Why hasn’t the CIA been abolished? Someone wrote to me what is a common response, which may be partly in jest: “Because when someone tries they end up dead.”

We need a more nuanced understanding if we are to fight an institution like the CIA.

There is a fear factor as Schumer made known, but it’s not of being bumped off. The CIA is a formidable opponent in other ways, as the FBI was with the secret files of Hoover. The threat is through information and blackmail, by knowing where the skeletons in the closets are. However, no matter, there are plenty of people with the courage to take on this opponent if they wanted to. Why don’t they? They don’t want to.

Why does the CIA maintain its power? What’s the source of its power? It’s the same reason why all the other departments and agencies of government remain relatively immune from serious attacks, reforms or abolition. It’s because each has the strong support of the rest of the government, most importantly, Congress and the Executive. The CIA is important to the empire, to the larger organization of which it is a part. So no important US officers seek to abolish it. People firmly in the system have very little incentive to disrupt it.

Think of the government as a colony of ants. It works through the presence of hundreds of ants scurrying around and foraging. They do not attack the colony itself. They attack each other sometimes, but not the colony, not the organization. Human beings work through incentives in addition to instincts, but they also organize into colonies (organizations) of various kinds. They then are loyal to them enough that we can tell that an organization is in place. We can tell because the individuals in it obey some sort of set of rules that governs certain of their behaviors. The colony becomes a reality over and above any given individual through this adherence and coordination of the choices made by individuals within it.

The CIA is an essential component sub-organization of a larger organization. It’s there for a purpose. We do not expect that other parts of the organization are going to tear it down because that would hurt their own positions and the larger organization. Just as animals fight for status and superiority, even ants, so do human beings within organizations; but these battles are typically against other individuals, not against the organization itself. We do get large scale re-organizations, breakups and amalgamations at times, such as the Protestant Reformation, but they are not the rule. In the business world and that of entrepreneurs is where we see continual ferment as old colonies die and new ones form. It is as time passes that we see governments change too. The CIA may disappear some day, but for the time scales of a few generations of our lives, these departments and agencies of government are durable.

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