Oh look. Babbys first rage against the machine.

>>53830
Complacent is complicity.

No. Intelligence is important, they do actually foil attacks and they also manage to find out a lot about hostile nations that would not otherwise be known and are thus able to provide useful information for the nation to act on.

>If people would know what happens beyond the tidbits, which sometimes flow to the surface, I think there would be constant rioting for months.

You would think that the information available to the Australian public regarding the deals that politicians are making with mining companies and the like would cause rioting for months but it really doesn't, nobody even cared that the Prime Minister was in the Panama papers.

>There is no way that they are compatible with a transparent democracy.

I don't really care for democracy anyway.

Yes, of course, all "secret services" should be forbbiden. The existence of such services in countries is a crime against human rights.

The thing is, countries do intelligence and counter-intelligence efforts because every other country does them too.
It's shit but the better your intelligence agency is the more protected you are from foreign intelligence agencies.
Abolishing your agency is like consciously not wearing a condom at a gay orgy. You're there because you got kidnapped, but you might as well protect yourself while you're there.

>They wield immense power and are basically unelected antidemocratic power structures, which outlive elected officials. There is no control, they majorly fuck up all the time

Well, the same could be said about the judicial system. A bureaucratic machine of unelected officials who wield great power isn't necessarily a bad thing, ultimately it has to do with their scope of operations. If you don't live in the American west, chances are your local police chief isn't elected either and this doesn't necessarily mean he's a subversive anti-democratic element. Certain nations certainly have secret agencies that are a fundamental threat or impediment to their freedom and civil rights, notably the USA and Russia. In the later's case, they've successfully prevented a functional democratic system from coming into being. In the former's, well, I guess we all know.
I suppose it is different for global superpowers and for secondary nations whose state of military-intelligence readiness isn't as relevant.

>If people would know what happens beyond the tidbits, which sometimes flow to the surface, I think there would be constant rioting for months. There is no way that they are compatible with a transparent democracy.

Well, I don't recall any great riots over the NSA being exposed as running a macabre system of total surveillance of the American populace. It seems relatively trivial events will cause the American nation to go up in flames, while this sort of thing is accepted.

On our own Portuguese intelligence services, they seem to be limited to fighting organized crime, counter-espionage and terrorism. We haven't had a terror attack on Portuguese citizens since some Armenians killed a Portuguese cop while massacring the Turkish embassy - so they must be successful on that end.
I know there were recently some notable legal troubles within the secret services, notably improper use of channels, judicial overreach and so on - but I guess hardly anything that would be truly shocking. Ultimately it's just petty corruption that the judiciary seems to be punishing. I'm afraid we have bigger threats to our freedom and liberties than the SIS.

>>53873

>judicial system

They operate in public, though. You can appeal a sentence, you have legal councel, the rules (e.g. the law) is clearly laid out.

>your local police chief isn't elected either and this doesn't necessarily mean he's a subversive anti-democratic element

Whats important is the element of secrecy. Cops are (somtimes, admittely) eventually brought to justice, with agents it's a completely different story. They get exchanged for favours or other agents and sent back to their home countries or in the case of domestic agents are usually demoted or even given a golden parachute. Here in Germany not one single official of our domestic secret service was held accountable for the scandal around the terrorist NSU organisation, they burned documents (the rest, hilariously enough, is longer locked away than the documents around JFK, more than a 100 years) and jack shit happened at all.

The key difference really is that all the above are theoretically able to be held accountable by the public. Not so much with anything a secret service does.

>Well, I don't recall any great riots over the NSA being exposed

Dude, you're misinformed. Literally everyone who has any merit in this threw a major hissy fit. Noone touches crypto from NIST anymore, we completely replaced HTTP with HTTPS, pretty much all of the internet traffic now is encrypted. They got caught with their pants down and paid for it. The huge data collection facility in Utah is also a result of this, since they can't monitor everything as easily anymore, minus the SIGINT. I remember even american companies like Google being majorly pissed, that they tapped their fiber lines.

