Pat, why did you delete so many of your posts?



Looking out for the PDGA by saving bandwith. Great job Pat!

5-2

^^^^^^^^^^^
That's funny!

very nice :)

because the little voice on my shoulder convinced me i was appearing as ridiculous as the ones i was arguing with. deleting them cannot ever make up for the atrocities i have committed in those posts, but perhaps it will serve to get some of it out of the way, and allow us to discuss more positive and relevant issues.

Post deleted by sandalman

Post deleted by sandalman



7-0 that time

That voice gave you some good advice.
I don't know about atrocities. That's rather harsh.
You've done nothing unforgivable and your heart's in the right place. Many of your ideas are sound and you can get support for them. You were voted in not just as an agent of chaos, as some would think.

Now stump if you must.

"agent of chaos" lol

thanks, bob.

Post deleted by agent of chaos

Is that title approved by the BoD?

if they abolish oversight director why in the world would they want an agent of chaos?

to Pat Brenner:

OK, Pat. I would agree that your position on the release of confidential material has been more than sufficiently clarified. Let's move on to something new. You have been publically criticizing me since January. I have been publically criticizing you for about two weeks.

Under what circumstances do you believe that one Board Member is justified in criticizing another on the message board? Specifically, do you believe that such public criticism is ever justified if the concerns have not first been raised at Board level?

Will the moderator please delete this thread. You all sound like a bunch of 3rd graders.

Hi Peter,
What kind of rise are you trying to create?
Do you think two wrongs make a right?
Aren't you a Board Member?

We can set up a web debate for you two if you want.
We'll post the dates and it can become a podcast.

peter, i am sorry, but you are on ignore for the message board. please dont hesitate to communicate with me via personal email. best regards.

I think Bruce's position, supported by Colin, is an excellent one, I disagree with it, but it has value.


Why thank you, Lyle. You can be such a sweetheart sometimes. I support this position because disruptive technologies have given us some of the greatest technological advances over the past 100 years. Organizations who's executives and managers all agree and try to slowly improve on the status quo get overtaken and become obsolete. Sometimes a complacent group of decision makers needs to get shaken up a bit to realign/redirect their vision in order to be successful now, tomorrow, and in years to come. I think Pat has done good and bad things so far, but what troubles me is that the Board is reacting so negatively. I do think that this organization needs more new faces to get new ideas and new opinions. By employing ex-board members as consultants indefinitely only magnifies the problem. More new faces, better leaders, and more disruptive people, handled the right way will make this organization stronger in the future. Unfortunately, I haven't seen it happen.....yet.



Excellent post if I may opine. I might not compare management techniques with technology, especially since that isn't what is in question here, but I'd want to know the source of the management style that is being used so I can read up on it? I've never heard of one like this before.

I think that different management styles are important and I agree with your assessment that new approaches might not be a bad idea. However, I am confident that whatever management style is used, it should not damage trust, period. I'd be willing to bet that no one would really support such an approach. Even if you are aggressive, your aggression should engender trust. It might make people mad, or even jealous, but they should know that you speak from the heart and that your word is good. (BTW look up one John O'Neil, FBI agent, and a very interesting story. He knew about OBL and no one listened to him.) One thing I will point out is that my experience with the management techniques of Board members past and present, specifically Theo, Terry, Todd, and EDs Brian H and Brian G is very consistent with the management techniques and styles being hyped during my MBA (graduated 2000). I don't think there have been major changes since then but I could be wrong.

As for hiring old Board Members, remember, in the last election we shook out a huge chunk of the Board. Indeed in the last two elections we have turned over almost the entire Board. And yet they still made this decision. Apparently it's not a new blood old blood thing. Maybe it's a full assessment shows it's a good option thing?

Let me ask you a question. What direction would you take the organization (sans the I just want to shake things up option?) What issues exist that you don't like the handling of (please ignore methodology, i.e. I don't like the hiring of BH and focus on results, I don't like the direction of the Pro Tour and give a concrete aspect that you might not like).

I've already given one here, I disagree with the structure of the NT (and I wrote extensively on the Jason Southwick thread about that). There are others and I feel comfortable discussing them. I simply won't address those issues by pointing a finger or implying that someone has done me and the membership wrong. I would also want to point out what is right with those things I disagree with. The NT for example, is powerful, it represents our sport well, I just feel the structure is too restricting.

BTW - Having a different style and aggressively protecting the membership is good. But you should not play fast and loose with information. Be frank, "I think this is a bad idea and I want it in the minutes and I'd like it on the MB." But don't break the rules to make your point... not that I'm saying anyone has done that.

I'm assuming you are asking me, not Pat, correct?

Hi Peter,
What kind of rise are you trying to create?
Do you think two wrongs make a right?
Aren't you a Board Member?

We can set up a web debate for you two if you want.
We'll post the dates and it can become a podcast.



If I may be so rude as to step in on Peter's behalf, you are correct, two wrongs don't make a right. If I can pose a question to you, how long does one wrong have to go on and at what frequency before someone responds?

Is Peter's question not a legitimate one? Should one Board Member speak out against another in an open forum without first going to the Board, especially when it is the fiduciary responsibility of the Board Members to promote the sport?

Leave Pat, Peter, or any other volunteer out of this. Address the question separately. Are we so into Reality T.V. that we'd rather have this play out here than in a Board meeting?

As a different issue, ask yourself, who initially brings these issues to this disgusting MB? Did Peter?

How many slights have been made about Board Members and EDs at this site that they've ignored? I assure you that it is in the dozens if not in the 100s. Should no one step up and defend those who don't feel it would be appropriate to defend themselves in an open format?

Yes Colin, I value your opinion and would like a discussion if you're willing.

Threads are a lot shorter when Lyle's posts are reduced to one line.

*** You are ignoring this monkey***

Threads are a lot shorter when Lyle's posts are reduced to one line.



While some measure their success based on post count, others measure their success based on word count. Look out Schweb, here I come.

Ya know, if I ever show up at a tournament and Matt and Cent are there, I'm gonna start lookin' to make sure they don't have a rope. :D

Yes Colin, I value your opinion and would like a discussion if you're willing.


Absolutely.

What direction would you take the organization (sans the I just want to shake things up option?) What issues exist that you don't like the handling of (please ignore methodology, i.e. I don't like the hiring of BH and focus on results, I don't like the direction of the Pro Tour and give a concrete aspect that you might not like).


To answer the first question, I need to address the second question first /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif I will do one point at a time for brevity Lyle.
First point:
1. I believe the PDGA is way too big and has spread itself way too thin. By examining the PDGA, we see that a minimal staff is supposed to: Run a National Tour, Run a Global Tour, Run all National, State, and Local Tournaments, Write Rules, Review Rules, Write and review equipment specifications, get new members, processes new members, all publications (except mag), marketing, advertising, running a store, process ratings, collect, organize and publish demographics, prepare documents for tour, events, members, etc, host a website, manage a forum, create run and manage an international center, etc, etc, etc.
When spread so thin, I firmly believe 2 things:
a. The PDGA cannot offer all those services and do so well.
b. The PDGA is creating an environment where 3-4 small and lean entities could completely overtake the PDGA's position in less than 10 years and make them completely obsolete.

Threads are a lot shorter when Lyle's posts are reduced to one line.



Ya know, if I ever show up at a tournament and Matt and Cent are there, I'm gonna start lookin' to make sure they don't have a rope. :D



I believe there were bananas available for breakfast at the Golden State Classic...Too bad you missed out.

Threads are a lot shorter when Lyle's posts are reduced to one line.



Ya know, if I ever show up at a tournament and Matt and Cent are there, I'm gonna start lookin' to make sure they don't have a rope. :D



I believe there were bananas available for breakfast at the Golden State Classic...Too bad you missed out.



I like bananas, apples are good too.

Yes Colin, I value your opinion and would like a discussion if you're willing.


Absolutely.

What direction would you take the organization (sans the I just want to shake things up option?) What issues exist that you don't like the handling of (please ignore methodology, i.e. I don't like the hiring of BH and focus on results, I don't like the direction of the Pro Tour and give a concrete aspect that you might not like).


To answer the first question, I need to address the second question first /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif I will do one point at a time for brevity Lyle.
First point:
1. I believe the PDGA is way too big and has spread itself way too thin. By examining the PDGA, we see that a minimal staff is supposed to: Run a National Tour, Run a Global Tour, Run all National, State, and Local Tournaments, Write Rules, Review Rules, Write and review equipment specifications, get new members, processes new members, all publications (except mag), marketing, advertising, running a store, process ratings, collect, organize and publish demographics, prepare documents for tour, events, members, etc, host a website, manage a forum, create run and manage an international center, etc, etc, etc.
When spread so thin, I firmly believe 2 things:
a. The PDGA cannot offer all those services and do so well.
b. The PDGA is creating an environment where 3-4 small and lean entities could completely overtake the PDGA's position in less than 10 years and make them completely obsolete.



An excellent point, or set of. How would you coordinate between your 3 or 4 entities to avoid redundancy? Oh and what would they be?

Also, how do you solve the warm body issue. Do you think more autonomy would mean more would step up?

Smaller jobs spread among more people can be very effective, if the individuals are responsible.

Hi Lyle,
In answer to the thought
"Should one Board Member speak out against another in an open forum without first going to the Board, especially when it is the fiduciary responsibility of the Board Members to promote the sport?"

Well, sometimes, maybe.
I can imagine a senario where it would seem the only option.
People in government can join in protest to things they are against. We have all sorts of nifty protections, that sorta work, for people that see wrong things happening in the government. And these protections extend to the public companies and non-profits.

The second part of the question is interesting. "fiduciary responsibility of the Board Members to promote the sport"
Now fiduciary has to do with fidelity or trust, right?
Meaning, I think, that the members are trusting the board to promote the sport.
So the impression is that trust will be lost if a board member speaks out against another in a open forum.

Well I certainly agree trust is lost by childish,"did no." "did so." arguements.


So there's my answer without referance to the two or more antagonists in this thread. I don't know if this applies to them or not.

I can't comment on the threads substance as I have no real information. Just unsubstanciated statements.

But I as a member will urge the Board members to work this out as adults.

[QUOTE]
[QUOTE]
[QUOTE]
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y246/ataribot/in%20ur/SCRATCHING-monkey.jpg

But I as a member will urge the Board members to work this out as adults.




"B" "O" "B",

You are too nice. I'd rather see them play GUTS with the sharpest, most overweight discs, currently being used in PDGA play. ;) :D

EPIC GUTS?

Sharpened Turbo Putters...

Screw the discs, bring out the saw blades.

1. I believe the PDGA is way too big and has spread itself way too thin. By examining the PDGA, we see that a minimal staff is supposed to: Run a National Tour, Run a Global Tour, Run all National, State, and Local Tournaments, Write Rules, Review Rules, Write and review equipment specifications, get new members, processes new members, all publications (except mag), marketing, advertising, running a store, process ratings, collect, organize and publish demographics, prepare documents for tour, events, members, etc, host a website, manage a forum, create run and manage an international center, etc, etc, etc.




Wow, all of this just for $75.00 a year? Maybe next year we can bump it up a notch so we can change the way members get their membership package and mag. Still haven't seen anything yet from the PDGA here in the Texas Panhandle :( Being on Interstate 40 I thought it would be rather simple to get mail from Georgia. And no mag either, wherever that comes from :p

Wow, all of this just for $75.00 a year?


It's only $75 a year if you play zero tournaments.

Yeah, and that's not counting all the volunteer work on the course, the work for the club, the demos for the schools and Parks Dept., etc.....

Pat, maybe you can push for complimentary memberships for those of us who have donated so much of our lives for this sport, doing these things that rarely get mentioned or noticed. Maybe something like $0.50 credit for each blister on a throwing hand, or $2.00 off for dropping a bucket of concrete on a toe, or even $10.00 for slipping a vertebrae while trying to get a torn up sleeve out of the ground? Or something.....

man that would be a great idea, huh! there is no doubt at all that disc golf's biggest asset is the volunteers out there on the courses, in the clubs, working locally and regionally. no matter what hapens to any large organization, as long as we have those guys and girls who are out there in the trenches, disc golf will survive. i'd say something clever like "they are the thin XXXXXX line", but i cant come up with the right color (or substitute).

To Everyone:

It is fine with me if Pat has put me on ignore. We can discuss the issue without him. I'll go first, and I welcome other comments.

It is a key issue. When Board Members criticize each other publically, the Board can become dysfunctional. Trust goes out the window and working relationships are destroyed. My opinion is that a Board Member should never publically criticise another unless:
1) He has a serious concern about another Board Member's professional conduct.
2) That concern has first been expressed at Board level and the Board declined to effectively address the concern.
3) He still believes that the member's conduct is damaging to the Board and/or to the PDGA.

What do you think?

What do you think?



Look, a monkey!


-----
Peter, I think you should refrain from posting even a single additional post with regard to Mr Brenner.

Right or wrong, arguing on the internet is like competing in the Special Olympics.

I'm with you Pat, just getting disgusted with the politics.

One question has been brewing deep inside though. Didn't Peter tell us over and over that nobody could hurt his feelings? I'm smelling smashed pride all over this part of the MB.

An excellent point, or set of. How would you coordinate between your 3 or 4 entities to avoid redundancy? Oh and what would they be?


Entity 1 (what i would call the PDGA) would handle rules, tech standards/approval, members, demographics, statistics, ratings, website, store, IDGC, etc.
Entity 2 (the Tour) would handle all Majors, NTs (and maybe A tiers), global tour events, competition manual, marketing, advertising, promotion, gathering sponsors, Marshalls, etc.
Entity 3 (homegrown tourneys, ala So. Nats.) would be responsible for all other tourneys, TDs communicate with them and they communicate to the PDGA if so desired, they could even run national, regional and state points series.
Entity 4 (if needed) could consist of consultants for spreading disc golf nationally and globally. For instance, this group could consist of a course designer, environmentalist, temporary teepad vendor and disc manufacturer and this group could work on the local level with parks and rec, or city councils to provide all the necessities to build a course and provide equipment, and even host clinics, or 1st events to showcase the "new course".

These entities would be independently run and funded and the degree of overlap could be decided amonst them, by them. They could contribute funds back and forth as deemed by mutual benefit.


Also, how do you solve the warm body issue. Do you think more autonomy would mean more would step up?


I don't know what the "warm body issue" is, but I don't swing that way Lyle.
As far as autonomy, that would be great if more purposeful and concentrated divisions that were not collectively funded were formed. For instance, the "Tour" entity would put all its efforts in to making money and growing the "Tour", this would only help disc golfers, especially Pros who are all hoping for that big payday someday.


Smaller jobs spread among more people can be very effective, if the individuals are responsible.


No question about that. 100% agree. And in this scenario, the individuals are responsible to their customers because they would be their livelihood.

maybe consider splitting entity 2 into two parts. one for the Pro Tour, and one for the Amateur and more casual events. the needs of a Pro tour are different from the needs of a viable Am/casual tournamentr experience. the Pros need to make some coin. the Ams (should) have different objectives. the resulting conflict makes it harder to make sense out of a single program.

I would think the first task would be to organize the finances of the existing org into those 2, 3 or 4 proposed operating entities (like company divisions) to see what the financial dynamics might be. After evaluation, even if it doesn't make sense to break into separate entities, having the finances organized that way may make planning and decisions easier down the road for the current org and more understandable for members.

Pat: In my head it came out, but not in print...Entity 2 would mostly handle pros and Entity 3 would mostly handle Ams.

Chuck: That's pretty much impossible. Since all those entities already exist, I was thinking more along the lines of 4 groups with ambition, teaming up to construct a new Pro and Amateur organizations. Divvying up finances to form something like this would probably lead to resentment and conflicts of interests and I don't think anyone would ever agree on it in the structure we have now.

I think fundamental overhead costs for each entity makes the idea currently less feasible unless the head of each entity operates from their home. With budgets 1/3 to 1/4 of the PDGA and no sweetheart deals like the IDGC, you can look back at what HQ was like for the PDGA when there were 3 to 4 thousand members and costs were lower than today.

I understand your point Chuck, and that issue arises because the PDGA is spread to thin and resources for any one project/division/whathaveyou are inadequate. If you try to do everything, then you will probably do nothing well. The PDGA or WFDF could split into Entities 1 & 2, So Nats/NEFA/Texas 10/SoCal could join forces to form entity 3, and Dave Mac/Gateway/Fly18/and an environmentalist could form entity 4 easily.
I'm not saying its the easiest thing in the world, but it is not far-fetched that this could happen in the next 10 years.

My take would be that the reason we are stretched thin is that the economic underpinnings to viably fund several of these functions either doesn't exist or doesn't exist yet until the sport is much bigger, or some of those involved actually start charging for the services they have been providing essentially free - TDs, course developers and park departments being some examples.

I think that was the case, but may or may not be true any longer. If this truly is "one of the fastest growing sports", then the market is ripe for exploitation and the leaner, more nimble entities are the ones poised to capitalize where their competitors and predessors have stumbled or settled for incremental improvements.

I'll give you a for instance. Why is it that a promoter hasn't developed a road show to produce a national series of amateur events where the potential money might be?

Leaner and nimble can be catch phrases for working harder but for less or no pay. We see that all the time among volunteers. But it doesn't provide the stability of an org with paid staff. There have been several efforts out there that have had a few years in the sun and flamed out since the financial underpinning wasn't there. I'm not against the idea that groups could become more focused on the areas that you and Pat have proposed. But I think those efforts can be addressed within the structure of PDGA as umbrella. Once any of those divisions gets in a position where being spun off makes economic sense, that can happen. We've done that on a limited basis with the NT Committee which should probably become part of, or the actual Pro Tour group to manage the incremental funds pros pay over the ams so that pros get the value they prefer for the differential.

Well I can't argue with you about that Chuck. But I think what you are missing is that right now, all associated with disc golf are operating under the same business model and competitive structure. And you are right, the business has evolved in such a way that supports this structure. However, I think a new structure could take traction whereby leaner and nimble (by which I mean small orgs whose roots aren't set in concrete that can rapidly shift and adapt to changing markets/locations/needs of the customers) organizations/companies are better poised to take advantage.
Everything you have said is true but is predicated on the fact that how things are structured today will remain so for a long time. I think a critical point in time for disc golf is on the horizon and it will either redefine the structure, or keep the current structure for a long time to come.

While typing this, you made me think.....
Has the current competitive disc golf structure lead to the current, low-profit margins of disc golf or has market demand caused this? Organization statistics and disc golf equipment suppliers point to the former over the latter.

The Internet has made a difference and will continue to do so. I think the PDGA has been vulnerable in this area but has also been trying to take steps to rectify that with the upcoming website changes and the new things that have been waiting for implementation. Ultimately, many of the best ideas that have been sitting in the wings involve the bottleneck of web development to make them work. If another startup knew what they were doing and thought it was worthwhile, they could pass the PDGA in some areas.

Perhaps the irony is that the low profitability of the current competitive environment, which the PDGA orchestrates but plays few instruments, has actually helped the PDGA get its web act together because it wasn't profitable for others to jump in. The one thing that is rarely mentioned regarding mission statements is that a key function of any sports umbrella org should be doing what it can to produce jobs and economic well being for those involved in doing the activities required to run and support the sport. The PDGA can be both the doer and the enabler, as Pat would say, depending on the activity.

"the economic underpinnings to viably fund several of these functions either doesn't exist or doesn't exist yet until the sport is much bigger"

could one of the reasons some of those underpinnings do not yet exist be that the PDGA has captured most of the profits for themselves already, making it less desireable for anyone to try? if so, then the PDGA might actually be a barrier to entry, acting against new firms who are struggling to start, rather than an enabler of the sport.

The PDGA doesn't decide whether TDs keep anything for themselves. On the other hand, payout policies for pros and having pro cash payouts before economically justified has produced a poor economic prospect for TDs to make anything running pro events. The PDGA hasn't dictated that course designers do designs, buy baskets and build courses free. The PDGA doesn't determine whether Park Departments should generate income in some fashion to justify their efforts. The PDGA doesn't suggest that artists do disc designs free or web masters maintain club or other disc golf related sites free. The PDGA doesn't go out and do free clinics and classes to undermine those who might charge for it but don't. The PDGA is not a competitor in any of those activities that those receiving benefits might consider valuable enough to pay for in some fashion.

could one of the reasons some of those underpinnings do not yet exist be that the PDGA has captured most of the profits for themselves already, making it less desireable for anyone to try? if so, then the PDGA might actually be a barrier to entry, acting against new firms who are struggling to start, rather than an enabler of the sport.


How gleeful PDGA board member Pat Brenner can be when he thinks of a new way the PDGA could potentially be positioned as doing bad things. Sigh.

(a) You are the PDGA (a board member the last time I looked), I am the PDGA, who is this "they" you posit?; and

(b) The PDGA does not make "profits," by definition, through its status as a 501(c)(3) - it even has an inadequate rainy day fund balance, which is where the closest thing to profits would reside, if they existed.

You will no doubt get a little less than your initial, usual vague and say that "they" "capture" what would be profits for those hypothetical small businesses.

If so, I would think you could find those "captured profits" in the PDGA budget somewhere. When the entire PDGA budget would not support much more than a handful of small businesses, when in fact it is a pretty small business, that seems rather unlikely.

semantics, Terry, semantics. it is also not just the actual profits, but the potential profits that matter.

i am NOT casting the PDGA in a bad light!!! i was asking a very simple, down-the-middle-of-the-road question. Chuck understood this, and enhanced the discussion by providing examples of where the structure i described is NOT the case. if chuck can understand it and discuss the issue instead of me, i am sure YOU can too.

chuck, what if (terry, please note the "what if") the "profits" are going to the central org in the form of events fees? there is only so much money available to the event. if we send some to the pdga, that amount is not available for other uses, including TD profits. The PDGA makes sure that it profits from events. it is not quite so demanding when it comes to TD profits. this is neither a new argument nor an anti-pdga Bashing by Brenner (tm). Stork himself uses this argument when talking about disc and basket fees. "manufacturers only have so much money to give back to the sport. if we raise disc fees (for example), at some point they will cut back in other areas, such as purse support." the same phenomenon exists for ALL costs, not just the ones that involve pdga-mfg relationships.

the question might be simply stated: "at this point in the evolution of the sport, is it better to have the bulk of the money flowing into the PDGA, or is it better to have it flowing to the vendors, service providers and players purses?" it CANNOT be a crime to ask this question!

if you water the stem too much, the fruit will never grow.

Words, PDGA board member Pat Brenner, words - what we use to communicate with.

at this point in the evolution of the sport, is it better to have the bulk of the money flowing into the PDGA, or is it better to have it flowing to the vendors, service providers and players purses?

Your latest question assumes "the bulk of the money" is flowing into the PDGA, Pat. It is this constant assumption of the most negative possible perspective of the PDGA that, I think, really illustrates your default condition. It takes only a moment's thought to know that assumption is totally false.

No one knows (and it would be a good project, worthy of being headed up by a productive board member to try to find out) how much money there is in disc golf and what portion of that 'flows into' the PDGA.

But I'll bet a whole heck of a lot more than goes into the PDGA goes into the pockets of the vendors, services providers, and the players' purses - and that's not even considering the manufacturers.

Heck, the PDGA budget is what, $1.1M? Last year's Pro purse was nearly $1.8M. The Am "purse" has to be way over $2M. So, not even counting vendors, service providers, and non-sanctioned events, way less than 20 percent of the money involved in just players' purses in just sanctioned events 'flows into' the PDGA. (Whoever "they" are.)

Heck, I just played around with some numbers and tried to estimate non-sanctioned event purse totals and end up with about $20M in Pro/Am combined purse totals in 2008 (maybe), which makes the PDGA budget about 5 percent of that particular dollar flow.

Consider that one important place where the PDGA has competition is event sanctioning. A TD chooses to sanction or not with the PDGA as one choice. The value had better be there from the standpoint of the TDs and those who they hope will play their event or they don't sanction. In areas where there are regional series, that's another choice regarding sanctioning.

I would submit that part of the success for series such as the SoNats and NEFA is their relative lower cost in relation to the PDGA. Their value looks better for several TDs and players in those areas in reference to the PDGA fees because ours are higher. Now we provide more services to members for the fees that are charged, but there's no question that it's kind of like going to a fast food place versus say a sit down diner where you pay a little more for the food and usually tip. If the PDGA did not charge the fees it does or charged the same as those regional fees, I believe our offer would look better in relation to their offer. In a way, it could be perceived as predatory pricing. So as long as our fees are higher and the benefits provided are more comprehensive, then we're not "hogging" the profits.

A case could be made that the PDGA has not helped produce more economic activity for the very reason it doesn't charge for several services in the same way that people can play free in public parks. Unless a private operator actually provides a superior venue and service for their pay-for-play facility, they aren't going to compete against the free park (that really isn't free). If the parks charged what the true value was for the venue provided, pay-for-play would be a better proposition than it currently is in some places.

Another example might be the course directory. With the PDGA making it available free, it's hard for someone to consider a business plan that charges for course directory services UNLESS it has lots of value added. The Disc Golf Course Review site is currently free with Tim making a huge effort. If the PDGA charged some amount for access to our Directory, a better case could be made that he could charge a premium for his service. Again it's a case where the PDGA has delayed the possibilities for economic development by not charging what the benefits have been worth. Does this make any sense, Pat?

I don't think Pat's post ASSUMED anything Terry. You can reverse the two thoughts and and/or conclude the opposite view.

PDGA fees have increased. Poor return for price has caused considerable concern among the constituants. (I like alliteration :) )

You seem to see the "buisness model" PDGA as a good thing.
Our school systems have gone this route to their detriment.
I feel the PDGA should remain in the "service model"

I like the idea of "baby" PDGA's branching off to run/organize certain aspects. Like the old phone company. But we should also expect, and embrace, the inevitable competition. Even support them.

I don't think we disagree, bob, except that I think the PDGA is in the service model, just trying to do it businesslike. And in doing so it is using a tiny percent of the available money in disc golf. For goodness sake, it doesn't even run its own events - even those like Worlds, where it could, for a net revenue - but instead puts money in and helps local vendors of tournaments make a buck.

Also: It does not manufacture discs or baskets, and when we opened the PDGA store on line, there was the explicit decision made that it would not offer a broad range of merch or offer low prices - precisely to not get in the way of the vendors.

Chuck's point about the free online directory is interesting, that possibly it being free keeps someone else from making money at it. But just imagine the howls of anguish if the PDGA restricted its use to members-only, which might boost membership.

Does anyone use the course directory?

Does anyone use the course directory?



I do on an almost daily basis.

Yes, we use the course directory - when travelling to a location with which we are not familiar and trying to determine which courses to play. Three times in the past 12 months, we've taken family trips (once to Toronto/New York/Michigan/Ohio, once to central Florida, and just this past weekend to upstate SC, through Atlanta, and back to Augusta) that included playing several courses. Think Tour de Risbee on a smaller scale. We call these events the "insert place name here" Disc Golf Experience, keep detailed round records and score according to both raw score and handicap (basing handicaps on our PDGA ratings at the time we travel), then declare a family "winner" for the trip. The course directory is an important resource for laying out the trip. Its especially nice to be able to use the Google Map Search (since its real hard to be able to find courses in a given area when looking up by city name).

I could suggest several enhancements in terms of the information provided - including supporting more detailed course descriptions, providing a specific place in the description for "find the first hole here" (!), and allowing the directory entry to include photos.

the printed course directory is definitely used, just like Vanessa described, by lots of golfers.

golfers on the road may realy dig a new project that is recently underway. we are enabling the development of a "Points of Interest" file for GPS units. This file will allow users to locate courses in our directory using personal GPS units and should be a big help for players who travel with a GPS.

this is an excellant example of partnering with motivated outside entities to expand the use of PDGA data, enhance the PDGA's position as the clearinghouse for disc golf data, strengthen the PDGA brand name, and bring value to the sport without spending any cash or significant staff time.

it is an outstanding approach, and kudos to everyone involved

I use it on occasion...

Does anyone use the course directory?

I use the on-line directory before almost every tournament I go to.

Responding to Terry, tongue-in-cheek, maybe we could make it pay-per-view for non-members.

Vanessa, while the feature is not available on the PDGA directory site, other course directory sites can handle uploaded pix. http://www.dgcoursereview.com/ is one example. most of the ning.com type discgolf sites could add that feature also.

we are coming to the realization that the costs to keep up with all the great ideas out there is simply prohibitive, and that we'd do better collectively - as a sport - if we worked with these sites and helped them succeed rather than trying to capture 100% of the traffic ourselves.

like i said, semantics. ok, "the bulk" was not as precise as i could have been. i'll give you that. thats not the main point though. we're just chilling and talking and throwing ideas around.

Isn't there a counter on the directory page? We could just ask the... Who is it runs the web site? (unsung hero.)

I direct players to the directory all the time. How does it cost money? There is a volunteer doing the maybe Herculean task of keeping it up to date from imput by players and coordinators.
Bandwidth? What IS the real cost of the website?
Not counting the Volunteer time.

the cost is probalby pretty close to zero. the printed directory has a big cost. data in the course directory is maintained via a partnership that involves the course "maintainer" and Cliffe Towne, our dedicated volunteer on the directory.

the Maintainer uses a web form to submit changes. Cliff receives those requests, reviews them, and click the button that publishes them to the live directory.

the cost is probalby pretty close to zero. the printed directory has a big cost. data in the course directory is maintained via a partnership that involves the course "maintainer" and Cliffe Towne, our dedicated volunteer on the directory.


Umm. Cliff Towne, great guy that he is, and underpaid for sure, is actually one of those much-despised "consultants" in the PDGA budget on which so much money is "wasted." Just look back a page or two of posts. I believe that it was you, PDGA board member Pat Brenner, who posted that list of consultants?

despised? why?

That's a very good question. Definitely not something that I understand. ROFL

Very nice misdirection, BTW. One or two more iterations and you could have people thinking I (pretend to) despise the consultants.

Pat merely mentioned who the consultants were. You were the one who mentioned "wasted" in relation to them. Didn't someone say something earlier about negative thoughts being projected on someone else?

So Cliff is not a volunteer. How dare you Pat. Misleading us all.
Well Cliff does a good job.
And the Directory DOES cost money.
Online fees are consultant fee plus an unspecified amount for hosting and such.
and Printed costs,
Does the sale of directories offset the costs?
How many get printed?
Are they all printed in a run?
Who works out the numbers for these?
What kind of sales figures do we have on directories?
Boy, I still have a lot of questions...

Pat, just to clarify, I didn't say I used the printed course directory. Its the on-line directory that is useful. (Personally, I don't think the printed directory is useful - at least not in comparison to the on-line version. We have a couple of directories around the house, but I can find what I want to know on-line much faster than I could even FIND the physical directory!)

And thanks Pat for explaining why pics aren't a part of the PDGA's on-line directory. However, the actual fact is -- gasp -- the PDGA page already provides what I was asking for. There's a spot on the course page for a link to the local club's site -- and those sites can have as many pics as the club wants to provide.

So Cliff is not a volunteer. How dare you Pat. Misleading us all.
Well Cliff does a good job.
And the Directory DOES cost money.
Online fees are consultant fee plus an unspecified amount for hosting and such.
and Printed costs,
Does the sale of directories offset the costs?
How many get printed?
Are they all printed in a run?
Who works out the numbers for these?
What kind of sales figures do we have on directories?
Boy, I still have a lot of questions...



Bob, why on earth do the answers to those questions matter to you? We have staff and a consultant who are charged with running that operation and from what I know it is bare bones to begin with. Why on earth would they need to spend valuable and limited time "reporting" to whatever member happened to have questions.

Why just the staff time to collect and report to you the details, in the way you might prefer them, would cost more than your annual dues? No organization can operate like that.

Why on earth would they need to spend valuable and limited time "reporting" to whatever member happened to have questions.



i'd hope that sort of data would be obvious to have at hand to assess the need to continue printing the course directory or not. if i understand it correctly, our dues are subsidizing something the vast majority of members don't have any use for. it seems to be an expensive, outdated use of membership money. as members, how dare we ask? /msgboard/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

at the very least, that data would be useful in determining print quantities. you might make a case to print less, charge more to those who want one that bad.


Why just the staff time to collect and report to you the details, in the way you might prefer them, would cost more than your annual dues? No organization can operate like that.



imho no organization can operate efficiently without having and using such simple, practical info. i believe bob's questions were intended to outline how to make such a decision. it'd be nice to know if the pdga were thinking in such practical terms. putting pat in office again is a step in that direction.

It probably is at hand, but maybe a report on it isn't? Geez.

Who might "make a case" to print more or less? How about the staff person responsible for it? And how about their performance is evaluated by the executive director? And his performance is evaluated by the board?

I mean, c'mon. Think of your any regular job. How about working the drive-by counter a McDonalds. You can't, as a customer, expect to drive up and ask the person handing you your food what temperature it was cooked at, what distributor it was purchased from, what their salary is, and how long their bathroom breaks are.

The PDGA is no different, except it's a member association. In which case the board of directors are our elected representatives to make sure the ED does his job for them, effectively utilizing staff.

The PDGA runs pretty well, maybe a little tougher to do than before with Pat on board because he seems to get miffed every time the other board members don't agree with him - and brings the issues here for micromanagement. Definitely not a good thing.

People who "get" this need to absolutely sure they tell their discgolfing buddies to vote for qualified candidates but not to vote for PDGA board member Pat Brenner. I mean it folks. You're reading this and you know what I mean. You have the responsibility to do what we need to get a board that works better together than what we have now.

So Cliff is not a volunteer. How dare you Pat. Misleading us all.
Well Cliff does a good job.
And the Directory DOES cost money.
Online fees are consultant fee plus an unspecified amount for hosting and such.
and Printed costs,
Does the sale of directories offset the costs?
How many get printed?
Are they all printed in a run?
Who works out the numbers for these?
What kind of sales figures do we have on directories?
Boy, I still have a lot of questions...



Question, do you suspect they are printing them at a loss? I'd hate to think our leaders are so stupid as to produce these at a loss and not discuss the topic at least in a Board meeting.

Brian G. or someone else on staff, can you answer this question, are we taking a shellacking on this? Are we breaking the bank? Can you tell Bob what our sales vs. production are so we can lay this... issue to rest?

Frankly, instead of this discussion, I'd love to see a PDGA survey with issues like this one on tap.

1. Do you want to continue to maintain a course guide on paper? (granted I'd want that skewed by sales and cost). I'd also want those who don't come here to weigh in. For example, while an on-line guide is fine, it is only good for those who come here. Since 90% of our membership doesn't come here, it seems we'd want their input on this issue to go along with the input that is here. Of course that would be reflected in sales. I do worry that a few voices in this setting might push such an issue and even that a decision would be made due to efforts here, and that a part of our membership would be neglected simply because they don't come on-line. Let's think about who that currently represents:

Barry Schultz
Ken Climo
Nate Doss


Not to mention the rank and file members who don't come here.


Some other questions that have been raised recently could also be added.

BTW - I never use the paper version of the course guide and rarely use the on-line version. I'd vote to eliminate the whole thing, but that is my choice and quite possibly doesn't represent the organization as a whole. On the other hand, I'd bet you could look and see how many hits go there and you could ask our sponsors if at least part of the reason they sponsor this site is for the traffic that goes to the course guide...

