Of all the agencies that I thought would capitulate quickly, I’ve got to admit I’m a bit shocked by this one.
At the same time, I’m sure this is not the whole story.
- the TLAs are the feds standing in the emperor's and lord diaper's way the most. justice is locked-down, as is enough of the courts; half of congress is in a daze and the moron majority is eating the orange poo; but the TLAs have off-the-book ops and funding to do 'things'.
- Yeah, they killed Kennedy over a lot less, and this time they're all at risk of losing their jobs and they're just going to shrug it off?
  
  Kennedy fired the architect of the CIA and planned to significantly cut their budget. What has Trump done that antagonizes them at anything close to that level?
  Y'all just think because you personally don't like Trump, the CIA must not like him either. But the CIA does not share your interests or values, in fact, they're pretty much completely opposite.
- They used up all their energy and resources on the 500 times they tried to murk Castro, they got no juice left.
- Well it is the CIA, it is plausible they're just playing the game to stay on Trump's good side. Maybe they 'buyout' a Joe and 'rehire' a Joey that just so happens to know everything Joe did, but 'adores' Trump for reasons
  
  My first thought was: everyone in the CIA “retires” and gets “consulting” gigs with shell companies nobody has heard of.
  
  People seem to not understand that there will be no rebuilding of these decimated institutions. If there are, they will be manned by a skeleton crew of trump loyalists. They don't care about lost institutional knowledge, or scaling back to current size, they care about capitulating to foreign actors that want to see US influence disappear from the world stage, and rehiring anyone doesn't help them accomplish that.
  
  I think you may have missed my point?
  I’m pretty sure the CIA is already a few steps ahead of Trump on this one, unlike many of the other Federal institutions who never saw it coming.
  
  Not sure what I missed.
  I think people overestimate the CIA and their capabilities both individually and as an institution. There's a lot of rank and file there. It's not like 90% of the workforce are covert agents or anything.
  What do you expect them to do? If you believe that they're going to get rehired as consultants, who's gonna hire them, and what for? Their names are in a list somewhere as having already worked for the CIA and they likely don't have a personal in with the necessary people (like Elon Musk). Do you expect them to use their covert identities? How many people do you think have those? How many of those identities would have relevant experience? Who is going to support those identities, now that the office providing them with believable history and financial details is no longer running? What kind of action do you think they're gonna take? If not any against the government, then they're just going to capitulate to doing their job for fascists. If against the government, why did they wait till it got so bad already? I legitimately don't understand what you think is going to happen.
  
  OK, not only are you completely correct, but the latest TechDirt article shows that the CIA has just blown the identity of all new hires to comply with an executive order.
  So long-time staffers might be doing CYA, but the org as a whole is already seriously compromised.
  
  Yeah, but who are those shell companies working for? A big selling point in the general buyouts is, "we want people out of govt service and in the private sector where they can do thier best work!"
  I'm thinking we don't want a bunch of freelance spies contracting to the highest bidder
  
  I think the joke was the shell companies are all owned by the CIA. Hence the quotes around "retires" and "consulting".
  
  The CIA will just become even sketchier.
- Why?
  
  I think it's not that far fetched to presume the CIA has major political power within the US, more than the EPA at least. If someone, they know how to assassinate a president or a billionaire and make it look like an accident.
  
  Sure, but why would they want to do anything about Trump?
  
  He's eroding the US' capability to coup and extract wealth from other countries. Trump is squandering all the power they built up on posturing and bullshit.
  
  How is he doing that?
  
  Reducing CIA headcount for example. But also, fracturing US alliances, stopping USAID, removing the US from international agreements that it could use as diplomatic soft power leverage, and just being a general jackass.
  
  Reducing CIA headcount
  So the reason they wouldn't take buyouts is because they were offered?
  But also, fracturing US alliances, stopping USAID, removing the US from international agreements that it could use as diplomatic soft power leverage, and just being a general jackass.
  "General jackassery" is not going to cause the CIA to assassinate a president. The CIA are generally jackasses lol. Fracturing alliances, I'm not sure that the CIA cares and I'm not sure how much of an effect his shenanigans will actually have in the long term. Some members of the CIA might prefer if he didn't withdraw from international agreements, but in the grand scheme of things, I imagine it's pretty small potatoes to them. The CIA certainly has the power to slap a president that gets out of line, but it's not as if they micromanage every decision. Is any of that really enough to make it "shocking" that they're cooperating?
  If Trump's really kneecapping the CIA that badly, I guess it's the one good thing he's done. More realistically, I assume he's greenlighting them on all sorts of horrible shit behind closed doors and couldn't be happier with him.

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