I’m not very good at writing new posts. Having no one else looking at it does not help the motivation. Then again having people reading my writing used to be the quickest way to get me to not write, so this may be untenable no matter how I look at it.
Anyways, I’ve been reading rather prolifically lately. I just finished Legacy of Ashes about the CIA, and it was quite interesting. It’s amazing that an organization with almost no major successes for the first decade of its existence kept receiving high levels of funding and support. It also highlighted that problems tend to revolve around people, not money or technology or ideas even (though ideas can be powerful in and of themselves). First in trying to establish contacts and build a network of intelligence and espionage agents in unfriendly places of the world (which was hit or miss, but then again the KGB was working directly against the CIA, which had just started, so somewhat understandable). Even worse though was after the organization had had the time and funding to build a viable program, they lacked the ability to acquire and train enough quality people to be able to accomplish anything really. It comes down to the basic question of how to motivate someone to go spend the prime of their lives mucking about with no creature comforts, no recognition, in a hostile country where screwing up would end up bad for the person and embarrassing for the country. So instead of these sorts of people who would give the CIA a fighting chance, it ended up (mostly) with bureaucrats, which has only gotten worse with the privatization of the intelligence community.
Then there’s the antagonism between the espionage side and the intelligence side, which to me is odd since the only way to have a hope of espionage being successful (let alone having any understanding at all even of the immediate consequences, successful or not) is if a certain level of knowledge has already been obtained on the area of interest. Without that, it’s like shooting in the dark, success might come about with enough money and brute force, but it’s not going to stay hidden, and the consequences are going to be worse than the rewards even in a successful operation.
There are other thoughts, but the last is on the antagonism shown by the military throughout the history of the CIA. First in keeping its intelligence from the CIA (which was originally created to oversee the nation’s efforts) to then trying to subvert and destroy the CIA, (taking over the NRO, having generals and admirals run the CIA, and finally succeeding in it being relegated to second tier status with the CIA director losing his seat on the NSC). competition is good, but this level of infighting (sometimes seen between services also) can only be counterproductive.
There’s more, but my thoughts aren’t entirely organized. How to get good intelligence, how to not let individuals ignore analysis and stamp their opinions on reports, how to keep the president from ignoring advice or swaying the organization away from unbiased reporting, all are lessons to be drawn from the book. I don’t know what the answer is on any of them other than finding the right people for the job, or possibly starting from scratch, which seems a waste. Though then you have to balance the pains of learning the wheel anew and losing half a century of expertise, and the struggles of overturning the culture, history, habits and prejudices of an organization as secretive and tribal as the CIA. There might be a third option, but I’m not sure what it is.
Tags: CIA