"The PDGA runs pretty well, maybe a little tougher to do than before with Pat on board because he seems to get miffed every time the other board members don't agree with him - and brings the issues here for micromanagement. "

if this is not an attack on me, then the message board rules are meaningless. we shall see.

campaign against me all you want. it tells me i am on the correct track.

I mean, c'mon. Think of your any regular job. How about working the drive-by counter a McDonalds. You can't, as a customer, expect to drive up and ask the person handing you your food what temperature it was cooked at, what distributor it was purchased from, what their salary is, and how long their bathroom breaks are.

The PDGA is no different, except it's a member association. In which case the board of directors are our elected representatives to make sure the ED does his job for them, effectively utilizing staff.




that's a pretty big distinction and a very poor analogy. lol.

i don't really need or want specific answers, i'd just like to know that sort of thought process has been carried through. is that too much to ask as a member?

a word of advice, mr. calhoun-- when you come on here and act indignant to membership concerns, you might as well be stumping for pat.

It probably is at hand, but maybe a report on it isn't? Geez.

Who might "make a case" to print more or less? How about the staff person responsible for it? And how about their performance is evaluated by the executive director? And his performance is evaluated by the board?

I mean, c'mon. Think of your any regular job. How about working the drive-by counter a McDonalds. You can't, as a customer, expect to drive up and ask the person handing you your food what temperature it was cooked at, what distributor it was purchased from, what their salary is, and how long their bathroom breaks are.

The PDGA is no different, except it's a member association. In which case the board of directors are our elected representatives to make sure the ED does his job for them, effectively utilizing staff.

The PDGA runs pretty well, maybe a little tougher to do than before with Pat on board because he seems to get miffed every time the other board members don't agree with him - and brings the issues here for micromanagement. Definitely not a good thing.

People who "get" this need to absolutely sure they tell their discgolfing buddies to vote for qualified candidates but not to vote for PDGA board member Pat Brenner. I mean it folks. You're reading this and you know what I mean. You have the responsibility to do what we need to get a board that works better together than what we have now.



I'd like to reiterate what Terry is saying here. The question being asked is: can Brian manage his staff and evaluate whether a PDGA activity is profitable and worthwhile? What is happening here is member management of our Executive Director. We are basically saying that we feel we should check up on his activities, and that we don't even trust the Board to check up on his work. I have to admit, I wouldn't want the job...

Let's be clear why that's a problem. The voices asking questions here are a small part of the organization and their needs and desires and what they think should be checked on reflects their desires. Should the PDGA be responsible to the voices here or do they need to think more globally?

BTW - this does not excuse the ED and the Board from being responsible to our membership. Perhaps it is time for a state of the organization document. Here is what we're doing, here's what works. Here's our goals. I don't think such a document would end what happens here, but it might help a little bit.

"The PDGA runs pretty well, maybe a little tougher to do than before with Pat on board because he seems to get miffed every time the other board members don't agree with him - and brings the issues here for micromanagement. "

if this is not an attack on me, then the message board rules are meaningless. we shall see.

campaign against me all you want. it tells me i am on the correct track.



So which is it to be Representative Pat, are you going to sue him or will it be the less onerous probation or banning? Perhaps we should as was suggested earlier, dunk him and see if he floats?

Are the minutes from the BOD meetings posted anywhere?
If so, can someone show me a link?

Most of that kind of stuff can be found here (http://www.pdga.com/org/index.php).

sure you can ask what temp it was cooked at. a first day cook would know, and will probably tell you.

dont let these couple of whiners get in the way. a few people come on this discussion board and focus on petty, personal issues and detract from real conversation. but its only a few malcontents. dont let them get away with it. if we had "stay on thread topic" rules none of their posts would stick.

income from course directory:

directory, 2007 actual: 11,917
directory, 2008 budget: 13,000

data sales, 2007 act: 500
data sales, 2008 budget: 500

print ads, 2007 actual: 1,895
print ads, 2008 budget: 3,000

online ads, 2007 actual: 2,350
online ads, 2008 budget: 3,000


expenses from course directory:

print, 2007 actual: 300
print, 2008 budget: 10,500


there may be other line items, related to the course directory efforts, so please dont consider this as gospel.

I mean, c'mon. Think of your any regular job. How about working the drive-by counter a McDonalds. You can't, as a customer, expect to drive up and ask the person handing you your food what temperature it was cooked at, what distributor it was purchased from, what their salary is, and how long their bathroom breaks are.

The PDGA is no different, except it's a member association. In which case the board of directors are our elected representatives to make sure the ED does his job for them, effectively utilizing staff.




that's a pretty big distinction and a very poor analogy. lol.

i don't really need or want specific answers, i'd just like to know that sort of thought process has been carried through. is that too much to ask as a member?

a word of advice, mr. calhoun-- when you come on here and act indignant to membership concerns, you might as well be stumping for pat.



On this I think md is correct, there should be a list of PDGA activities with a sketch of who, what, and when for easy perusal.

if this is not an attack on me, then the message board rules are meaningless. we shall see.


Hey, it's my opinion, backed up by facts, about your performance as a board member. If that's a personal attack, especially on a thread about whether or not to re-elect you, then we do have problems and I would be delighted to lose the temptation to post here for a while :cool:

Meanwhile, wow! Someone finally posted the record (http://www.pdga.com/documents/boardminutes/2008-05-12BODElectronicVote.pdf) (PDF) of the wonderful Juliana Korver being voted into an open spot on the board.

I think reading it will indicate how far the board has come since two years ago in terms of smooth functioning, due in many respects to actions by PDGA board member Pat Brenner.

sure you can ask what temp it was cooked at. a first day cook would know, and will probably tell you.

dont let these couple of whiners get in the way. a few people come on this discussion board and focus on petty, personal issues and detract from real conversation. but its only a few malcontents. dont let them get away with it. if we had "stay on thread topic" rules none of their posts would stick.

income from course directory:

directory, 2007 actual: 11,917
directory, 2008 budget: 13,000

data sales, 2007 act: 500
data sales, 2008 budget: 500

print ads, 2007 actual: 1,895
print ads, 2008 budget: 3,000

online ads, 2007 actual: 2,350
online ads, 2008 budget: 3,000


expenses from course directory:

print, 2007 actual: 300
print, 2008 budget: 10,500


there may be other line items, related to the course directory efforts, so please dont consider this as gospel.



Yawn! [whine on] let's see, Pat didn't say my name but I wonder if this is directed at me, should I run to the moderators? [whine off]

Me thinks that posting information, say like "here's the information from Dog Ball, and even though it doesn't have any correlation to the PDGA, you should still compare the two," is hardly real conversation. Posting that our growth is average and then posting later that there's no real information to judge is hardly real conversation.

The fact that there are posters who come here and point out that there is no substance to some posts made, is staying on thread; does it bother you when people point out holes in your arguments?

Well I DO have a lot of questions.
Better than me telling people what they should do. And how dare they not.

My questions don't get answered often. And sometimes they can seem inapropiate or tactless. Still, I gotta ask.

The Directory is great. Best thing the PDGA prints. I wish it was available in Barnes and Noble. Can we get that to happen? Maybe in the travel section? Or an abreviated version with nice maps?

The Directory is great. Best thing the PDGA prints. I wish it was available in Barnes and Noble. Can we get that to happen? Maybe in the travel section? Or an abreviated version with nice maps?


Questions are good, and [email protected] and (706) 261-6342 work much better than posts here, at least 99.99 percent of the time.

And, wow, what a great vision about Barnes & Noble. It may happen. Locally, in one week we've had disc golf (a) show up in the statewide AAA magazine, (b) in a full report on the DGLO on the front page of the sports section of the Ann Arbor news, and (c) in a cover article on professional women disc golfers inside a Sunday magazine in the Detroit Free Press.

Barnes & Noble, here we come!

I'd hate to think our leaders are so stupid as to produce these at a loss and not discuss the topic at least in a Board meeting.


If I'm not mistaken, isn't the Pro Worlds DVD produced every year at a loss by the PDGA? I swear I remember reading one of Chuck's posts where he said that. I may be wrong.

Apparently the last few since Iowa have eventually broken even on paper although there are unpaid labor costs not truly recovered. There's an initial investment each year that's not recovered in the first year but hopefully within about three years.

OK, point retracted. I didn't know that they broke even as that info is not easily decipherable.

Which is why it took me a while to find that out also.

So Cliff is not a volunteer. How dare you Pat. Misleading us all.
Well Cliff does a good job.
And the Directory DOES cost money.
Online fees are consultant fee plus an unspecified amount for hosting and such.
and Printed costs,
Does the sale of directories offset the costs?
How many get printed?
Are they all printed in a run?
Who works out the numbers for these?
What kind of sales figures do we have on directories?
Boy, I still have a lot of questions...



Bob, why on earth do the answers to those questions matter to you? We have staff and a consultant who are charged with running that operation and from what I know it is bare bones to begin with. Why on earth would they need to spend valuable and limited time "reporting" to whatever member happened to have questions.

Why just the staff time to collect and report to you the details, in the way you might prefer them, would cost more than your annual dues? No organization can operate like that.



As to WHY does it matter to me, the answers to the questions I ask? Well since you asked me, and I cannot imagine why you want to know my motives, maybe it was a retorical question, but I have a desire to see the PDGA do better.
From what you know "it" is bare bones to begin with. I don't know that, do I take your word for it? How do you know if you didn't ask?

I also know a bit about printing and thought I might by asking a few questions, spark alternate views in some others that might want to know more.

I don't want the PDGA machine to come to a halt so I can have my questions answered. I would have thought this info was on or in the desk of the person or persons that authorized the directories.

colin,

from the financials, it looks like a loss. all numbers 2007 actuals

Income: Merch/Videas,DVDs: 15,015
Expense: Merch/WorldsDVDs: 445
Expense: Marketing,Promo/Worlds Vids/DVDs: 31,718

17,148 "loss" in 2007.

i'll be happy to edit this post if other numbers should be included. its hard to know which rows should be included.

If it takes three years to recoup, the number of units ordered and the cost goes up along with the cost to produce them and hopefully the sales price each year after one is produced, then the most recent year financials should always show some loss even if a specific year DVD eventually breaks even. Need to get Breiner's info to really pin it down.

colin,

from the financials, it looks like a loss. all numbers 2007 actuals

Income: Merch/Videas,DVDs: 15,015
Expense: Merch/WorldsDVDs: 445
Expense: Marketing,Promo/Worlds Vids/DVDs: 31,718

17,148 "loss" in 2007.

i'll be happy to edit this post if other numbers should be included. its hard to know which rows should be included.




These numbers can be somewhat misleading if you do not have all of the facts so be very careful how you read them.

The $31,718 was spent in mid 2007 to create the 2007 DVD, which did not go on sale until late 2007. The bulk of the income line of $15,015 is from the sales of 2006 DVD's. Most of the income for the 2007 DVD will be received in 2008. It was reported at the Spring summit that the last couple of Worlds DVD's have come close to breaking even but it usually takes about three years to recoup the investment. Some sell better than others but the DVD's do sell, even the older ones.

Last year, Cliff Towne and I introduced the concept of printing the course directory as an edition rather than every year as has been done in the past. The thought was that we might be able to go 1 1/2 to two years between printings to save the PDGA money and allow us more time to move the current edition. Yes, we do look at our sales numbers and yes we do make adjustments to our orders to ensure that we are getting the best bang for our members buck.

I use the on-line Course Directory almost every day. I definitely use it when planning a trip (like "Tour de Rizbee 2008 - New England, New Courses") and I use it regularly with a few of my hobby projects (e.g., mapping Ben Calhoun's disc golf odyssey). I think it's a great tool and one of the best things that the PDGA does.

Ever since 1984 I've kept a copy of the printed Course Directory on hand - not always the current year but never more than a few years old. In the days before laptops and ubiquitous wifi it was a necessary tool if you were travelling and wanted to find a place to play at the last minute - just ask Gregg Hosfeld. BTW, if the printed version ever goes away it'll make him cry. I think the printed version has value - either for those folks who aren't computer users or those of us who still like to take printed material out to the hammock for our pre-nap reading.

It's a good thing. Not perfect, but pretty darn good. Kudos to Cliff and those who work with him and/or authorize the consulting fee.

I, too, use the online directory extensively. While there are additional features I wish it had, I prefer a single, comprehensive, and straightforward directory with (presumably) every course in an area listed, than a half-dozen competing sites, each of which may be incomplete depending on the submissions from the local courses. For myself, the online directory is one of the more valuable PDGA services my membership funds.

Cliff Towne and others have been working on a internet mapping page. It is great, it will be much like google maps with all disc golf courses on it, with actual hole locations shown on the map. Not sure when its coming out but keep looking for it.

Cliff Towne and others have been working on a internet mapping page. It is great, it will be much like google maps with all disc golf courses on it, with actual hole locations shown on the map. Not sure when its coming out but keep looking for it.



There are several very exciting course directory projects currently in the works which should enhance our current offerings including a collaboration with an existing site, DiscGolfCourseReview.com (http://DiscGolfCourseReview.com), that should result in an online course directory with all of the bells and whistles that everyone has been dreaming about. Another is a partnership to create a POI (Points of Interest) course directory site for owners of handheld GPS units to direct them to our courses. Cliff Towne should be commended for his quest to make the online and printed directories the absolute best they can be.

We are the PDGA. We can do anything! ....but we cannot do everything. Tim Gostovic and Scott Holter are great examples of what can be accomplished when members with specialized skill sets partner with the PDGA to develop projects to promote our game.

woohoo, i've been Censured! they couldnt make it work with an "O" so they switched to a "U" :)

What does that mean exactly? Or aren't you allowed to say...

it doesnt mean a darn thing. well, it does mean one thing - Peter got a motion passed, and so far anyway, has not announced that he has changed his mind. so we can add it to the list of compelling work accomplished this term. :)

sure you can ask what temp it was cooked at. a first day cook would know, and will probably tell you.

dont let these couple of whiners get in the way. a few people come on this discussion board and focus on petty, personal issues and detract from real conversation. but its only a few malcontents. dont let them get away with it. if we had "stay on thread topic" rules none of their posts would stick.

income from course directory:

directory, 2007 actual: 11,917
directory, 2008 budget: 13,000

data sales, 2007 act: 500
data sales, 2008 budget: 500

print ads, 2007 actual: 1,895
print ads, 2008 budget: 3,000

online ads, 2007 actual: 2,350
online ads, 2008 budget: 3,000


expenses from course directory:

print, 2007 actual: 300
print, 2008 budget: 10,500


there may be other line items, related to the course directory efforts, so please dont consider this as gospel.



Yawn! [whine on] let's see, Pat didn't say my name but I wonder if this is directed at me, should I run to the moderators? [whine off]

Me thinks that posting information, say like "here's the information from Dog Ball, and even though it doesn't have any correlation to the PDGA, you should still compare the two," is hardly real conversation. Posting that our growth is average and then posting later that there's no real information to judge is hardly real conversation.

The fact that there are posters who come here and point out that there is no substance to some posts made, is staying on thread; does it bother you when people point out holes in your arguments?



http://ephemerist.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/einstein.jpg

no, Lyle, it doesnt bother me when people point out holes in my arguments. i actually expect it and hope for it. how else could i refine those ideas into something workable?

my arguments are frequently full of holes. especially argument i put on the Discussion Board. thats the point of discussing, isnt it? if this was a place to post ideas that are 100% perfect in every way and that have no competing ideas or nuances then it would be called the Perfectly Formed Ideas Board.

How etymologically astute!

discussion
c.1340, from O.Fr. discussion, from L.L. discussionem "examination, discussion," in classical L., "a shaking," from discussus, pp. of discutere "strike asunder, break up," from dis- "apart" + quatere "to shake." Originally "examination, investigation, judicial trial;" meaning of "talk over, debate" first recorded 1448. Sense evolution in L. appears to have been from "smash apart" to "scatter, disperse," then in post-classical times (via the mental process involved) to "investigate, examine," then to "debate."

"Shades" of The Republic :) Kind of like looking deep into the entrails, or their discharge?

A lot of "compelling work" completed in the past two years, eh?

what did i rid us of?

ok, 2 and a half weeks left to vote. the most important thing is to vote. the next most is to vote for me :) and after that, vote for people who have similar ideas. but most important, vote for whoever you believe best represents your views on disc golf, or whatever criteria you use to decide.

Now, if the candidates will just refrain from saying anything that would cause those of us who've already cast our ballots misgivings.

Pro or con.

Too late.

Not necessarily you, but you gave the opportunity to reply.

One of the current candidates has set records for trying (and failing) to table motions that already were seconded and which then got passed (after the tabling motion was voted down) - including voting Juliana Korver onto the board. [Tough job reading two years of minutes.] Want to guess who? (Hint: The initials "align" with the initials of "peanut butter") But, geez, who doesn't love peanut butter?

There were three candidates under consideration. Two of them the Board knew a little bit about because they had filed candidate statements. Juliana is an unknown in terms of what she's for or against. Everyone knows who she is and everyone who knows her knows that she is both a competitor and a decent human being. But she never posts.

Is she for more BOHICA Am Worlds like 2007? Is she for banning non-members at all PDGA events? I know she has a position on banning tobacco use at PDGA events, or used to anyway.

Is it irrational for Board members to want to find out something about a candidate before they vote on them besides their rating and their popularity index?

Weak stuff, Terry.

One of the current candidates has set records for trying (and failing) to table motions that already were seconded and which then got passed (after the tabling motion was voted down) - including voting Juliana Korver onto the board. [Tough job reading two years of minutes.] Want to guess who? (Hint: The initials "align" with the initials of "peanut butter") But, geez, who doesn't love peanut butter?



So then, which board members are repeatedly trying to pass motions without the general membership of the pdga knowing the facts or other reasons for such motions? Can you please tell us who these board members are that you refer to? Thanks for clarifying that this is actually going on too Terry, as many of us have assumed this, but now you have confirmed it!

The general members of any organization seldom know the facts or reasons for motions until after they are discussed and voted on. It would make very little sense to alert general membership of the details of every motion prior to it being adopted or rejected.

Thanks for confirming that they are doing their job.

Thanks for confirming the BOD makes little sense! :D

I think most parliamentary procedures make little sense.

But I think the answer to your previous query is hopefully all
board members at some time will try to pass motions that the general membership is not aware of the full details of. If they were not, then they would not be fulfilling the responsibilities of their office.

To state that in a way that implies impropriety is not appropriate.

While I don't agree with all of their decisions, I do not believe the board is dishonest.

We're all a little weak sometimes, Bruce.

However, it's pretty hard to have played disc golf for a long time, have a feel for the sport that's good enough to qualify you to be on the board, and attend Worlds and some summits - and not have somewhat of an understanding of what a great person Juliana Korver is in ways that matter on the board. Not to mention that she does occasionally post here. I bet those who voted for her think they know her well enough and, since Brenner didn't and he voted against her anyway, well . . . tabling seems to me to have been used once again as a way of expressing a sort of mature, Roberts Rules of Order-type tantrum. :cool:

I might add that I would not, as a board member voting on appointing a new member, vote for or against an individual based on specific viewpoints on specific issues, anyway. My concern would be for a level head, thoughtfulness, intelligence, understanding of the sport, etc. When board members vote on an appointment it should be with a different set of criteria than when a member does as they have a different responsibility and relationship to the PDGA.

Further, Brenner had nominated his own candidate, someone much less well known, and he didn't seem to have a problem with how well a candidate was known until after it was pretty obvious who the board was going to appoint.

Finally, I am pretty surprised at your use of the modifier for Am Worlds in your post, above. I'm not one to be punching the "notify moderator" button that quickly, but I would, if this were on DGRUS, be asking you to edit that acronym/term. Disregarding the slam on the folks who worked so hard on 2007 Am Worlds, which I very much enjoyed, that term is rife with implications regarding abusive sexual behavior. There are no age limits on viewing these posts, unfortunately.

I thought the Membership voted for Board Members, not the Board itself?

I thought the Membership voted for Board Members, not the Board itself?



When there is a director vacancy, the board is responsible for filling the position until the term expires.

yepper, i use the table option sometimes. i used it to try to prevent taking away the TurboPuttr approval. the BoD went ahead and took it away. they went ahead and restored a few days later. Directors who have joined me in supporting table motions this year include: Decker, Dodge, Shive and Convers. i will forward the diatribe against tabling to them also.

the only thing i know about Juliana is what i can get from this website. that is not sufficient for me to vote for her, or anyone. sorry about that, but i as voting against the process Decker used, not juliana. i do not know enough to vote for or against juliana.

I'll have to go back through Robert's rules. I didn't think tabling was an option for that purpose.

you can move to table any motion. the reason is immaterial. if the reason is agreeable enough to enough directors, the motion to table will pass.

the reason i wnated to table the TurboPuttr motion is because the disc had already been approved. revoking its approval at the time it was revoked was horribly premature. it could have caused a lawsuit - and we were not exactly in a position of strength. soon afterward, the board realized what it had done and reversed the revocation.

Not saying that your reasons for making the motion were unfounded, just that a motion to table was not the correct motion to make.

A motion to "postpone to a certain time" or even "extend the limits of debate" would have been better options.

The traditional rules do not allow for tabling a motion that is under debate except for the purpose of introducing more urgent business.

Unless we do not use Robert's rules.

we only use Roberts Rules when it suits our purposes.

actually, different RRO references include different material about tabling. some [present 3 or more formats - like the table until a certain time, table indefinitely, etc. each type has different ramifications. we could easily follow a process that is described in one source but not in another.

in our current practice RRO is a loose guide and is not followed closely.

I'll have to look for a current copy.

Having a guide that you only follow when it suits an undetermined segment of the group's purposes is a rather strange system.

http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/5533/napoleondynamitewallpapnp0.jpg

How do we vote? Did I miss an email or something?

I received an email and cast my vote a few weeks ago.

WHo'd you vote for? ;)

I guess I'll make a phone call. Thanks

WHo'd you vote for?



Hoeniger. But look who Mickey suggests.

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/1594/disneylandsigngeneratorgx7.jpg

If I didn't know better, I'd guess Pat has the goods on John. :D

So Hero, why is it that you're so keen on Pat? Is it that he thinks posting PMs on the MB is good? Or is that he disrupts Board items that don't get voted the way he wants by tabling them? Perhaps it's that he regularly brings information to this site out of context? Or maybe it's his assertion that the organization doesn't perform well when he admits he doesn't have any information to actually judge our performance? I know, it was his desire to give a free membership to Hawk, a past regular here who spent much of his time criticizing the organization.

Myself, I'm voting for people who are optimistic and believe in this organization. Who know how to work with others to achieve their goals. Someone who is less Mickey Mouse and more of a... leader.

I didn't vote for Pat for any of those reasons, Lyle. I certainly didn't vote for Pat b/c we wife swap. I didn't even vote for Pat b/c we're friends. I voted for Pat b/c the members of the PDGA deserve someone as hard working, loyal, and diligent as Pat. Pretty simple really.

This one's for you:

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/9967/celebritypj6.jpg

I didn't vote for Pat for any of those reasons, Lyle. I certainly didn't vote for Pat b/c we wife swap. I didn't even vote for Pat b/c we're friends. I voted for Pat b/c the members of the PDGA deserve someone as hard working, loyal, and diligent as Pat. Pretty simple really.

This one's for you:

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/9967/celebritypj6.jpg



So put it into perspective, how does Pat disrupting other Board votes and preventing work from getting done benefit the organization? Or is it that you feel "only" Pat gets it? This being the same Pat who accused the rest of the Board of breaking the law in Colorado, the state where we're chartered?

Pat may work hard, but I don't see how it benefits this organization or helps to get things accomplished?

BTW - the notion that this organization needs Pat like it needs Monica seems a strange position to take...

Lyle, do you really think you're going to get a straight answer out of me? Haven't you been paying attention for the last 9 years? :D

Clinton made a mistake. I'm still waiting to see if Pat will make one. Until then, he gets my vote. :p

Lyle, do you really think you're going to get a straight answer out of me? Haven't you been paying attention for the last 9 years? :D

Clinton made a mistake. I'm still waiting to see if Pat will make one. Until then, he gets my vote. :p



No, but I likes the game so far. So you don't think accusing your fellow Board Members of breaking the law is a mistake, that is, given that it wasn't true? Wow! You must be a fun date! "Hey babe, lets go rob a store! Yes, I know it's against the law but the message we need more police needs to be gotten through to City Hall!" :D

Or maybe it is that you see Pat in a Monica sort of way. Didn't she say she took the position so she could accomplish the life long achievement of sex with the President? Indulge me, translate this to a Pat goal?

On the other hand, I have to admire your constraint, the notion that misrepresenting the organization without any information seems to be a pretty big mistake to me. But then, I think posting PMs and other confidential information is a mistake, one that competent leaders don't make... Silly me.

Yes, silly you.

<font color="blue"> image removed</font>

Yes, silly you.

<font color="blue"> image removed </font>



Ouch, my recollection is that the last time someone here had a joke at the expense of those with genetic based mental deficiencies, someone got on and pointed out that their family had a child with that condition and that their post was in poor taste.

Or perhaps you're telling us you feel Pat supports such things?

Who said anything about anyone having genetic based mental deficiencies? Guilty conscience perhaps? "Assume", makes a buttocks out of u and me. :DCarry on.

<font color="blue"> [personal attack deleted] </font>

FYI, I have 2 family members w/ DS. So contrary to what many may believe based on "knowing" me from this BORED, i would never purposely humiliate anyone with a mental handicap.

Who said anything about anyone having genetic based mental deficiencies? Guilty conscience perhaps? "Assume", makes a buttocks out of u and me. :DCarry on.



I have to agree with Terry, weak. You're way funnier than this John!

Now, if you posted a picture of Ralph Nader in whatever compromising position you could find and thanked me for handing the election to Bush, I'd have to post this...


:o

Doh!

FYI, I have 2 family members w/ DS. So contrary to what many may believe based on "knowing" me from this BORED, i would never purposely humiliate anyone with a mental handicap.

FYI, I have 2 family members w/ DS. So contrary to what many may believe based on "knowing" me from this BORED, i would never purposely humiliate anyone with a mental handicap.



Hate to be dumb but I don't know what DS is? But I stand by my posts.

Lyle you're not dumb. Hardheaded and opinionated maybe but not dumb. DS is short for Downs Syndrome.

I voted for Pat Brenner, he doesn't seem to have any affiliations other than to the membership. I knew Terry was anti-progress.

Speaking of votes...NObama "Keep the change"

http://www.dontvoteobama.net/images/No%20Bama.jpg

http://api.ning.com/files/QE55BvwVUGnaq1DT9CyKeV14aItKh-i6oZz0CTtEK8bjPRR9wPAwVNl-mxQqZUuxJsqkuOvZ1sLBXukLxQUXRaJTKm9hp-FL/obama_new_yorker.jpg (http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2008/07/obama-new-yorker-cover.html)�, to a progressive that was a low blow :cool:

Here's the next president of the United States, portrayed in all of the smear that righties like you would have us believe.

Happy nightmares. :D

P.S. I think Pat's affiliations are mostly to himself. His positions work on this DISCussion board because of the attention they draw to "himself" - they don't work in the real world of a responsible board of directors. A good board member's affiliations and responsibilities are to the organization and its mission (http://www.pdga.com/org/documents/2006/MissionStatement03Summit.pdf) (PDF).

Lyle you're not dumb. Hardheaded and opinionated maybe but not dumb. DS is short for Downs Syndrome.



DOH! :o I never think of DS, I think trisomy...

That's what happens when you work with such things, you forget about the end result and focus on the mechanism.

"His positions work on this DISCussion board because of the attention they draw to "himself" "

spare me the psychoanalysis Terry. you are NOT qualified.

arent you the guy who demands loyalty to the BoD and its decisions? whjo is feeding you all this crap abouit being "dysfunctional" and "contentious". it is no such thing. someone is talking out of turn at best, and spreading mistruths at worst. where's your outrage? is it reserved for me and me alone? no bias there, Terry, is there?

btw, many of the challenges facing this organization are simply not addresses by the Mission Statement. try asking it for guidance about Enabler vs Vendor. or Am vs Pro. or IDGC vs. Tour. its tough to get any guidance from the current Mission Statement. it needs to be updated.

I don't know, I thought he showed a talent myself. His analysis seemed right on and highly entertaining.

BTW - I liked it better when you were making fun of the Board for censuring you. Especially when viewed in the context of your earlier campaign statements that you work well with the other Board Members...

So many funny statements, so little time to laugh.

how about the funny statements where some condemned me for wanting to release information, then voted 7-0 to release it. makes you kinda wonder what the basis for their original objection was, doesnt it. so much irony :)

image removed



Huh? Where did you put it Lyle?

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vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv INSERT LONG WINDED POST vvvvvvvvvvv



:D

One can't help but wonder why this phrase was included in the topic. Could plea bargaining in exchange for testimony be just in other countries but not in the United States? Is there something that makes plea bargaining in the United States different from plea bargaining anywhere else? If so, what? If not, then what's the importance of this phrase?

To begin to explore answers to these questions, it is as always important when discussing any criminal justice issue in the United States to recall that the United States federalist system. Though the Constitution, as interpreted by the Courts and years of practice, has set a certain framework within which they must operate, state and local governments are provided with a wide degree of latitude in setting up their criminal justice systems. For this reason, the way that plea bargaining is used in the United States can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

An affirmative could try to argue that, on balance, the way jurisdictions employ plea bargaining in exchange for testimony in the United States is unjust. In this case, the affirmative would not be arguing that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is inherently unjust, but that it is simply unjust the way it is generally done in the United States. To make this case, though, the affirmative would need to set up criteria for showing when plea bargaining in exchange for testimony would be just and then present hard evidence that in the United States most jurisdictions do not satisfy these criteria when bargaining for testimony. This would probably be a tough a case to make, since it is unclear how one could establish criteria for the just exchange of testimony for a lighter sentence and then be able to show, empirically, that these criteria are not met in a significant number of cases where bargaining takes place. There are some indicators, like the well documented difficulty the poor have in securing adequate legal counsel, which could suggest that defendants are at a great disadvantage when dealing with the government in many cases. Still, the burden of proof of the affirmative in this instance would be quite heavy.

If the affirmative argues that the in the United States, currently, the the use of plea bargaining to get testimony in a trial, negative will want to raise the question of whether the affirmative believes the system is beyond repair. If the affirmative tries to argue that it is, then the debate will effectively become about the inherent injustice of plea bargaining in exchange for testimony. If the affirmative argues that it might be repairable, but that the affirmative's burden is only to show that plea bargaining in exchange for justice is unjust presently, then the debate could get rather messy. The affirmative that adopts this strategy should be armed with a lot of evidence showing that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony as practiced in the United States today is unjust. It might prove difficult for the negative to refute each piece of evidence and, therefore, the negative would need to focus on the criteria that the affirmative offered as a basis for weighing this evidence. Additionally, the negative should of course question whether the evidence the affirmative presented showed more than just isolated instances of the unjust use of plea bargaining for testimony was unjust. Finally, the the negative should question the affirmative's assertion that affirmative only needs to show that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is currently being misused in the United States as opposed to it being inherently unjust for the practice to be used in the United States.

An affirmative could, of course, also try to argue that in some cases in the United States plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is unjust, but few judges are likely to accept that affirmative has so light a burden in this round.

The most promising route the affirmative can take is to argue either that there is little significance to the phrase "In the United States" in the topic, that the topic could just as easily have stipulated "In a just society" in place of "In the United States," or that there are features of the United States constitutional framework that make plea bargaining in exchange for testimony unjust. Of these two choices, the latter is probably the more promising.

[]Plea Bargaining
A plea bargain is a process in which the defendant arranges a �deal� with the prosecution. A plea bargain essentially means that a defendant charged with multiple crimes will plead guilty to a certain charge in order to escape going to trial for a more serious charge. In the United States, the majority of criminal cases are settled through plea bargains.

It is important to recognize, however, that while the majority of criminal cases in the United States never go to trial, that this does not mean that in the majority of plea bargains include an agreement to testify in court. There have been some notable cases in the news of late where accused criminals agreed to testify against co-conspirators with the understanding that they would plead guilty to less serious charges. Oddly, both cases involved athletes: Michael Vick and O.J. Simpson. In both cases, prosecutors sought incriminating testimony in order to improve their case against the star athletes. However, both of these cases ended up in the news long after the NFL wording committee composed this topic, so it would be a mistake to assume that these are the cases that inspired the topic.

An intrepid researcher might be able to find out roughly how many plea bargains included an agreement to testify. If someone finds this information, hopefully they'll post it here. However, it is worth keeping in mind that in most cases plea bargains are entered into simply to avoid going to trial. Criminal trials are basically winner take all propositions, which make them relatively risky for both prosecution and defense. Further, in the United States, where the criminal justice system is crowded with cases, plea deals are sometimes offered simply to resolve cases quickly and more efficiently. Whether this results in defendants pleading guilty to crimes they didn't commit or to lesser crimes than they actually did commit is on open question, one that ought to be researched and explored by debaters preparing to debate these cases. Debaters who find evidence relating to this issue are urged to post citations to it on the Debatepedia.

In arguing this topic, however, it is important that both sides consider whether they're arguing for or against plea bargaining in and of itself, or simply the practice of plea bargaining in exchange for testimony.

Another thing to keep in mind is that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony, though not as common as plea bargaining is not something being proposed by this topic but a practice that's taken place in the United States for some time now. This means that the affirmative needs to be careful when offering cause and effect arguments. That is, the affirmative can't say "if we allow plea bargaining in exchange for testimony then scores of innocent people will be convicted of crimes they didn't commit" without having hard evidence to back this claim up. If plea bargaining of this type has bad effects, these effects should already have occurred.

It is also important to note that at the point in the criminal justice process when plea deals are offered a plea bargain in exchange for testimony both the person offered the plea and the person against who testimony, in the United States' criminal justice system, retain a presumption of innocence.

[]A Note on the National Forensic League's Definition: of Plea Bargaining in Exchange for Testimony
The National Forensic League offers the following definition of plea bargaining in its topic overview topic overview: "the reduction in sentence for one guilty individual in exchange for information regarding another illegal act or guilty individual." This definition, which the NFL makes clear should not be quoted in the round, makes a questionable assumption: that both the person who offers testimony in exchange for a plea arrangement and the person against whom this information is used are in fact guilty. In the United States, individuals accused of crime are rightly considered innocent until proven guilty. Plea bargains are offered to defendants at a point in the criminal justice process when guilt has not yet been proven. Now, the assumption that an innocent person would never agree to plead guilty to a crime he or she didn't commit is a flawed one. An innocent person, fearing conviction for a crime he or she didn't commit, might reasonably choose to plead guilty to a charge simply to avoid being convicted of a more serious charge. Further, the fact that the prosecution has to offer a plea bargain in exchange for testimony suggests it does not have sufficient evidence against the accused to prove him or her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is entirely within the realm of possibility, then, that a fearful but innocent defendant, fearing an unjust conviction, might decide to offer false testimony in order to secure a guarantee of a lighter sentence through an equally false plea of guilty to a false charge.
[]Testimony
Westlaw's Law.com defines testimony as "oral evidence given under oath by a witness in answer to questions posed by attorneys at trial or at a deposition (questioning under oath outside of court)." Testimony is usually limited to bare facts; opinions and inferences are generally discouraged because they offer the opinion of the witness and consequently do not provide an objective account of the crime.