>counter-espionage and terrorism. We haven't had a terror attack on Portuguese citizens since some Armenians killed a Portuguese cop while massacring the Turkish embassy - so they must be successful on that end.

True, but thats a job a federal police force could just do aswell, if we're being honest, and also be held accountable by the public.

>>53880

>One of the more controversial subjects to come to light during the NSU murder trial was the level of cooperation and support that neo-Nazi informants and organizations received from the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany's domestic security agency. The BfV began cultivating informants from Germany's neo-Nazi groups in the early and mid-1990s to deal with the rise in anti-immigrant crime like the Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots of 1992. During the trial it became clear that BfV informants were aware or potentially aware of the homicides and other crimes attributed to the NSU and that this information was not shared with local police either accidentally or purposefully.[39] All attempts made by the victims' legal team to examine this relationship have been buried by the prosecution team as irrelevant to the scope of the murder trial.[40]

Very macabre stuff but I suppose Germany is its own case due to historical and geopolitical reasons.

>True, but thats a job a federal police force could just do aswell, if we're being honest, and also be held accountable by the public.

The work of the Portuguese secret services is impossible for a federal police force here - as we are not a federation :DD Joges aside, if you have a department of a federal police force doing counter-espionage and anti-terror actions that must be of a classified nature - you have a secret service. If our secret services were absorved as part of our national gendarmerie , nothing would really change.
The real truth in all of this is that these sorts of structures by their very nature are prone to corruption. Lack of transparency leads to this, but there's no way for a state to do certain things with complete transparency. Perhaps it would even be possible for Portugal to entirely forgo its secret services, but only because it is so attached to a wider NATO and EU structure. Given we wouldn't leave these wider structures, all our country would be doing is to hand over that work of counter-espionage to other entities in other nations. Which I guess would defeat the purpose of counter-espionage.

>with agents it's a completely different story

Well, dunno the last head of the secret services here got handed a 4 year prison sentence for selling information to companies.

On the NSA scandal thing, I know that certain people did become deeply concerned about all this, but it's not like it was pushed into political change. The large majority of people didn't give a shit. It would seem like it's the most pressing threat to amerigan freedumbs yet who cares.
I used to deeply care about personal privacy and remember extensively watching videos and talks about NSA glow in the dark niggery but now I think it's some natural consequence of the development of technology. Possibly inevitable.

>>53883

>Very macabre stuff

The Verfassungsschutz was basically a nazi aftermath organisation and is still a right-wing organisation until this day. They're famous for notoriously and "accidentally" destroying files concerning their involvement with such topics.

>>53889

>The Verfassungsschutz was basically a nazi aftermath organisation and is still a right-wing organisation until this day. They're famous for notoriously and "accidentally" destroying files concerning their involvement with such topics.

Maybe they could do some good and pay a nazi-ossi to suicide Habeck and Baerbock. Otherwise, we'll have no-nations-no-borders come autumn.

>>53890
You know, I would love to see the CDU getting btfo for their horrible way of "ruling" this country, but the realistic alternative is so bad that I really can't think of any proper way out. Maybe if all politicans died at once and we could start from scratch again.

>If people would know what happens beyond the tidbits

I think there's already a lot of information out there, but people just don't care & there's probably also efforts by the agencies to memory-hole it. It's an endless rabbithole of research, and then all you're likely getting for it is being ostracized as a conspiracy nut by the vast majority of people so it's understandable that few people bother.
But I've been interested in it for a while, so I'll take this thread as a cue to finally read a bit more.

If anybody has any interesting books/resources (especially beyond CIA), please share.

It's not a problem with that they exist so much as how they are used. The fact they're effectively above the law and unaccountable and used for doing shady shit is the problem. The concept of intelligence services is fine and necessary. It's practically like asking if we should abolish DoD at this point. Yeah, it's awful what DoD gets used for, but you're not getting rid of the department of war while every other country has one.

>>53919
Thanks for your books. Here are a couple from me.

