I would guess (like in everything else) Intelligence agencies have a ranking order and people in the business know who is good , who is very good and who is ter

I would guess (like in everything else) Intelligence agencies have a ranking order and people in the business know who is good , who is very good and who is terrible. I guess it could be considered "cred" of a kind. Like programmers might say "Google used to be very cool 5 years ago but these days is just a cube farm", I can imagine people in the spy business saying "The Americans were really good, but after they got into Iraq and Afghanistan, they've been slipping" or something like that. How people like us ever get to hear an opinion like that is a different question entirely.