Since the topic does specify "testimony" as opposed to simply "information", one affirmative strategy could be to argue that the defense does not have an equivalent ability to bargain for testimony and since the testimony gained through plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is inherently suspect, that bargains ought not be made for the sake of testimony but that bargains may be used to gain needed information.

There may be cases, an affirmative could argue, when the government may determine that the need to gather information outweighs the potential injustice of letting a suspect plea bargain, but that bargaining for information is different from bargaining for testimony.

[]Unjust
Quite simply, unjust can be thought of as "not just." We then have to look to the definition of what is just. The most basic definition of justice is 'giving each his fair due.' Going by that definition, something unjust would give a person more or less than what he deserves. (to be continued...)

The somewhat shopworn definition of justice, "giving each their fair due," is an agreeable one for both sides of this topic. The affirmative and negative will, of course, need to address the question of who is due what, but the obvious parties here are the defendants accused of crimes (i.e. both the person being offered the plea bargain and the person against whom testimony is sought) and the general public that the criminal justice system is designed to protect. Is plea bargaining unjust to the general population? To the defendants? To other individuals waiting to be tried?

[]Can Plea Bargaining in Exchange for Justice be "Necessary but not just?"
There are always some debaters, when confronted with a topic that asks if a given policy is just, that will try to argue that the policy is "necessary but not just." For instance, there are those who argue that the death penalty is not just, but "necessary." These arguments, however, are in almost every case wholly specious. In the case of this topic this is more true than in most.

First, there is no way that, strictly speaking, plea bargaining in exchange for testimony could really be called "necessary." Obviously, the prosecution could simply try to convict both defendants without offering one a plea bargain in exchange for testimony against the other. Some negatives might try to argue that the only way to elicit the testimony that the prosecution believes is necessary to gain a conviction is by offering a plea deal to another defendant. However, strictly speaking, this can't be true. There are other methods that could be used to elicit testimony other than through a plea bargain. For instance, the prosecution can offer something other than a plea bargain in order to entice a recalcitrant witness to testify. For instance, a prosecutor could offer a witness money for his or her testimony. This, indeed, is common practice when it come to expert witnesses. The prosecution could also, conceivably, use less savory means of eliciting testimony, like threats or even torture.

The affirmative might try to argue that having to offer one accused criminal a lighter sentence in exchange for testimony is in and of its unjust, and that even if doing so results in a greater good for society, there is no denying that an injustice has occurred in that an accused criminal has been offered a lighter sentence than he or she might have merited. The argument here would run along the lines that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is nothing more than a "necessary evil." However, there really is no such thing as a "necessary evil" is as much of an oxymoron as a "deafening silence." For the affirmative to argue that it is necessary for the prosecution to offer a witness a plea deal, it would have to be the case that to fail to do so would be immoral. That is, the necessity involved in clearly not a physical necessity. The prosecutor is not compelled to offer a plea bargain in the same way that a rock thrown from a window will necessarily fall. The necessity in question is a moral necessity: the prosecutor who failed to offer a plea bargain, the affirmative has to be arguing, would be acting contrary to the demands of justice. However, how could it be wrong to do that which it would be wrong not to do? That is nonsensical.

When faced with a choice between two actions, both of which would produce some degree of harm, the only way it could be necessary for an agent to choose one course of action over another is if it would be wrong to choose one of the two alternatives. The fact that the agent might not have had a third option, which could have resulted in less or no harm to anyone, is unfortunate but not in it of itself immoral. However, as we have already discussed, there are obviously more than just two options at the prosecutor's disposal. In the end, the affirmative that conceded to the negative that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is necessary has conceded the round to the negative.

Further, the assumption that both the affirmative and the negative who argue that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is somehow necessary fails to recognize the fact that the criminal justice system requires that each person get a fair trial, not that certain defendants must, at all costs, be convicted. Given that every defendant is innocent until proven guilty, what moral necessity could there be to torture, bribe or coerce testimony against an accused? The prosecution's obligation is to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. One could easily argue that if a prosecutor could really only convict an accused criminal using testimony that is elicited through a plea bargain, that there is obviously something lacking in the prosecution's case. This is particularly true when the veracity of the testimony cannot be independently verified.

[]Values and Criterion
Since the resolution uses the word 'unjust' many will argue that the inherent (and therefore ultimate) value would be justice.

Indeed, it is not a mystery what value the two sides are asked to uphold: "justice". It is up to both sides in this debate to determine whether plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is a just practice within the context of the United States' criminal justice system. Currently, in the United States plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is permitted and takes place on a regular basis. This is likely why the wording committee asked whether the practice is "unjust:" debate convention holds that the affirmative ought to be challenging the status quo. The affirmative must argue in this debate against the status quo in the United States.

Those who would critique the very notion of justice might try to argue that justice is a meaningless concept and that therefore it make no sense to label any action either just or unjust. Claiming that the word "unjust" is empty of meaning, some might try to argue, proves the statement "In the United States, plea bargaining for testimony is unjust" false. It is an interesting question for "meta-debaters" to ask whether the negative in a Lincoln-Douglas debate fulfills his or her burden by denying that the words of a topic have any meaning whatsoever. However, the negative who goes down this route is likely to confront judges who have little patience for this sort of debate. Few people would be willing to accept that there is no meaning to inherent to the word "justice." Debaters who seek to deny this and to engage in a debate not about plea bargaining in exchange for testimony but rather the nature of the word "just" are likely to try the patience of most judges.

There will be other negatives who might try to question the just/unjust dichotomy and argue that there is a third category of actions: actions that are neither just nor unjust. Deciding what to call this category of actions, though, is something that should immediately give these negatives a degree of self-doubt. One would think, if there was a category of actions that we neither just nor unjust, that there would be some obvious word that could be used to describe those actions. No such word exists. One could call an action "morally neutral," in this case meaning neither right nor wrong. For instance, when one looks at a menu in a restaurant and has to decide between the carrots or peas as a vegetable, few would describe choosing one vegetable over the other an immoral or for that matter unjust act. It's trivially true that the choice between the side dishes on a menu is not a decision of much moral significance. However, in terms of justice, there is no way to say that a choice like this "ajust." The choice of either peas or carrots is, in fact, just. This is trivially true, but nonetheless worth noting: in choosing between eating peas or eating carrots the diner is obviously choosing between two just options.

So that leaves us with the more pressing question of figuring out a criterion for determining whether plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is unjust. The hackneyed "giving each his or her due," though vague is nonetheless a good starting point. When it comes to criminal justice, most people have a general sense of what justice requires: punishing the guilty and protecting the innocent. At first glance, therefore, one could say that if plea bargaining in exchange for testimony does not insure that the guilty are punished and the innocent protected, then it would be unjust. Unfortunately, things aren't that simple. One of the problems that society's face in designing their criminal justice systems is determining how to properly balance a desire to protect the innocent and to punish the guilty. Clearly, putting criminals in jail protects the innocent public. However, we also realize that it would be wrong to protect society from shoplifters by chopping off their hands. Punishment needs to fit the crime, and one of the problems that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony raises is whether by giving some criminals lighter sentences than they perhaps deserve in exchange for testimony against someone else that an injustice has occurred. Is the wrong of letting one person get a lighter sentence than he or she merits offset by society gaining testimony that could be used against a more serious offender? Arguably yes, but the weighing mechanism that society uses in order to determine the justice of this transaction cannot be precise. Put simply, the scale of justice are not that easy to balance.

Another thing to consider is the specific context in which this resolution is set: the United States. There are three provisions of the United States Constitution that are relevant to this debate topic:

The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." (the italicized text is commonly referred to as the Due Process clause). Though originally only a restriction on the Federal Government, this restriction on the power of the the federal government is understood to have been incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment and now applies to the States.
The Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a right to a jury trial: " In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
In considering these three provisions of the Constitution, however, it is important for the affirmative to keep in mind that the Supreme Court has not had much to say about plea bargaining in exchange for testimony and given the prevalence of the practice one has little choice but to interpret the Court's silence as consent. The most important Supreme Court decision that dealt with plea bargaining dealt with a very narrow issue of someone accepting a plea arrangement in order to avoid a death sentence without in fact admitting guilt (see North Caroline v. Alfrod, 400 U.S. 25 (1970) .

One could be tempted to argue that the criteria to use when considering the justness of a part of the United States' criminal justice system ought to be whether the practice comports with the United States' Constitution. The only problem here is that the constitutionality of a practice, in and of itself, is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to establishing its moral legitimacy. No better evidence of this can be found than in Article Four, Section 2 of the Constitution, which reads: " No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due." Though this section of the the constitution was superseded by the Thirteenth Amendment, one could not reasonably argue that the practice of returning fugitive slaves to their master was ever just, even if until the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment it was a practice not only permitted but required by the Constitution.

However, while constitutionality could not serve as a sole criteria for determining the justness of plea bargaining in exchange for testimony, this should not preclude the affirmative from running the argument that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is unconstitutional. In doing so, however, the affirmative will have to explain why these provisions of the constitution are just in and of themselves and why their violation is wrong. The affirmative, though, can argue that there is an injustice in violating a just provision of a written constitution even that could trump the benefit that might be achieved through such violation.

[]On the presumption of innocence
Though rightly considered a cornerstone of the United States' criminal justice system, the concept that a person is innocent until proven guilty is no where mentioned in the United States Constitution. In all likelihood, the Founders simply took this truth for granted, carrying it over from the British Common Law. Justice White, Coffin v. the United States, 156 U.S. 432 (1895), stated it best when he wrote: "The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law. It is stated as unquestioned in the textbooks, and has been referred to as a matter of course in the decisions of this court and in the courts of the several states." This idea that justice demands that those accused of crimes should be considered innocent until proven guilty is not unique to the United States nor is it particularly new.[1] Why, though, does justice demand that we make such a presumption?

Consider the following example:

Bob and Ray, two brothers, are accused of having committing the same murder. The circumstances of the crime is such that the District Attorney does not have sufficient evidence against either brother without them testifying against one another.

The District Attorney decides to put the two brothers into a classical "prisoner's dilemma." That is, he instructs the police to arrest Bob and Ray and he has them put into separate jail cells where he can offer them each plea deals in exchange for their testimony.

The district attorney explains that:

If one brother testifies and the other remains silent, the brother who testifies would go free and the silent brother would likely be sentenced to twenty years to life in prison.
If both brothers refuse to testify, the district attorney tells the brothers he will charge them with lesser offenses that will likely result in each of them receiving jail sentences of about two years.
If the brothers both testify, each will likely receive a sentence of ten to fifteen years.
In sum:

Bob Stays Silent Bob Betrays Ray
Ray Stays Silent Bob and Ray
serve two years Ray serves twenty to life
Bob goes free
Ray Betrays Bob Ray goes free
Rob serves twenty to life Bob and Ray
serves ten to fifteen years


The district attorney offers these plea deals to each brother separately and does not let them confer with one another before making their decision. Neither brother knows for sure what choice his sibling might make. How should the brother's act?

Bob and Ray each have only two choices: stay silent or testify. As you can see from the table above, neither brother, assuming he wants to avoid a very long prison sentence, has any real incentive other than sibling loyalty to stay silent.

If Bob were to stay silent, there are two possibilities: his brother betrays him, in which case he get sent to prison for twenty year to life or his brother also stays silent in which case both of them get two years in prison.

However, if Bob were two betray his brother, the results in both instances are better: either his brother stays silent, in which case he would be let go, or his brother testifies against him in which case he receives a sentence of fifteen years in prison-a long sentence, no doubt, but still a significantly better sentence than twenty to life.

From the point of view of the district attorney, plea bargaining in exchange for testimony would have worked out quite well. By engaging in plea bargaining in exchange for testimony, the two brothers would likely both testify against one another and receive relatively long prison sentences. Simply by separating the two brothers and offering them each the same deal.

It is worth noting, by the way, that our example though clearly hypothetical is neither particularly far fetched nor overly contrived. Many negatives assume that the only time a prosecutor will offer a plea bargain in exchange for testimony is when the person being offered a plea deal is guilty of a minor offense and the person against whom testimony is sought is potentially guilty of a much more serious crime. So long as both brothers were properly informed of their Miranda rights, it would not obviously violate any current United States' laws.

So, what does this long digression have to do with the presumption of innocence? Wasn't the district attorney able to come up with an ingenious method of protecting the public in this case? Without having offered plea bargains in exchange for testimony, both of the brothers would likely have received light sentences for relatively minor offenses. The district attorney managed to get two accused murderers to testify against one another and avoided either of them being set free. What could possibly be unjust?

Well, suppose neither Bob nor Ray were guilty? Under the circumstances the district attorney put the brothers in, assuming that they are primarily motivated by a desire to minimize potential prison time, the most rational thing for these two innocent men to do is falsely accuse his brother of murder resulting in both serving ten to fifteen years in prison.

Suppose only one of the two brothers was guilty. Again, assuming that both are primarily motivated by a desire to minimize potential prison time, a guilty man was given incentive to compound his guilty by falsely accusing his innocent brother, who in turn ends up serving a ten to fifteen year prison term.

The justice of the outcome of this application of the prisoner's dilemma depends on the actual guilt of parties involved. If one of both of the brothers is innocent, putting them in the situation that the district attorney did would work against the cause of justice.

One might still ask, of course, what does this really have to do with the presumption of innocence? A negative might try to dismiss the Bob and Ray example as being only one example of plea bargaining in exchange for justice and argue that it does not prove plea bargaining in exchange for justice wrong in all in cases, which is fair enough. Further, the negative might continue:

If we assume that at least one of the two brothers is guilty then the prisoner's dilemma doesn't appear so unjust. Admittedly having two innocent men go to prison would be bad, but they might both be guilty and having them both in jail for ten to fifteen years is preferable to either of them getting to walk free or both receiving light prison sentences. If one of the two brothers is guilty, while it's true that at innocent man is going to prison for ten years, so is a murderer and we're all safer for that.
The negative who makes this argument would have to prove that all else being equal, the wrong of letting a guilty man go free is at least no worse than the wrong involved in punishing the innocent.

The injustices involved in letting the guilty go free are real: the criminal might continue to commit crimes; the criminal's victims are denied restitution; society is denied the opportunity to rehabilitate the criminal; etc. At the same time, consider again our example of Bob and Ray.

Suppose Bob was innocent, but out of loyalty to his criminal brother decided to stay silent. His brother, motivated only by a desire to avoid prison, betrays his brother knowing full well that his brother is indeed innocent. Bob has done nothing wrong yet will be denied his freedom for a minimum of twenty years. While Ray might continue to commit crimes, he also might not. He might in fact go on to lead the life of perfectly law abiding citizen. It would be hard to argue that the injustice done to the innocent Bob can in anyway be considered equal to the injustice inherent to letting the guilty Ray go free.

Suppose Bob was innocent and decided to testify against Ray, who was indeed guilty, and suppose Ray decides to falsely accuse his brother in the hopes of getting a lighter sentence for a crime he committed. Are the scales of justice somehow balanced by having both an innocent and guilty man serve the same time for a crime that only one of them committed. Would the injustice done to the innocent Bob somehow even out through the sentencing of the guilty Ray? Would we prefer having them both go free rather than both go to jail? Would we consider the option of the two going to jail the moral equivalent of the two going to jail? It's hard to see how it really could be. The injustice perpetrated on the innocent brother seems clearly greater than the injustice that results from the guilty brother.

The negative might try to argue that the harm to society of letting the guilty go free somehow balances out the harm done to the innocent person who is convicted of a crime, but this is a very hard case to make. How many innocent people would a society feel secure putting in prison to insure that one guilty person is convicted?

The greatest injustice of letting the guilty go free is the possibility that the criminal will continue to offend. However, there is no guarantee that this will occur whereas the harm to the innocent brother is clearly guaranteed. Clearly there might be situations where the criminal in question is so craven and the crimes he or she is capable of committing so grave that one might be willing to accept the conviction of the innocent if could guarantee the incapacitation of the guilty.

Finally, when we consider the situation that both brothers found themselves in when confronted with the district attorney intent on convicting them, we see the imbalance of power that the brothers confronted when dealing with the district attorney. When confronted with the power of the state, the individual is almost always going to be at a disadvantage. Absent a presumption of innocence, the scales of justice would simply weigh to heavily against the innocent.

[]Affirmative Overview
An important strategic choice the affirmative must make is whether to argue against the practice of plea bargaining as whole or just plea bargaining in exchange for testimony. Affirmative could try to argue first that plea bargaining is in general unjust but then contend that even if this weren't true that plea bargaining in exchange of testimony is unjust. Adopting a two tiered "even if" approach to affirming is always somewhat risky since the danger is the appearance that the affirmative is contradictory. Further, the negative could always concede that plea bargaining in general is wrong, but that when its necessary to elicit testimony it is just.

If affirmative chooses to argue against plea bargaining in its entirety, the debate will likely center on the potential injustice of trying to convince an innocent person to plead guilty to a crime he or she didn't commit or of allowing a criminal to receive a less severe punishment than justice might require. The question that affirmative will need to consider, if choosing to argue against plea bargaining in and of itself, is why the state engages in such a practice.

In the United States, as noted above, the main reason that plea bargaining takes place is to avoid the uncertainties of a trial. Attorneys for the prosecution and the defense will carefully weigh what they believe to be their chances of success if a case goes to trial and weigh that against the offer being made by the other side. A prosecutor might offer a defendant the chance to plead guilty to a lesser charge in order to avoid the defendant being acquitted of a more serious charge and set free. Double jeopardy prevents the state from putting a person on trial for the same offense more than once. An interesting question is whether the process of plea bargaining is one that leads to the most just outcome.

The goal of any criminal justice system ought to be to convict the guilty and free the innocent. Now, the American criminal justice system rests on the assumption, carried over from the British common law tradition, that the injustice of convicting the innocent is greater than that of allowing the guilty go free. William Blackstone's well known maxim that it is "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" is one that rests at the core of the American criminal justice system. In American criminal courts, the burden of proof rests squarely on the state: people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Some negatives may try to argue that in determining the justice of plea bargaining that convicting the innocent is no worse than acquitting the guilty; affirmatives should be prepared to refute such a claim.

The question then is whether plea bargaining maximizes the chances of that only the guilty are punished for having committed crimes. Criminal justice is, unfortunately, not an exact science. John Rawls distinguished between three forms of procedural justice in his classic work A Theory of Justice:

Perfect procedural justice has two characteristics: (1) an independent criterion for what constitutes a fair or just outcome of the procedure, and (2) a procedure that guarantees that the fair outcome will be achieved.
Imperfect procedural justice shares the first characteristic of perfect procedural justice--there is an independent criterion for a fair outcome--but no method that guarantees that the fair outcome will be achieved.
Pure procedural justice describes situations in which there are no criterion for what constitutes a just outcome other than the procedure itself.[2]
Criminal justice systems are an example of "imperfect procedural justice." The affirmative will need to argue that plea bargaining makes the American criminal justice system less likely to achieve the desired outcome, placing a premium on insuring that the innocent are not punished for crimes they did not commit.

Whether plea bargaining makes the United States' criminal justice system more or less just is to a large extent an empirical question. If plea bargaining makes it more likely for innocent people to go free and the guilty to receive punishments that they deserve, then it will be relatively difficult for the affirmative to prove the practice of plea bargaining unjust. Given that the vast majority of criminal cases in the United States never go to trial, and are instead settled through plea arrangements, for the affirmative to claim that somehow plea is unjust they would have to be able to give hard, empirical evident, that the status quo is not working in the United States. It's not enough for the affirmative to make unwarranted claims of cause and effect (e.g. "Plea bargaining will result in innocent pleading pleading guilty to crimes they didn't commit and guilty people getting lighter sentence). Given that plea bargaining has been such a large part of the American criminal justice for such a long time at this point, any claims that the affirmative makes about the harms that plea bargaining brings should be supported with evidence. Hopefully, people will be adding some references to studies of the affect of plea bargaining on the American criminal justice.

When it comes to plea bargaining in exchange for testimony, however, the affirmative could argue that this exchange is an inherently unjust means to achieve potentially just ends. The easiest way to illustrate will be to consider two other practices: bribery and torture.

Suppose a defendant, offers to donate a lot of money to charity in exchange for a lighter sentence? Most would agree that the wealthy ought not to be able to exchange money for a lighter sentence. In fact, one of the most common criticisms of the American criminal justice system is that the poor are far more likely to be convicted when they are charged with the same crime. The ability of people to exchange money for a lighter sentence is widely considered an injustice. Why, then, should be it right for a person to exchange information for a lighter sentence? Surely, a large donation to charity might do more good for society than paying to have someone serve time behind bars, so why not let the wealthy criminals trade their wealth for their freedom? Similarly, while the state often will often offer rewards for people who provide information leading to the arrest and conviction of wanted criminals, even tough citizens ought to offer this information to the state free of charge, most would object if the state started to offer people money to testify against criminals in trials. While it is a common practice to pay "expert witnesses" to testify at a trial, this too is a practice that's commonly criticized and is not really analogous to paying for non-expert testimony.

Most people in our morally aware country would agree that torture is wrong. Of course, offering people a lighter sentence in exchange for testimony is not the moral equivalent of torturing them. Nonetheless, the problems inherent to using torture to elicit testimony are not unlike those that the affirmative to attribute to plea bargaining in exchange for testimony. Information that victims of torture provide is notoriously suspect. The torture victim will say anything to put the torture to an end. In fact, there's a long history of torture being used to elicit false confessions and information used at trials. A person confronted with long prison sentence could similarly be thought of as having every incentive to lie in order to escape that fate. However, even if the information extracted through torture were reliable, most people would still recognize that the ends in these cases don't justify the means. The affirmative can argue that threatening a person with a harsher sentence than they might otherwise get in order to elicit testimony from them is not that much different from torturing them. The analogy to torture might prove particularly effective for affirmative in those rounds where the negative insists that the ends justify the means. Affirmative will want to press the negative on this point.

[]Negative Overview
There really aren't that many choices for the negative. Other than some silly deconstruction of the notion of justice that results in the claim that "since the concept of justice is meaningless no practice can rightly be termed 'unjust,'" the negative's strategy is to argue, simply, that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is just because it is elicits testimony necessary that can be used to imprison criminals that society needs to get off the streets. The picture the negative will want to paint is of the state offering a petty thief a deal to avoid a lengthy prison term in exchange for testimony that would get a mass murderer off the streets. The negative wants to make it seem that the person whose testimony is being purchased through a plea bargain will still receive a just amount of punishment for a crime that he or she actually committed and that he or she will offer truthful testimony absolutely necessary for the state to convict a ruthless criminal.

The negative might try a strategy of trying to avoid a detailed discussion of the current practice of plea bargaining in the United States and to argue, instead, that the topic is asking simply whether the practice is in principle just. This would allow the negative to offer some criteria for when it is just for a prosecutor to offer a person a plea deal in exchange for testimony. This way the negative can avoid having to defend the status quo and potentially even offer a plan that might improve on it. Being able to set a set of criteria under which plea bargaining in exchange for testimony would be just in the United States saves the negative the trouble of showing that on balance the system is working properly in the United States today, which might simply be too difficult to prove.

The negative's best arguments are pragmatic ones that focus on the moral obligation the state has to protection of individual rights. If the state determines that, on balance, plea bargaining in exchange for testimony results in more criminals off the streets and fewer innocents behind behind bars or victims of crimes, it better protects the rights of its citizens.

Negative will need to weigh carefully how far to go in shifting the balance of power between the prosecution and the defense. While it's possible to argue that by offering some defendants a chance to plead guilty to a lighter sentence benefits them, on balance plea bargaining in general and plea bargaining in exchange for testimony specifically seems to give prosecutors a tool to guarantee convictions. Only in cases where the accused are actually guilty and are being offered a lighter sentence than they might get if they lose at trial can an accused be said to have benefited from a plea deal. Further, while there are safeguards built into the United States' criminal justice system, the negative would be foolish to assert that there are no dangers whatsoever involved in the process.

Negative might try to argue that United States criminal justice system ought to abandon Blackstone's ratio and not weigh protecting the innocent against false conviction more heavily than convicting the guilty. It's a risky strategy, but it could work. A better strategy, however, would likely be to argue that the threat to innocents in this case is minimal if not negligible on account of the checks inherent in this system. Given that the United States Court system is overwhelmed and plea bargaining is a practical if not moral necessity at this point, the negative might be on firm ground here, particularly given that plea bargaining and plea bargaining in exchange for testimony have been practiced for years now with the Supreme Court's mostly tacit consent.

[]Cross Examination
[]Negative
Given that plea bargaining for testimony has been practiced for some time now in the United States, the negative should probably ask the affirmative why, if the practice unjust, why it has not resulted either in some quantifiable injustices (e.g. large numbers of innocent people being convicted of crimes they haven't committed) or been subject to negative review by the Supreme Court.

[]Affirmative
The best line of questioning for the affirmative will focus on how plea bargaining in exchange for testimony potentially shifts the delicate balance of the United States criminal justice system away from protecting the innocents towards conviction of the guilty. At the very least, the United States criminal justice system is premised on the claim that all else being equal it would be better to let a guilty person go free than to punish an innocent individual. Whether that necessarily means that it is better than ten or a hundred guilty go free rather than have one innocent person convicted or plead guilty to a crime he or she didn't commit is not so clear.

Nice :D:D

Lyle, don't you dare reply to John's post with a bunch of inserted, colored rebuttals. :p

C'mon. I'm trolling, don't scare the fish away.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv INSERT LONG WINDED POST vvvvvvvvvvv



:D

One can't help but wonder why this phrase was included in the topic. Could plea bargaining in exchange for testimony be just in other countries but not in the United States? Is there something that makes plea bargaining in the United States different from plea bargaining anywhere else? If so, what? If not, then what's the importance of this phrase?

To begin to explore answers to these questions, it is as always important when discussing any criminal justice issue in the United States to recall that the United States federalist system. Though the Constitution, as interpreted by the Courts and years of practice, has set a certain framework within which they must operate, state and local governments are provided with a wide degree of latitude in setting up their criminal justice systems. For this reason, the way that plea bargaining is used in the United States can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

An affirmative could try to argue that, on balance, the way jurisdictions employ plea bargaining in exchange for testimony in the United States is unjust. In this case, the affirmative would not be arguing that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is inherently unjust, but that it is simply unjust the way it is generally done in the United States. To make this case, though, the affirmative would need to set up criteria for showing when plea bargaining in exchange for testimony would be just and then present hard evidence that in the United States most jurisdictions do not satisfy these criteria when bargaining for testimony. This would probably be a tough a case to make, since it is unclear how one could establish criteria for the just exchange of testimony for a lighter sentence and then be able to show, empirically, that these criteria are not met in a significant number of cases where bargaining takes place. There are some indicators, like the well documented difficulty the poor have in securing adequate legal counsel, which could suggest that defendants are at a great disadvantage when dealing with the government in many cases. Still, the burden of proof of the affirmative in this instance would be quite heavy.

If the affirmative argues that the in the United States, currently, the the use of plea bargaining to get testimony in a trial, negative will want to raise the question of whether the affirmative believes the system is beyond repair. If the affirmative tries to argue that it is, then the debate will effectively become about the inherent injustice of plea bargaining in exchange for testimony. If the affirmative argues that it might be repairable, but that the affirmative's burden is only to show that plea bargaining in exchange for justice is unjust presently, then the debate could get rather messy. The affirmative that adopts this strategy should be armed with a lot of evidence showing that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony as practiced in the United States today is unjust. It might prove difficult for the negative to refute each piece of evidence and, therefore, the negative would need to focus on the criteria that the affirmative offered as a basis for weighing this evidence. Additionally, the negative should of course question whether the evidence the affirmative presented showed more than just isolated instances of the unjust use of plea bargaining for testimony was unjust. Finally, the the negative should question the affirmative's assertion that affirmative only needs to show that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is currently being misused in the United States as opposed to it being inherently unjust for the practice to be used in the United States.

An affirmative could, of course, also try to argue that in some cases in the United States plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is unjust, but few judges are likely to accept that affirmative has so light a burden in this round.

The most promising route the affirmative can take is to argue either that there is little significance to the phrase "In the United States" in the topic, that the topic could just as easily have stipulated "In a just society" in place of "In the United States," or that there are features of the United States constitutional framework that make plea bargaining in exchange for testimony unjust. Of these two choices, the latter is probably the more promising.

[]Plea Bargaining
A plea bargain is a process in which the defendant arranges a �deal� with the prosecution. A plea bargain essentially means that a defendant charged with multiple crimes will plead guilty to a certain charge in order to escape going to trial for a more serious charge. In the United States, the majority of criminal cases are settled through plea bargains.

It is important to recognize, however, that while the majority of criminal cases in the United States never go to trial, that this does not mean that in the majority of plea bargains include an agreement to testify in court. There have been some notable cases in the news of late where accused criminals agreed to testify against co-conspirators with the understanding that they would plead guilty to less serious charges. Oddly, both cases involved athletes: Michael Vick and O.J. Simpson. In both cases, prosecutors sought incriminating testimony in order to improve their case against the star athletes. However, both of these cases ended up in the news long after the NFL wording committee composed this topic, so it would be a mistake to assume that these are the cases that inspired the topic.

An intrepid researcher might be able to find out roughly how many plea bargains included an agreement to testify. If someone finds this information, hopefully they'll post it here. However, it is worth keeping in mind that in most cases plea bargains are entered into simply to avoid going to trial. Criminal trials are basically winner take all propositions, which make them relatively risky for both prosecution and defense. Further, in the United States, where the criminal justice system is crowded with cases, plea deals are sometimes offered simply to resolve cases quickly and more efficiently. Whether this results in defendants pleading guilty to crimes they didn't commit or to lesser crimes than they actually did commit is on open question, one that ought to be researched and explored by debaters preparing to debate these cases. Debaters who find evidence relating to this issue are urged to post citations to it on the Debatepedia.

In arguing this topic, however, it is important that both sides consider whether they're arguing for or against plea bargaining in and of itself, or simply the practice of plea bargaining in exchange for testimony.

Another thing to keep in mind is that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony, though not as common as plea bargaining is not something being proposed by this topic but a practice that's taken place in the United States for some time now. This means that the affirmative needs to be careful when offering cause and effect arguments. That is, the affirmative can't say "if we allow plea bargaining in exchange for testimony then scores of innocent people will be convicted of crimes they didn't commit" without having hard evidence to back this claim up. If plea bargaining of this type has bad effects, these effects should already have occurred.

It is also important to note that at the point in the criminal justice process when plea deals are offered a plea bargain in exchange for testimony both the person offered the plea and the person against who testimony, in the United States' criminal justice system, retain a presumption of innocence.

[]A Note on the National Forensic League's Definition: of Plea Bargaining in Exchange for Testimony
The National Forensic League offers the following definition of plea bargaining in its topic overview topic overview: "the reduction in sentence for one guilty individual in exchange for information regarding another illegal act or guilty individual." This definition, which the NFL makes clear should not be quoted in the round, makes a questionable assumption: that both the person who offers testimony in exchange for a plea arrangement and the person against whom this information is used are in fact guilty. In the United States, individuals accused of crime are rightly considered innocent until proven guilty. Plea bargains are offered to defendants at a point in the criminal justice process when guilt has not yet been proven. Now, the assumption that an innocent person would never agree to plead guilty to a crime he or she didn't commit is a flawed one. An innocent person, fearing conviction for a crime he or she didn't commit, might reasonably choose to plead guilty to a charge simply to avoid being convicted of a more serious charge. Further, the fact that the prosecution has to offer a plea bargain in exchange for testimony suggests it does not have sufficient evidence against the accused to prove him or her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is entirely within the realm of possibility, then, that a fearful but innocent defendant, fearing an unjust conviction, might decide to offer false testimony in order to secure a guarantee of a lighter sentence through an equally false plea of guilty to a false charge.
[]Testimony
Westlaw's Law.com defines testimony as "oral evidence given under oath by a witness in answer to questions posed by attorneys at trial or at a deposition (questioning under oath outside of court)." Testimony is usually limited to bare facts; opinions and inferences are generally discouraged because they offer the opinion of the witness and consequently do not provide an objective account of the crime.

Since the topic does specify "testimony" as opposed to simply "information", one affirmative strategy could be to argue that the defense does not have an equivalent ability to bargain for testimony and since the testimony gained through plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is inherently suspect, that bargains ought not be made for the sake of testimony but that bargains may be used to gain needed information.

There may be cases, an affirmative could argue, when the government may determine that the need to gather information outweighs the potential injustice of letting a suspect plea bargain, but that bargaining for information is different from bargaining for testimony.

[]Unjust
Quite simply, unjust can be thought of as "not just." We then have to look to the definition of what is just. The most basic definition of justice is 'giving each his fair due.' Going by that definition, something unjust would give a person more or less than what he deserves. (to be continued...)

The somewhat shopworn definition of justice, "giving each their fair due," is an agreeable one for both sides of this topic. The affirmative and negative will, of course, need to address the question of who is due what, but the obvious parties here are the defendants accused of crimes (i.e. both the person being offered the plea bargain and the person against whom testimony is sought) and the general public that the criminal justice system is designed to protect. Is plea bargaining unjust to the general population? To the defendants? To other individuals waiting to be tried?

[]Can Plea Bargaining in Exchange for Justice be "Necessary but not just?"
There are always some debaters, when confronted with a topic that asks if a given policy is just, that will try to argue that the policy is "necessary but not just." For instance, there are those who argue that the death penalty is not just, but "necessary." These arguments, however, are in almost every case wholly specious. In the case of this topic this is more true than in most.

First, there is no way that, strictly speaking, plea bargaining in exchange for testimony could really be called "necessary." Obviously, the prosecution could simply try to convict both defendants without offering one a plea bargain in exchange for testimony against the other. Some negatives might try to argue that the only way to elicit the testimony that the prosecution believes is necessary to gain a conviction is by offering a plea deal to another defendant. However, strictly speaking, this can't be true. There are other methods that could be used to elicit testimony other than through a plea bargain. For instance, the prosecution can offer something other than a plea bargain in order to entice a recalcitrant witness to testify. For instance, a prosecutor could offer a witness money for his or her testimony. This, indeed, is common practice when it come to expert witnesses. The prosecution could also, conceivably, use less savory means of eliciting testimony, like threats or even torture.

The affirmative might try to argue that having to offer one accused criminal a lighter sentence in exchange for testimony is in and of its unjust, and that even if doing so results in a greater good for society, there is no denying that an injustice has occurred in that an accused criminal has been offered a lighter sentence than he or she might have merited. The argument here would run along the lines that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is nothing more than a "necessary evil." However, there really is no such thing as a "necessary evil" is as much of an oxymoron as a "deafening silence." For the affirmative to argue that it is necessary for the prosecution to offer a witness a plea deal, it would have to be the case that to fail to do so would be immoral. That is, the necessity involved in clearly not a physical necessity. The prosecutor is not compelled to offer a plea bargain in the same way that a rock thrown from a window will necessarily fall. The necessity in question is a moral necessity: the prosecutor who failed to offer a plea bargain, the affirmative has to be arguing, would be acting contrary to the demands of justice. However, how could it be wrong to do that which it would be wrong not to do? That is nonsensical.