>>53919
Finished Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties yesterday.
The author originally planned to write an article for a magazine but ended up getting sucked into the research since he uncovered some inconsistencies in the "official" narrative of the Tate-LaBianca murders orchestrated by Manson as they are presented in Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter" book.
There's lots of details and different leads that the author follows but IMO the main argument for possible secret service involvement w/ Manson is that he and the members of the family were arrested many times before the murders but then let go scot-free, so that they could commit a crime that would discredit the counterculture, similar to how FBI's COINTELPRO & CIA's CHAOS worked at that time to discredit leftist and Black Panther movements.
There are also parallels drawn to CIA's MKULTRA programs of mind control with Manson's ability to control the members of the family through LSD & hypnosis, but the research in that direction is more spurious (and the author aknowledges this).
Because of the failure to provide conclusive proofs in that direction it was a bit disappointing but would definitely recommend the book, even as a casual read, it's a real pageturner.

Probably gonna read attached one next, that or The Shadow Warriors: O.S.S. And The Origins Of The C.I.A by Bradley F. Smith (PDF is on libgen but too large to attach here)

>>53966
Thx, gonna check these out. The Harald Gröhler one looks kinda sus going by the single amazon rating tho, haha

Saw The Patroits (Les Patriotes) yesterday. Great film, if you're interested in how the HUMINT side works. Historically semi-accurate, but especially the agent training and source acquisition parts are super insightful.

Post some kgb reads pl0x

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/secrecythefilm

A documentary on secrecy. Peter Galison is involved, a well known historian. Should be an interesting and insightful documentary. The trailer takes on things like secrecy in relation to security, accountability etc . but the women also shows that game theory is involved in intelligence service thinking it seems.

>>54056
Here are a few that seemed interesting from my casual research. Christopher Andrew's (who's also the official historian of MI5) works seem to be the most standard ones, as he worked together with KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin, he also has a number of other books on KGB with the double agent Oleg Gordievsky. Supposedly rather dry stuff though.

The Litvinenko one is actually about FSB, but probably also interesting (and comparatively short).

I'll try to post more if I manage to delve deeper into the topic.

>>54056
https://www.amazon.com/State-Within-Russia-Present-Future/dp/0374527385
Read this book, posted about it on history thread. Good stuff.

>>54149
Don't know much about author, but recently she had an interview with obvious LARPer pretending to be general of Foreign Intelligence Service. Says a lot about professionalism.

>>54056
https://www.amazon.com/KGB-Plays-Chess-Soviet-Secret/dp/1888690755
Haven't read it myself though.

>>54175
Do you have a link for this interview?

>>54178
If you speak Russian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJdFCcGjk08

>>54040
Finished The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government by David Talbot
Had some qualms during the first few chapters because of the many digressions but enjoyed it afterwards. It's split into three parts, first one dealing with Dulles' involvement in opening of "ratlines" and recruitment of Nazis during the aftermath of WW2, e.g. Reinhard Gehlen who would later become the director of the German BND. The author also accuses Dulles of suppressing information about the Holocaust during the War.
The second section deals with Dulles' many personal & professional connections, especially in the American "national security"/military-industrial complex, as well as a selection of the CIA ops and coups they were involved in, leading up to a discussion of the JFK assassination and Dulles' probable involvement in the last section. This one's somewhat short, but I suppose there are plenty of books that deal with this subject exclusively.
Overall liked it but at times the writing felt a bit too polemic & narrative-driven, where a more impartial view might have been more appropriate.

Next reading a book about the history of the NSU, a German Neonazi terrorist group, and allegations of either incompetence or complicity of the German secret services due to the long and unsuccessful investigations.

>>54260

>Origins
>this section is empty

Lol English wiki says little. I'm surprised this was happening so recently, or maybe partly just because of fueling and turning a blind eye to far right movements throughout Europe for so long under GLADIO since they served a useful purpose then. Is it organic or was the NSU basically just blowback like the Mujahideen became?

>>54272

>Is it organic or was the NSU basically just blowback like the Mujahideen became?

Sort of both. When one of the core members (Mundlos) of the group was in the Bundeswehr, the MAD tried to recruit him, out of a tip from the Verfassungschutz, which failed. Afterwards, the MAD pretty much just ignored an ideologically firm nazi in the military until the end of his mandatory service. This were the 90s, mind you, but who knows if it's any different today.

