Learning to Read
When I was a first-year law student, our professors warned us repeatedly about relying on what they used to call "newspaper jurisprudence", that is to say, press accounts of an incident, to form a professional opinion. Thus, we were instructed to gather the facts for ourselves, in order to proceed responsibly.
Obviously, the CIA does not subscribe to this operating procedure, given the Benghazi fiasco. It has come to light that "the Company" relied on newspaper reports on the unrest there previously to the attack, and passed it on to the rest of the American government as good, solid intelligence. Except, in this case, the reporting was deeply flawed, and so was the CIA's assessment of the situation. Simply put, the Agency did not do its job of data-gathering and analysis, thereby misleading its government.
By all accounts, this is not the first time that the CIA has done a poor job in this regard. There have been cases in which it has failed to read or has misread the press of a foreign country, missing critical information that was readily available to the general public.
As I've said before, there's a lot of propaganda that passes for truth in American media. Too many movies and TV shows that purport to portray American institutions as superior to those of the rest of the world.
"Not really", my son would say.
Obviously, the CIA does not subscribe to this operating procedure, given the Benghazi fiasco. It has come to light that "the Company" relied on newspaper reports on the unrest there previously to the attack, and passed it on to the rest of the American government as good, solid intelligence. Except, in this case, the reporting was deeply flawed, and so was the CIA's assessment of the situation. Simply put, the Agency did not do its job of data-gathering and analysis, thereby misleading its government.
By all accounts, this is not the first time that the CIA has done a poor job in this regard. There have been cases in which it has failed to read or has misread the press of a foreign country, missing critical information that was readily available to the general public.
As I've said before, there's a lot of propaganda that passes for truth in American media. Too many movies and TV shows that purport to portray American institutions as superior to those of the rest of the world.
"Not really", my son would say.
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