When faced with a choice between two actions, both of which would produce some degree of harm, the only way it could be necessary for an agent to choose one course of action over another is if it would be wrong to choose one of the two alternatives. The fact that the agent might not have had a third option, which could have resulted in less or no harm to anyone, is unfortunate but not in it of itself immoral. However, as we have already discussed, there are obviously more than just two options at the prosecutor's disposal. In the end, the affirmative that conceded to the negative that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is necessary has conceded the round to the negative.

Further, the assumption that both the affirmative and the negative who argue that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is somehow necessary fails to recognize the fact that the criminal justice system requires that each person get a fair trial, not that certain defendants must, at all costs, be convicted. Given that every defendant is innocent until proven guilty, what moral necessity could there be to torture, bribe or coerce testimony against an accused? The prosecution's obligation is to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. One could easily argue that if a prosecutor could really only convict an accused criminal using testimony that is elicited through a plea bargain, that there is obviously something lacking in the prosecution's case. This is particularly true when the veracity of the testimony cannot be independently verified.

[]Values and Criterion
Since the resolution uses the word 'unjust' many will argue that the inherent (and therefore ultimate) value would be justice.

Indeed, it is not a mystery what value the two sides are asked to uphold: "justice". It is up to both sides in this debate to determine whether plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is a just practice within the context of the United States' criminal justice system. Currently, in the United States plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is permitted and takes place on a regular basis. This is likely why the wording committee asked whether the practice is "unjust:" debate convention holds that the affirmative ought to be challenging the status quo. The affirmative must argue in this debate against the status quo in the United States.

Those who would critique the very notion of justice might try to argue that justice is a meaningless concept and that therefore it make no sense to label any action either just or unjust. Claiming that the word "unjust" is empty of meaning, some might try to argue, proves the statement "In the United States, plea bargaining for testimony is unjust" false. It is an interesting question for "meta-debaters" to ask whether the negative in a Lincoln-Douglas debate fulfills his or her burden by denying that the words of a topic have any meaning whatsoever. However, the negative who goes down this route is likely to confront judges who have little patience for this sort of debate. Few people would be willing to accept that there is no meaning to inherent to the word "justice." Debaters who seek to deny this and to engage in a debate not about plea bargaining in exchange for testimony but rather the nature of the word "just" are likely to try the patience of most judges.

There will be other negatives who might try to question the just/unjust dichotomy and argue that there is a third category of actions: actions that are neither just nor unjust. Deciding what to call this category of actions, though, is something that should immediately give these negatives a degree of self-doubt. One would think, if there was a category of actions that we neither just nor unjust, that there would be some obvious word that could be used to describe those actions. No such word exists. One could call an action "morally neutral," in this case meaning neither right nor wrong. For instance, when one looks at a menu in a restaurant and has to decide between the carrots or peas as a vegetable, few would describe choosing one vegetable over the other an immoral or for that matter unjust act. It's trivially true that the choice between the side dishes on a menu is not a decision of much moral significance. However, in terms of justice, there is no way to say that a choice like this "ajust." The choice of either peas or carrots is, in fact, just. This is trivially true, but nonetheless worth noting: in choosing between eating peas or eating carrots the diner is obviously choosing between two just options.

So that leaves us with the more pressing question of figuring out a criterion for determining whether plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is unjust. The hackneyed "giving each his or her due," though vague is nonetheless a good starting point. When it comes to criminal justice, most people have a general sense of what justice requires: punishing the guilty and protecting the innocent. At first glance, therefore, one could say that if plea bargaining in exchange for testimony does not insure that the guilty are punished and the innocent protected, then it would be unjust. Unfortunately, things aren't that simple. One of the problems that society's face in designing their criminal justice systems is determining how to properly balance a desire to protect the innocent and to punish the guilty. Clearly, putting criminals in jail protects the innocent public. However, we also realize that it would be wrong to protect society from shoplifters by chopping off their hands. Punishment needs to fit the crime, and one of the problems that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony raises is whether by giving some criminals lighter sentences than they perhaps deserve in exchange for testimony against someone else that an injustice has occurred. Is the wrong of letting one person get a lighter sentence than he or she merits offset by society gaining testimony that could be used against a more serious offender? Arguably yes, but the weighing mechanism that society uses in order to determine the justice of this transaction cannot be precise. Put simply, the scale of justice are not that easy to balance.

Another thing to consider is the specific context in which this resolution is set: the United States. There are three provisions of the United States Constitution that are relevant to this debate topic:

The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." (the italicized text is commonly referred to as the Due Process clause). Though originally only a restriction on the Federal Government, this restriction on the power of the the federal government is understood to have been incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment and now applies to the States.
The Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a right to a jury trial: " In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
In considering these three provisions of the Constitution, however, it is important for the affirmative to keep in mind that the Supreme Court has not had much to say about plea bargaining in exchange for testimony and given the prevalence of the practice one has little choice but to interpret the Court's silence as consent. The most important Supreme Court decision that dealt with plea bargaining dealt with a very narrow issue of someone accepting a plea arrangement in order to avoid a death sentence without in fact admitting guilt (see North Caroline v. Alfrod, 400 U.S. 25 (1970) .

One could be tempted to argue that the criteria to use when considering the justness of a part of the United States' criminal justice system ought to be whether the practice comports with the United States' Constitution. The only problem here is that the constitutionality of a practice, in and of itself, is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to establishing its moral legitimacy. No better evidence of this can be found than in Article Four, Section 2 of the Constitution, which reads: " No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due." Though this section of the the constitution was superseded by the Thirteenth Amendment, one could not reasonably argue that the practice of returning fugitive slaves to their master was ever just, even if until the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment it was a practice not only permitted but required by the Constitution.

However, while constitutionality could not serve as a sole criteria for determining the justness of plea bargaining in exchange for testimony, this should not preclude the affirmative from running the argument that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is unconstitutional. In doing so, however, the affirmative will have to explain why these provisions of the constitution are just in and of themselves and why their violation is wrong. The affirmative, though, can argue that there is an injustice in violating a just provision of a written constitution even that could trump the benefit that might be achieved through such violation.

[]On the presumption of innocence
Though rightly considered a cornerstone of the United States' criminal justice system, the concept that a person is innocent until proven guilty is no where mentioned in the United States Constitution. In all likelihood, the Founders simply took this truth for granted, carrying it over from the British Common Law. Justice White, Coffin v. the United States, 156 U.S. 432 (1895), stated it best when he wrote: "The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law. It is stated as unquestioned in the textbooks, and has been referred to as a matter of course in the decisions of this court and in the courts of the several states." This idea that justice demands that those accused of crimes should be considered innocent until proven guilty is not unique to the United States nor is it particularly new.[1] Why, though, does justice demand that we make such a presumption?

Consider the following example:

Bob and Ray, two brothers, are accused of having committing the same murder. The circumstances of the crime is such that the District Attorney does not have sufficient evidence against either brother without them testifying against one another.

The District Attorney decides to put the two brothers into a classical "prisoner's dilemma." That is, he instructs the police to arrest Bob and Ray and he has them put into separate jail cells where he can offer them each plea deals in exchange for their testimony.

The district attorney explains that:

If one brother testifies and the other remains silent, the brother who testifies would go free and the silent brother would likely be sentenced to twenty years to life in prison.
If both brothers refuse to testify, the district attorney tells the brothers he will charge them with lesser offenses that will likely result in each of them receiving jail sentences of about two years.
If the brothers both testify, each will likely receive a sentence of ten to fifteen years.
In sum:

Bob Stays Silent Bob Betrays Ray
Ray Stays Silent Bob and Ray
serve two years Ray serves twenty to life
Bob goes free
Ray Betrays Bob Ray goes free
Rob serves twenty to life Bob and Ray
serves ten to fifteen years


The district attorney offers these plea deals to each brother separately and does not let them confer with one another before making their decision. Neither brother knows for sure what choice his sibling might make. How should the brother's act?

Bob and Ray each have only two choices: stay silent or testify. As you can see from the table above, neither brother, assuming he wants to avoid a very long prison sentence, has any real incentive other than sibling loyalty to stay silent.

If Bob were to stay silent, there are two possibilities: his brother betrays him, in which case he get sent to prison for twenty year to life or his brother also stays silent in which case both of them get two years in prison.

However, if Bob were two betray his brother, the results in both instances are better: either his brother stays silent, in which case he would be let go, or his brother testifies against him in which case he receives a sentence of fifteen years in prison-a long sentence, no doubt, but still a significantly better sentence than twenty to life.

From the point of view of the district attorney, plea bargaining in exchange for testimony would have worked out quite well. By engaging in plea bargaining in exchange for testimony, the two brothers would likely both testify against one another and receive relatively long prison sentences. Simply by separating the two brothers and offering them each the same deal.

It is worth noting, by the way, that our example though clearly hypothetical is neither particularly far fetched nor overly contrived. Many negatives assume that the only time a prosecutor will offer a plea bargain in exchange for testimony is when the person being offered a plea deal is guilty of a minor offense and the person against whom testimony is sought is potentially guilty of a much more serious crime. So long as both brothers were properly informed of their Miranda rights, it would not obviously violate any current United States' laws.

So, what does this long digression have to do with the presumption of innocence? Wasn't the district attorney able to come up with an ingenious method of protecting the public in this case? Without having offered plea bargains in exchange for testimony, both of the brothers would likely have received light sentences for relatively minor offenses. The district attorney managed to get two accused murderers to testify against one another and avoided either of them being set free. What could possibly be unjust?

Well, suppose neither Bob nor Ray were guilty? Under the circumstances the district attorney put the brothers in, assuming that they are primarily motivated by a desire to minimize potential prison time, the most rational thing for these two innocent men to do is falsely accuse his brother of murder resulting in both serving ten to fifteen years in prison.

Suppose only one of the two brothers was guilty. Again, assuming that both are primarily motivated by a desire to minimize potential prison time, a guilty man was given incentive to compound his guilty by falsely accusing his innocent brother, who in turn ends up serving a ten to fifteen year prison term.

The justice of the outcome of this application of the prisoner's dilemma depends on the actual guilt of parties involved. If one of both of the brothers is innocent, putting them in the situation that the district attorney did would work against the cause of justice.

One might still ask, of course, what does this really have to do with the presumption of innocence? A negative might try to dismiss the Bob and Ray example as being only one example of plea bargaining in exchange for justice and argue that it does not prove plea bargaining in exchange for justice wrong in all in cases, which is fair enough. Further, the negative might continue:

If we assume that at least one of the two brothers is guilty then the prisoner's dilemma doesn't appear so unjust. Admittedly having two innocent men go to prison would be bad, but they might both be guilty and having them both in jail for ten to fifteen years is preferable to either of them getting to walk free or both receiving light prison sentences. If one of the two brothers is guilty, while it's true that at innocent man is going to prison for ten years, so is a murderer and we're all safer for that.
The negative who makes this argument would have to prove that all else being equal, the wrong of letting a guilty man go free is at least no worse than the wrong involved in punishing the innocent.

The injustices involved in letting the guilty go free are real: the criminal might continue to commit crimes; the criminal's victims are denied restitution; society is denied the opportunity to rehabilitate the criminal; etc. At the same time, consider again our example of Bob and Ray.

Suppose Bob was innocent, but out of loyalty to his criminal brother decided to stay silent. His brother, motivated only by a desire to avoid prison, betrays his brother knowing full well that his brother is indeed innocent. Bob has done nothing wrong yet will be denied his freedom for a minimum of twenty years. While Ray might continue to commit crimes, he also might not. He might in fact go on to lead the life of perfectly law abiding citizen. It would be hard to argue that the injustice done to the innocent Bob can in anyway be considered equal to the injustice inherent to letting the guilty Ray go free.

Suppose Bob was innocent and decided to testify against Ray, who was indeed guilty, and suppose Ray decides to falsely accuse his brother in the hopes of getting a lighter sentence for a crime he committed. Are the scales of justice somehow balanced by having both an innocent and guilty man serve the same time for a crime that only one of them committed. Would the injustice done to the innocent Bob somehow even out through the sentencing of the guilty Ray? Would we prefer having them both go free rather than both go to jail? Would we consider the option of the two going to jail the moral equivalent of the two going to jail? It's hard to see how it really could be. The injustice perpetrated on the innocent brother seems clearly greater than the injustice that results from the guilty brother.

The negative might try to argue that the harm to society of letting the guilty go free somehow balances out the harm done to the innocent person who is convicted of a crime, but this is a very hard case to make. How many innocent people would a society feel secure putting in prison to insure that one guilty person is convicted?

The greatest injustice of letting the guilty go free is the possibility that the criminal will continue to offend. However, there is no guarantee that this will occur whereas the harm to the innocent brother is clearly guaranteed. Clearly there might be situations where the criminal in question is so craven and the crimes he or she is capable of committing so grave that one might be willing to accept the conviction of the innocent if could guarantee the incapacitation of the guilty.

Finally, when we consider the situation that both brothers found themselves in when confronted with the district attorney intent on convicting them, we see the imbalance of power that the brothers confronted when dealing with the district attorney. When confronted with the power of the state, the individual is almost always going to be at a disadvantage. Absent a presumption of innocence, the scales of justice would simply weigh to heavily against the innocent.

[]Affirmative Overview
An important strategic choice the affirmative must make is whether to argue against the practice of plea bargaining as whole or just plea bargaining in exchange for testimony. Affirmative could try to argue first that plea bargaining is in general unjust but then contend that even if this weren't true that plea bargaining in exchange of testimony is unjust. Adopting a two tiered "even if" approach to affirming is always somewhat risky since the danger is the appearance that the affirmative is contradictory. Further, the negative could always concede that plea bargaining in general is wrong, but that when its necessary to elicit testimony it is just.

If affirmative chooses to argue against plea bargaining in its entirety, the debate will likely center on the potential injustice of trying to convince an innocent person to plead guilty to a crime he or she didn't commit or of allowing a criminal to receive a less severe punishment than justice might require. The question that affirmative will need to consider, if choosing to argue against plea bargaining in and of itself, is why the state engages in such a practice.

In the United States, as noted above, the main reason that plea bargaining takes place is to avoid the uncertainties of a trial. Attorneys for the prosecution and the defense will carefully weigh what they believe to be their chances of success if a case goes to trial and weigh that against the offer being made by the other side. A prosecutor might offer a defendant the chance to plead guilty to a lesser charge in order to avoid the defendant being acquitted of a more serious charge and set free. Double jeopardy prevents the state from putting a person on trial for the same offense more than once. An interesting question is whether the process of plea bargaining is one that leads to the most just outcome.

The goal of any criminal justice system ought to be to convict the guilty and free the innocent. Now, the American criminal justice system rests on the assumption, carried over from the British common law tradition, that the injustice of convicting the innocent is greater than that of allowing the guilty go free. William Blackstone's well known maxim that it is "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" is one that rests at the core of the American criminal justice system. In American criminal courts, the burden of proof rests squarely on the state: people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Some negatives may try to argue that in determining the justice of plea bargaining that convicting the innocent is no worse than acquitting the guilty; affirmatives should be prepared to refute such a claim.

The question then is whether plea bargaining maximizes the chances of that only the guilty are punished for having committed crimes. Criminal justice is, unfortunately, not an exact science. John Rawls distinguished between three forms of procedural justice in his classic work A Theory of Justice:

Perfect procedural justice has two characteristics: (1) an independent criterion for what constitutes a fair or just outcome of the procedure, and (2) a procedure that guarantees that the fair outcome will be achieved.
Imperfect procedural justice shares the first characteristic of perfect procedural justice--there is an independent criterion for a fair outcome--but no method that guarantees that the fair outcome will be achieved.
Pure procedural justice describes situations in which there are no criterion for what constitutes a just outcome other than the procedure itself.[2]
Criminal justice systems are an example of "imperfect procedural justice." The affirmative will need to argue that plea bargaining makes the American criminal justice system less likely to achieve the desired outcome, placing a premium on insuring that the innocent are not punished for crimes they did not commit.

Whether plea bargaining makes the United States' criminal justice system more or less just is to a large extent an empirical question. If plea bargaining makes it more likely for innocent people to go free and the guilty to receive punishments that they deserve, then it will be relatively difficult for the affirmative to prove the practice of plea bargaining unjust. Given that the vast majority of criminal cases in the United States never go to trial, and are instead settled through plea arrangements, for the affirmative to claim that somehow plea is unjust they would have to be able to give hard, empirical evident, that the status quo is not working in the United States. It's not enough for the affirmative to make unwarranted claims of cause and effect (e.g. "Plea bargaining will result in innocent pleading pleading guilty to crimes they didn't commit and guilty people getting lighter sentence). Given that plea bargaining has been such a large part of the American criminal justice for such a long time at this point, any claims that the affirmative makes about the harms that plea bargaining brings should be supported with evidence. Hopefully, people will be adding some references to studies of the affect of plea bargaining on the American criminal justice.

When it comes to plea bargaining in exchange for testimony, however, the affirmative could argue that this exchange is an inherently unjust means to achieve potentially just ends. The easiest way to illustrate will be to consider two other practices: bribery and torture.

Suppose a defendant, offers to donate a lot of money to charity in exchange for a lighter sentence? Most would agree that the wealthy ought not to be able to exchange money for a lighter sentence. In fact, one of the most common criticisms of the American criminal justice system is that the poor are far more likely to be convicted when they are charged with the same crime. The ability of people to exchange money for a lighter sentence is widely considered an injustice. Why, then, should be it right for a person to exchange information for a lighter sentence? Surely, a large donation to charity might do more good for society than paying to have someone serve time behind bars, so why not let the wealthy criminals trade their wealth for their freedom? Similarly, while the state often will often offer rewards for people who provide information leading to the arrest and conviction of wanted criminals, even tough citizens ought to offer this information to the state free of charge, most would object if the state started to offer people money to testify against criminals in trials. While it is a common practice to pay "expert witnesses" to testify at a trial, this too is a practice that's commonly criticized and is not really analogous to paying for non-expert testimony.

Most people in our morally aware country would agree that torture is wrong. Of course, offering people a lighter sentence in exchange for testimony is not the moral equivalent of torturing them. Nonetheless, the problems inherent to using torture to elicit testimony are not unlike those that the affirmative to attribute to plea bargaining in exchange for testimony. Information that victims of torture provide is notoriously suspect. The torture victim will say anything to put the torture to an end. In fact, there's a long history of torture being used to elicit false confessions and information used at trials. A person confronted with long prison sentence could similarly be thought of as having every incentive to lie in order to escape that fate. However, even if the information extracted through torture were reliable, most people would still recognize that the ends in these cases don't justify the means. The affirmative can argue that threatening a person with a harsher sentence than they might otherwise get in order to elicit testimony from them is not that much different from torturing them. The analogy to torture might prove particularly effective for affirmative in those rounds where the negative insists that the ends justify the means. Affirmative will want to press the negative on this point.

[]Negative Overview
There really aren't that many choices for the negative. Other than some silly deconstruction of the notion of justice that results in the claim that "since the concept of justice is meaningless no practice can rightly be termed 'unjust,'" the negative's strategy is to argue, simply, that plea bargaining in exchange for testimony is just because it is elicits testimony necessary that can be used to imprison criminals that society needs to get off the streets. The picture the negative will want to paint is of the state offering a petty thief a deal to avoid a lengthy prison term in exchange for testimony that would get a mass murderer off the streets. The negative wants to make it seem that the person whose testimony is being purchased through a plea bargain will still receive a just amount of punishment for a crime that he or she actually committed and that he or she will offer truthful testimony absolutely necessary for the state to convict a ruthless criminal.

The negative might try a strategy of trying to avoid a detailed discussion of the current practice of plea bargaining in the United States and to argue, instead, that the topic is asking simply whether the practice is in principle just. This would allow the negative to offer some criteria for when it is just for a prosecutor to offer a person a plea deal in exchange for testimony. This way the negative can avoid having to defend the status quo and potentially even offer a plan that might improve on it. Being able to set a set of criteria under which plea bargaining in exchange for testimony would be just in the United States saves the negative the trouble of showing that on balance the system is working properly in the United States today, which might simply be too difficult to prove.

The negative's best arguments are pragmatic ones that focus on the moral obligation the state has to protection of individual rights. If the state determines that, on balance, plea bargaining in exchange for testimony results in more criminals off the streets and fewer innocents behind behind bars or victims of crimes, it better protects the rights of its citizens.

Negative will need to weigh carefully how far to go in shifting the balance of power between the prosecution and the defense. While it's possible to argue that by offering some defendants a chance to plead guilty to a lighter sentence benefits them, on balance plea bargaining in general and plea bargaining in exchange for testimony specifically seems to give prosecutors a tool to guarantee convictions. Only in cases where the accused are actually guilty and are being offered a lighter sentence than they might get if they lose at trial can an accused be said to have benefited from a plea deal. Further, while there are safeguards built into the United States' criminal justice system, the negative would be foolish to assert that there are no dangers whatsoever involved in the process.

Negative might try to argue that United States criminal justice system ought to abandon Blackstone's ratio and not weigh protecting the innocent against false conviction more heavily than convicting the guilty. It's a risky strategy, but it could work. A better strategy, however, would likely be to argue that the threat to innocents in this case is minimal if not negligible on account of the checks inherent in this system. Given that the United States Court system is overwhelmed and plea bargaining is a practical if not moral necessity at this point, the negative might be on firm ground here, particularly given that plea bargaining and plea bargaining in exchange for testimony have been practiced for years now with the Supreme Court's mostly tacit consent.

[]Cross Examination
[]Negative
Given that plea bargaining for testimony has been practiced for some time now in the United States, the negative should probably ask the affirmative why, if the practice unjust, why it has not resulted either in some quantifiable injustices (e.g. large numbers of innocent people being convicted of crimes they haven't committed) or been subject to negative review by the Supreme Court.

[]Affirmative
The best line of questioning for the affirmative will focus on how plea bargaining in exchange for testimony potentially shifts the delicate balance of the United States criminal justice system away from protecting the innocents towards conviction of the guilty. At the very least, the United States criminal justice system is premised on the claim that all else being equal it would be better to let a guilty person go free than to punish an innocent individual. Whether that necessarily means that it is better than ten or a hundred guilty go free rather than have one innocent person convicted or plead guilty to a crime he or she didn't commit is not so clear.



Are you quoting Lyle :eek:

btw, many of the challenges facing this organization are simply not addresses by the Mission Statement. try asking it for guidance about Enabler vs Vendor. or Am vs Pro. or IDGC vs. Tour. its tough to get any guidance from the current Mission Statement. it needs to be updated.





MISSION STATEMENT
(as approved at the 2003 PDGA Summit)
1. Continue to develop the professional and
amateur tours to complement national
sponsorship.
2. Work to develop the PDGA as the external face of
competitive Disc Golf.
3. Continue to add value to our membership while
encouraging competitive growth.
4. Establish, enhance and govern the
standardization in the rules of play, tournament
formats, and all other aspects of the sport of Disc
Golf.
5. Prepare our Organization for growth.






From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A mission statement is a brief statement of the purpose of a company, religious group or organization. Companies sometimes use their mission statement as an advertising slogan, but the intention of a mission statement is to keep members and users aware of the organization's purpose. In the case of public commercial companies, the primary purpose must always be to uphold the interests of shareholders, whatever the mission statement.




I agree that the above MS needs to be updated. I was bit surprised when I first read this and the lack of simple explanations of the how to's. For example expanding on the "encourage competitive growth" part... Or the Preparation of growth..... We could also include some addtional tasks not included in the current statement. For example:

Partner with our official publication to reach a common goal for the advertisment, publicising, and public outreach of our sport and other flying disc related sports...

I just made that up off the top of my head...... But maybe you get the point....

<font color="red"> Lyle's really intelligent. You just have to learn how to read through all of the jibba jabba. Speaking of inteliigence: </font>

:D

Organization
The heraldic symbol that comprises the CIA seal consists of three representative parts: the "right"-facing bald eagle head atop,( "right" facing, since the eagle looks over its "right" shoulder, not the left shoulder ) the compass star (or compass rose), and the shield. The eagle is the national bird, standing for strength and alertness. The 16-point compass star represents the CIA's world-wide search for intelligence outside the United States, which is then reported to the headquarters for analysis, reporting, and re-distribution to policymakers. The compass rests upon a shield, symbolic of defense.[9][10]

The CIA has an executive office, four major directorates, and a variety of specialized offices. Prior to the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligences, it had some additional responsibilities for the IC as a whole.


[edit] Executive offices
Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community (IC), serving as the president's principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 amended the National Security Act to provide for a Director of National Intelligence who would assume some of the roles formerly fulfilled by the DCI, with a separate Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DCI's title now is "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.

Currently, the Central Intelligence Agency answers directly to the Director of National Intelligence, although the CIA Director may brief the President directly. The CIA has its budget approved by the Congress, a subset of which do see the line items. The intelligence community, however, does not take direct orders from the Congress. The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the National Security Council, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all 16 U.S. Intelligence Community agencies are under the policy, but not necessarily budgetary, authority of the Director of National Intelligence.

The effect of the personalities of the DCIs on the structure and behavior of the Agency and indeed the IC is analyzed in Painter's dissertation on "Early Leader Effects" of Donovan, Dulles and Hoover[11]

Until the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the Director of the CIA met regularly with the President to issue daily reports on ongoing operations. After the creation of the post of DNI, currently Mike McConnell, the report is now given by the DNI�who oversees all US Intelligence activities, including intelligence community operations outside of CIA jurisdiction. Former CIA Director Porter Goss, who had been a CIA officer, denied this has had a diminishing effect on morale, but promoted his mission to reform the CIA into the lean and agile counter-terrorism focused force he believes it should be.[12]

A Deputy Director of the CIA (DDCIA) Assists the Director in his duties as head of the CIA and exercises the powers of the Director when the Director�s position is vacant or in the Director�s absence or disability. Either the Director or Deputy Director may be a military officer, but both positions may not be filled, at the same time, by military officers.

On July 5, 2006, the position of Executive Director, who managed day-to-day operations and budget, was replaced with an Associate Deputy Director of the CIA (ADD)[13]


[edit] Support to Military Operations
As the DCIA's principal adviser and representative on military issues, the Associate Director for Military Support (AD/MS), a senior general officer, coordinates CIA efforts to provide Joint Force commanders, who are principally consumers of national-level intelligence but producers of operational intelligence. The AD/MS also supports Department of Defense officials who oversee military intelligence training and the acquisition of intelligence systems and technology. John A. Gordon was the first AD/MS, before the creation of ODNI. There is also an Associate Deputy Director for Operations for Military Affairs (ADDO/MA)[14]

The Office of Military Affairs provides intelligence and operational support to the US armed forces.[15]

President George W. Bush, in creating the National Clandestine Service (NCS), made it clear policy that the CIA would be in charge of all human intelligence (HUMINT) operations. NCS, (formerly the Directorate of Operations, and earlier the "Directorate of Plans"), collects clandestine human intelligence collection, and conducts deniable psychological and paramilitary operations.[16] Creation of the NCS was the culmination of a years old turf war regarding influence, philosophy and budget between the United States Department of Defense and the CIA. The Pentagon, through the DIA, wanted to take control of the CIA's paramilitary operations and many of its human assets.[citation needed] DoD had organized the Defense HUMINT Service,[17] which, with the Presidential decision, became part of the NCS.

The CIA, which has for years held that human intelligence is the core of the agency, successfully argued that the CIA's decades long experience with human resources and civilian oversight made it the ideal choice. Thus, the CIA was given charge of all US human intelligence, but as a compromise, the Pentagon was authorized to include increased paramilitary capabilities in future budget requests.[citation needed] The military is also authorized to run Counterintelligence Force Protection Source Operations, which are directly related to the protection of military forces and facility. Another HUMINT area that remains with DoD is direct support to special operations, by an organization, originally called the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), which is a special access program (i.e., separate from sensitive compartmented intelligence activities that must be reported to the Congressional intelligence committees). ISA and its successors transferred to the United States Special Operations Command, where their classified names and special access program designations are changed frequently.[18]

The Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities (TENCAP) program is a system of making national intelligence available to warfighters.[19] TENCAP information most commonly comes from space-based and national-level aircraft programs, where CIA's responsibilities have moved, in many cases, to NRO, NSA, NGA, and DIA. Nevertheless, CIA still can serve such information, with the emphasis on HUMINT, and on technical sensors that need to be emplaced clandestinely in denied areas.


[edit] Proposed support to Homeland Security
A great sensitivity remains about CIA having domestic responsibilities, but it clearly will, on occasions, collect information outside the US that relates directly to domestic security. CIA, for example, is more likely to obtain HUMINT on terrorists than the very limited foreign resources of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

While DHS, like the military, is seen principally as a consumer of national intelligence, but its border and transportation security functions will produce intelligence. At present, however, there is no well-defined way for DHS to task intelligence collection agencies with its requirements. One proposal suggests using the AD/MS as a prototype, to create an AD/Homeland Security in the CIA, and possibly an equivalent position in the Justice Department, which, through the FBI and other agencies, legally collects domestic intelligence.[20] This proposal is one of many to improve coordination and avoid intelligence failures caused by not "connecting the dots", when the dots are held by different agencies.


[edit] National estimates
Prior to 2004, CIA had two analytic roles: the main effort based in the Directorate of Intelligence, which used internal experts to analyze data collected by the CIA, National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the military collection organizations, and other parts of the intelligence community. Many of these reports were on current subjects, such as the status of a revolutionary group, or the technical details of a new Chinese factory.

Another function, however, was preparing "estimates", which try to predict the future. Estimates are a product of the intelligence community as a whole. National Intelligence Estimates were the most extensively coordinated documents, often that could be scheduled on a regular basis, such as a regular report on Soviet intentions. Special National Intelligence Estimates (SNIE) were quick-response publications, often providing guidance in a crisis, but were still interagency consensus rather than CIA alone.

CIA had a separate and prestigious office, going by different names and organizations, such as the Office of National Estimates, Board of National Estimates, or a set of National Intelligence Officers, which would seek out the consensus of all the intelligence agencies, and then have some of the most senior analysts write a draft. The idea of such estimates is often credited to Sherman Kent,sometimes called the father of US intelligence analysis, with special emphasis on the production of estimates.[21] This function is now in the National Intelligence Council of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.[22] Originally defined in 1950, this responsibility stated "CIA is now in the business of producing what are called National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) along the lines laid down in NSC 50. These papers are interdepartmental in character, designed to focus all available intelligence on a problem of importance to the national security." In the early days of the process, CIA used the State Department's intelligence staff for drafting the NIEs, but a "small top level Office of National Estimates" was set up to integrate the departmental drafts. A senior CIA analyst responsible for the document would work out differences. There is also a process by which an agency can disagree with a comment called a "reclama", which is a footnote expressing an alternate position. For an example of such dissents, see Special National Intelligence Estimate 10-9-65 in CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific#Vietnam 1965: Viet Cong and DRV Reactions, where there are dissents to various parts from all or part of the military, and from the Department of State.

Upon approval by an interagency review committee, the paper becomes a NIE and is sent by the Director of Central Intelligence to the President, appropriate officers of Cabinet level, and the NSC.[23]

[edit] Directorate of Intelligence
The "DI" is the analytical branch of the CIA, responsible for the production and dissemination of all-source intelligence analysis on key foreign issues..[24] While it has, like most government agencies, reorganized over the years, its current structure has four regional analytic groups, six groups for transnational issues, and two support units.[25] Prior to the formation of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, the President's Daily Brief was prepared by the CIA Office of Current Intelligence.

Some open source intelligence OSINT, such as the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, were, at different times, part of the Directorate of Intelligence or the Directorate of Science &amp; Technology. Along with other OSINT functions, the National Open Source Enterprise is now in the ODNI.


[edit] Regional groups
There is an Office dedicated to Iraq. In addition, there are regional analytical Offices covering:

Near East, North Africa and South Asia: The Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis (NESA)
Russia and Europe: The Office of Russian and European Analysis (OREA)
Asian-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa: The Office of East Asian, Pacific, Latin American and African Analysis (APLAA)

[edit] Transnational groups
The Office of Terrorism Analysis,[26] which supports the National Counterterrorism Center, in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Office of Transnational Issues[27] applies unique functional expertise to assess existing and emerging threats to US national security and provides the most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support.

The CIA Crime and Narcotics Center[28] researches information on international narcotics trafficking and organized crime for policymakers and the law enforcement community. Since the CIA has no domestic police authority, it sends its analytic information to the FBI and other law enforcement organizations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The Weapons, Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center[29] provides intelligence support deals with national and non-national threats, as well as supporting threat reduction/arms control. This works with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Again cooperating with the FBI for domestic activity, the Counterintelligence Center Analysis Group[30] identifies, monitors, and analyzes the efforts of foreign intelligence entities, both national and non-national, against US interests.

The Information Operations Center Analysis Group[31] evaluates foreign threats to US computer systems, particularly those that support critical infrastructures. It works with critical infrastructure protection organizations in the United States Department of Defense (e.g., CERT Coordination Center) and the Department of Homeland Security (e.g., United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team)


[edit] Support and general units
The Office of Collection Strategies and Analysis provides comprehensive intelligence collection expertise to the DI, a wide range of senior Agency and Intelligence Community officials, and key national policymakers.

The Office of Policy Support customizes DI analysis and presents it to a wide variety of policy, law enforcement, military, and foreign liaison recipients.


[edit] National Clandestine Service
Main article: National Clandestine Service
The National Clandestine Service, a semi-independent service which was formerly the Directorate of Operations, is responsible for collection of foreign intelligence, principally from clandestine HUMINT sources, and covert action. The new name reflects its having absorbed the Defense HUMINT Service, which did strategic human intelligence HUMINT collection for the Department of Defense (DoD). HUMINT directly related to military missions remains under the DoD. Note that there is an open source function in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which may be taking over certain legal interviews in the US that previously were the Domestic Contact Division (or Domestic Contact Service).

While the NCS organization chart has not been published, although there have been prior descriptions of the Directorate of Plans or the Directorate of Operations, a fairly recent organization chart of the Defense HUMINT Service will indicate functions transferred into the NCS, and may well be fairly close to the overall NCS organizational structure.[32]

There are references to earlier structures in various historical documents. For example, in a CIA paper on the internal probe into the Bay of Pigs,[33] there are several comments on the Directorate of Plans organizational structure in 1962. Even though any large organization will constantly reorganize, the basic functions will stay and can be a clue to future organization.

At the top level, Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell had two Assistant Deputy Directors, C. Tracy Barnes and Richard Helms. Warner explains "operational details fell to Branch 4 (Cuba) of the DDP's Western Hemisphere Division (WH)", with some exceptions. Jacob Esterline, chief of the Cuba Branch, reported directly to Bissell and Barnes rather than to his division chief, J.C. King "although King was regularly informed and often consulted. To confuse matters still further, Branch 4 had no direct control over the Brigade's aircraft, which were managed by a separate DDP division that also took some orders directly from Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) Charles P. Cabell, a US Air Force general who liked to keep his hand in the planning of airdrops and other missions," Air operations, therefore, were in a separate division either for covert support, paramilitary operations, or both.

