I confess I am sympathetic. The CIA seems only adept at undermining our government.
Yet the CIA--or elements of it--have done good work in Afghanistan as part of that campaign to overthrow the Taliban. And I can only assume that its agents have done other good work that we don't know about simply because we have not been attacked on our soil on the scale of 9/11. There are clearly dedicated CIA personnel out there who would defend us if allowed to do so. I assume not all the analysts are as worthless as the NIE summary makes them appear.
In the end, maybe we need to break apart the CIA and sell it for parts. Keep the operators who actually fight our enemies out in the field. And fire the analysts whose greatest victories come in Washington thwarting their nominal boss, the President of the United States. We have plenty of other analysts in other intelligence agencies. Indeed, hired by agencies that work for the United States, many if not most of the CIA analysts could probably be counted on to do their jobs.
We need an intelligence agency to defend us. I have deep doubts that the CIA as a whole is capable of doing that. The CIA is likely more valuable stripped for parts than it is intact.
UPDATE: Victor Hanson comments that in the wake of the widely disbelieved (yet nonethless influential) NIE report that "clears" Iran, the CIA is shown to be a bunch of inept clowns:
In the report, they claim that in 2003 the mullahs stopped their efforts to get the bomb, due to “diplomatic” pressures, of which they cite none at all and omit the elephant in the room of the American toppling of nearby Saddam Hussein and the capitulation of Libya.
And the result? No one believes that the Iranians really quit, but most certainly believe we have ended any chance of serious international sanctions and embargoes, the Chinese, Russians, and Germans now sighing in collective relief.
And all this comes after the Clark, the Scheuer, the Tenet, and the Plame tell-all memoirs. I can’t think of any agencies of government that have now enjoyed lower public esteem than the intelligence bureaucracies. At least in the old days the CIA was considered a tough bunch of bastards that acted like they knew what they were doing.
The new stereotype is that of a generation of history, and English BAs—who failing to get their law or advanced academic degrees—went into intelligence. Once there they got angry that their genius was not appreciated and their liberal worldviews were not heard, and then began leaking and molding intelligence to fit preconceived notions—even as they claim they were squeezed by right-wingers wanting to bomb someone. A thorough mess we have at present. Partisanship shapes intelligence analyses, and dissidents leak and spin to the media to undermine views they do not embrace.
Our Left has learned to love the CIA. Now you know why.
