Did anyone ever seriously believe that spies in general know what they are doing? It seems unlikely that such groups of people would necessarily be better orga

Did anyone ever seriously believe that spies in general know what they are doing? It seems unlikely that such groups of people would necessarily be better organized than any other well financed group of people (such as a major industrial concern) especially when you consider that much of what they must do has to be done in the dark and is difficult to verify. Plus of course you have the problem that a lot of what they do know how to do only exists because of the existence of their counterparts in the opposing country and has nothing to do with actual intelligence gathering but rather is about competition and conflict between agencies both between and within counties and alliances.