Cuba Branch had a "Foreign Intelligence Section," foreign intelligence being a term of art for HUMINT. The branch, however, established "a separate "G-2" unit subordinate to its Paramilitary Section, which planned the actual invasion. This gives us the model of a geographic branch with subordinate sections, at least, for intelligence collection and paramilitary actions.

Warner's paper also mentions that certain DDP groups were outside the scope of the post-mortem by Executive Director Lyman Kirkpatrick, but their mention tells us that these were representative components of the DDP: "... the Havana station or the Santiago base, the development of foreign intelligence assets and liaison contacts, Division D's technical collection programs, or counter-intelligence work against the Cuban services." CIA "stations" are the parts of the embassy with officers under diplomatic cover, in a typical diplomatic office building. "Bases", however, are large facilities for supporting operations, typically with an airfield, secure warehouses, barracks and training areas. Division D was the joint CIA-NSA collection effort, where CIA would use clandestine operations personnel to emplace NSA SIGINT sensors. The reference to counter-intelligence work appears to refer to a main counterintelligence division, presumably the Counterintelligence Staff under James Jesus Angleton.


[edit] Directorate of Science and Technology
Main article: Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science &amp; Technology
The Directorate of Science &amp; Technology creates and applies innovative technology in support of the intelligence collection mission.[34][dead links] The CIA has always shown a strong interest in how to use advances in technology to enhance its effectiveness.[35] This interest in modern technology came from two main aims: firstly, to harness these techniques its own use, and second to counter any new technologies the Soviets might develop. This effort gained impetus in the fifties with the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the USSR. The agency was also extremely interested in computer and information technology. In 1999, CIA created the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel to help fund and develop technologies of interest to the agency.[36][37][38]

Its website mentions its priorities being in:

Application Software and Analytics
Bio, Nuclear, and Chemical Technologies
Communications and Infrastructure
Digital Identity and Security
Embedded Systems and Power[39]
In January 2008, its featured collaboration was with Streambase Systems,[40] makers of a "high-performance Complex Event Processing (CEP) software platform for real-time and historical analysis of high-volume intelligence data," using a new processing paradigm for Structured Query Language (SQL), allowing queries against multiple real-time data streams still updating the data base.


[edit] Directorate of Support
The Directorate of Support provides necessary "housekeeping" administration functions, but in a manner consistent with the need to keep their details protected. These functions include personnel, security, communications, and financial operations. Most of this Directorate is sub-structured into smaller offices based on role and purpose, such as the Office of Security, which is concerned both with personnel and physical security. Other major offices include the Office of Communications and the Office of Information Technology.


[edit] Logistics and proprietaries
Under the original NSC 10/2 authorization, CIA was made responsible not just for covert action during the cold war, but for such action during major wars, in collaboration with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When DCI Smith created the Directorate of Plans and ended the autonomy of the OPC and OSO, he recognized it was necessary to establish logistical support for these operations before the start of a hot war. Smith did not want to duplicate existing military support systems, and proposed, in 1952, that the CIA should be able to draw, on a reimbursable basis, on military supply stocks. In many respects, this was the beginning of the idea that what was to become the Directorate of Support had a far wider scope than the OSS and initial CIA term, Directorate of Administration.

Smith presented the concept that the CIA would need a worldwide system of support bases, which usually could be tenant organizations on military bases. According to Smith's memo,

A major logistical support base will consist of a CIA base headquarters, training, communications, medical accommodation for evacuees and storage for six months� hot war requirements as well as provide logistical support for CIA operational groups or headquarters... Informal planning along the lines indicated has been carried out by elements of CIA with ... the Joint Chiefs of Staff ...

The CIA was expected to reimburse "extraordinary expenses" incurred by the military services.[41]

While military transportation might be appropriate for some purposes, there would be cases where the arrival of a military aircraft at a location other than a military base might draw undue attention. This was the origin of the idea of the CIA operating proprietary airlines, whose relationship to the US government would not be public.[42] Among these organizations were airlines that provided covert logistical support, such as Civil Air Transport, Southern Air Transport, and consolidated them into Air America. The latter was heavily involved in support with the war in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in the 1960s.


[edit] Training
This directorate includes the Office of Training, which starts with a Junior Officer Training program for new employees. So that the initial course might be taken by employees who had not received final security clearance and thus were not permitted unescorted access to the Headquarters building, a good deal of basic training has been given at office buildings in the urban areas of Arlington, Virginia.

It is known, although not acknowledged by the U.S. Government, that the CIA runs at least two operations training facilities.[43] One is known as The Farm, at Camp Peary, Virginia. The other is known as The Point at Harvey Point, North Carolina. While the course outline has never been revealed, it is believed to include such things as surveillance, countersurveillance, cryptography, paramilitary training as well as other tradecraft. The course seems to be about less than a year and runs at irregular intervals depending on circumstances. Operations training is delivered by experienced operations officers.

Student progress is monitored by experienced evaluators that meet to discuss a recruit's progress and have the power to dismiss a recruit even before his or her training is complete. Evaluation techniques for the CIA's World War II predecessor, the OSS, were published as the book Assessment of Men, Selection of Personnel for the office of Strategic Services.[44] See Roger Hall's You're Stepping on my Cloak and Dagger for an accurate but amusing account of Hall's OSS duty, which included finding unexpected solutions to things in the assessment process as well as his experience in real operations.[45] He described a specific assessment period at a rural facility called "Station S". Hall said he tried to find out why it was called Station S, and finally decided the reason was that "assess" has more "S" letters than any other.

Psychological stress is part of operations training, but of a different type than military special operations force evaluation, such as the Navy SEAL Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course or Army Special Forces Assessment and Selection. For instance, an operations training officer will often lie to a recruit saying they have evidence that will result in the recruit to be arrested and tried for felony crimes. This is a test of the recruit's ability to maintain a cover under stress.

Contrary to popular belief or what is seen in film and television series, American-born, professional employees trained to work for the National Clandestine Service (CIA) are never referred to as "secret agents", "spies", "agents" or "special agents", they are known as 'Operations Officers' or 'Case Officers', or Officer for short. To highlight this point: within the intelligence community, the equivalent of an FBI Special Agent is a CIA Officer. Within the law enforcement community, the equivalent of a CIA 'agent' is an FBI informant. There does not exist any working title or job position known as 'CIA Agent', agents of the CIA are usually always foreigners who choose to betray their own country by passing along secret information to the government through CIA Case Officers, who are posted at U.S. embassies worldwide.[46]

These CIA Case Officers recruit foreign agents, known as 'assets', to give information to the CIA. There are a wide range of motivations for a person to become an asset; see CIA Case Officers are normally sent abroad under a cover identity, most commonly as a diplomat but sometimes under "nonofficial cover" using an assumed identity and having no immunity.[46]


[edit] Other offices

[edit] General Publications
One of the CIA's best-known publications, The World Factbook, is in the public domain and is made freely available without copyright restrictions because it is a work of the United States federal government.[47]

CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence maintains the Agency's historical materials and promotes the study of intelligence as a legitimate and serious discipline.[48][dead links] The CIA since 1955 has published an in-house professional journal known as Studies in Intelligence that addresses historical, operational, doctrinal, and theoretical aspects of the intelligence profession. The Center also publishes unclassified and declassified Studies articles, as well as other books and monographs.[49] A further annotated collection of Studies articles was published through Yale University Press under the title Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992.[50]

In 2002, CIA's Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis began publishing the unclassified Kent Center Occasional Papers, aiming to offer "an opportunity for intelligence professionals and interested colleagues�in an unofficial and unfettered vehicle�to debate and advance the theory and practice of intelligence analysis."[51][dead links]


[edit] General Counsel and Inspector General
Two offices advise the Director on legality and proper operations. The Office of the General Counsel advises the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on all legal matters relating to his role as CIA director and is the principal source of legal counsel for the CIA.[52][dead links]

The Office of Inspector General promotes efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability in the administration of Agency activities. OIG also seeks to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. The Inspector General is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Inspector General, whose activities are independent of those of any other component in the Agency, reports directly to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. OIG conducts inspections, investigations, and audits at Headquarters and in the field, and oversees the Agency-wide grievance-handling system. The OIG provides a semiannual report to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency which the Director is required by law to submit to the Intelligence Committees of Congress within 30 days.

In February 2008, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael V. Hayden, sent a message to employees that Inspector General John L. Helgerson will accept increased control over the investigations by that office, saying "John has chosen to take a number of steps to heighten the efficiency, assure the quality and increase the transparency of the investigation process".[53] The Washington Post suggested this was a response to senior officials who believe the OIG has been too aggressive in looking into counterterrorism programs, including detention programs. The changes were the result of an investigation, begun in April 2007, by one of Hayden's assistants, Robert L. Deitz.[54] There was congressional concern that restrictions on the OIG might have a chilling effect on its effectiveness. Senator Ron Wyden , a Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, did not disagree with any of Hayden's actions, said the inquiry �should never have happened and can�t be allowed to happen again.�...�I�m all for the inspector general taking steps that help C.I.A. employees understand his processes, but that can be done without an approach that can threaten the inspector general�s independence


[edit] Public Affairs
The Office of Public Affairs advises the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on all media, public policy, and employee communications issues relating to his role as CIA director and is the CIA�s principal communications focal point for the media, the general public and Agency employees.[55][dead links] See CIA influence on public opinion.


[edit] Relationship with other sources of intelligence
The CIA acts as the primary American HUMINT and general analytic agency, under the Director of National Intelligence, who directs or coordinates the 16 member organizations of the United States Intelligence Community. It obtains information from other U.S. government intelligence agencies, commercial information sources, and foreign intelligence services.


[edit] Other U.S. intelligence agencies
A number of those organizations are fully or partially under the budgetary control of the United States Secretary of Defense or other cabinet officers such as the Attorney General of the United States.

As do other analytic members of the U.S. intelligence community such as the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the analytic division of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), its raw input includes imagery intelligence IMINT collected by air and space systems of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) processed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), signal intelligence SIGINT of the National Security Agency (NSA), and measurement and signature intelligence MASINT from the DIA MASINT center.


[edit] Open Source Intelligence
Until the 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community, one of the "services of common concern" that CIA provided was OSINT from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).[56] FBIS, which had absorbed the Joint Publication Research Service, a military organization that translated documents,[57] which moved into the National Open Source Enterprise under the Director of National Intelligence.

CIA still provides a variety of unclassified maps and reference documents both to the intelligence community and the public.[58]

As part of its mandate to gather intelligence, CIA is looking increasingly online for information, and has become a major consumer of social media. "We're looking at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence," said Doug Naquin, director of the DNI Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA. "We're looking at chat rooms and things that didn't exist five years ago, and trying to stay ahead."[59]


[edit] Outsourcing
In a trend some find disturbing, many of duties and functions of Intelligence Community activities, not the CIA alone, are being "outsourced" and "privatized." Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, was about to publicize an investigation report of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies, as required by Congress.[60] However, this report was then classified.[61][62] Hillhouse speculates that this report includes requirements for the CIA to report:[61][63]

different standards for government employees and contractors;
contractors providing similar services to government workers;
analysis of costs of contractors vs. employees;
an assessment of the appropriateness of outsourced activities;
an estimate of the number of contracts and contractors;
comparison of compensation for contractors and government employees,
attrition analysis of government employees;
descriptions of positions to be converted back to the employee model;
an evaluation of accountability mechanisms;
an evaluation of procedures for "conducting oversight of contractors to ensure identification and prosecution of criminal violations, financial waste, fraud, or other abuses committed by contractors or contract personnel; and
an "identification of best practices of accountability mechanisms within service contracts."
According to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, "...what we have today with the intelligence business is something far more systemic: senior officials leaving their national security and counterterrorism jobs for positions where they are basically doing the same jobs they once held at the CIA, the NSA and other agencies - but for double or triple the salary, and for profit. It's a privatization of the highest order, in which our collective memory and experience in intelligence - our crown jewels of spying, so to speak - are owned by corporate America. Yet, there is essentially no government oversight of this private sector at the heart of our intelligence empire. And the lines between public and private have become so blurred as to be nonexistent."[64][65]

Congress has required an outsourcing report by March 30, 2008.[63]

The Director of National Intelligence has been granted the authority to increase the number of positions (FTEs) on elements in the Intelligence Community by up to 10% should there be a determination that activities performed by a contractor should be done by a US government employee.

Part of the contracting problem comes from Congressional restrictions on the number of employees in the IC. According to Hillhouse, this resulted in0% of the de facto workforce of the CIA's National Clandestine Service being made up of contractors. "After years of contributing to the increasing reliance upon contractors, Congress is now providing a framework for the conversion of contractors into federal government employees--more or less."[63]

As with most government agencies, building equipment often is contracted. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), responsible for the development and operation of airborne and spaceborne sensors, long was a joint operation of the CIA and the United States Department of Defense. NRO had been significantly involved in the design of such sensors, but the NRO, then under DCI authority, contracted more of the design that had been their tradition, and to a contractor without extensive reconnaissance experience, Boeing.

The next-generation satellite Future Imagery Architecture project, which missed objectives after $4 billion in cost overruns, was the result of this contract.[66][67]

Some of the cost problems associated with intelligence come from one agency, or even a group within an agency, not accepting the compartmented security practices for individual projects, requiring expensive duplication.[68]


[edit] Foreign intelligence services
Many intelligence services cooperate. There may even be a deniable communications channel with ostensibly hostile nations.

The role and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki) (SVR), the French foreign intelligence service Direction G�n�rale de la S�curit� Ext�rieure (DGSE) and Israel's Mossad. While the preceding agencies both collect and analyze information, some like the US State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research are purely analytical agencies. See List of intelligence agencies.

The closest links of the US IC to other foreign intelligence agencies are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. There is a special communications marking that signals that intelligence-related messages can be shared with these four countries.[69] An indication of the United States' close operational cooperation is the creation of a new message distribution label within the main US military communications network. Previously, the marking of NOFORN (i.e., No Foreign Nationals) required the originator to specify which, if any, non-US countries could receive the information. A new handling caveat, USA/AUS/CAN/GBR/NZL Eyes Only, used primarily on intelligence messages, gives an easier way to indicate that the material can be shared with Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and New Zealand.


[edit] Organizational history
The Central Intelligence Agency was created by Congress with National Security Act of 1947, signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It is the descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which was dissolved in October 1945 and its functions transferred to the State and War Departments. Eleven months earlier, in 1944, William J. Donovan, the OSS's creator, proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt creating a new organization directly supervised by the President: "which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies."[70] Under his plan, a powerful, centralized civilian agency would have coordinated all the intelligence services. He also proposed that this agency have authority to conduct "subversive operations abroad," but "no police or law enforcement functions, either at home or abroad."[71][dead links]


The lives of 83 fallen CIA officers are represented by 83 stars on the CIA memorial wall in the Original Headquarters building.CIA personnel have died on duty, some in accidents and some by deliberate hostile action. On the memorial wall at CIA headquarters, some of the stars have no name attached, because it would reveal the identity of a clandestine officer.[72] Both the OSS and its British counterparts, as do other agencies worldwide, struggle with finding the right organizational balance among clandestine intelligence collection, counterintelligence, and covert action. See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for a historical perspective on this problem. These issues also bear on the reasons that, in the history below, some "eras" overlap. Also see the Wikipedia article Director of Central Intelligence, which contains an expanded history of CIA by director; the priorities and personalities of individual directors have had a strong influence on Agency operations.


[edit] Immediate predecessors, 1946-1947
The Office of Strategic Services, which was the first independent US intelligence agency, created for the Second World War, was broken up shortly after the end of the war, by President Truman, on September 20, 1945. The rapid reorganizations that followed reflected the routine sort of bureaucratic competition for resources, but also trying to deal with the proper relationships of clandestine intelligence collection and covert action (i.e., paramilitary and psychological operations). See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for a more detailed history of this problem, which was not unique to the US during and after World War II. In October 1945, the functions of the OSS were split between the Departments of State and War:

New Unit Oversight OSS Functions Absorbed
Strategic Services Unit (SSU) War Department Secret Intelligence (SI) (i.e., clandestine intelligence collection) and Counter-espionage (X-2)
Interim Research and Intelligence Service (IRIS) State Department Research and Analysis Branch (i.e., intelligence analysis)
Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) (not uniquely for former OSS) War Department, Army General Staff Staff officers from Operational Groups, Operation Jedburgh, Morale Operations (black propaganda)

This division lasted only a few months.Despite opposition from the military establishment, the United States Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),[70] President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) in January 1946 which was the direct predecessor to the CIA.[73][dead links] The CIG was an interim authority established under Presidential authority. The assets of the SSU, which now constituted a streamlined "nucleus" of clandestine intelligence was transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO).


[edit] Early CIA, 1947-1952
In September 1947, the National Security Act of 1947 established both the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.[74] Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was appointed as the first Director of Central Intelligence.


The 16-foot (5 m) diameter CIA seal in the lobby of the Original Headquarters Building.The National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1948 (NSC 10/2) further gave the CIA the authority to carry out covert operations "against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons."[75]

In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act (Public Law 81-110) authorized the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures, and exempting it from most of the usual limitations on the use of Federal funds. It also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its "organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed." It also created the program "PL-110", to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" who fall outside normal immigration procedures, as well as giving those persons cover stories and economic support.[76]


[edit] The structure stabilizes, 1952
Then-DCI Walter Bedell Smith, who enjoyed a special degree of Presidential trust, having been Dwight D. Eisenhower's primary Chief of Staff during World War II, insisted that the CIA -- or at least only one department -- had to direct the OPC and OSO. Those organization, as well as some minor functions, formed the euphemistically named Directorate of Plans in 1952.

Also in 1952, United States Army Special Forces were created, with some missions overlapping those of the Department of Plans. In general, the pattern emerged that the CIA could borrow resources from Special Forces, although it had its own special operators.


[edit] Early Cold War, 1953-1966

Lockheed U-2 "Dragon Lady", the first generation of near-space reconnaissance satellites.Allen Dulles, who had been a key OSS operations officer in Switzerland during the Second World War, took over from Smith, at a time where US policy was dominated by intense anticommunism. Various sources were involved, the most visible being the investigations and abuses of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the more quiet but systematic containment doctrine developed by George Kennan, the Berlin Blockade and the Korean War. Dulles enjoyed a high degree of flexibility, as his brother, John Foster Dulles, was simultaneously Secretary of State. Concern regarding the Soviet Union and the difficulty of getting information from its closed society, which few agents could penetrate, led to solutions based on advanced technology. Among the first success was with the Lockheed U-2 aircraft, which could take pictures and collect electronic signals from an altitude above Soviet air defenses' reach. After Gary Powers was shot down by an SA-2 surface to air missile in 1960, causing an international incident, the SR-71 was developed to take over this role.


The USAF's SR-71 Blackbird was developed from the CIA's A-12 OXCART.During this period, there were numerous covert actions against perceived Communist expansion. Some of the largest operations were aimed at Cuba after the overthrow of the Batista government, including assassination attempts against Fidel Castro and the dubiously deniable Bay of Pigs Invasion. There have been suggestions that the Soviet attempt to put missiles into Cuba came, indirectly, when they realized how badly they had been compromised by a US-UK defector in place, Oleg Penkovsky.[77]

The CIA, working with the military, formed the joint National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to operate reconnaissance aircraft such as the SR-71 and later satellites. "The fact of" the United States operating reconnaissance satellites, like "the fact of" the existence of NRO, was highly classified for many years.


Early CORONA/KH-4B imagery IMINT satellite.
[edit] Complications from Indochina and the Vietnam War (1954-1975)
As the US military and electorate were affected by Vietnam, so was the CIA. The OSS Patti mission had arrived near the end of the Second World War, and had significant interaction with the leaders of many Vietnamese factions, including Ho Chi Minh.[78] While the Patti mission forwarded Ho's proposals for phased independence, with the French or even the United States as the transition partner, the US policy of containment opposed forming any government that might be Communist.

The first CIA mission to Indochina, under the code name Saigon Military Mission arrived in 1954, under Edward Lansdale. US-based analysts were simultaneously trying to project the evolution of political power, both if the scheduled referendum chose merger of the North and South, or if the South, the US client, stayed independent. Initially, the US focus in Southeast Asia was on Laos, not Vietnam.

During the period of American combat involvement in the Vietnam War, there was considerable arguments about progress among the Department of Defense under Robert S. McNamara, the CIA, and, to some extent, the intelligence staff of the Military Assistance Command Vietnam.[79] In general, the military was consistently more optimistic than the CIA. Sam Adams, a junior CIA analyst with responsibilities for estimating the actual damage to the enemy, eventually resigned from the CIA, after expressing concern, to Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms with estimates that were changed for interagency and White House political reasons, writing the book War of Numbers.


[edit] Abuses of CIA authority, 1970s-1990s
Things came to a head in the early 1970s, around the time of the Watergate political burglary affair. A dominant feature of political life during that period were the attempts of Congress to assert oversight of U.S. Presidency, the executive branch of the U.S. Government. Revelations about past CIA activities, such as assassinations and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders, illegal domestic spying on U.S. citizens, provided the opportunities to execute Congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence operations. Hastening the Central Intelligence Agency's fall from grace were the burglary of the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic Party by ex-CIA agents, and President Richard Nixon's subsequent use of the CIA to impede the FBI's investigation of the burglary. In the famous "smoking gun" recording that led to President Nixon's resignation, Nixon ordered his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, to tell the CIA that further investigation of Watergate would "open the whole can of worms" about the Bay of Pigs of Cuba, and, therefore, that the CIA should tell the FBI to cease investigating the Watergate burglary, due to reasons of "national security".[80]

In 1973, then-DCI James R. Schlesinger commissioned reports � known as the "Family Jewels" � on illegal activities by the Agency. In December 1974, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the news of the "Family Jewels" in a front-page article in The New York Times, revealing that the CIA had assassinated foreign leaders, and had conducted surveillance on some seven thousand American citizens involved in the antiwar movement (Operation CHAOS).

Congress responded to the disturbing charges in 1975, investigating the CIA in the Senate via the Church Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), and in the House of Representatives via the Pike Committee, chaired by Congressman Otis Pike (D-NY). In addition, President Gerald Ford created the Rockefeller Commission, and issued an Executive Order prohibiting the assassination of foreign leaders.

Repercussions from the Iran-Contra Affair arms smuggling scandal included the creation of the Intelligence Authorization Act in 1991. It defined covert operations as secret missions in geopolitical areas where the U.S. is neither openly nor apparently engaged. This also required an authorizing chain of command, including an official, presidential finding report and the informing of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, which, in emergencies, requires only "timely notification".


[edit] 2004, DCI takes over CIA top-level functions
Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community, serving as the president's principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DCI's title now is "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.

Currently, the Central Intelligence Agency reports to the Director of National Intelligence. Prior to the establishment of the DNI, the CIA reported to the President, with informational briefings to U.S. Congressional committees The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the National Security Council, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, et cetera; all sixteen Intelligence Community agencies are under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.


[edit] Mission-related issues and controversies
The history of CIA deals with several things, certainly including covert action, but also clandestine and overt intelligence collection, intelligence analysis and reporting, and logistical and technical support of its activities. Prior to the December 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community (IC), it also was responsible for coordinations of IC-wide intelligence estimates.

These articles are organized in two different ways: By geographical region (for state actors or non-state actors limited to a country or region) and by transnational topic (for non-state actors).

CIA operations by region, country and date are discussed in detail in the following Wikipedia articles:

CIA activities in Africa
CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific
CIA activities in Russia and Europe
CIA activities in the Americas
CIA activities in the Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia
CIA analyses of issues such as the effect of emerging diseases, and the detection of WMDs, are inherently transnational, and are discussed in the following articles. CIA operations and, where appropriate, authorizations for covert operations (for example, NSDD 138 authorizing direct action against terrorists) by transnational topic are discussed in the following Wikipedia articles:

CIA transnational activities in counterproliferation
CIA transnational anti-crime and anti-drug activities
CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities
CIA transnational health and economic activities
CIA transnational human rights actions
In addition, a view of covert US activity specifically oriented towards regime change actions is given in the following Wikipedia article:

Covert U.S. regime change actions
Major sources for this section include the Council on Foreign Relations of the United States series, the National Security Archive and George Washington University, the Freedom of Information Act Reading Room at the CIA, U.S. Congressional hearings, Blum's book[81] and Weiner's book[82] Note that the CIA has posted a rebuttal to Weiner's book,[83] and that Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive has also been sharply critical of it.[84]

Areas of controversy about inappropriate, often illegal actions include experiments, without consent, on human beings to explore chemical means of eliciting information or disabling people. Another area involved torture and clandestine imprisonment. There have been attempted assassinations under CIA orders and support for assassinations of foreign leaders by citizens of the leader's country, and, in a somewhat different legal category that may fall under the customary laws of war, targeted killing of terrorist leaders.


[edit] Security and counterintelligence failures
While the names change periodically, there are two basic security functions to protect the CIA and its operations. There is an Office of Security in the Directorate for Support, which is responsible for physical security of the CIA buildings, secure storage of information, and personnel security clearances. These are directed inwardly to the agency itself.

In what is now the National Clandestine Service, there is a counter-intelligence function, called the Counterintelligence Staff under its most controversial chief, James Jesus Angleton. This function has roles including looking for staff members that are providing information to foreign intelligence services (FIS) as moles. Another role is to check proposals for recruiting foreign HUMINT assets, to see if these people have any known ties to FIS and thus may be attempts to penetrate CIA to learn its personnel and practices, or as a provocateur, or other form of double agent.

This agency component may also launch offensive counterespionage, where it attempts to interfere with FIS operations. CIA officers in the field often have assignments in offensive counterespionage as well as clandestine intelligence collection.


[edit] Security failures
In 1993, the headquarters of the CIA was attacked by Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani national. Two CIA employees were killed, Frank Darling and Lansing Bennett, M.D.

The "Family Jewels" and other documents reveal that the Office of Security violated the prohibition of CIA involvement in domestic law enforcement, sometimes with the intention of assisting police organizations local to CIA buildings.


[edit] Counterintelligence failures
Perhaps the most disruptive period involving counterintelligence was James Jesus Angleton's search for a mole,[85] based on the statements of a Soviet defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn. A second defector, Yuri Nosenko, challenged Golitsyn's claims, with the two calling one another Soviet double agents.[86] Many CIA officers fell under career-ending suspicion; the details of the relative truths and untruths from Nosenko and Golitsyn may never be released, or, in fact, may not be fully understood. The accusations also crossed the Atlantic to the British intelligence services, who also were damaged by molehunts.[87]

On February 24, 1994, the agency was rocked by the arrest of 31-year veteran case officer Aldrich Ames on charges of spying for the Soviet Union since 1985.[88]

Other defectors have included Edward Lee Howard, a field operations officer, and William Kampiles, a low-level worker in the CIA 24-hour Operations Center. Kampiles sold the Soviets the detailed operational manual for the KH-11 reconnaissance satellite.[89]


[edit] Failures in intelligence analysis
The agency has also been criticized for ineffectiveness as an intelligence gathering agency. Former DCI Richard Helms commented, after the end of the Cold War, "The only remaining superpower doesn't have enough interest in what's going on in the world to organize and run an espionage service."[90] The CIA has come under particular criticism for failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union.

See the information technology section of the intelligence analysis management for discussion of possible failures to provide adequate automation support to analysts, and US intelligence community A-Space for a IC-wide program to collect some of them. Cognitive traps for intelligence analysis also goes into areas where CIA has examined why analysis can fail.

Agency veterans have lamented CIA's inability to produce the kind of long-range strategic intelligence that it once did in order to guide policymakers. John McLaughlin, who was deputy director and acting director of central intelligence from October 2000 to September 2004, said that drowned by demands from the White House and Pentagon for instant information, "intelligence analysts end up being the Wikipedia of Washington."[91] In the intelligence analysis article, orienting oneself to the consumers deals with some of ways in which intelligence can become more responsive to the needs of policymakers.

For the media, the failures are most newsworthy. A number of declassified National Intelligence Estimates do predict the behavior of various countries, but not in a manner attractive to news, or, most significantly, not public at the time of the event. In its operational role, some successes for the CIA include the U-2 and SR-71 programs, and anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s.

Among the first analytic failures, before the CIA had its own collection capabilities, it assured President Harry S Truman on October 13, 1950 that the Chinese would not send troops to Korea. Six days later, over one million Chinese troops arrived.[92] See an analysis of the failure; also see surrounding text for the two Koreas and China, and the time period before the Korean War. Earlier, the intelligence community failed to detect the North Korean invasion, in part because resources were not allocated to SIGINT coverage of the Korean peninsula.

The history of US intelligence, with respect to French Indochina and then the two Vietnams, is long and complex. The Pentagon Papers often contain pessimistic CIA analyses that conflicted with White House positions. It does appear that some estimates were changed to reflect Pentagon and White House views..[79] See CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific for detailed discussions of intelligence and covert operations from 1945 (i.e., before the CIA) onwards.

Another criticism is the failure to predict India's nuclear tests in 1974. A review of the various analyses of India's nuclear program did predict some aspects of the test, such as a 1965 report saying, correctly, that if India did develop a bomb, it would be explained as "for peaceful purposes".

A major criticism is failure to forestall the September 11, 2001 attacks. The 9/11 Commission Report identifies failures in the IC as a whole. One problem, for example, was the FBI failing to "connect the dots" by sharing information among its decentralized field offices. The report, however, criticizes both CIA analysis, and impeding their investigation.

The executive summary of a report which was released by the office of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson on August 21, 2007 concluded that former DCI George Tenet failed to adequately prepare the agency to deal with the danger posed by Al Qaeda prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The report had been completed in June, 2005 and was partially released to the public in an agreement with Congress, over the objections of current DCI General Michael V. Hayden. Hayden said its publication would "consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed.�[93] Tenet disagreed with the report's conclusions, citing his planning efforts vis-a-vis al-Qaeda, particularly from 1999.[94]


[edit] Internal/presidential studies, external investigations and document releases
Several investigations (e.g., Church Committee, Rockefeller Commission, Pike Committee), as well as released declassified documents, reveal that the CIA, at times, operated outside its charter. In some cases, such as during Watergate, this may have been due to inappropriate requests by White House staff. In other cases, there was a violation of Congressional intent, such as the Iran-Contra affair.


[edit] 1949 Eberstadt Report (First Hoover Commission)
The first major analysis, following the National Security Act of 1947, was chaired by former President Herbert Hoover, with a Task Force on National Security Organization under Ferdinand Eberstadt, one of the drafters of the National Security Act and a believer in centralized intelligence.

The task force concluded that the system of the day led to an adversarial relationship, with little effective coordination, among the CIA, the military, and the State Department. "In the opinion of the task force, this produced duplication on one hand, and, on the other, departmental intelligence estimates that "have often been subjective and biased." In large measure, the military and State Department were blamed for their failure to consult and share pertinent information with the CIA. The task force recommended "that positive efforts be made to foster relations of mutual confidence between the [CIA] and the several departments and agencies that it serves."

This report stressed that the CIA "must be the central organization of the national intelligence system." It recommended a "...top echelon [of] an evaluation board or section composed of competent and experienced personnel who would have no administrative responsibilities and whose duties would be confined solely to intelligence evaluation." It also favored a civilian DCI with a long term in office.

"In the arena of covert operations and clandestine intelligence, the Eberstadt Report supported the integration of all clandestine operations into one office within CIA, under NSC supervision. To alleviate concerns expressed by the military who viewed this proposal as encroaching upon their prerogatives, the report stated that clandestine operations should be the responsibility of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in time of war."

The report declared that the failure to appraise scientific advances (e.g., biological and chemical warfare, electronics, aerodynamics, guided missiles, atomic weapons, and nuclear energy) in hostile countries might have more immediate and catastrophic consequences than failure in any other field of intelligence. It urged the US to develop a centralized capability for tracking these developments.


[edit] 1949 Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report
The Eberstadt report was soon eclipsed by what may have been the most influential policy paper. "On January 8, 1948, the National Security Council established the Intelligence Survey Group (ISG) to "evaluate the CIA's effort and its relationship with other agencies."[95] The Jackson-Dulles-Correa report held an opposite view on clandestine collection to the Eberstadt Report, interesting in that Dulles was a clandestine collection specialist.

Like the Hoover Commission, this group was chartered at the request

hmmm

Lyle, don't you dare reply to John's post with a bunch of inserted, colored rebuttals. :p



Nope, I was too busy LMAO! Now that was the John we know and love!

Dang, i found the ceiling for the number of characters allowed in a single post.

image removed



Huh? Where did you put it Lyle?



Don't look at me, my wife won't even let me handle family pics.

Funny!!!!

how about the funny statements where some condemned me for wanting to release information, then voted 7-0 to release it. makes you kinda wonder what the basis for their original objection was, doesnt it. so much irony :)



I think you're mistaking yourself for Alanis Morissette; she cdidn't know the definition of irony either.

In one case, an individual, based on their own desires and need for attention, takes an action and says look at me, look at what I did for you. In the other, the Board makes a decision on how the organization should be run and follows the established procedure.

Please see Terry's post above... :p

yeah, that will solve it. he is omniscient and infallible after all. i hear its the result of sleeping blissfully in the hot tub while the BoD deliberates :)


btw, anyone for broadcasting BoD meetings on the web? there are several ways to do it.

Dang, i foung the ceiling for number of characters allowed in a single post.



I told them you were a valuable member and would make a valuable contribution, ceiling limits and new words, all in one post. :D

Foung - The process in which one tests the character limit of a MB by posing a long and rambling commentary on... any topic of choice.

Now surprisingly enough, one would have thought, given my predilection to ramble, that I'd of already made this contribution. I hate losing! On the other hand, one should always acknowledge one's betters! In this I concede to your superior skill.

yeah, that will solve it. he is omniscient and infallible after all. i hear its the result of sleeping blissfully in the hot tub while the BoD deliberates :)


btw, anyone for broadcasting BoD meetings on the web? there are several ways to do it.



Yes, but he does look like Hemingway.

Are you proposing making a contribution? Gee thanks Pat, let us know when you have the structure together, I look forward to it!

Dang, i foung the ceiling for number of characters allowed in a single post.



I told them you were a valuable member and would make a valuable contribution, ceiling limits and new words, all in one post. :D

Foung - The process in which one tests the character limit of a MB by posing a long and rambling commentary on... any topic of choice.

Now surprisingly enough, one would have thought, given my predilection to ramble, that I'd of already made this contribution. I hate losing! On the other hand, one should always acknowledge one's betters! In this I concede to your superior skill.



Nice creative quote editing there Lyle. The real quote can be found above in my errorless entry. :D

No, I swear, I didn't edit your post! And even if I did it was some computer glitchy thing and thus not my fault... Did I define "if" yet?

