...unless you're doing a long-march-through-the-institutions, subversion-from-within thing, which, good luck against the CIA... How can we be sure this hasn't

...unless you're doing a long-march-through-the-institutions, subversion-from-within thing, which, good luck against the CIA... How can we be sure this hasn't happened already? Could anyone imagine a less effective, more hated organization? Could CIA provide poorer intelligence to the executive if they were actually trying to provide poor intelligence? Could their actions reflect more poorly on USA if they were actually trying to tarnish our reputation? [EDIT:] Perhaps this just proves your point. Continued existence of something like CIA in a putatively democratic society is a mystery. Perhaps they practice a sort of continuous self-disruption, defending themselves from the attentions of better people by always getting worse?