We did not need the CIA and like everything else, the intel community should have faced a massive draw down in 1946...
We did not have anything beyond standard military intelligence formations before WWII.
Henry Stimson was mocked for his comment that “gentlemen don’t read other people’s mail”.
What people failed to note is the other side of his morality. When someone took advantage of that basic American decency and sucker punched us, he came back as Secretary of War and built a 16 million man army, the Manhattan project and dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. When Patton was under fire for the slapping incident, Stimson decided he would stay on duty and went and told the Senate as much.
Our turn towards British inspired OSS/CIA models turned America into untrustworthy sneaks rather than the John Wayne mentality we should have.
I agree with you there. At some point after WWI, the progressive-globalists-empire-builders steadily took control of our country, and we turned into an empire, always at war somewhere. And for that, you need a security state.
Its in over-drive now.
I'm reevaluating so much of what I thought I knew after the revelations of the last few years. Your comments are getting me to think about how maybe the introduction of the CIA wasn't a good thing. I've known about many of their transgressions (Iran, Guatemala, etc) for a long time, but I always thought that it was done with a higher purpose of defending the West from Communism. Now I'm not so sure that is completely what it was about. Confusing times.