Spencer’s Reviews > Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA > Status Update

Helms reminded the president that the CIA was barred from spying on Americans. He says Johnson told him: “I’m quite aware of that. What I want for you is to pursue this matter, and to do what is necessary to track down the foreign communists who are behind this intolerable interference in our domestic affairs.” It is likely that LBJ expressed himself more plainly.

The president told McCone to set up a domestic task force to stop the flow of secrets from the government to the newspapers. The order violated the agency’s charter, which specifically prohibits domestic spying. Long before Nixon created his “plumbers” unit of CIA veterans to stop news leaks, Kennedy used the agency to spy on Americans.

Critchfield quickly became interested in the Ba’ath Party of Iraq after its thugs tried to kill Qasim in a bungled gun battle. His officers ran another failed assassination plot, using a poisoned handkerchief, an idea that was endorsed all the way up the CIA’s chain of command. It took five more years, but the agency finally backed a successful coup in Iraq in the name of American influence.

Bissell stated it plainly: “Many of us who joined the CIA did not feel bound in the actions we took as staff members to observe all the ethical rules.” He and his colleagues were prepared to lie to the president to protect the agency’s image. And their lies had lasting consequences.

The ability to represent failure as success was becoming a CIA tradition. The agency’s unwillingness to learn from its mistakes became a permanent part of its culture. The CIA’s covert operators never wrote “lessons-learned” studies. Even today there are few if any rules or procedures for producing them.