How much can you trust government agencies in times like these? With so many competing intelligence agencies, quite possibly sitting on the brink of WWIII, I don't think it's outlandish for an official source to lie, intentionally or not.
though that's always the problem with non-opensource-secret-intelligence information. we either trust the government/system/organization, or we do not.
The government isn't competent as a whole.. but the intelligence agencies are rather powerful. I've worked for DARPA and IARPA and you wouldn't believe half the stuff I could say publicly and none of the stuff I can't disclose.
It's certainly possible that intelligence agencies are mistaken or deliberately lying. We can't possibly know if that's the best interpretation of the evidence they may or may not have. They have been correct in the past as well.
The best and only thing the average citizen can really do is try to put people in office who can intelligently parse classified information and evidence from intelligence agencies.
As member of the public, you should never trust intelligence agencies about anything. Disinformation of the public is part of their job description. If you are a member of the executive or the military, then it might be something different, because these agencies exist to work for you. Everyone else, not so much...
We can't trust the intelligence agencies in the U.S., China, Russia, Australia, or Britain but of course the EU's agencies are trustworthy. After all, everyone knows there's nothing more effective than a European court and nobody more honest than European bureaucrats.
It's funny that we treat intelligence agencies' statements as unassailable truths when these people have committed to lying to everyone they know about what they do.
Sources that identify persons who worked at government intelligence agencies that now work in private sector, that are verified? That's quite credible, as it can be quickly and independently verified. Brains... use them.
So...you won't trust CSIS until they try to overthrow the government?
Personally, seeing them operate equally well under multiple generations of opposing political parties in one of the most free countries on earth for 40 years, PLUS having no track record of misinformation, is more than enough reason to trust them.
Doesn’t that sort of make it a noop though? I.e., its just a claim for which they can provide no evidence, and anyone can (and do) make those all the time and it’s just how politics works.
I can only imagine how hard it must be to protect sources, but the end state must eventually be to provide evidence or there is no way to tell the difference between an intelligence service and a method for manufacturing unsubstantiated claims at the convenience of whoever operates the agency. Maybe I’m being naive.
Who assumes that what the intelligence report says now is actually based in fact and not in convenient fiction? The US poised to attack Syria -- having long supported the opposition -- and the stars needed to align to help that happen. For a released intelligence report to yield the very strongly desired results, among a collection of agencies with a long history of bending the truth (patriotic so long as it served the end goal), should be met with a hefty serving of skepticism.
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