John Kiriakou

It's supposed to be a policy support organization.

So the CIA director should never take a position on things like that.

They do, obviously, but they're not supposed to.

When George W. Bush was president in his second term, he changed the structure of the PDB, the President's Daily Brief.

It used to be, for most of the articles, it would be a paragraph of fact and a paragraph of analysis.

he ordered a third paragraph to be added, policy recommendation.

And it was like setting the building on fire.

Nobody wanted to be responsible for telling the president of the United States what he should do about a policy.

That's just not what the CIA was created for.

Behind closed doors, of course, they're going to offer advice.

When I was there,

the Joint Chiefs almost always deferred to the Secretary of Defense, but they were also almost always of one mind.

When we attacked Iraq in 2003, there was a very significant split where it was the Office of the Vice President, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the NSC that were the pro-war faction.

And the anti-war faction- The political people.

The political people.

crazy as it sounds, well, maybe not crazy, CIA, State Department, and Joint Chiefs that were opposed to the war.

I'm not surprised at all.

And I'm not complimenting CIA.

No, no.

I know in the chat, I'm gonna be accused of being a shill for the CIA, which I'm not.