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Editor says, what if the CIA had been broken into a thousand pieces by President Kennedy? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the May 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1981, Claire Sterling's "The Terror Network" argued that nearly twenty years after President Kennedy disbanded the Central Intelligence Agency the majority of its assets remained in place in an operational state.
The Terror NetworkAlthough subsequent Presidents had refrained from actually creating a successor organization, the number of suspected covert actions had not significantly decreased. Instead, argued Sterling, they had used a combination of new and existing assets to maintain a proxy force that could advance US foreign policy goals around the World.
The CIA had been officially disbanded in the way of the Big of Pigs fiasco. However, the Agency, like many of the controversial forces confronted by Kennedy during his transformative two-term Presidency, had slowly re-emerged in a different guise during the nineteen seventies.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: CIA, Claire Sterling, Terror Network, Central Intelligence Agency, Cold War. Editor says, in reality Sterling argued that that the USSR was using terrorists as a proxy force. In part because of the book, CIA director William J. Casey commissioned a Special National Intelligence Estimate on Soviet support for terrorism.
~ Given the realities of the Cold War, if he disbanded the CIA he'd have to put something else in its place, quick-smart. And Kennedy was a fan of the CIA and covert action, so him disbanding the CIA would be like Reagan endorsing publicly-funded health care.
~ And tomorrow night, on the Terror Network, catch another episode of "No Such Thing as the KGB" at eight, followed by "Wall? What wall?" at nine.
Please click hyperlink for Yahoo! Groups Discussion comments.
~ I'd have turned the CIA loose!
~ The Terror Network...is that a cable or satellite channel? :D
~ Turned the CIA loose? To do what? Spy on Americans? Conduct secret experiments on unsuspecting subjects using mind-altering drugs? Meddle in U.S. domestic politics?
Oh, wait a minute--it did all of that in our history.
The real reason JFK wouldn't have actually disbanded the CIA is, I think, that he suspected he'd have been shot soon afterward by some "left-ing extremist" nobody had ever heard of. Ahem.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
