Should the CIA be Abolished?

The CIA was once the organization that provided the government the information, public and secret, that helped them make policy regarding foreign affairs. Today it has transformed itself into a policy-making organization via selective leaks to the media and publication of politically charged guesses regarding foreign activities.

This situation is intolerable because the CIA is not an elected body and is therefore not accountable to the citizenry. It cannot be changed via elections and apparently will not accept control by elected officials who are presumably superior to it.

Under those circumstances, its product – intelligence gathering – becomes suspect. Public officials will ignore its findings, for good reason, and the public at large will become antagonistic toward its people and will discount not only politicized intelligence but also good intelligence. In effect, the CIA will become a large, expensive, and counterproductive piece of government waste.

From Instapundit:

I don't know a lot about this, but it's possible further evidence that I was right to oppose Harriet Miers' nomination. Well, that's probably unfair -- she opposed destroying the tapes, according to ABC. On the other hand, she'd be a Supreme Court justice now, which would be ticklish. As I argued, the path from White House Counsel to Supreme Court is not one that should be too short.

Should we abolish the CIA? Well, it's probably too early to draw that conclusion.

UPDATE: A different view from reader Thom Wilder:

I think I preferred the cold war days when congress and the press, and the general public for that matter, had far less knowledge/scrutiny of what the CIA does. Secrecy is the only way an intelligence agency can do its job. If it's actions are public, as now, then they become a mere political pawn. Can you imagine how the cold war might have turned out without the CIA or SAS having had the ability to perform it's operations almost entirely out of view and out of scrutiny?

Gitmo and terror interrogation tapes are small potatoes in the larger scheme of things, and they are better off kept secret, as they once were. Just as I don't trust Congress to run a war via legislated, politically-motivated surrender dates and withholding of troop funding, I don't trust them to run an intelligence agency via politically-motivated reports and knee-jerks to things like destroyed interrogation tapes. (I'll take my chances entrusting the Military, and yes the CIA.) I don't even trust Congress to have a single worthwhile thing to say about it one way or the other.

An intelligence agency by definition must operate in secret, otherwise there is little point to it's existence, and little hope of actually gathering good intelligence. The CIA is perhaps now just another role-player in the daily political soap-opera that is our two-party travesty of a government has become, written and executive-produced by the left-biased MSM.

The old system rested on a degree of patriotism and self-control that is no longer present in our political class, including the media. It also depended on a willingness to discipline those who departed from the norms. That, too, is absent.

Rasmussen ran a poll and found that not many believe the NIE report.
Just 18% Believe Iran has Stopped Nuclear Weapons Development Program

Just 18% of American voters believe that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 66% disagree and say Iran has not stopped its nuclear weapons program. Twenty-one percent (21%) of men believe Iran has stopped the weapons development along with 16% of women (see crosstabs).

The survey was conducted following release of a government report saying that Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003.

The Rasmussen Reports survey also found that 67% of American voters believe that Iran remains a threat to the national security of the United States. Only 19% disagree while 14% are not sure.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) believe that the United States should continue sanctions against Iran. Twenty percent (20%) disagree and 21% are not sure.

Forty-seven percent (47%) believe it is Very Likely that Iran will develop nuclear weapons in the future and another 34% believe Iran is Somewhat Likely to do so.

Twenty-nine percent (29%) of liberal voters believe that Iran has stopped its weapons program but 54% disagree.

Among conservatives, just 8% believe Iran has stopped and 81% disagree.

I would say that the people who put the NIE together, and the people who run the CIA have a very serious problem when roughly as many people have faith in theim as have faith in Congress.