Apr 28 2006
North of the Rio Grande
Back about 2000 years ago, the Roman senate had an interesting law. You could raise up an army and go conquer Gaul or Briton for the greater glory of Rome, and all was well and good. But you couldn’t bring the army (as a functioning unit) back south of the Rubicon river, a river which seperates the “boot” of Italy from mainland Europe. The first guy to violate this law was Julius Ceasar, and it’s where we get the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” from. When told that he was violating the law and that he was going to be arrested, he also invented the childhood taunt “Oh yeah? You and what army?”
Here in the US, we have a similiar situation. We tell the CIA and DIA and etc. that they can go out and kill, bribe, and blackmail leaders of other countries, interfere with free elections, and so on, all for the greater glory of the United States (or at least the greater profit of it’s corporations). But they can’t bring that behavior back north of the Rio Grande- they can’t do that sort of thing here. I’ve always expected that this law works about as well now as it did for the Roman Senate (i.e. not at all).
Which is why, unlike Billmon, I am not the least bit surprised or confused at the news that the CIA chief has been implicated in a prostitute ring supplying prostitutes to elected officials and members of goverment. I mean, can you think of a better way to get blackmail on these people? We wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover the CIA running a prostitution ring in Bogota, or Beijing, or even Berlin. Why are we surprised when they use their skills at home?
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The link to the CIA chief is at best entirely speculative. The Wall Street Journal makes no mention of anything even close. Harper’s mentions that he has learned that the FBI is investigating a number of other lawmakers, including one who holds a high-ranking intelligence post. From there the Muckracker guy speculates that he is reffering to the CIA director. From there, to say that he is not only involved but running the prostitute ring (a ring that as best I can tell, had only one customer) is even more speculation. I’m not saying he’s not involved, but lets wait for some evidence before casting too much blame about.
Beyond TheHawk’s points, I’d also like to note that there are lots of good obvious motivation to run a prostitution ring without political spookiness — and there would certainly be cleaner and easier ways to get blackmail material when the entirity of the CIA is at your disposal.
Prostitution isn’t a big money maker- not in the way the CIA is interested in. The problem is that it’s a retail business. Retail businesses means lots of hands-on management sort of work. Worse yet, it’s a retail business with a low barrier to entry- which means low margins. If you want to make the big bucks- and I’m talking about the fund your own wars or bribe entire goverments sort of big bucks here- you need something with a higher barrier to entry and you want to be doing wholesale, not retail, business. Which is why the CIA is all over drug and weapon smuggling, but they don’t do much at the street level.
There are only three things I see the CIA being interested in: money, power/leverage, and information. All three overlap like a Venn diagram, I comment. I don’t see the CIA running prostitution rings for the money, there just isn’t enough money in it. Which leaves power and information. Information- hoping your clients spill state secrets during pillow talk, is a good reason to be running prostitute rings in Berlin, Beijing, and Bogota. Places where their official, legal access is limited or non-existant. But this is Washington D.C. The CIA doesn’t have to trick the information out of, for example, the OMB, they can just request it. Yes, there’s a fair bit of paperwork involved- but it’s still a heck of a lot less work than setting up a prostitute ring.
That leaves power. A.k.a. blackmail.
As much as all your points are true, there still is no evidence that the CIA was in any way running a prostitution ring. There is only speculation that the FBI might be investigating the CIA chief for possible involvement. This does not in any way say that they even think the CIA was running it. In fact so far it seems to have been run by civilian defense contractors out to bribe lawmakers. So again, until there’s any actual evidence of involvement, this is all paranoid speculation.