© Reuters / Mike Blake and Yuri Gripas
John Krasinski
Americans should be thankful for the services the CIA provides,
'Jack Ryan' actor John Krasinski says.
After all, without the agency, who would prop up foreign dictators, stage coups and 'play' with mind-control drugs?
In three decades between the publication of
'The Hunt for Red October' in 1984 and his death in 2013, Tom Clancy pumped out more than 20 books, giving lots of material for spy agency fanboys.
At long last though, there's someone out there who gets even more tumescent at the thought of clandestine criminality than Clancy himself. Actor John Krasinski - star of
'The Office' and now
'Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan' - came out and told reporters before the release of season 2 that "The CIA is something that we should all not only cherish, but be saying thank you for every single day."
Unlike the FBI, the CIA is not tasked with fighting crime in America. It doesn't spend its time tracking murderers and busting pedophile rings. Instead, the agency often operates in the shadows abroad, and while its officers do foil terror attacks and intercept shipments of weapons of mass destruction, the agency has also been referred to by journalist Douglas Valentine as "the organized crime branch of the US government."
So, to be thankful for the agency's work means also to be thankful for a sordid history of highly controversial actions.
Comment: The GLI-F4 grenade is weapon of war indeed. How can the French law enforcement justify using such a dangerous device for "crowd control"?