[QUOTE]
<font color="red"> Lyle's really intelligent. You just have to learn how to read through all of the jibba jabba. Speaking of inteliigence: </font>

:D

Organization
The heraldic symbol that comprises the CIA seal consists of three representative parts: the "right"-facing bald eagle head atop,( "right" facing, since the eagle looks over its "right" shoulder, not the left shoulder ) the compass star (or compass rose), and the shield. The eagle is the national bird, standing for strength and alertness. The 16-point compass star represents the CIA's world-wide search for intelligence outside the United States, which is then reported to the headquarters for analysis, reporting, and re-distribution to policymakers. The compass rests upon a shield, symbolic of defense.[9][10]

The CIA has an executive office, four major directorates, and a variety of specialized offices. Prior to the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligences, it had some additional responsibilities for the IC as a whole.


[edit] Executive offices
Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community (IC), serving as the president's principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 amended the National Security Act to provide for a Director of National Intelligence who would assume some of the roles formerly fulfilled by the DCI, with a separate Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DCI's title now is "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.

Currently, the Central Intelligence Agency answers directly to the Director of National Intelligence, although the CIA Director may brief the President directly. The CIA has its budget approved by the Congress, a subset of which do see the line items. The intelligence community, however, does not take direct orders from the Congress. The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the National Security Council, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all 16 U.S. Intelligence Community agencies are under the policy, but not necessarily budgetary, authority of the Director of National Intelligence.

The effect of the personalities of the DCIs on the structure and behavior of the Agency and indeed the IC is analyzed in Painter's dissertation on "Early Leader Effects" of Donovan, Dulles and Hoover[11]

Until the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the Director of the CIA met regularly with the President to issue daily reports on ongoing operations. After the creation of the post of DNI, currently Mike McConnell, the report is now given by the DNI�who oversees all US Intelligence activities, including intelligence community operations outside of CIA jurisdiction. Former CIA Director Porter Goss, who had been a CIA officer, denied this has had a diminishing effect on morale, but promoted his mission to reform the CIA into the lean and agile counter-terrorism focused force he believes it should be.[12]

A Deputy Director of the CIA (DDCIA) Assists the Director in his duties as head of the CIA and exercises the powers of the Director when the Director�s position is vacant or in the Director�s absence or disability. Either the Director or Deputy Director may be a military officer, but both positions may not be filled, at the same time, by military officers.

On July 5, 2006, the position of Executive Director, who managed day-to-day operations and budget, was replaced with an Associate Deputy Director of the CIA (ADD)[13]


[edit] Support to Military Operations
As the DCIA's principal adviser and representative on military issues, the Associate Director for Military Support (AD/MS), a senior general officer, coordinates CIA efforts to provide Joint Force commanders, who are principally consumers of national-level intelligence but producers of operational intelligence. The AD/MS also supports Department of Defense officials who oversee military intelligence training and the acquisition of intelligence systems and technology. John A. Gordon was the first AD/MS, before the creation of ODNI. There is also an Associate Deputy Director for Operations for Military Affairs (ADDO/MA)[14]

The Office of Military Affairs provides intelligence and operational support to the US armed forces.[15]

President George W. Bush, in creating the National Clandestine Service (NCS), made it clear policy that the CIA would be in charge of all human intelligence (HUMINT) operations. NCS, (formerly the Directorate of Operations, and earlier the "Directorate of Plans"), collects clandestine human intelligence collection, and conducts deniable psychological and paramilitary operations.[16] Creation of the NCS was the culmination of a years old turf war regarding influence, philosophy and budget between the United States Department of Defense and the CIA. The Pentagon, through the DIA, wanted to take control of the CIA's paramilitary operations and many of its human assets.[citation needed] DoD had organized the Defense HUMINT Service,[17] which, with the Presidential decision, became part of the NCS.

The CIA, which has for years held that human intelligence is the core of the agency, successfully argued that the CIA's decades long experience with human resources and civilian oversight made it the ideal choice. Thus, the CIA was given charge of all US human intelligence, but as a compromise, the Pentagon was authorized to include increased paramilitary capabilities in future budget requests.[citation needed] The military is also authorized to run Counterintelligence Force Protection Source Operations, which are directly related to the protection of military forces and facility. Another HUMINT area that remains with DoD is direct support to special operations, by an organization, originally called the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), which is a special access program (i.e., separate from sensitive compartmented intelligence activities that must be reported to the Congressional intelligence committees). ISA and its successors transferred to the United States Special Operations Command, where their classified names and special access program designations are changed frequently.[18]

The Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities (TENCAP) program is a system of making national intelligence available to warfighters.[19] TENCAP information most commonly comes from space-based and national-level aircraft programs, where CIA's responsibilities have moved, in many cases, to NRO, NSA, NGA, and DIA. Nevertheless, CIA still can serve such information, with the emphasis on HUMINT, and on technical sensors that need to be emplaced clandestinely in denied areas.


[edit] Proposed support to Homeland Security
A great sensitivity remains about CIA having domestic responsibilities, but it clearly will, on occasions, collect information outside the US that relates directly to domestic security. CIA, for example, is more likely to obtain HUMINT on terrorists than the very limited foreign resources of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

While DHS, like the military, is seen principally as a consumer of national intelligence, but its border and transportation security functions will produce intelligence. At present, however, there is no well-defined way for DHS to task intelligence collection agencies with its requirements. One proposal suggests using the AD/MS as a prototype, to create an AD/Homeland Security in the CIA, and possibly an equivalent position in the Justice Department, which, through the FBI and other agencies, legally collects domestic intelligence.[20] This proposal is one of many to improve coordination and avoid intelligence failures caused by not "connecting the dots", when the dots are held by different agencies.


[edit] National estimates
Prior to 2004, CIA had two analytic roles: the main effort based in the Directorate of Intelligence, which used internal experts to analyze data collected by the CIA, National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the military collection organizations, and other parts of the intelligence community. Many of these reports were on current subjects, such as the status of a revolutionary group, or the technical details of a new Chinese factory.

Another function, however, was preparing "estimates", which try to predict the future. Estimates are a product of the intelligence community as a whole. National Intelligence Estimates were the most extensively coordinated documents, often that could be scheduled on a regular basis, such as a regular report on Soviet intentions. Special National Intelligence Estimates (SNIE) were quick-response publications, often providing guidance in a crisis, but were still interagency consensus rather than CIA alone.

CIA had a separate and prestigious office, going by different names and organizations, such as the Office of National Estimates, Board of National Estimates, or a set of National Intelligence Officers, which would seek out the consensus of all the intelligence agencies, and then have some of the most senior analysts write a draft. The idea of such estimates is often credited to Sherman Kent,sometimes called the father of US intelligence analysis, with special emphasis on the production of estimates.[21] This function is now in the National Intelligence Council of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.[22] Originally defined in 1950, this responsibility stated "CIA is now in the business of producing what are called National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) along the lines laid down in NSC 50. These papers are interdepartmental in character, designed to focus all available intelligence on a problem of importance to the national security." In the early days of the process, CIA used the State Department's intelligence staff for drafting the NIEs, but a "small top level Office of National Estimates" was set up to integrate the departmental drafts. A senior CIA analyst responsible for the document would work out differences. There is also a process by which an agency can disagree with a comment called a "reclama", which is a footnote expressing an alternate position. For an example of such dissents, see Special National Intelligence Estimate 10-9-65 in CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific#Vietnam 1965: Viet Cong and DRV Reactions, where there are dissents to various parts from all or part of the military, and from the Department of State.

Upon approval by an interagency review committee, the paper becomes a NIE and is sent by the Director of Central Intelligence to the President, appropriate officers of Cabinet level, and the NSC.[23]

[edit] Directorate of Intelligence
The "DI" is the analytical branch of the CIA, responsible for the production and dissemination of all-source intelligence analysis on key foreign issues..[24] While it has, like most government agencies, reorganized over the years, its current structure has four regional analytic groups, six groups for transnational issues, and two support units.[25] Prior to the formation of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, the President's Daily Brief was prepared by the CIA Office of Current Intelligence.

Some open source intelligence OSINT, such as the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, were, at different times, part of the Directorate of Intelligence or the Directorate of Science &amp; Technology. Along with other OSINT functions, the National Open Source Enterprise is now in the ODNI.


[edit] Regional groups
There is an Office dedicated to Iraq. In addition, there are regional analytical Offices covering:

Near East, North Africa and South Asia: The Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis (NESA)
Russia and Europe: The Office of Russian and European Analysis (OREA)
Asian-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa: The Office of East Asian, Pacific, Latin American and African Analysis (APLAA)

[edit] Transnational groups
The Office of Terrorism Analysis,[26] which supports the National Counterterrorism Center, in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Office of Transnational Issues[27] applies unique functional expertise to assess existing and emerging threats to US national security and provides the most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support.

The CIA Crime and Narcotics Center[28] researches information on international narcotics trafficking and organized crime for policymakers and the law enforcement community. Since the CIA has no domestic police authority, it sends its analytic information to the FBI and other law enforcement organizations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The Weapons, Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center[29] provides intelligence support deals with national and non-national threats, as well as supporting threat reduction/arms control. This works with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Again cooperating with the FBI for domestic activity, the Counterintelligence Center Analysis Group[30] identifies, monitors, and analyzes the efforts of foreign intelligence entities, both national and non-national, against US interests.

The Information Operations Center Analysis Group[31] evaluates foreign threats to US computer systems, particularly those that support critical infrastructures. It works with critical infrastructure protection organizations in the United States Department of Defense (e.g., CERT Coordination Center) and the Department of Homeland Security (e.g., United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team)


[edit] Support and general units
The Office of Collection Strategies and Analysis provides comprehensive intelligence collection expertise to the DI, a wide range of senior Agency and Intelligence Community officials, and key national policymakers.

The Office of Policy Support customizes DI analysis and presents it to a wide variety of policy, law enforcement, military, and foreign liaison recipients.


[edit] National Clandestine Service
Main article: National Clandestine Service
The National Clandestine Service, a semi-independent service which was formerly the Directorate of Operations, is responsible for collection of foreign intelligence, principally from clandestine HUMINT sources, and covert action. The new name reflects its having absorbed the Defense HUMINT Service, which did strategic human intelligence HUMINT collection for the Department of Defense (DoD). HUMINT directly related to military missions remains under the DoD. Note that there is an open source function in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which may be taking over certain legal interviews in the US that previously were the Domestic Contact Division (or Domestic Contact Service).

While the NCS organization chart has not been published, although there have been prior descriptions of the Directorate of Plans or the Directorate of Operations, a fairly recent organization chart of the Defense HUMINT Service will indicate functions transferred into the NCS, and may well be fairly close to the overall NCS organizational structure.[32]

There are references to earlier structures in various historical documents. For example, in a CIA paper on the internal probe into the Bay of Pigs,[33] there are several comments on the Directorate of Plans organizational structure in 1962. Even though any large organization will constantly reorganize, the basic functions will stay and can be a clue to future organization.

At the top level, Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell had two Assistant Deputy Directors, C. Tracy Barnes and Richard Helms. Warner explains "operational details fell to Branch 4 (Cuba) of the DDP's Western Hemisphere Division (WH)", with some exceptions. Jacob Esterline, chief of the Cuba Branch, reported directly to Bissell and Barnes rather than to his division chief, J.C. King "although King was regularly informed and often consulted. To confuse matters still further, Branch 4 had no direct control over the Brigade's aircraft, which were managed by a separate DDP division that also took some orders directly from Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) Charles P. Cabell, a US Air Force general who liked to keep his hand in the planning of airdrops and other missions," Air operations, therefore, were in a separate division either for covert support, paramilitary operations, or both.

Cuba Branch had a "Foreign Intelligence Section," foreign intelligence being a term of art for HUMINT. The branch, however, established "a separate "G-2" unit subordinate to its Paramilitary Section, which planned the actual invasion. This gives us the model of a geographic branch with subordinate sections, at least, for intelligence collection and paramilitary actions.

Warner's paper also mentions that certain DDP groups were outside the scope of the post-mortem by Executive Director Lyman Kirkpatrick, but their mention tells us that these were representative components of the DDP: "... the Havana station or the Santiago base, the development of foreign intelligence assets and liaison contacts, Division D's technical collection programs, or counter-intelligence work against the Cuban services." CIA "stations" are the parts of the embassy with officers under diplomatic cover, in a typical diplomatic office building. "Bases", however, are large facilities for supporting operations, typically with an airfield, secure warehouses, barracks and training areas. Division D was the joint CIA-NSA collection effort, where CIA would use clandestine operations personnel to emplace NSA SIGINT sensors. The reference to counter-intelligence work appears to refer to a main counterintelligence division, presumably the Counterintelligence Staff under James Jesus Angleton.


[edit] Directorate of Science and Technology
Main article: Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science &amp; Technology
The Directorate of Science &amp; Technology creates and applies innovative technology in support of the intelligence collection mission.[34][dead links] The CIA has always shown a strong interest in how to use advances in technology to enhance its effectiveness.[35] This interest in modern technology came from two main aims: firstly, to harness these techniques its own use, and second to counter any new technologies the Soviets might develop. This effort gained impetus in the fifties with the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the USSR. The agency was also extremely interested in computer and information technology. In 1999, CIA created the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel to help fund and develop technologies of interest to the agency.[36][37][38]

Its website mentions its priorities being in:

Application Software and Analytics
Bio, Nuclear, and Chemical Technologies
Communications and Infrastructure
Digital Identity and Security
Embedded Systems and Power[39]
In January 2008, its featured collaboration was with Streambase Systems,[40] makers of a "high-performance Complex Event Processing (CEP) software platform for real-time and historical analysis of high-volume intelligence data," using a new processing paradigm for Structured Query Language (SQL), allowing queries against multiple real-time data streams still updating the data base.


[edit] Directorate of Support
The Directorate of Support provides necessary "housekeeping" administration functions, but in a manner consistent with the need to keep their details protected. These functions include personnel, security, communications, and financial operations. Most of this Directorate is sub-structured into smaller offices based on role and purpose, such as the Office of Security, which is concerned both with personnel and physical security. Other major offices include the Office of Communications and the Office of Information Technology.


[edit] Logistics and proprietaries
Under the original NSC 10/2 authorization, CIA was made responsible not just for covert action during the cold war, but for such action during major wars, in collaboration with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When DCI Smith created the Directorate of Plans and ended the autonomy of the OPC and OSO, he recognized it was necessary to establish logistical support for these operations before the start of a hot war. Smith did not want to duplicate existing military support systems, and proposed, in 1952, that the CIA should be able to draw, on a reimbursable basis, on military supply stocks. In many respects, this was the beginning of the idea that what was to become the Directorate of Support had a far wider scope than the OSS and initial CIA term, Directorate of Administration.

Smith presented the concept that the CIA would need a worldwide system of support bases, which usually could be tenant organizations on military bases. According to Smith's memo,

A major logistical support base will consist of a CIA base headquarters, training, communications, medical accommodation for evacuees and storage for six months� hot war requirements as well as provide logistical support for CIA operational groups or headquarters... Informal planning along the lines indicated has been carried out by elements of CIA with ... the Joint Chiefs of Staff ...

The CIA was expected to reimburse "extraordinary expenses" incurred by the military services.[41]

While military transportation might be appropriate for some purposes, there would be cases where the arrival of a military aircraft at a location other than a military base might draw undue attention. This was the origin of the idea of the CIA operating proprietary airlines, whose relationship to the US government would not be public.[42] Among these organizations were airlines that provided covert logistical support, such as Civil Air Transport, Southern Air Transport, and consolidated them into Air America. The latter was heavily involved in support with the war in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in the 1960s.


[edit] Training
This directorate includes the Office of Training, which starts with a Junior Officer Training program for new employees. So that the initial course might be taken by employees who had not received final security clearance and thus were not permitted unescorted access to the Headquarters building, a good deal of basic training has been given at office buildings in the urban areas of Arlington, Virginia.

It is known, although not acknowledged by the U.S. Government, that the CIA runs at least two operations training facilities.[43] One is known as The Farm, at Camp Peary, Virginia. The other is known as The Point at Harvey Point, North Carolina. While the course outline has never been revealed, it is believed to include such things as surveillance, countersurveillance, cryptography, paramilitary training as well as other tradecraft. The course seems to be about less than a year and runs at irregular intervals depending on circumstances. Operations training is delivered by experienced operations officers.

Student progress is monitored by experienced evaluators that meet to discuss a recruit's progress and have the power to dismiss a recruit even before his or her training is complete. Evaluation techniques for the CIA's World War II predecessor, the OSS, were published as the book Assessment of Men, Selection of Personnel for the office of Strategic Services.[44] See Roger Hall's You're Stepping on my Cloak and Dagger for an accurate but amusing account of Hall's OSS duty, which included finding unexpected solutions to things in the assessment process as well as his experience in real operations.[45] He described a specific assessment period at a rural facility called "Station S". Hall said he tried to find out why it was called Station S, and finally decided the reason was that "assess" has more "S" letters than any other.

Psychological stress is part of operations training, but of a different type than military special operations force evaluation, such as the Navy SEAL Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course or Army Special Forces Assessment and Selection. For instance, an operations training officer will often lie to a recruit saying they have evidence that will result in the recruit to be arrested and tried for felony crimes. This is a test of the recruit's ability to maintain a cover under stress.

Contrary to popular belief or what is seen in film and television series, American-born, professional employees trained to work for the National Clandestine Service (CIA) are never referred to as "secret agents", "spies", "agents" or "special agents", they are known as 'Operations Officers' or 'Case Officers', or Officer for short. To highlight this point: within the intelligence community, the equivalent of an FBI Special Agent is a CIA Officer. Within the law enforcement community, the equivalent of a CIA 'agent' is an FBI informant. There does not exist any working title or job position known as 'CIA Agent', agents of the CIA are usually always foreigners who choose to betray their own country by passing along secret information to the government through CIA Case Officers, who are posted at U.S. embassies worldwide.[46]

These CIA Case Officers recruit foreign agents, known as 'assets', to give information to the CIA. There are a wide range of motivations for a person to become an asset; see CIA Case Officers are normally sent abroad under a cover identity, most commonly as a diplomat but sometimes under "nonofficial cover" using an assumed identity and having no immunity.[46]


[edit] Other offices

[edit] General Publications
One of the CIA's best-known publications, The World Factbook, is in the public domain and is made freely available without copyright restrictions because it is a work of the United States federal government.[47]

CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence maintains the Agency's historical materials and promotes the study of intelligence as a legitimate and serious discipline.[48][dead links] The CIA since 1955 has published an in-house professional journal known as Studies in Intelligence that addresses historical, operational, doctrinal, and theoretical aspects of the intelligence profession. The Center also publishes unclassified and declassified Studies articles, as well as other books and monographs.[49] A further annotated collection of Studies articles was published through Yale University Press under the title Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992.[50]

In 2002, CIA's Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis began publishing the unclassified Kent Center Occasional Papers, aiming to offer "an opportunity for intelligence professionals and interested colleagues�in an unofficial and unfettered vehicle�to debate and advance the theory and practice of intelligence analysis."[51][dead links]


[edit] General Counsel and Inspector General
Two offices advise the Director on legality and proper operations. The Office of the General Counsel advises the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on all legal matters relating to his role as CIA director and is the principal source of legal counsel for the CIA.[52][dead links]

The Office of Inspector General promotes efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability in the administration of Agency activities. OIG also seeks to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. The Inspector General is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Inspector General, whose activities are independent of those of any other component in the Agency, reports directly to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. OIG conducts inspections, investigations, and audits at Headquarters and in the field, and oversees the Agency-wide grievance-handling system. The OIG provides a semiannual report to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency which the Director is required by law to submit to the Intelligence Committees of Congress within 30 days.

In February 2008, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael V. Hayden, sent a message to employees that Inspector General John L. Helgerson will accept increased control over the investigations by that office, saying "John has chosen to take a number of steps to heighten the efficiency, assure the quality and increase the transparency of the investigation process".[53] The Washington Post suggested this was a response to senior officials who believe the OIG has been too aggressive in looking into counterterrorism programs, including detention programs. The changes were the result of an investigation, begun in April 2007, by one of Hayden's assistants, Robert L. Deitz.[54] There was congressional concern that restrictions on the OIG might have a chilling effect on its effectiveness. Senator Ron Wyden , a Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, did not disagree with any of Hayden's actions, said the inquiry �should never have happened and can�t be allowed to happen again.�...�I�m all for the inspector general taking steps that help C.I.A. employees understand his processes, but that can be done without an approach that can threaten the inspector general�s independence


[edit] Public Affairs
The Office of Public Affairs advises the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on all media, public policy, and employee communications issues relating to his role as CIA director and is the CIA�s principal communications focal point for the media, the general public and Agency employees.[55][dead links] See CIA influence on public opinion.


[edit] Relationship with other sources of intelligence
The CIA acts as the primary American HUMINT and general analytic agency, under the Director of National Intelligence, who directs or coordinates the 16 member organizations of the United States Intelligence Community. It obtains information from other U.S. government intelligence agencies, commercial information sources, and foreign intelligence services.


[edit] Other U.S. intelligence agencies
A number of those organizations are fully or partially under the budgetary control of the United States Secretary of Defense or other cabinet officers such as the Attorney General of the United States.

As do other analytic members of the U.S. intelligence community such as the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the analytic division of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), its raw input includes imagery intelligence IMINT collected by air and space systems of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) processed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), signal intelligence SIGINT of the National Security Agency (NSA), and measurement and signature intelligence MASINT from the DIA MASINT center.


[edit] Open Source Intelligence
Until the 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community, one of the "services of common concern" that CIA provided was OSINT from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).[56] FBIS, which had absorbed the Joint Publication Research Service, a military organization that translated documents,[57] which moved into the National Open Source Enterprise under the Director of National Intelligence.

CIA still provides a variety of unclassified maps and reference documents both to the intelligence community and the public.[58]

As part of its mandate to gather intelligence, CIA is looking increasingly online for information, and has become a major consumer of social media. "We're looking at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence," said Doug Naquin, director of the DNI Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA. "We're looking at chat rooms and things that didn't exist five years ago, and trying to stay ahead."[59]


[edit] Outsourcing
In a trend some find disturbing, many of duties and functions of Intelligence Community activities, not the CIA alone, are being "outsourced" and "privatized." Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, was about to publicize an investigation report of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies, as required by Congress.[60] However, this report was then classified.[61][62] Hillhouse speculates that this report includes requirements for the CIA to report:[61][63]

different standards for government employees and contractors;
contractors providing similar services to government workers;
analysis of costs of contractors vs. employees;
an assessment of the appropriateness of outsourced activities;
an estimate of the number of contracts and contractors;
comparison of compensation for contractors and government employees,
attrition analysis of government employees;
descriptions of positions to be converted back to the employee model;
an evaluation of accountability mechanisms;
an evaluation of procedures for "conducting oversight of contractors to ensure identification and prosecution of criminal violations, financial waste, fraud, or other abuses committed by contractors or contract personnel; and
an "identification of best practices of accountability mechanisms within service contracts."
According to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, "...what we have today with the intelligence business is something far more systemic: senior officials leaving their national security and counterterrorism jobs for positions where they are basically doing the same jobs they once held at the CIA, the NSA and other agencies - but for double or triple the salary, and for profit. It's a privatization of the highest order, in which our collective memory and experience in intelligence - our crown jewels of spying, so to speak - are owned by corporate America. Yet, there is essentially no government oversight of this private sector at the heart of our intelligence empire. And the lines between public and private have become so blurred as to be nonexistent."[64][65]

Congress has required an outsourcing report by March 30, 2008.[63]

The Director of National Intelligence has been granted the authority to increase the number of positions (FTEs) on elements in the Intelligence Community by up to 10% should there be a determination that activities performed by a contractor should be done by a US government employee.

Part of the contracting problem comes from Congressional restrictions on the number of employees in the IC. According to Hillhouse, this resulted in0% of the de facto workforce of the CIA's National Clandestine Service being made up of contractors. "After years of contributing to the increasing reliance upon contractors, Congress is now providing a framework for the conversion of contractors into federal government employees--more or less."[63]

As with most government agencies, building equipment often is contracted. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), responsible for the development and operation of airborne and spaceborne sensors, long was a joint operation of the CIA and the United States Department of Defense. NRO had been significantly involved in the design of such sensors, but the NRO, then under DCI authority, contracted more of the design that had been their tradition, and to a contractor without extensive reconnaissance experience, Boeing.

The next-generation satellite Future Imagery Architecture project, which missed objectives after $4 billion in cost overruns, was the result of this contract.[66][67]

Some of the cost problems associated with intelligence come from one agency, or even a group within an agency, not accepting the compartmented security practices for individual projects, requiring expensive duplication.[68]


[edit] Foreign intelligence services
Many intelligence services cooperate. There may even be a deniable communications channel with ostensibly hostile nations.

The role and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki) (SVR), the French foreign intelligence service Direction G�n�rale de la S�curit� Ext�rieure (DGSE) and Israel's Mossad. While the preceding agencies both collect and analyze information, some like the US State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research are purely analytical agencies. See List of intelligence agencies.

The closest links of the US IC to other foreign intelligence agencies are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. There is a special communications marking that signals that intelligence-related messages can be shared with these four countries.[69] An indication of the United States' close operational cooperation is the creation of a new message distribution label within the main US military communications network. Previously, the marking of NOFORN (i.e., No Foreign Nationals) required the originator to specify which, if any, non-US countries could receive the information. A new handling caveat, USA/AUS/CAN/GBR/NZL Eyes Only, used primarily on intelligence messages, gives an easier way to indicate that the material can be shared with Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and New Zealand.


[edit] Organizational history
The Central Intelligence Agency was created by Congress with National Security Act of 1947, signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It is the descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which was dissolved in October 1945 and its functions transferred to the State and War Departments. Eleven months earlier, in 1944, William J. Donovan, the OSS's creator, proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt creating a new organization directly supervised by the President: "which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies."[70] Under his plan, a powerful, centralized civilian agency would have coordinated all the intelligence services. He also proposed that this agency have authority to conduct "subversive operations abroad," but "no police or law enforcement functions, either at home or abroad."[71][dead links]


The lives of 83 fallen CIA officers are represented by 83 stars on the CIA memorial wall in the Original Headquarters building.CIA personnel have died on duty, some in accidents and some by deliberate hostile action. On the memorial wall at CIA headquarters, some of the stars have no name attached, because it would reveal the identity of a clandestine officer.[72] Both the OSS and its British counterparts, as do other agencies worldwide, struggle with finding the right organizational balance among clandestine intelligence collection, counterintelligence, and covert action. See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for a historical perspective on this problem. These issues also bear on the reasons that, in the history below, some "eras" overlap. Also see the Wikipedia article Director of Central Intelligence, which contains an expanded history of CIA by director; the priorities and personalities of individual directors have had a strong influence on Agency operations.


[edit] Immediate predecessors, 1946-1947
The Office of Strategic Services, which was the first independent US intelligence agency, created for the Second World War, was broken up shortly after the end of the war, by President Truman, on September 20, 1945. The rapid reorganizations that followed reflected the routine sort of bureaucratic competition for resources, but also trying to deal with the proper relationships of clandestine intelligence collection and covert action (i.e., paramilitary and psychological operations). See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for a more detailed history of this problem, which was not unique to the US during and after World War II. In October 1945, the functions of the OSS were split between the Departments of State and War:

New Unit Oversight OSS Functions Absorbed
Strategic Services Unit (SSU) War Department Secret Intelligence (SI) (i.e., clandestine intelligence collection) and Counter-espionage (X-2)
Interim Research and Intelligence Service (IRIS) State Department Research and Analysis Branch (i.e., intelligence analysis)
Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) (not uniquely for former OSS) War Department, Army General Staff Staff officers from Operational Groups, Operation Jedburgh, Morale Operations (black propaganda)

This division lasted only a few months.Despite opposition from the military establishment, the United States Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),[70] President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) in January 1946 which was the direct predecessor to the CIA.[73][dead links] The CIG was an interim authority established under Presidential authority. The assets of the SSU, which now constituted a streamlined "nucleus" of clandestine intelligence was transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO).


[edit] Early CIA, 1947-1952
In September 1947, the National Security Act of 1947 established both the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.[74] Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was appointed as the first Director of Central Intelligence.


The 16-foot (5 m) diameter CIA seal in the lobby of the Original Headquarters Building.The National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1948 (NSC 10/2) further gave the CIA the authority to carry out covert operations "against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons."[75]

In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act (Public Law 81-110) authorized the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures, and exempting it from most of the usual limitations on the use of Federal funds. It also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its "organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed." It also created the program "PL-110", to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" who fall outside normal immigration procedures, as well as giving those persons cover stories and economic support.[76]


[edit] The structure stabilizes, 1952
Then-DCI Walter Bedell Smith, who enjoyed a special degree of Presidential trust, having been Dwight D. Eisenhower's primary Chief of Staff during World War II, insisted that the CIA -- or at least only one department -- had to direct the OPC and OSO. Those organization, as well as some minor functions, formed the euphemistically named Directorate of Plans in 1952.

Also in 1952, United States Army Special Forces were created, with some missions overlapping those of the Department of Plans. In general, the pattern emerged that the CIA could borrow resources from Special Forces, although it had its own special operators.


[edit] Early Cold War, 1953-1966

Lockheed U-2 "Dragon Lady", the first generation of near-space reconnaissance satellites.Allen Dulles, who had been a key OSS operations officer in Switzerland during the Second World War, took over from Smith, at a time where US policy was dominated by intense anticommunism. Various sources were involved, the most visible being the investigations and abuses of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the more quiet but systematic containment doctrine developed by George Kennan, the Berlin Blockade and the Korean War. Dulles enjoyed a high degree of flexibility, as his brother, John Foster Dulles, was simultaneously Secretary of State. Concern regarding the Soviet Union and the difficulty of getting information from its closed society, which few agents could penetrate, led to solutions based on advanced technology. Among the first success was with the Lockheed U-2 aircraft, which could take pictures and collect electronic signals from an altitude above Soviet air defenses' reach. After Gary Powers was shot down by an SA-2 surface to air missile in 1960, causing an international incident, the SR-71 was developed to take over this role.


The USAF's SR-71 Blackbird was developed from the CIA's A-12 OXCART.During this period, there were numerous covert actions against perceived Communist expansion. Some of the largest operations were aimed at Cuba after the overthrow of the Batista government, including assassination attempts against Fidel Castro and the dubiously deniable Bay of Pigs Invasion. There have been suggestions that the Soviet attempt to put missiles into Cuba came, indirectly, when they realized how badly they had been compromised by a US-UK defector in place, Oleg Penkovsky.[77]

The CIA, working with the military, formed the joint National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to operate reconnaissance aircraft such as the SR-71 and later satellites. "The fact of" the United States operating reconnaissance satellites, like "the fact of" the existence of NRO, was highly classified for many years.


Early CORONA/KH-4B imagery IMINT satellite.
[edit] Complications from Indochina and the Vietnam War (1954-1975)
As the US military and electorate were affected by Vietnam, so was the CIA. The OSS Patti mission had arrived near the end of the Second World War, and had significant interaction with the leaders of many Vietnamese factions, including Ho Chi Minh.[78] While the Patti mission forwarded Ho's proposals for phased independence, with the French or even the United States as the transition partner, the US policy of containment opposed forming any government that might be Communist.

The first CIA mission to Indochina, under the code name Saigon Military Mission arrived in 1954, under Edward Lansdale. US-based analysts were simultaneously trying to project the evolution of political power, both if the scheduled referendum chose merger of the North and South, or if the South, the US client, stayed independent. Initially, the US focus in Southeast Asia was on Laos, not Vietnam.

During the period of American combat involvement in the Vietnam War, there was considerable arguments about progress among the Department of Defense under Robert S. McNamara, the CIA, and, to some extent, the intelligence staff of the Military Assistance Command Vietnam.[79] In general, the military was consistently more optimistic than the CIA. Sam Adams, a junior CIA analyst with responsibilities for estimating the actual damage to the enemy, eventually resigned from the CIA, after expressing concern, to Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms with estimates that were changed for interagency and White House political reasons, writing the book War of Numbers.


[edit] Abuses of CIA authority, 1970s-1990s
Things came to a head in the early 1970s, around the time of the Watergate political burglary affair. A dominant feature of political life during that period were the attempts of Congress to assert oversight of U.S. Presidency, the executive branch of the U.S. Government. Revelations about past CIA activities, such as assassinations and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders, illegal domestic spying on U.S. citizens, provided the opportunities to execute Congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence operations. Hastening the Central Intelligence Agency's fall from grace were the burglary of the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic Party by ex-CIA agents, and President Richard Nixon's subsequent use of the CIA to impede the FBI's investigation of the burglary. In the famous "smoking gun" recording that led to President Nixon's resignation, Nixon ordered his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, to tell the CIA that further investigation of Watergate would "open the whole can of worms" about the Bay of Pigs of Cuba, and, therefore, that the CIA should tell the FBI to cease investigating the Watergate burglary, due to reasons of "national security".[80]

In 1973, then-DCI James R. Schlesinger commissioned reports � known as the "Family Jewels" � on illegal activities by the Agency. In December 1974, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the news of the "Family Jewels" in a front-page article in The New York Times, revealing that the CIA had assassinated foreign leaders, and had conducted surveillance on some seven thousand American citizens involved in the antiwar movement (Operation CHAOS).

Congress responded to the disturbing charges in 1975, investigating the CIA in the Senate via the Church Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), and in the House of Representatives via the Pike Committee, chaired by Congressman Otis Pike (D-NY). In addition, President Gerald Ford created the Rockefeller Commission, and issued an Executive Order prohibiting the assassination of foreign leaders.

Repercussions from the Iran-Contra Affair arms smuggling scandal included the creation of the Intelligence Authorization Act in 1991. It defined covert operations as secret missions in geopolitical areas where the U.S. is neither openly nor apparently engaged. This also required an authorizing chain of command, including an official, presidential finding report and the informing of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, which, in emergencies, requires only "timely notification".


[edit] 2004, DCI takes over CIA top-level functions
Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community, serving as the president's principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DCI's title now is "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.

Currently, the Central Intelligence Agency reports to the Director of National Intelligence. Prior to the establishment of the DNI, the CIA reported to the President, with informational briefings to U.S. Congressional committees The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the National Security Council, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, et cetera; all sixteen Intelligence Community agencies are under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.


[edit] Mission-related issues and controversies
The history of CIA deals with several things, certainly including covert action, but also clandestine and overt intelligence collection, intelligence analysis and reporting, and logistical and technical support of its activities. Prior to the December 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community (IC), it also was responsible for coordinations of IC-wide intelligence estimates.

These articles are organized in two different ways: By geographical region (for state actors or non-state actors limited to a country or region) and by transnational topic (for non-state actors).

