that the Operations Department through JSOC and its contractor friends like Blackwater, et.al. is running covert ops in many nations, and that they are not subject to Congressional oversight as are military ops.  (Think of the most recent Raymond Davis debacle in Pakistan.)  This is scary business, and many critics have taken to calling this unholy alliance the Dark Army or Shadow Army.  No one knows exactly to whom they answer, although we toss around acronyms like the Masters of the Universe – close enough without further identifications.

In the video below, long-time CIA analyst for many administrations Ray McGovern talks about some of the dangers of General Petraeus heading the CIA.  A couple ironies to note are that a) he reminds us that most Congressional Dems objected when General Michael Hayden was appointed to head the Agency under Bush, but now are apparently sanguine about their Democratic President appointing a Republican General as head.  WTF?  The other is that McGovern was recently arrested at a Clinton speech at Georgetown U on internet freedom for standing with his back toward her so that his T-shirt’s message could be read, “Veterans for Peace”.  (Video of his injuries and arrest here.)

Aside from the alarming fact that this appointment will finally erase any pretense of the separation of intelligence and military and/or covert ops, thus rendering Congressional accountability virtually impossible, it will be impossible for actual unbiased intel to get a fair hearing.

I would also submit that the State Department is becoming less about actual diplomacy, and has turned toward being another arm of the military and sales representative for the defense industry according to many of the cable leaked by Wikileaks.  Our brains can now imagine how much of the cocktail talk at Diplomatic Parties concerns...weapons sales.  Someone should write a play or a film about it, IMO.

Now here’s one of the main reasons for this diary: I’d like to know what you think about McGovern’s (and many others) contentions that this appointment will speed Petraeus on the road toward the Presidency, and specifically if the neo-con constant war for profiteering and resource control would be aided more by his becoming President or remaining as head of the CIA?  Remember: if a Democratic Prez can appoint him, how likely is it that he’ll be replaced any time soon under another administration?  The media heart this man extraordinarily; that gives him an extra three aces in the hand he’s holding.

I will say up front that I dismiss the idea that it’s an Obama Chess Move to neutralize the General as a Veep candidate in 2012, but if it’s your argument, I’ll try to hear it again. 

(cross-posted at My.FDL)