Quote Originally Posted by Ramil View Post
By 'they' I meant CIA (if you look at my previous remark)
Ah, ok. Sorry about that. I looked at the caricature and I had an impression those who allegedly 'milked' the Middle East wore some 'capitalistic uniform', so I thought it's about the capitalists, and mainly the US as the primary enemy of the USSR back then. I didn't think that you only meant the CIA wearing those 'capitalist' clothes. I'd say if the artist had the CIA in mind, he would probably picture some 'James Bond' kind of a guy with a smoking gun and a sex bomb or something like that. But, never mind, that's not important.

Quote Originally Posted by Ramil View Post
Come on, you should at least suspect that not everything CIA does it reports to the US Government
Yes, I can agree with that. However, there's a HUGE distance between 'not everything' and make a series of revolutions in a couple of countries, won't you agree?

Quote Originally Posted by Ramil View Post
In fact, I think the government sometimes prefers not to know anything about their 'accomplishments' in order not to be embarassed later.
Yes, that is a good point. But again, the design of anything on a large scale cannot qualify as a 'black operation'. Come to think of it, I don't believe whenever the CIA boasts it was able to do something big like destroying the USSR from within by some kind of a smart tactics (i.e. keeping the oil down for a decade and stuff). Don't get me wrong, some of the CIA operatives are qualified enough to perform some very sophisticated things. But, when you try to design anything on a large scale, you notice the system is just too complex to be under control. Too many unpredictable/uncontrollable variables. And when you try to gather information about those variables, the situation had already changed.