Blundering spies

Ever since the end of the Second World War, the C.I.A. has been considered to be the ultimate spy agency, together perhaps with the Mossad. The James Bond's of the C.I.A. were professional spies, turning up all sorts of secrets all over the world. In “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA”, Tim Weiner thoroughly debunks this myth. In 1971, Henry Kissinger told Zhou Enlai that the competence of the CIA was being vastly overestimated. Evan Thomas sums it all up in this book review. Here is another one by Michael Beschloss, both published in the New York Times.

The C.I.A.'s spies were picked up by the dozen in the Soviet Union and China. The agency did not foresee the explosion of the Soviet atom bomb, the Korean War, uprisings in Eastern Europe, the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba, the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the collapse of the Soviet Union, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait or India's nuclear bomb explosion. Even its successes turned out to be failures. In 1963, the C.I.A. backed a coup in Iraq: it ultimately brought Saddam Hussein to power.

The C.I.A.'s analysis is fatally flawed by a lack of agents speaking foreign languages and understanding the history and culture of their target countries. This is even more so for those agents who try to directly meddle in the affairs of other countries. When the Berlin Wall fell, the leader of the C.I.A.'s Soviet division watched CNN...

For those who oppose U.S. imperialism, it's good to know that the C.I.A. is just a bunch of idiots. As Thomas notes, Weiner “paints what may be the most disturbing picture of C.I.A. ineptitude.” It may take some time, but ultimately, the truth surfaces.