Later the Verfassungsschutz successfully recruited him and from there it metastasized. They give you a lot of room and ressources as a source (like money, contacts and even tips when the cops are about to raid you), which he successfully used to build up a cell with some of his old friends, which then, under the full knowledge of the VS, goes on to kill and bomb turks, a police officer (where a fucking VS agent was present at the crime scene, and mysteriously even some fbi agents in the same town at the day) and rob a couple banks. Apparently they hid in plain sight and were wll know in the local saxonian/thuringian scene, ditto for the VS, because they're always involved when anything nazi happens in Germany.

In the end two of the group killed themselves, the third burned evidence, the VS shredded files and a couple heads rolled (not that any secret service employee has gone to jail, like always), but no real organisational changes were made. So, more or less blowback, but semi-organic.

>>54288
Are those the proven happenings? I always wonder what's the end goal behind that.
I mean, there wasn't even any actual terrorism, it was just a series of murders with a xenophobic motive.
The NSU was a bunch of serial killers, but to what end?

>>54289
Yes, serial killings, bombs, robberies and responsibility claims thereof with a political motive are certainly terrorism.

Rights are not given but taken. If you have no will and power to take them - you have no rights. The fact that you are not an actual physical slave in chains is not granted, it was taken by your ancestors with great sacrifices, through collective work and social tension. Edgy, yeah.

>>54272
We do have "organic" Nazis here, fresh from Germany, who would have thought.
Though there are notoriously many informers in those circles who are on the Verfassungsschutz payroll but the money they receive is nothing to write home about afaik. E.g. Tino Brandt, one of the most high profile informers, is estimated to have receieved ~100.000€ over ~7 years or so. Apparently the VS also tips them off about police raids sometimes so they can keep working for them, but that's about it I'd assume.

>>54288
If you want to spin the conspiracy angle, you gotta come up with something more substantial.
From what I can tell the reason they didn't get caught earlier is mostly just incompetence & the bureaucratic mess due to the amount of police and VS agencies from the different federal states involved without any proper organization and cooperation.

>>54289

>Are those the proven happenings?

Nod really, there's no real evidence that Mundlos was "recruited" or that the VS had "full knowledge" of their crimes.

>but to what end?

I don't think there was any profound endgoal. They were just frustrated Neonazis who got radicalized. Started out with "pranks" like wearing a SS uniform at a KZ, went on to placing fake bombs etc. Then they got raided because of the bomb investigations, so they went into hiding without much planning. The only people who helped them out at that point were other Nazis so they ended up doubling down on their beliefs which led to them committing the murders etc.

>>54290
Well, the weird thing, but also one of the reasons they weren't caught earlier is that they didn't release any responsibility claims for a very long time, basically until they were caught. The CDs with their videos were only sent out by Zschäpe in 2011 when Mundlos & Böhnhardt had already killed themselves as they were getting cornered by the police after another robbery.

>>54289
After 90s I would have no clue. Before 90s it is Years of Lead and Strategy of Tension. Sowing complete chaos, fear, suspicion, distrust among a population accomplishes a political motive at state level either to soften up a target, blame some group which in the 80s and 70s would be bombing people and framing leftist groups, and for other reasons. There are certainly Cold War era links between secret services, the Nazi underground, and far right political movements, the most infamous probably being Bologna train station bombing.

>why would you do that

Well if you want to sabotage growing leftist movements with CCCP symapthies, blaming them for robberies and serial killing serves an obvious purpose. Broadcasting it was far right and blaming them serves to undermine those groups. Or it also is just unorganized stupidity by people who think they'll be the great national front leading to the RaHoWa clueless the severity of damaging their own cause.

>>54260
Finished the book on the NSU. Kind of interesting to read some details about the crimes, but as far as info of secret services goes, I just learned that the Verfassungsschutz aside from the federal level institution cosnsists of state level institutions for each state that don't always cooperate. There is also some info on how they use informers, but the biggest takeaway seems to be that they're rather incompetent. Maybe this is actually in part because the compartmentalization, though that prevents a consolidation of power.

