Because the historical record shows exactly that. The United fruit company initiated the operation because it's commercial interests were threatened. It used extensive lobbying and PR to persuade the US government - congress and the president - that a communist revolution was imminent and a direct threat to the region. The CIA was intimately involved from the very start of this deception, due to the close links between the United Fruit Company and the Dulles' brothers' law firm. This is not in dispute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d'%C3%A9tat#Lobbying_the_United_States
That goes completely against the historical record. Truman fully agreed to topple Arbenz and Eisenhower had strong connections to the United Fruit Company, giving him reason to be in on the deal.
U.S. President Harry Truman authorized Operation PBFORTUNE to topple Árbenz in 1952, with the support of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García, but the operation was aborted when too many details became public. Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected U.S. President in 1952, promising to take a harder line against communism; the close links that his staff members John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles had to the UFC also predisposed him to act against Árbenz. Eisenhower authorized the CIA to carry out Operation PBSUCCESS in August 1953.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
This template was followed time and again throughout the 20th century. Kermit Roosevelt unilaterally initiated the operation to overthrow the Iranian democratically elected government, without the President's sign-off, as part of an agreement between the CIA and British Petroleum to protect British interests in the area.
That's not true.
With a change to more conservative governments in both Britain and the United States, Winston Churchill and the Eisenhower administration decided to overthrow Iran's government, though the predecessor Truman administration had opposed a coup.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
Churchill and Eisenhower both agreed to overthrow the Iranian government. Oddly enough, Truman's opposition was enough to stop the coup from taking place, which pretty much throws your whole "the CIA does whatever it wants without the president's approval" argument out the window.
In any case, your defense that the President must have signed off on everything is irrelevant, because the Presidents were always carefully guided to the 'correct' choice by the CIA themselves. The CIA was responsible for identifying threats, proposing solutions, and briefing the President on the likelihood of success for each option.
Well, one would expect a president to listen to his intelligence agency when it comes to making a serious foreign policy decision. Many, including Truman and Kennedy outright rejected various proposals by the CIA. The president is always calling the shots.
Even when the President was completely opposed to the CIA's preferred option, he often demurred because he would need the CIA's support for his own agenda.
Even though my Truman example completely disproves this.
A perfect example of this is the Bay of Pigs invasion that Kennedy approved. He hated the idea, but knew it would be political suicide to deny it. When it failed, by design, he refused to back the CIA up with a full-scale invasion with conventional forces, a decision that caused so much anger against him that he never had the CIA's cooperation in any future endeavor.
JFK refused air support for the Bay of Pigs invasion, which is why what was supposed to be a successful invasion of a tiny island by the world's strongest military was such a disaster. If the CIA was upset with him, its because they lost many people that day senselessly due to Kennedy's objections.
Are you suggesting the President Reagan fully approved of the CIA running cocaine into the US for sale to it's citizens?
The Reagan administration was one of the most corrupt in modern history. He had to have known.
Are you suggesting that the MKULTRA programme was fully approved by the various presidents at the time? The historical record shows otherwise. None of this is disputed or merely 'theory'. It is simple historical fact.
There's no official word on whether any president at the time was fully aware of the operation, so the "historical record" is far from clear and there is no "historical fact" to be derived from this. Gerald Ford, Carter and Reagan all put limitations on human experimentation, which shows that once again the president does have a say in the actions of the agency.
Breaking the agency up and moving it's operations under the umbrella of the more accountable parts of the DoD would acheive two things: Remove the top layer of leadership that has caused all the problems Limit the reach of any single organization, which would in turn limit the damage they could cause with rogue operations
Yes, because corruption is completely unheard of in other agencies. Its not like there are vested financial interests in other areas of the government.
You need to read some history of the agency you are defending. The only history that agrees with your argument is that written by the CIA themselves.
TIL the CIA puts out history textbooks.
It really seems like you have an undeclared dog in this fight.
Shit, you really did not just accuse me of being a shill, did you? Wow.