CIA operations by region, country and date are discussed in detail in the following Wikipedia articles:

CIA activities in Africa
CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific
CIA activities in Russia and Europe
CIA activities in the Americas
CIA activities in the Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia
CIA analyses of issues such as the effect of emerging diseases, and the detection of WMDs, are inherently transnational, and are discussed in the following articles. CIA operations and, where appropriate, authorizations for covert operations (for example, NSDD 138 authorizing direct action against terrorists) by transnational topic are discussed in the following Wikipedia articles:

CIA transnational activities in counterproliferation
CIA transnational anti-crime and anti-drug activities
CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities
CIA transnational health and economic activities
CIA transnational human rights actions
In addition, a view of covert US activity specifically oriented towards regime change actions is given in the following Wikipedia article:

Covert U.S. regime change actions
Major sources for this section include the Council on Foreign Relations of the United States series, the National Security Archive and George Washington University, the Freedom of Information Act Reading Room at the CIA, U.S. Congressional hearings, Blum's book[81] and Weiner's book[82] Note that the CIA has posted a rebuttal to Weiner's book,[83] and that Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive has also been sharply critical of it.[84]

Areas of controversy about inappropriate, often illegal actions include experiments, without consent, on human beings to explore chemical means of eliciting information or disabling people. Another area involved torture and clandestine imprisonment. There have been attempted assassinations under CIA orders and support for assassinations of foreign leaders by citizens of the leader's country, and, in a somewhat different legal category that may fall under the customary laws of war, targeted killing of terrorist leaders.


[edit] Security and counterintelligence failures
While the names change periodically, there are two basic security functions to protect the CIA and its operations. There is an Office of Security in the Directorate for Support, which is responsible for physical security of the CIA buildings, secure storage of information, and personnel security clearances. These are directed inwardly to the agency itself.

In what is now the National Clandestine Service, there is a counter-intelligence function, called the Counterintelligence Staff under its most controversial chief, James Jesus Angleton. This function has roles including looking for staff members that are providing information to foreign intelligence services (FIS) as moles. Another role is to check proposals for recruiting foreign HUMINT assets, to see if these people have any known ties to FIS and thus may be attempts to penetrate CIA to learn its personnel and practices, or as a provocateur, or other form of double agent.

This agency component may also launch offensive counterespionage, where it attempts to interfere with FIS operations. CIA officers in the field often have assignments in offensive counterespionage as well as clandestine intelligence collection.


[edit] Security failures
In 1993, the headquarters of the CIA was attacked by Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani national. Two CIA employees were killed, Frank Darling and Lansing Bennett, M.D.

The "Family Jewels" and other documents reveal that the Office of Security violated the prohibition of CIA involvement in domestic law enforcement, sometimes with the intention of assisting police organizations local to CIA buildings.


[edit] Counterintelligence failures
Perhaps the most disruptive period involving counterintelligence was James Jesus Angleton's search for a mole,[85] based on the statements of a Soviet defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn. A second defector, Yuri Nosenko, challenged Golitsyn's claims, with the two calling one another Soviet double agents.[86] Many CIA officers fell under career-ending suspicion; the details of the relative truths and untruths from Nosenko and Golitsyn may never be released, or, in fact, may not be fully understood. The accusations also crossed the Atlantic to the British intelligence services, who also were damaged by molehunts.[87]

On February 24, 1994, the agency was rocked by the arrest of 31-year veteran case officer Aldrich Ames on charges of spying for the Soviet Union since 1985.[88]

Other defectors have included Edward Lee Howard, a field operations officer, and William Kampiles, a low-level worker in the CIA 24-hour Operations Center. Kampiles sold the Soviets the detailed operational manual for the KH-11 reconnaissance satellite.[89]


[edit] Failures in intelligence analysis
The agency has also been criticized for ineffectiveness as an intelligence gathering agency. Former DCI Richard Helms commented, after the end of the Cold War, "The only remaining superpower doesn't have enough interest in what's going on in the world to organize and run an espionage service."[90] The CIA has come under particular criticism for failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union.

See the information technology section of the intelligence analysis management for discussion of possible failures to provide adequate automation support to analysts, and US intelligence community A-Space for a IC-wide program to collect some of them. Cognitive traps for intelligence analysis also goes into areas where CIA has examined why analysis can fail.

Agency veterans have lamented CIA's inability to produce the kind of long-range strategic intelligence that it once did in order to guide policymakers. John McLaughlin, who was deputy director and acting director of central intelligence from October 2000 to September 2004, said that drowned by demands from the White House and Pentagon for instant information, "intelligence analysts end up being the Wikipedia of Washington."[91] In the intelligence analysis article, orienting oneself to the consumers deals with some of ways in which intelligence can become more responsive to the needs of policymakers.

For the media, the failures are most newsworthy. A number of declassified National Intelligence Estimates do predict the behavior of various countries, but not in a manner attractive to news, or, most significantly, not public at the time of the event. In its operational role, some successes for the CIA include the U-2 and SR-71 programs, and anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s.

Among the first analytic failures, before the CIA had its own collection capabilities, it assured President Harry S Truman on October 13, 1950 that the Chinese would not send troops to Korea. Six days later, over one million Chinese troops arrived.[92] See an analysis of the failure; also see surrounding text for the two Koreas and China, and the time period before the Korean War. Earlier, the intelligence community failed to detect the North Korean invasion, in part because resources were not allocated to SIGINT coverage of the Korean peninsula.

The history of US intelligence, with respect to French Indochina and then the two Vietnams, is long and complex. The Pentagon Papers often contain pessimistic CIA analyses that conflicted with White House positions. It does appear that some estimates were changed to reflect Pentagon and White House views..[79] See CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific for detailed discussions of intelligence and covert operations from 1945 (i.e., before the CIA) onwards.

Another criticism is the failure to predict India's nuclear tests in 1974. A review of the various analyses of India's nuclear program did predict some aspects of the test, such as a 1965 report saying, correctly, that if India did develop a bomb, it would be explained as "for peaceful purposes".

A major criticism is failure to forestall the September 11, 2001 attacks. The 9/11 Commission Report identifies failures in the IC as a whole. One problem, for example, was the FBI failing to "connect the dots" by sharing information among its decentralized field offices. The report, however, criticizes both CIA analysis, and impeding their investigation.

The executive summary of a report which was released by the office of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson on August 21, 2007 concluded that former DCI George Tenet failed to adequately prepare the agency to deal with the danger posed by Al Qaeda prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The report had been completed in June, 2005 and was partially released to the public in an agreement with Congress, over the objections of current DCI General Michael V. Hayden. Hayden said its publication would "consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed.�[93] Tenet disagreed with the report's conclusions, citing his planning efforts vis-a-vis al-Qaeda, particularly from 1999.[94]


[edit] Internal/presidential studies, external investigations and document releases
Several investigations (e.g., Church Committee, Rockefeller Commission, Pike Committee), as well as released declassified documents, reveal that the CIA, at times, operated outside its charter. In some cases, such as during Watergate, this may have been due to inappropriate requests by White House staff. In other cases, there was a violation of Congressional intent, such as the Iran-Contra affair.


[edit] 1949 Eberstadt Report (First Hoover Commission)
The first major analysis, following the National Security Act of 1947, was chaired by former President Herbert Hoover, with a Task Force on National Security Organization under Ferdinand Eberstadt, one of the drafters of the National Security Act and a believer in centralized intelligence.

The task force concluded that the system of the day led to an adversarial relationship, with little effective coordination, among the CIA, the military, and the State Department. "In the opinion of the task force, this produced duplication on one hand, and, on the other, departmental intelligence estimates that "have often been subjective and biased." In large measure, the military and State Department were blamed for their failure to consult and share pertinent information with the CIA. The task force recommended "that positive efforts be made to foster relations of mutual confidence between the [CIA] and the several departments and agencies that it serves."

This report stressed that the CIA "must be the central organization of the national intelligence system." It recommended a "...top echelon [of] an evaluation board or section composed of competent and experienced personnel who would have no administrative responsibilities and whose duties would be confined solely to intelligence evaluation." It also favored a civilian DCI with a long term in office.

"In the arena of covert operations and clandestine intelligence, the Eberstadt Report supported the integration of all clandestine operations into one office within CIA, under NSC supervision. To alleviate concerns expressed by the military who viewed this proposal as encroaching upon their prerogatives, the report stated that clandestine operations should be the responsibility of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in time of war."

The report declared that the failure to appraise scientific advances (e.g., biological and chemical warfare, electronics, aerodynamics, guided missiles, atomic weapons, and nuclear energy) in hostile countries might have more immediate and catastrophic consequences than failure in any other field of intelligence. It urged the US to develop a centralized capability for tracking these developments.


[edit] 1949 Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report
The Eberstadt report was soon eclipsed by what may have been the most influential policy paper. "On January 8, 1948, the National Security Council established the Intelligence Survey Group (ISG) to "evaluate the CIA's effort and its relationship with other agencies."[95] The Jackson-Dulles-Correa report held an opposite view on clandestine collection to the Eberstadt Report, interesting in that Dulles was a clandestine collection specialist.

Like

Apparently I'm not that smart, somewhere in that post Bruce is having me on and for the life of me I can't figure it out...

FILLIBUSTER!!!! :eek: :eek:

Looks like Bruce also reached the character limit and subsequently we lost what he wanted to say. :D

Well I read the entire thing and I still don't get it??

[QUOTE]
<font color="red"> Lyle really lacks intelligence. You just have to learn how to read through all of the jibba jabba. Speaking of inteliigence: </font>

:D

Organization
The heraldic symbol that comprises the CIA seal consists of three representative parts: the "right"-facing bald eagle head atop,( "right" facing, since the eagle looks over its "right" shoulder, not the left shoulder ) the compass star (or compass rose), and the shield. The eagle is the national bird, standing for strength and alertness. The 16-point compass star represents the CIA's world-wide search for intelligence outside the United States, which is then reported to the headquarters for analysis, reporting, and re-distribution to policymakers. The compass rests upon a shield, symbolic of defense.[9][10]

The CIA has an executive office, four major directorates, and a variety of specialized offices. Prior to the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligences, it had some additional responsibilities for the IC as a whole.


[edit] Executive offices
Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community (IC), serving as the president's principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 amended the National Security Act to provide for a Director of National Intelligence who would assume some of the roles formerly fulfilled by the DCI, with a separate Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DCI's title now is "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.

Currently, the Central Intelligence Agency answers directly to the Director of National Intelligence, although the CIA Director may brief the President directly. The CIA has its budget approved by the Congress, a subset of which do see the line items. The intelligence community, however, does not take direct orders from the Congress. The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the National Security Council, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all 16 U.S. Intelligence Community agencies are under the policy, but not necessarily budgetary, authority of the Director of National Intelligence.

The effect of the personalities of the DCIs on the structure and behavior of the Agency and indeed the IC is analyzed in Painter's dissertation on "Early Leader Effects" of Donovan, Dulles and Hoover[11]

Until the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the Director of the CIA met regularly with the President to issue daily reports on ongoing operations. After the creation of the post of DNI, currently Mike McConnell, the report is now given by the DNI�who oversees all US Intelligence activities, including intelligence community operations outside of CIA jurisdiction. Former CIA Director Porter Goss, who had been a CIA officer, denied this has had a diminishing effect on morale, but promoted his mission to reform the CIA into the lean and agile counter-terrorism focused force he believes it should be.[12]

A Deputy Director of the CIA (DDCIA) Assists the Director in his duties as head of the CIA and exercises the powers of the Director when the Director�s position is vacant or in the Director�s absence or disability. Either the Director or Deputy Director may be a military officer, but both positions may not be filled, at the same time, by military officers.

On July 5, 2006, the position of Executive Director, who managed day-to-day operations and budget, was replaced with an Associate Deputy Director of the CIA (ADD)[13]


[edit] Support to Military Operations
As the DCIA's principal adviser and representative on military issues, the Associate Director for Military Support (AD/MS), a senior general officer, coordinates CIA efforts to provide Joint Force commanders, who are principally consumers of national-level intelligence but producers of operational intelligence. The AD/MS also supports Department of Defense officials who oversee military intelligence training and the acquisition of intelligence systems and technology. John A. Gordon was the first AD/MS, before the creation of ODNI. There is also an Associate Deputy Director for Operations for Military Affairs (ADDO/MA)[14]

The Office of Military Affairs provides intelligence and operational support to the US armed forces.[15]

President George W. Bush, in creating the National Clandestine Service (NCS), made it clear policy that the CIA would be in charge of all human intelligence (HUMINT) operations. NCS, (formerly the Directorate of Operations, and earlier the "Directorate of Plans"), collects clandestine human intelligence collection, and conducts deniable psychological and paramilitary operations.[16] Creation of the NCS was the culmination of a years old turf war regarding influence, philosophy and budget between the United States Department of Defense and the CIA. The Pentagon, through the DIA, wanted to take control of the CIA's paramilitary operations and many of its human assets.[citation needed] DoD had organized the Defense HUMINT Service,[17] which, with the Presidential decision, became part of the NCS.

The CIA, which has for years held that human intelligence is the core of the agency, successfully argued that the CIA's decades long experience with human resources and civilian oversight made it the ideal choice. Thus, the CIA was given charge of all US human intelligence, but as a compromise, the Pentagon was authorized to include increased paramilitary capabilities in future budget requests.[citation needed] The military is also authorized to run Counterintelligence Force Protection Source Operations, which are directly related to the protection of military forces and facility. Another HUMINT area that remains with DoD is direct support to special operations, by an organization, originally called the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), which is a special access program (i.e., separate from sensitive compartmented intelligence activities that must be reported to the Congressional intelligence committees). ISA and its successors transferred to the United States Special Operations Command, where their classified names and special access program designations are changed frequently.[18]

The Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities (TENCAP) program is a system of making national intelligence available to warfighters.[19] TENCAP information most commonly comes from space-based and national-level aircraft programs, where CIA's responsibilities have moved, in many cases, to NRO, NSA, NGA, and DIA. Nevertheless, CIA still can serve such information, with the emphasis on HUMINT, and on technical sensors that need to be emplaced clandestinely in denied areas.


[edit] Proposed support to Homeland Security
A great sensitivity remains about CIA having domestic responsibilities, but it clearly will, on occasions, collect information outside the US that relates directly to domestic security. CIA, for example, is more likely to obtain HUMINT on terrorists than the very limited foreign resources of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

While DHS, like the military, is seen principally as a consumer of national intelligence, but its border and transportation security functions will produce intelligence. At present, however, there is no well-defined way for DHS to task intelligence collection agencies with its requirements. One proposal suggests using the AD/MS as a prototype, to create an AD/Homeland Security in the CIA, and possibly an equivalent position in the Justice Department, which, through the FBI and other agencies, legally collects domestic intelligence.[20] This proposal is one of many to improve coordination and avoid intelligence failures caused by not "connecting the dots", when the dots are held by different agencies.


[edit] National estimates
Prior to 2004, CIA had two analytic roles: the main effort based in the Directorate of Intelligence, which used internal experts to analyze data collected by the CIA, National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the military collection organizations, and other parts of the intelligence community. Many of these reports were on current subjects, such as the status of a revolutionary group, or the technical details of a new Chinese factory.

Another function, however, was preparing "estimates", which try to predict the future. Estimates are a product of the intelligence community as a whole. National Intelligence Estimates were the most extensively coordinated documents, often that could be scheduled on a regular basis, such as a regular report on Soviet intentions. Special National Intelligence Estimates (SNIE) were quick-response publications, often providing guidance in a crisis, but were still interagency consensus rather than CIA alone.

CIA had a separate and prestigious office, going by different names and organizations, such as the Office of National Estimates, Board of National Estimates, or a set of National Intelligence Officers, which would seek out the consensus of all the intelligence agencies, and then have some of the most senior analysts write a draft. The idea of such estimates is often credited to Sherman Kent,sometimes called the father of US intelligence analysis, with special emphasis on the production of estimates.[21] This function is now in the National Intelligence Council of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.[22] Originally defined in 1950, this responsibility stated "CIA is now in the business of producing what are called National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) along the lines laid down in NSC 50. These papers are interdepartmental in character, designed to focus all available intelligence on a problem of importance to the national security." In the early days of the process, CIA used the State Department's intelligence staff for drafting the NIEs, but a "small top level Office of National Estimates" was set up to integrate the departmental drafts. A senior CIA analyst responsible for the document would work out differences. There is also a process by which an agency can disagree with a comment called a "reclama", which is a footnote expressing an alternate position. For an example of such dissents, see Special National Intelligence Estimate 10-9-65 in CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific#Vietnam 1965: Viet Cong and DRV Reactions, where there are dissents to various parts from all or part of the military, and from the Department of State.

Upon approval by an interagency review committee, the paper becomes a NIE and is sent by the Director of Central Intelligence to the President, appropriate officers of Cabinet level, and the NSC.[23]

[edit] Directorate of Intelligence
The "DI" is the analytical branch of the CIA, responsible for the production and dissemination of all-source intelligence analysis on key foreign issues..[24] While it has, like most government agencies, reorganized over the years, its current structure has four regional analytic groups, six groups for transnational issues, and two support units.[25] Prior to the formation of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, the President's Daily Brief was prepared by the CIA Office of Current Intelligence.

Some open source intelligence OSINT, such as the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, were, at different times, part of the Directorate of Intelligence or the Directorate of Science &amp; Technology. Along with other OSINT functions, the National Open Source Enterprise is now in the ODNI.


[edit] Regional groups
There is an Office dedicated to Iraq. In addition, there are regional analytical Offices covering:

Near East, North Africa and South Asia: The Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis (NESA)
Russia and Europe: The Office of Russian and European Analysis (OREA)
Asian-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa: The Office of East Asian, Pacific, Latin American and African Analysis (APLAA)

[edit] Transnational groups
The Office of Terrorism Analysis,[26] which supports the National Counterterrorism Center, in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Office of Transnational Issues[27] applies unique functional expertise to assess existing and emerging threats to US national security and provides the most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support.

The CIA Crime and Narcotics Center[28] researches information on international narcotics trafficking and organized crime for policymakers and the law enforcement community. Since the CIA has no domestic police authority, it sends its analytic information to the FBI and other law enforcement organizations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The Weapons, Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center[29] provides intelligence support deals with national and non-national threats, as well as supporting threat reduction/arms control. This works with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Again cooperating with the FBI for domestic activity, the Counterintelligence Center Analysis Group[30] identifies, monitors, and analyzes the efforts of foreign intelligence entities, both national and non-national, against US interests.

The Information Operations Center Analysis Group[31] evaluates foreign threats to US computer systems, particularly those that support critical infrastructures. It works with critical infrastructure protection organizations in the United States Department of Defense (e.g., CERT Coordination Center) and the Department of Homeland Security (e.g., United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team)


[edit] Support and general units
The Office of Collection Strategies and Analysis provides comprehensive intelligence collection expertise to the DI, a wide range of senior Agency and Intelligence Community officials, and key national policymakers.

The Office of Policy Support customizes DI analysis and presents it to a wide variety of policy, law enforcement, military, and foreign liaison recipients.


[edit] National Clandestine Service
Main article: National Clandestine Service
The National Clandestine Service, a semi-independent service which was formerly the Directorate of Operations, is responsible for collection of foreign intelligence, principally from clandestine HUMINT sources, and covert action. The new name reflects its having absorbed the Defense HUMINT Service, which did strategic human intelligence HUMINT collection for the Department of Defense (DoD). HUMINT directly related to military missions remains under the DoD. Note that there is an open source function in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which may be taking over certain legal interviews in the US that previously were the Domestic Contact Division (or Domestic Contact Service).

While the NCS organization chart has not been published, although there have been prior descriptions of the Directorate of Plans or the Directorate of Operations, a fairly recent organization chart of the Defense HUMINT Service will indicate functions transferred into the NCS, and may well be fairly close to the overall NCS organizational structure.[32]

There are references to earlier structures in various historical documents. For example, in a CIA paper on the internal probe into the Bay of Pigs,[33] there are several comments on the Directorate of Plans organizational structure in 1962. Even though any large organization will constantly reorganize, the basic functions will stay and can be a clue to future organization.

At the top level, Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell had two Assistant Deputy Directors, C. Tracy Barnes and Richard Helms. Warner explains "operational details fell to Branch 4 (Cuba) of the DDP's Western Hemisphere Division (WH)", with some exceptions. Jacob Esterline, chief of the Cuba Branch, reported directly to Bissell and Barnes rather than to his division chief, J.C. King "although King was regularly informed and often consulted. To confuse matters still further, Branch 4 had no direct control over the Brigade's aircraft, which were managed by a separate DDP division that also took some orders directly from Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) Charles P. Cabell, a US Air Force general who liked to keep his hand in the planning of airdrops and other missions," Air operations, therefore, were in a separate division either for covert support, paramilitary operations, or both.

Cuba Branch had a "Foreign Intelligence Section," foreign intelligence being a term of art for HUMINT. The branch, however, established "a separate "G-2" unit subordinate to its Paramilitary Section, which planned the actual invasion. This gives us the model of a geographic branch with subordinate sections, at least, for intelligence collection and paramilitary actions.

Warner's paper also mentions that certain DDP groups were outside the scope of the post-mortem by Executive Director Lyman Kirkpatrick, but their mention tells us that these were representative components of the DDP: "... the Havana station or the Santiago base, the development of foreign intelligence assets and liaison contacts, Division D's technical collection programs, or counter-intelligence work against the Cuban services." CIA "stations" are the parts of the embassy with officers under diplomatic cover, in a typical diplomatic office building. "Bases", however, are large facilities for supporting operations, typically with an airfield, secure warehouses, barracks and training areas. Division D was the joint CIA-NSA collection effort, where CIA would use clandestine operations personnel to emplace NSA SIGINT sensors. The reference to counter-intelligence work appears to refer to a main counterintelligence division, presumably the Counterintelligence Staff under James Jesus Angleton.


[edit] Directorate of Science and Technology
Main article: Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science &amp; Technology
The Directorate of Science &amp; Technology creates and applies innovative technology in support of the intelligence collection mission.[34][dead links] The CIA has always shown a strong interest in how to use advances in technology to enhance its effectiveness.[35] This interest in modern technology came from two main aims: firstly, to harness these techniques its own use, and second to counter any new technologies the Soviets might develop. This effort gained impetus in the fifties with the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the USSR. The agency was also extremely interested in computer and information technology. In 1999, CIA created the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel to help fund and develop technologies of interest to the agency.[36][37][38]

Its website mentions its priorities being in:

Application Software and Analytics
Bio, Nuclear, and Chemical Technologies
Communications and Infrastructure
Digital Identity and Security
Embedded Systems and Power[39]
In January 2008, its featured collaboration was with Streambase Systems,[40] makers of a "high-performance Complex Event Processing (CEP) software platform for real-time and historical analysis of high-volume intelligence data," using a new processing paradigm for Structured Query Language (SQL), allowing queries against multiple real-time data streams still updating the data base.


[edit] Directorate of Support
The Directorate of Support provides necessary "housekeeping" administration functions, but in a manner consistent with the need to keep their details protected. These functions include personnel, security, communications, and financial operations. Most of this Directorate is sub-structured into smaller offices based on role and purpose, such as the Office of Security, which is concerned both with personnel and physical security. Other major offices include the Office of Communications and the Office of Information Technology.


[edit] Logistics and proprietaries
Under the original NSC 10/2 authorization, CIA was made responsible not just for covert action during the cold war, but for such action during major wars, in collaboration with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When DCI Smith created the Directorate of Plans and ended the autonomy of the OPC and OSO, he recognized it was necessary to establish logistical support for these operations before the start of a hot war. Smith did not want to duplicate existing military support systems, and proposed, in 1952, that the CIA should be able to draw, on a reimbursable basis, on military supply stocks. In many respects, this was the beginning of the idea that what was to become the Directorate of Support had a far wider scope than the OSS and initial CIA term, Directorate of Administration.

Smith presented the concept that the CIA would need a worldwide system of support bases, which usually could be tenant organizations on military bases. According to Smith's memo,

A major logistical support base will consist of a CIA base headquarters, training, communications, medical accommodation for evacuees and storage for six months� hot war requirements as well as provide logistical support for CIA operational groups or headquarters... Informal planning along the lines indicated has been carried out by elements of CIA with ... the Joint Chiefs of Staff ...

The CIA was expected to reimburse "extraordinary expenses" incurred by the military services.[41]

While military transportation might be appropriate for some purposes, there would be cases where the arrival of a military aircraft at a location other than a military base might draw undue attention. This was the origin of the idea of the CIA operating proprietary airlines, whose relationship to the US government would not be public.[42] Among these organizations were airlines that provided covert logistical support, such as Civil Air Transport, Southern Air Transport, and consolidated them into Air America. The latter was heavily involved in support with the war in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in the 1960s.


[edit] Training
This directorate includes the Office of Training, which starts with a Junior Officer Training program for new employees. So that the initial course might be taken by employees who had not received final security clearance and thus were not permitted unescorted access to the Headquarters building, a good deal of basic training has been given at office buildings in the urban areas of Arlington, Virginia.

It is known, although not acknowledged by the U.S. Government, that the CIA runs at least two operations training facilities.[43] One is known as The Farm, at Camp Peary, Virginia. The other is known as The Point at Harvey Point, North Carolina. While the course outline has never been revealed, it is believed to include such things as surveillance, countersurveillance, cryptography, paramilitary training as well as other tradecraft. The course seems to be about less than a year and runs at irregular intervals depending on circumstances. Operations training is delivered by experienced operations officers.

Student progress is monitored by experienced evaluators that meet to discuss a recruit's progress and have the power to dismiss a recruit even before his or her training is complete. Evaluation techniques for the CIA's World War II predecessor, the OSS, were published as the book Assessment of Men, Selection of Personnel for the office of Strategic Services.[44] See Roger Hall's You're Stepping on my Cloak and Dagger for an accurate but amusing account of Hall's OSS duty, which included finding unexpected solutions to things in the assessment process as well as his experience in real operations.[45] He described a specific assessment period at a rural facility called "Station S". Hall said he tried to find out why it was called Station S, and finally decided the reason was that "assess" has more "S" letters than any other.

Psychological stress is part of operations training, but of a different type than military special operations force evaluation, such as the Navy SEAL Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course or Army Special Forces Assessment and Selection. For instance, an operations training officer will often lie to a recruit saying they have evidence that will result in the recruit to be arrested and tried for felony crimes. This is a test of the recruit's ability to maintain a cover under stress.

Contrary to popular belief or what is seen in film and television series, American-born, professional employees trained to work for the National Clandestine Service (CIA) are never referred to as "secret agents", "spies", "agents" or "special agents", they are known as 'Operations Officers' or 'Case Officers', or Officer for short. To highlight this point: within the intelligence community, the equivalent of an FBI Special Agent is a CIA Officer. Within the law enforcement community, the equivalent of a CIA 'agent' is an FBI informant. There does not exist any working title or job position known as 'CIA Agent', agents of the CIA are usually always foreigners who choose to betray their own country by passing along secret information to the government through CIA Case Officers, who are posted at U.S. embassies worldwide.[46]

These CIA Case Officers recruit foreign agents, known as 'assets', to give information to the CIA. There are a wide range of motivations for a person to become an asset; see CIA Case Officers are normally sent abroad under a cover identity, most commonly as a diplomat but sometimes under "nonofficial cover" using an assumed identity and having no immunity.[46]


[edit] Other offices

[edit] General Publications
One of the CIA's best-known publications, The World Factbook, is in the public domain and is made freely available without copyright restrictions because it is a work of the United States federal government.[47]

CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence maintains the Agency's historical materials and promotes the study of intelligence as a legitimate and serious discipline.[48][dead links] The CIA since 1955 has published an in-house professional journal known as Studies in Intelligence that addresses historical, operational, doctrinal, and theoretical aspects of the intelligence profession. The Center also publishes unclassified and declassified Studies articles, as well as other books and monographs.[49] A further annotated collection of Studies articles was published through Yale University Press under the title Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992.[50]

In 2002, CIA's Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis began publishing the unclassified Kent Center Occasional Papers, aiming to offer "an opportunity for intelligence professionals and interested colleagues�in an unofficial and unfettered vehicle�to debate and advance the theory and practice of intelligence analysis."[51][dead links]


[edit] General Counsel and Inspector General
Two offices advise the Director on legality and proper operations. The Office of the General Counsel advises the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on all legal matters relating to his role as CIA director and is the principal source of legal counsel for the CIA.[52][dead links]

The Office of Inspector General promotes efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability in the administration of Agency activities. OIG also seeks to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. The Inspector General is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Inspector General, whose activities are independent of those of any other component in the Agency, reports directly to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. OIG conducts inspections, investigations, and audits at Headquarters and in the field, and oversees the Agency-wide grievance-handling system. The OIG provides a semiannual report to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency which the Director is required by law to submit to the Intelligence Committees of Congress within 30 days.

In February 2008, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael V. Hayden, sent a message to employees that Inspector General John L. Helgerson will accept increased control over the investigations by that office, saying "John has chosen to take a number of steps to heighten the efficiency, assure the quality and increase the transparency of the investigation process".[53] The Washington Post suggested this was a response to senior officials who believe the OIG has been too aggressive in looking into counterterrorism programs, including detention programs. The changes were the result of an investigation, begun in April 2007, by one of Hayden's assistants, Robert L. Deitz.[54] There was congressional concern that restrictions on the OIG might have a chilling effect on its effectiveness. Senator Ron Wyden , a Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, did not disagree with any of Hayden's actions, said the inquiry �should never have happened and can�t be allowed to happen again.�...�I�m all for the inspector general taking steps that help C.I.A. employees understand his processes, but that can be done without an approach that can threaten the inspector general�s independence


[edit] Public Affairs
The Office of Public Affairs advises the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on all media, public policy, and employee communications issues relating to his role as CIA director and is the CIA�s principal communications focal point for the media, the general public and Agency employees.[55][dead links] See CIA influence on public opinion.


[edit] Relationship with other sources of intelligence
The CIA acts as the primary American HUMINT and general analytic agency, under the Director of National Intelligence, who directs or coordinates the 16 member organizations of the United States Intelligence Community. It obtains information from other U.S. government intelligence agencies, commercial information sources, and foreign intelligence services.


[edit] Other U.S. intelligence agencies
A number of those organizations are fully or partially under the budgetary control of the United States Secretary of Defense or other cabinet officers such as the Attorney General of the United States.

As do other analytic members of the U.S. intelligence community such as the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the analytic division of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), its raw input includes imagery intelligence IMINT collected by air and space systems of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) processed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), signal intelligence SIGINT of the National Security Agency (NSA), and measurement and signature intelligence MASINT from the DIA MASINT center.


[edit] Open Source Intelligence
Until the 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community, one of the "services of common concern" that CIA provided was OSINT from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).[56] FBIS, which had absorbed the Joint Publication Research Service, a military organization that translated documents,[57] which moved into the National Open Source Enterprise under the Director of National Intelligence.

CIA still provides a variety of unclassified maps and reference documents both to the intelligence community and the public.[58]

As part of its mandate to gather intelligence, CIA is looking increasingly online for information, and has become a major consumer of social media. "We're looking at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence," said Doug Naquin, director of the DNI Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA. "We're looking at chat rooms and things that didn't exist five years ago, and trying to stay ahead."[59]


[edit] Outsourcing
In a trend some find disturbing, many of duties and functions of Intelligence Community activities, not the CIA alone, are being "outsourced" and "privatized." Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, was about to publicize an investigation report of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies, as required by Congress.[60] However, this report was then classified.[61][62] Hillhouse speculates that this report includes requirements for the CIA to report:[61][63]

different standards for government employees and contractors;
contractors providing similar services to government workers;
analysis of costs of contractors vs. employees;
an assessment of the appropriateness of outsourced activities;
an estimate of the number of contracts and contractors;
comparison of compensation for contractors and government employees,
attrition analysis of government employees;
descriptions of positions to be converted back to the employee model;
an evaluation of accountability mechanisms;
an evaluation of procedures for "conducting oversight of contractors to ensure identification and prosecution of criminal violations, financial waste, fraud, or other abuses committed by contractors or contract personnel; and
an "identification of best practices of accountability mechanisms within service contracts."
According to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, "...what we have today with the intelligence business is something far more systemic: senior officials leaving their national security and counterterrorism jobs for positions where they are basically doing the same jobs they once held at the CIA, the NSA and other agencies - but for double or triple the salary, and for profit. It's a privatization of the highest order, in which our collective memory and experience in intelligence - our crown jewels of spying, so to speak - are owned by corporate America. Yet, there is essentially no government oversight of this private sector at the heart of our intelligence empire. And the lines between public and private have become so blurred as to be nonexistent."[64][65]

Congress has required an outsourcing report by March 30, 2008.[63]

The Director of National Intelligence has been granted the authority to increase the number of positions (FTEs) on elements in the Intelligence Community by up to 10% should there be a determination that activities performed by a contractor should be done by a US government employee.

Part of the contracting problem comes from Congressional restrictions on the number of employees in the IC. According to Hillhouse, this resulted in0% of the de facto workforce of the CIA's National Clandestine Service being made up of contractors. "After years of contributing to the increasing reliance upon contractors, Congress is now providing a framework for the conversion of contractors into federal government employees--more or less."[63]

As with most government agencies, building equipment often is contracted. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), responsible for the development and operation of airborne and spaceborne sensors, long was a joint operation of the CIA and the United States Department of Defense. NRO had been significantly involved in the design of such sensors, but the NRO, then under DCI authority, contracted more of the design that had been their tradition, and to a contractor without extensive reconnaissance experience, Boeing.

The next-generation satellite Future Imagery Architecture project, which missed objectives after $4 billion in cost overruns, was the result of this contract.[66][67]

Some of the cost problems associated with intelligence come from one agency, or even a group within an agency, not accepting the compartmented security practices for individual projects, requiring expensive duplication.[68]


[edit] Foreign intelligence services
Many intelligence services cooperate. There may even be a deniable communications channel with ostensibly hostile nations.

The role and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki) (SVR), the French foreign intelligence service Direction G�n�rale de la S�curit� Ext�rieure (DGSE) and Israel's Mossad. While the preceding agencies both collect and analyze information, some like the US State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research are purely analytical agencies. See List of intelligence agencies.

The closest links of the US IC to other foreign intelligence agencies are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. There is a special communications marking that signals that intelligence-related messages can be shared with these four countries.[69] An indication of the United States' close operational cooperation is the creation of a new message distribution label within the main US military communications network. Previously, the marking of NOFORN (i.e., No Foreign Nationals) required the originator to specify which, if any, non-US countries could receive the information. A new handling caveat, USA/AUS/CAN/GBR/NZL Eyes Only, used primarily on intelligence messages, gives an easier way to indicate that the material can be shared with Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and New Zealand.


[edit] Organizational history
The Central Intelligence Agency was created by Congress with National Security Act of 1947, signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It is the descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which was dissolved in October 1945 and its functions transferred to the State and War Departments. Eleven months earlier, in 1944, William J. Donovan, the OSS's creator, proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt creating a new organization directly supervised by the President: "which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies."[70] Under his plan, a powerful, centralized civilian agency would have coordinated all the intelligence services. He also proposed that this agency have authority to conduct "subversive operations abroad," but "no police or law enforcement functions, either at home or abroad."[71][dead links]


The lives of 83 fallen CIA officers are represented by 83 stars on the CIA memorial wall in the Original Headquarters building.CIA personnel have died on duty, some in accidents and some by deliberate hostile action. On the memorial wall at CIA headquarters, some of the stars have no name attached, because it would reveal the identity of a clandestine officer.[72] Both the OSS and its British counterparts, as do other agencies worldwide, struggle with finding the right organizational balance among clandestine intelligence collection, counterintelligence, and covert action. See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for a historical perspective on this problem. These issues also bear on the reasons that, in the history below, some "eras" overlap. Also see the Wikipedia article Director of Central Intelligence, which contains an expanded history of CIA by director; the priorities and personalities of individual directors have had a strong influence on Agency operations.