Started the Shadow Warriors book by Bradley F. Smith. First chapter deals with how the success of the German blitzkrieg victory over France in 1940 was attributed to a Nazi "fifth column" of spies and saboteurs. In fact, they didn't really have any sophisticated or particularly effective foreign intelligence, but their alleged success in that regard is what lead to the establishment of the OSS.

Pic related an anecdote about British Secret services, which also were a blueprint for the American OSS, despite in fact not being particularly effective.

>>54469
lmao that reminds me of the scene in "The Men who stare at Goats" where they talk about psi divisions and such, being a spook really is just flinging lots of shit and see what sticks to wall, huh?

>>53829
Sausages and politics. You don't want to know the details. you just want food in your plate and the country running. Secret Services are a sad... but necessary thing. The only problem is when they have too much power like KGB of old.

>>58392
Is there any evidence that they're necessary? In the USA they haven't been able to give forewarning of important events (such as the fall of the USSR taking them completely by surprise) or gave warning and were completely ignored (Bin Laden's attack on the World Trade Center) or said something the current leadership didn't want to hear and were completely ignored (when they told Bush that Iraq didn't have and wasn't trying to produce nuclear weapons). What have been their successes?

>>58430
Destabilizing foreign countries and creating waves of refugees because it's more profitable to certain industries

Creating the illusion of safety for the populace

Maintaining aspects of a US-centric world order

Creating fodder for numerous entertaining conspiracy theories by their very existence regardless their capacity to competently carry any of them out or not

Seriously though the real problem of being an intelligence asset is no one ever notices or congratulates your successes as you're forbidden to secrecy while the whole world gets to blame you for your fuckups. It's one of the most thankless jobs in the world in a sense. I think that The Good Shepherd was one of the best movies ever made about life in the intelligence field during the Cold War in terms of encapsulating the experience of it, minus added layers of paranoia and smoke and mirrors although it made them look kore professional when Cold War was a wild west. Nowadays they're mostly more tame and orderly.

>>58430

>such as the fall of the USSR taking them completely by surprise

To be fair, it also took the KGB by surprise.

>>58430
The mere fact that they failed in their functions prove that they were necessary in first place. A failure of something doesnt precludes its existence, if anything shows that it needs to proper function instead

>said something the current leadership didn't want to hear and were completely ignored (when they told Bush that Iraq didn't have and wasn't trying to produce nuclear weapons

Exactly, this proves how intelligence gathering and security services are needed. The failure resides in the political leadership.

>>54469
Finished Shadow Warriors a while ago - it's amazingly researched but for a relatively casual reader perhaps a bit too detailed at times. Also it really only covers the history of the OSS with its more or less successful WW2 operations (pic related for another fun anecdote). There's very little on its predecessors and successor organizations, particularly almost nothing about the CIA (despite its mention in the title).
Still some interesting takeaways, e.g.
- just how much bureacratic squabbles there were among different US intelligence/military/political organizations (and their other UK & USSR counterparts), as well as more personal intrigue btw various staff
- the roots of the Cold War already being sown by some of the conservative hardliners towards the end of the war (again to some extent Allen Dulles' influence, but the implications for broader policy shouldn't be overestimated)
- the extent to which the OSS (and later I suppose also CIA) were a personal project of "Wild Bill" Donovan (and his eccentricities)
- the connections between the Research & Analysis division with academia, and the "old boys network" between former OSS memebers even after it was abolished

if you look at the pictures of wtc1+2 bursting from top to bottom into dust then you know that secret services should not exist.

they should certainly abolished from imageboards

http://metanoia-films.org/counter-intelligence/#watch

Pretty good docu series about intelligence agencies, the whole "deep state" complex and the crimes of the terrorist state of AmeriKKKa. Sometimes it's a bit too conspiraboomer aesthetically with some clumsy Adam Curtis imitations, but mostly rather grounded and well researched.

>>66776

>AmeriKKKa

The '90s called. It wants its shitty critique back.

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