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Take everything negative that you have ever heard about the CIA. Now consider that the victors write the history books and the CIA records have not yet been se

• rdl 13y ago
  OTOH, the CIA has some incentive to being known as ineffectual. If enemies underestimate them, the mission of the CIA will be easier. OTOH, as far as I can tell, to call them ineffectual from ~1989 until ~2000s sometime would be excessively kind. So maybe they did also suck before that as well, but I think the end of the Cold War and political turnover after GHWB really gutted them, and it wasn't until they remade themselves as a black site operating, drone killing paramilitary group that they came back.
  • jlgreco 13y ago
    If the CIA has an incentive to be known as ineffectual, then I can only conclude that I am most likely assuming that they are incapable of far less than they actually are. The idea that I am underestimating their vile capacity only serves to disturb me further.
  • EthanHeilman 13y ago
    They have very strong institutional motives to be seen as highly-competent. A cynical view would be to think of intelligence agencies as semi-rational actors attempting to capture as much of the budget as possible with secrecy reducing all the costs of getting caught lying (think FEMA with no transparency and machine that prints get out of jail free cards). The cynical view is never fully accurate, sometimes it isn't accurate at all because organisations always include idealist/true believers/patriots. Organisations which don't include idealists tend to weed themselves out pretty quickly and collapse.
    • rdl 13y ago
      Highly-competent in private/classified, highly incompetent in public, is the ideal balance. Although it does affect recruiting, so "highly constrained by morals and ethics" in public is probably better than generally incompetent. It would be interesting to see what a "we are really professional, but generally law abiding" intelligence service could do.
      • deleted 13y ago
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