[edit] Immediate predecessors, 1946-1947
The Office of Strategic Services, which was the first independent US intelligence agency, created for the Second World War, was broken up shortly after the end of the war, by President Truman, on September 20, 1945. The rapid reorganizations that followed reflected the routine sort of bureaucratic competition for resources, but also trying to deal with the proper relationships of clandestine intelligence collection and covert action (i.e., paramilitary and psychological operations). See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for a more detailed history of this problem, which was not unique to the US during and after World War II. In October 1945, the functions of the OSS were split between the Departments of State and War:

New Unit Oversight OSS Functions Absorbed
Strategic Services Unit (SSU) War Department Secret Intelligence (SI) (i.e., clandestine intelligence collection) and Counter-espionage (X-2)
Interim Research and Intelligence Service (IRIS) State Department Research and Analysis Branch (i.e., intelligence analysis)
Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) (not uniquely for former OSS) War Department, Army General Staff Staff officers from Operational Groups, Operation Jedburgh, Morale Operations (black propaganda)

This division lasted only a few months.Despite opposition from the military establishment, the United States Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),[70] President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) in January 1946 which was the direct predecessor to the CIA.[73][dead links] The CIG was an interim authority established under Presidential authority. The assets of the SSU, which now constituted a streamlined "nucleus" of clandestine intelligence was transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO).


[edit] Early CIA, 1947-1952
In September 1947, the National Security Act of 1947 established both the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.[74] Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was appointed as the first Director of Central Intelligence.


The 16-foot (5 m) diameter CIA seal in the lobby of the Original Headquarters Building.The National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1948 (NSC 10/2) further gave the CIA the authority to carry out covert operations "against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons."[75]

In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act (Public Law 81-110) authorized the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures, and exempting it from most of the usual limitations on the use of Federal funds. It also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its "organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed." It also created the program "PL-110", to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" who fall outside normal immigration procedures, as well as giving those persons cover stories and economic support.[76]


[edit] The structure stabilizes, 1952
Then-DCI Walter Bedell Smith, who enjoyed a special degree of Presidential trust, having been Dwight D. Eisenhower's primary Chief of Staff during World War II, insisted that the CIA -- or at least only one department -- had to direct the OPC and OSO. Those organization, as well as some minor functions, formed the euphemistically named Directorate of Plans in 1952.

Also in 1952, United States Army Special Forces were created, with some missions overlapping those of the Department of Plans. In general, the pattern emerged that the CIA could borrow resources from Special Forces, although it had its own special operators.


[edit] Early Cold War, 1953-1966

Lockheed U-2 "Dragon Lady", the first generation of near-space reconnaissance satellites.Allen Dulles, who had been a key OSS operations officer in Switzerland during the Second World War, took over from Smith, at a time where US policy was dominated by intense anticommunism. Various sources were involved, the most visible being the investigations and abuses of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the more quiet but systematic containment doctrine developed by George Kennan, the Berlin Blockade and the Korean War. Dulles enjoyed a high degree of flexibility, as his brother, John Foster Dulles, was simultaneously Secretary of State. Concern regarding the Soviet Union and the difficulty of getting information from its closed society, which few agents could penetrate, led to solutions based on advanced technology. Among the first success was with the Lockheed U-2 aircraft, which could take pictures and collect electronic signals from an altitude above Soviet air defenses' reach. After Gary Powers was shot down by an SA-2 surface to air missile in 1960, causing an international incident, the SR-71 was developed to take over this role.


The USAF's SR-71 Blackbird was developed from the CIA's A-12 OXCART.During this period, there were numerous covert actions against perceived Communist expansion. Some of the largest operations were aimed at Cuba after the overthrow of the Batista government, including assassination attempts against Fidel Castro and the dubiously deniable Bay of Pigs Invasion. There have been suggestions that the Soviet attempt to put missiles into Cuba came, indirectly, when they realized how badly they had been compromised by a US-UK defector in place, Oleg Penkovsky.[77]

The CIA, working with the military, formed the joint National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to operate reconnaissance aircraft such as the SR-71 and later satellites. "The fact of" the United States operating reconnaissance satellites, like "the fact of" the existence of NRO, was highly classified for many years.


Early CORONA/KH-4B imagery IMINT satellite.
[edit] Complications from Indochina and the Vietnam War (1954-1975)
As the US military and electorate were affected by Vietnam, so was the CIA. The OSS Patti mission had arrived near the end of the Second World War, and had significant interaction with the leaders of many Vietnamese factions, including Ho Chi Minh.[78] While the Patti mission forwarded Ho's proposals for phased independence, with the French or even the United States as the transition partner, the US policy of containment opposed forming any government that might be Communist.

The first CIA mission to Indochina, under the code name Saigon Military Mission arrived in 1954, under Edward Lansdale. US-based analysts were simultaneously trying to project the evolution of political power, both if the scheduled referendum chose merger of the North and South, or if the South, the US client, stayed independent. Initially, the US focus in Southeast Asia was on Laos, not Vietnam.

During the period of American combat involvement in the Vietnam War, there was considerable arguments about progress among the Department of Defense under Robert S. McNamara, the CIA, and, to some extent, the intelligence staff of the Military Assistance Command Vietnam.[79] In general, the military was consistently more optimistic than the CIA. Sam Adams, a junior CIA analyst with responsibilities for estimating the actual damage to the enemy, eventually resigned from the CIA, after expressing concern, to Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms with estimates that were changed for interagency and White House political reasons, writing the book War of Numbers.


[edit] Abuses of CIA authority, 1970s-1990s
Things came to a head in the early 1970s, around the time of the Watergate political burglary affair. A dominant feature of political life during that period were the attempts of Congress to assert oversight of U.S. Presidency, the executive branch of the U.S. Government. Revelations about past CIA activities, such as assassinations and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders, illegal domestic spying on U.S. citizens, provided the opportunities to execute Congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence operations. Hastening the Central Intelligence Agency's fall from grace were the burglary of the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic Party by ex-CIA agents, and President Richard Nixon's subsequent use of the CIA to impede the FBI's investigation of the burglary. In the famous "smoking gun" recording that led to President Nixon's resignation, Nixon ordered his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, to tell the CIA that further investigation of Watergate would "open the whole can of worms" about the Bay of Pigs of Cuba, and, therefore, that the CIA should tell the FBI to cease investigating the Watergate burglary, due to reasons of "national security".[80]

In 1973, then-DCI James R. Schlesinger commissioned reports � known as the "Family Jewels" � on illegal activities by the Agency. In December 1974, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the news of the "Family Jewels" in a front-page article in The New York Times, revealing that the CIA had assassinated foreign leaders, and had conducted surveillance on some seven thousand American citizens involved in the antiwar movement (Operation CHAOS).

Congress responded to the disturbing charges in 1975, investigating the CIA in the Senate via the Church Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), and in the House of Representatives via the Pike Committee, chaired by Congressman Otis Pike (D-NY). In addition, President Gerald Ford created the Rockefeller Commission, and issued an Executive Order prohibiting the assassination of foreign leaders.

Repercussions from the Iran-Contra Affair arms smuggling scandal included the creation of the Intelligence Authorization Act in 1991. It defined covert operations as secret missions in geopolitical areas where the U.S. is neither openly nor apparently engaged. This also required an authorizing chain of command, including an official, presidential finding report and the informing of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, which, in emergencies, requires only "timely notification".


[edit] 2004, DCI takes over CIA top-level functions
Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community, serving as the president's principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DCI's title now is "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.

Currently, the Central Intelligence Agency reports to the Director of National Intelligence. Prior to the establishment of the DNI, the CIA reported to the President, with informational briefings to U.S. Congressional committees The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the National Security Council, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, et cetera; all sixteen Intelligence Community agencies are under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.


[edit] Mission-related issues and controversies
The history of CIA deals with several things, certainly including covert action, but also clandestine and overt intelligence collection, intelligence analysis and reporting, and logistical and technical support of its activities. Prior to the December 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community (IC), it also was responsible for coordinations of IC-wide intelligence estimates.

These articles are organized in two different ways: By geographical region (for state actors or non-state actors limited to a country or region) and by transnational topic (for non-state actors).

CIA operations by region, country and date are discussed in detail in the following Wikipedia articles:

CIA activities in Africa
CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific
CIA activities in Russia and Europe
CIA activities in the Americas
CIA activities in the Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia
CIA analyses of issues such as the effect of emerging diseases, and the detection of WMDs, are inherently transnational, and are discussed in the following articles. CIA operations and, where appropriate, authorizations for covert operations (for example, NSDD 138 authorizing direct action against terrorists) by transnational topic are discussed in the following Wikipedia articles:

CIA transnational activities in counterproliferation
CIA transnational anti-crime and anti-drug activities
CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities
CIA transnational health and economic activities
CIA transnational human rights actions
In addition, a view of covert US activity specifically oriented towards regime change actions is given in the following Wikipedia article:

Covert U.S. regime change actions
Major sources for this section include the Council on Foreign Relations of the United States series, the National Security Archive and George Washington University, the Freedom of Information Act Reading Room at the CIA, U.S. Congressional hearings, Blum's book[81] and Weiner's book[82] Note that the CIA has posted a rebuttal to Weiner's book,[83] and that Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive has also been sharply critical of it.[84]

Areas of controversy about inappropriate, often illegal actions include experiments, without consent, on human beings to explore chemical means of eliciting information or disabling people. Another area involved torture and clandestine imprisonment. There have been attempted assassinations under CIA orders and support for assassinations of foreign leaders by citizens of the leader's country, and, in a somewhat different legal category that may fall under the customary laws of war, targeted killing of terrorist leaders.


[edit] Security and counterintelligence failures
While the names change periodically, there are two basic security functions to protect the CIA and its operations. There is an Office of Security in the Directorate for Support, which is responsible for physical security of the CIA buildings, secure storage of information, and personnel security clearances. These are directed inwardly to the agency itself.

In what is now the National Clandestine Service, there is a counter-intelligence function, called the Counterintelligence Staff under its most controversial chief, James Jesus Angleton. This function has roles including looking for staff members that are providing information to foreign intelligence services (FIS) as moles. Another role is to check proposals for recruiting foreign HUMINT assets, to see if these people have any known ties to FIS and thus may be attempts to penetrate CIA to learn its personnel and practices, or as a provocateur, or other form of double agent.

This agency component may also launch offensive counterespionage, where it attempts to interfere with FIS operations. CIA officers in the field often have assignments in offensive counterespionage as well as clandestine intelligence collection.


[edit] Security failures
In 1993, the headquarters of the CIA was attacked by Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani national. Two CIA employees were killed, Frank Darling and Lansing Bennett, M.D.

The "Family Jewels" and other documents reveal that the Office of Security violated the prohibition of CIA involvement in domestic law enforcement, sometimes with the intention of assisting police organizations local to CIA buildings.


[edit] Counterintelligence failures
Perhaps the most disruptive period involving counterintelligence was James Jesus Angleton's search for a mole,[85] based on the statements of a Soviet defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn. A second defector, Yuri Nosenko, challenged Golitsyn's claims, with the two calling one another Soviet double agents.[86] Many CIA officers fell under career-ending suspicion; the details of the relative truths and untruths from Nosenko and Golitsyn may never be released, or, in fact, may not be fully understood. The accusations also crossed the Atlantic to the British intelligence services, who also were damaged by molehunts.[87]

On February 24, 1994, the agency was rocked by the arrest of 31-year veteran case officer Aldrich Ames on charges of spying for the Soviet Union since 1985.[88]

Other defectors have included Edward Lee Howard, a field operations officer, and William Kampiles, a low-level worker in the CIA 24-hour Operations Center. Kampiles sold the Soviets the detailed operational manual for the KH-11 reconnaissance satellite.[89]


[edit] Failures in intelligence analysis
The agency has also been criticized for ineffectiveness as an intelligence gathering agency. Former DCI Richard Helms commented, after the end of the Cold War, "The only remaining superpower doesn't have enough interest in what's going on in the world to organize and run an espionage service."[90] The CIA has come under particular criticism for failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union.

See the information technology section of the intelligence analysis management for discussion of possible failures to provide adequate automation support to analysts, and US intelligence community A-Space for a IC-wide program to collect some of them. Cognitive traps for intelligence analysis also goes into areas where CIA has examined why analysis can fail.

Agency veterans have lamented CIA's inability to produce the kind of long-range strategic intelligence that it once did in order to guide policymakers. John McLaughlin, who was deputy director and acting director of central intelligence from October 2000 to September 2004, said that drowned by demands from the White House and Pentagon for instant information, "intelligence analysts end up being the Wikipedia of Washington."[91] In the intelligence analysis article, orienting oneself to the consumers deals with some of ways in which intelligence can become more responsive to the needs of policymakers.

For the media, the failures are most newsworthy. A number of declassified National Intelligence Estimates do predict the behavior of various countries, but not in a manner attractive to news, or, most significantly, not public at the time of the event. In its operational role, some successes for the CIA include the U-2 and SR-71 programs, and anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s.

Among the first analytic failures, before the CIA had its own collection capabilities, it assured President Harry S Truman on October 13, 1950 that the Chinese would not send troops to Korea. Six days later, over one million Chinese troops arrived.[92] See an analysis of the failure; also see surrounding text for the two Koreas and China, and the time period before the Korean War. Earlier, the intelligence community failed to detect the North Korean invasion, in part because resources were not allocated to SIGINT coverage of the Korean peninsula.

The history of US intelligence, with respect to French Indochina and then the two Vietnams, is long and complex. The Pentagon Papers often contain pessimistic CIA analyses that conflicted with White House positions. It does appear that some estimates were changed to reflect Pentagon and White House views..[79] See CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific for detailed discussions of intelligence and covert operations from 1945 (i.e., before the CIA) onwards.

Another criticism is the failure to predict India's nuclear tests in 1974. A review of the various analyses of India's nuclear program did predict some aspects of the test, such as a 1965 report saying, correctly, that if India did develop a bomb, it would be explained as "for peaceful purposes".

A major criticism is failure to forestall the September 11, 2001 attacks. The 9/11 Commission Report identifies failures in the IC as a whole. One problem, for example, was the FBI failing to "connect the dots" by sharing information among its decentralized field offices. The report, however, criticizes both CIA analysis, and impeding their investigation.

The executive summary of a report which was released by the office of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson on August 21, 2007 concluded that former DCI George Tenet failed to adequately prepare the agency to deal with the danger posed by Al Qaeda prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The report had been completed in June, 2005 and was partially released to the public in an agreement with Congress, over the objections of current DCI General Michael V. Hayden. Hayden said its publication would "consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed.�[93] Tenet disagreed with the report's conclusions, citing his planning efforts vis-a-vis al-Qaeda, particularly from 1999.[94]


[edit] Internal/presidential studies, external investigations and document releases
Several investigations (e.g., Church Committee, Rockefeller Commission, Pike Committee), as well as released declassified documents, reveal that the CIA, at times, operated outside its charter. In some cases, such as during Watergate, this may have been due to inappropriate requests by White House staff. In other cases, there was a violation of Congressional intent, such as the Iran-Contra affair.


[edit] 1949 Eberstadt Report (First Hoover Commission)
The first major analysis, following the National Security Act of 1947, was chaired by former President Herbert Hoover, with a Task Force on National Security Organization under Ferdinand Eberstadt, one of the drafters of the National Security Act and a believer in centralized intelligence.

The task force concluded that the system of the day led to an adversarial relationship, with little effective coordination, among the CIA, the military, and the State Department. "In the opinion of the task force, this produced duplication on one hand, and, on the other, departmental intelligence estimates that "have often been subjective and biased." In large measure, the military and State Department were blamed for their failure to consult and share pertinent information with the CIA. The task force recommended "that positive efforts be made to foster relations of mutual confidence between the [CIA] and the several departments and agencies that it serves."

This report stressed that the CIA "must be the central organization of the national intelligence system." It recommended a "...top echelon [of] an evaluation board or section composed of competent and experienced personnel who would have no administrative responsibilities and whose duties would be confined solely to intelligence evaluation." It also favored a civilian DCI with a long term in office.

"In the arena of covert operations and clandestine intelligence, the Eberstadt Report supported the integration of all clandestine operations into one office within CIA, under NSC supervision. To alleviate concerns expressed by the military who viewed this proposal as encroaching upon their prerogatives, the report stated that clandestine operations should be the responsibility of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in time of war."

The report declared that the failure to appraise scientific advances (e.g., biological and chemical warfare, electronics, aerodynamics, guided missiles, atomic weapons, and nuclear energy) in hostile countries might have more immediate and catastrophic consequences than failure in any other field of intelligence. It urged the US to develop a centralized capability for tracking these developments.


[edit] 1949 Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report
The Eberstadt report was soon eclipsed by what may have been the most influential policy paper. "On January 8, 1948, the National Security Council established the Intelligence Survey Group (ISG) to "evaluate the CIA's effort and its relationship with other agencies."[95] The Jackson-Dulles-Correa report held an opposite view on clandestine collection to the Eberstadt Report, interesting in that Dulles was a clandestine collection specialist.
<br /

I agree that the above MS needs to be updated. I was bit surprised when I first read this and the lack of simple explanations of the how to's. For example expanding on the "encourage competitive growth" part... Or the Preparation of growth..... We could also include some addtional tasks not included in the current statement. For example:

Partner with our official publication to reach a common goal for the advertisment, publicising, and public outreach of our sport and other flying disc related sports...

I just made that up off the top of my head...... But maybe you get the point....


Usually, Senior, an organization has a Vision and a Mission, as the top level of a strategic plan, which itself contains Strategic Objectives, and then various Goals or Benchmarks on the way to measure movement toward objectives, and perhaps a number of potential Strategic Initiatives are decided upon to move in the direction of the objectives. (Language can vary.)

When it comes to the tasks part, they are best not in the mission, which really should be a very general statement.

What is needed, and has been for some time, is some serious strategic planning. I think the problem is, though, that for it to be done right means hiring a pretty expensive consultant to manage the process. Our tendency would be to do it with knowledge inside the heads of our disc golfing community, which usually means getting it cheap. And with this stuff, you get what you pay for, especially when you DIY.

I don't think the Mission necessary needs changed (although going through a planning process would result in that) so much as there needs to be a real Strategic Plan to wrap around the Mission.

Unfortunately, just as when I was on the board, it seems as though the board is too wrapped up on operational needs to engage in the kind of top-level strategizing and visioning we need. It really ought to let go and leave that kind of stuff to the staff. Specific tasks or initiatives need to be done. But to step up and do a good strategic plan, individual likes of dislikes of specific initiatives need to get put aside. And that seems hard to do. Which is one of the reasons to hire an expensive consultant who can say to individual board members: "It doesn't matter about the 2-meter rule or what the depth of payouts is, focus on the big picture."

It's like the supposed SWOT analysis the board did some time ago - I'm not sure if it really happened or when, but I am told it did. A SWOT analysis should never be done without being done in the context of what it's for - it's done in the context of where an organization is not and where it wants to move to. I saw a copy of the SWOT analysis, but it was without any such context. For all I know it was done without such context. (Maybe not? If so I'd love to know what the wording of the context was.) An external, paid consultant would definitely not have let that happen.

I guess my point is that the PDGA is a big enough business that its board needs to be a board, not operational. And its members should not be coming on with specific, precise accomplishments to get done that are operational, but with the attitude that 7 very talented people are going to share their thoughts and visions and guide the organization's strategic movement: Not make detailed decisions about next year's tour.

Wowzers!

Post of the year in my book!

Of course I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that some of the Board's operational time is spent trying to... clean up messes left for them by... others. If they didn't have to do that just think how much time they could spend developing a strategic plan...

Hey did you hear that the Board had to vote on whether or not to give Hawk a free membership? Now personally, I'd say that rates somewhere in the top 10 of wasted time items.

Hey Pat,

Could you do me a favor, could you run to the moderator and tell them BigE said I lack intelligence, it hurt my feelin's. By the way, in terms of humor, John is much better...

Looks like Bruce also reached the character limit and subsequently we lost what he wanted to say. :D

All I wanted to say is, looks like the message board needs a cloture rule! :D

Hey Pat,

Could you do me a favor, could you run to the moderator and tell them BigE said I lack intelligence, it hurt my feelin's. By the way, in terms of humor, John is much better...



I am not funny :(

Looks like Bruce also reached the character limit and subsequently we lost what he wanted to say. :D

All I wanted to say is, looks like the message board needs a cloture rule! :D



That's funny/great but we already know Pat wins by a landslide. :D

A vote for Pat is A vote for A ra-


tional voice in the PDGA BOD's....... :D

Good read John,
You type so fast. :)

Usually, Senior, an organization has a Vision and a Mission, as the top level of a strategic plan, which itself contains Strategic Objectives, and then various Goals or Benchmarks on the way to measure movement toward objectives, and perhaps a number of potential Strategic Initiatives are decided upon to move in the direction of the objectives. (Language can vary.)

When it comes to the tasks part, they are best not in the mission, which really should be a very general statement.

What is needed, and has been for some time, is some serious strategic planning. I think the problem is, though, that for it to be done right means hiring a pretty expensive consultant to manage the process. Our tendency would be to do it with knowledge inside the heads of our disc golfing community, which usually means getting it cheap. And with this stuff, you get what you pay for, especially when you DIY.

I don't think the Mission necessary needs changed (although going through a planning process would result in that) so much as there needs to be a real Strategic Plan to wrap around the Mission.

Unfortunately, just as when I was on the board, it seems as though the board is too wrapped up on operational needs to engage in the kind of top-level strategizing and visioning we need. It really ought to let go and leave that kind of stuff to the staff. Specific tasks or initiatives need to be done. But to step up and do a good strategic plan, individual likes of dislikes of specific initiatives need to get put aside. And that seems hard to do. Which is one of the reasons to hire an expensive consultant who can say to individual board members: "It doesn't matter about the 2-meter rule or what the depth of payouts is, focus on the big picture."





up to this point, Terry and I are in remarkable agreement. i wish he would have stopped here.





It's like the supposed SWOT analysis the board did some time ago - I'm not sure if it really happened or when, but I am told it did. A SWOT analysis should never be done without being done in the context of what it's for - it's done in the context of where an organization is not and where it wants to move to. I saw a copy of the SWOT analysis, but it was without any such context. For all I know it was done without such context. (Maybe not? If so I'd love to know what the wording of the context was.) An external, paid consultant would definitely not have let that happen.

hey dude, it WAS out of context! to say you need a paid consultant to do a sowt analysis is silly. talk about overkill and spending needless money. do you think we/i did that analysis "just because"? ask the other BoD members what they added to it at the summit when we did it. before belittling our efforts, please share w2ith us ANY similar analysis, complete or incomplete, that you may have initiated will you were a Director.

btw, Terry, is it an accident that your new initials are:

<font size=+50><font color="green">T</font></font>erry
<font size=+50><font color="green">H</font></font>ussein
<font size=+50><font color="green">C</font></font>alhoun
?

to say you need a paid consultant to do a sowt analysis is silly. talk about overkill and spending needless money. do you think we/i did that analysis "just because"? ask the other BoD members what they added to it at the summit when we did it. before belittling our efforts, please share w2ith us ANY similar analysis, complete or incomplete, that you may have initiated will you were a Director.


I wrote that to undertake serious strategic planning the board would need a paid consultant. Then, when talking about the SWOT, I noted that a paid consultant would not have permitted it to happen in the absence of clear desired path from the present to a future state. I did not say that to do a SWOT requires a paid consultant, in fact in an about-to-be-published monograph on Climate Action Planning for college campuses, I wrote guidelines for doing a SWOT without a consultant.

It's truly amazing how you can confuse and conflate things to mean something else entirely, like your allegation I was belittling the current board's effort. Since any reasonable read of my statements makes it clear that I consider the current board's efforts much like the board I was on, there is obviously no such belittlement. Thankfully, only you will read it that way - although one of two of your sycophants may chime in and say they did, too, after getting their instructions from your "take.". (That there's Bush administration tactics, son.) :cool:

Was there a clear delineation of the current state of the PDGA and where it was desired that the PDGA move, when that SWOT was done, or not?

As for any SWOTs, or any other analysis, survey, whatever, that I participated in when I was on the board, d'oh, ask the staff for the PDGA records, man. Asking for things on DISCussion that have have a far more reasonably path of access is just one example of why I hope you are not re-elected. Any other board member who wanted something like that would ask staff. Why not you?

You don't need a "clear desired path from the present to a future state" to do a SWOT. In fact, usually a SWOT analysis presents you with a direction. What about a "path" is required to list strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? You could do a SWOT for a multitude of companies without knowing their "vision" or "future path". The 2 are unrelated.

you criticized my work for missing a component. a component that arguably may or may not be needed.

Since any reasonable read of my statements makes it clear that I consider the current board's efforts much like the board I was on, there is obviously no such belittlement.

there is nothing wrong with belittling certain aspects of one's own time on the Board. i know i do. maybe your's was perfect in your eyes.

I agree that the above MS needs to be updated. I was bit surprised when I first read this and the lack of simple explanations of the how to's. For example expanding on the "encourage competitive growth" part... Or the Preparation of growth..... We could also include some addtional tasks not included in the current statement. For example:

Partner with our official publication to reach a common goal for the advertisment, publicising, and public outreach of our sport and other flying disc related sports...

I just made that up off the top of my head...... But maybe you get the point....


Usually, Senior, an organization has a Vision and a Mission, as the top level of a strategic plan, which itself contains Strategic Objectives, and then various Goals or Benchmarks on the way to measure movement toward objectives, and perhaps a number of potential Strategic Initiatives are decided upon to move in the direction of the objectives. (Language can vary.)

When it comes to the tasks part, they are best not in the mission, which really should be a very general statement.

What is needed, and has been for some time, is some serious strategic planning. I think the problem is, though, that for it to be done right means hiring a pretty expensive consultant to manage the process. Our tendency would be to do it with knowledge inside the heads of our disc golfing community, which usually means getting it cheap. And with this stuff, you get what you pay for, especially when you DIY.

I don't think the Mission necessary needs changed (although going through a planning process would result in that) so much as there needs to be a real Strategic Plan to wrap around the Mission.

Unfortunately, just as when I was on the board, it seems as though the board is too wrapped up on operational needs to engage in the kind of top-level strategizing and visioning we need. It really ought to let go and leave that kind of stuff to the staff. Specific tasks or initiatives need to be done. But to step up and do a good strategic plan, individual likes of dislikes of specific initiatives need to get put aside. And that seems hard to do. Which is one of the reasons to hire an expensive consultant who can say to individual board members: "It doesn't matter about the 2-meter rule or what the depth of payouts is, focus on the big picture."

It's like the supposed SWOT analysis the board did some time ago - I'm not sure if it really happened or when, but I am told it did. A SWOT analysis should never be done without being done in the context of what it's for - it's done in the context of where an organization is not and where it wants to move to. I saw a copy of the SWOT analysis, but it was without any such context. For all I know it was done without such context. (Maybe not? If so I'd love to know what the wording of the context was.) An external, paid consultant would definitely not have let that happen.

I guess my point is that the PDGA is a big enough business that its board needs to be a board, not operational. And its members should not be coming on with specific, precise accomplishments to get done that are operational, but with the attitude that 7 very talented people are going to share their thoughts and visions and guide the organization's strategic movement: Not make detailed decisions about next year's tour.



From my favorite, Wikipedia....


SWOTs are used as inputs to the creative generation of possible strategies, by asking and answering each of the following four questions, many times:

How can we Use each Strength?
How can we Stop each Weakness?
How can we Exploit each Opportunity?
How can we Defend against each Threat?
Ideally a cross-functional team or a task force that represents a broad range of perspectives should carry out the SWOT analysis. For example, a SWOT team may include an accountant, a salesperson, an executive manager, an engineer, and an ombudsman.

are you talking to me or Hot Tub?

how about the funny statements where some condemned me for wanting to release information, then voted 7-0 to release it. makes you kinda wonder what the basis for their original objection was, doesnt it. so much irony :)



The actions of the other members would show a respect for the established guidelines and a willingness to re-examine and change those processes that are no longer deemed appropriate under the current circumstances.

terry, not colin.

I will not vote for someone who continually writes without bothering to use proper capitalization, regardless of how well phrased their sentences may be.

You may take that to mean whatever you wish, but all it really means is that it bugs the heck out of me.

Perhaps irritation is the goal; I don't know ...

That's too bad...Sandalman's penmanship is really nice though.

caps take additional dexterity, especially with the little fingers. i'm prety good with three fingers and a thumb when i try to get that last one involved, well, thind's startto get funkyt.

at least you have thought about it and have a reason :)

i'm prety good with three fingers and a thumb ...


Hmm, I was beginning to question whether some of the posters on this thread (both sides of the argument) had opposable thumbs. Thanks for clearing that up. :p

no problem , fellow lefty. anhysers rule, and they are ALL lefty holes!

You don't need a "clear desired path from the present to a future state" to do a SWOT. In fact, usually a SWOT analysis presents you with a direction. What about a "path" is required to list strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? You could do a SWOT for a multitude of companies without knowing their "vision" or "future path". The 2 are unrelated.


Yeah, right, "28003" (at least two clicks away from Colin Furrow) and both my 15 years experience working for a planning organization and Wikipedia are wrong. I quote from Wikipedia, which isn't bad on this right now (and people pay me good money to write about this stuff - did I mention that?): "If SWOT analysis does not start with defining a desired end state or objective, it runs the risk of being useless."

If your "path" is to die, then oxygen is a weakness. If it is to live, then oxygen is a strength. D'oh! (Unless you wish to die from immolation, of course. Dang, don't you just hate nuances? If so, vote for McCain!) The "path" matters.

Merciful "P.S." - a SWOT without the path is indeed an "environmental scan," maybe even useful, but it is not a useful SWOT.

Yo! Bring me my pedestal!!

LOL...you crack me up Terry. Very entertaining to read your posts...whether I care about the thread subject or not :D

Let's wish the present and future BoD member Pat Brenner good luck at The Vibram Open. Good Luck Filthy Feets!

I don't know, by his passing on of rumors, he doesn't stand a chance against those innova players...

You have noticed that most innova pencils usually have an eraser attached to the top. :p

You have noticed that most innova pencils usually have an eraser attached to the top. :p



I thought it was to correct the scorecard after the Discraft guys gave it to you with the wrong scores on it. :eek:

You have noticed that most innova pencils usually have an eraser attached to the top. :p



I thought it was to correct the scorecard after the Discraft guys gave it to you with the wrong scores on it. :eek:



I'm still waiting to see how he gets the hamsters to you for that remark :D :eek: :o:D

I'm still waiting to see how he gets the hamsters to you for that remark :D :eek: :o:D



The eraser tip kind of looks like a Hampster vittle and can be used for luring unsuspecting furry rodents into places that they dare not travel unless enticed. :eek:

http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/5180/hpim0900hs1.jpg

Any initiatives on your mind for your "lame duck" period, sandalman? Strike while the iron is hot. . . :D

not really, no. my disc golf plans are the same for the next couple years regardless. i'm looking forward to having some additional time free to play, to finally implement an idea for a score-based rankings system, and a couple/few other ideas.

best wishes and luck to the incoming BoD, and thanks for voting, everyone!

not really, no. my disc golf plans are the same for the next couple years regardless. i'm looking forward to having some additional time free to play, to finally implement an idea for a score-based rankings system, and a couple/few other ideas.

best wishes and luck to the incoming BoD, and thanks for voting, everyone!



well at least the ADGA can get your full attention once again ;)

<font color="blue"> [personal attacks deleted] </font>

Dang. It's sour grapes about the election. Maybe the people who were elected, along with the appointee, will be just what the PDGA needs.

Me, I just want to rewrite the entire PDGA Documentation, for a fee, cause it's hard work and I know how to use a semi-colon. And lead the PDGA's course building crew, which will tour the country with pretty big equipment building courses. Chipper, splitter, chainsaws, strong young guys, me. I get the best chainsaw.

No beer till 4. Tough love baby.

I was also thinking about a little rant regarding the PDGA Board's lack of even geographical representation, but this may have already been discussed among the sour grape eaters like me.

Wow these grapes are sour.

Well at least you get to play disc golf. I have never been a fan of certain candidates, especially when it comes to voting. The best lesson to be learned here is that the favorite, or most household name, or maybe the guy who didn't say too much, whatever....

He gets elected, not the candidates who play the role of anti-establishment and the like.... It plain and simple politics.

I myself will (and again, mind you) gloat for the second time.

Every guy I voted for got in. Why? Go back and read the statements from each candidate...... Well golly gee, looks we have some winners...... :eek:

PS I had to vote for Matt Gillis because I know he will do a great job ! Go NorCal......

Hey I'm on probation and if I transgress again, I'm banned for, I think, three weeks. Three whole weeks. If I behave for three months I can misbehave again, but just once.

The cycle continues.

I guess I see what happens when you skirt the edge. I'm still not sure if "Goofball" or "You're so stoopid" or "Doofus" earned a three-month probation. See, it's dangerous to use multiple derogatory nous in one post, even relatively innocuous ones. I used to be pretty sure that "Goofball" was okay, but now?

It's a tricky game. If you've been pitching in the league for a while some umpires will give you the strike on the breaking ball that's maybe a little out of the strike zone. The same words can be taken different ways. Remember Ed Asner on Saturday Night Live leaving the nuclear power plant he ran, telling his employees, "Remember, you can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor."

And he leaves, and the employees ask each other, "Did he mean, we can put as much water in it as we want, or that we have to watch out not to put too much water in?" They're not sure.

Scene changes to Ed Asner on a vacation island with his wife, and a mushroom cloud emerges on the horizon, after an explosion, and he says to his wife, "You can't look at a mushroom cloud too long."

wow, i read it once but missed the attack. o well, shoulda kept a copy. perhaps if we ask nicely the reasoning might be understood, so that it does not happen again.

philosophical question: is deleting a post the internet equivalent of burning books?

The moderation team very kindly e-mailed me a full copy of my edited post along with the notice of probation. Can't complain. Wasn't my best work anyway.

You gotta admit, the rules are applied evenly when you can't even mildly personally attack Michael Kernan, who's a big goofball.

Sorry, but I still gotta know if goofball is okay. If you can't call people goofballs, not only is humanity doomed, I'll need an acceptable synonym, just to keep typing.

Stop looking at me like that.

hi jason, haven't heard from you in a while, did goofball get you banned?

remember: a self-proclaimed goofball can call out another goofball
and a doofus can call another doofus, doofus; but, a goofball can't call a non-goofball a doofus. understand?

edit to say i never understood semi-colons...

Keep trying jason, you can do it!!!! :D I imagine you will be banned sooner than later....

Jason, its the way you phrase it when you call somebody a goofball that gets you in trouble, not the simple act of calling them a goofball. I read your deleted post before it was wisked away and if I was the person involved I would have been glad to see it removed. So the next time you want to call someone a goofball call them a goofball nicely and the goofballs won't come crying to the Mods in their own goofball ways.... Did I goofball that up? Oh well..... I'm just a big goofball.....

http://www1.umn.edu/techpub/img/assets/22113/goofball_gareb.jpg