In the Cold War and from the mid 50’s to early 70’s the CIA and related covert intelligence services were assumed to have God like powers of detection and it was almost a given that we had our ear to the ground in practically every important venue.
Now post 9-11 with technological capabilities that are orders of magnitude more powerful we seem to be knocking around in a dark room with a blind man’s cane with respect to gathering useful and contextually accurate information about our enemies and their capabilities. This current WMD snark hunt is only the latest embarrassment for the intelligence services.
Why does our intelligence suck so bad? It’s not resources. Post 9-11 the intelligence services are funded as never before.
Some say the government’s reform/restrictions put on some of the more free wheeling aspects of the CIA operations are to blame. Some say the growing influence of Mormons in the upper echelons of the intelligence services has routed out and destroyed a willingness to tolerate less reputable, but highly productive operatives that the Ivy League college boys that ran the intelligence services in the 50’s and 60’s actively encouraged and tolerated as a necessary price to be paid. But this is primarily the grousing of older ex-intelligence officers and their motives for saying this may be the settling old political and bureaucratic infighting scores.
What’s the scoop. Why do we suck so bad? Are James Bond and his American dopplegangers really dead? Is infiltrating the current enemy simply an impossibly difficult task?
Put simply, we knew where to look in the olde days. Espionage was a rather gentlemanly game and people rarely got their hands very dirty. Nowadays, we dont know what to expect.
Huh? Mormons in the upper ranks of intelligence? First I’ve heard of it.
I will say, though, that upon arriving in the USSR in 1989, it pretty much boggled my mind that the U.S. ever saw them as a serious military threat. None of their damn machinery worked properly, and of course organizational imcompetence was legendary. I never have been able to make up my mind whether the intelligence folks were clueless, or merely trying to protect their own jobs.
From my understanding, we can thank Frank Church for gutting the operational capability of the CIA. Some think installing a gov’t in Peru was some evil and nasty deed, but it did show that the CIA once had the gumption and ability to perform effectively.
Now? They couldn’t find their own ass, even with the umpteen billion-dollar satellites they have. Even if they did find it, they couldn’t do much with it. Iraq should have been a showcase of how the CIA can get the job done. God knows that Saddam wasn’t very popular in Iraq. Heck, the old CIA wouldn’t have let Bin Laden outlive his usefullness.
It’s a bit of a trade. If we want the CIA to be sqeeky-clean, we can’t realistically expect them to be able to pop nasty character at will and whatnot. It takes a certain ‘organizational mindset’ to be the equal of the Mossad. Heck, from what little I know of such things, it seems the Brits and Frogs have a better operational intelligence gathering (and actioning) capability.
The CIA seems to be a copy of the NSA nowadays. Lots of satellites, lots of ELINT and SIGINT, but little ‘silenced .22 to the base of the skull’ capability. Maybe if we loosen the leash a bit…
Personally, I have heard this from Ops officers and some analytical people, as a complaint. Issue of passing security clearances, easier if you are squeeky clean. Without supporting the view, my contacts complain that squeeky nerdy Mormons pass like nobody’s business (no drinking or susp. socializing to kill you in the poly).
I have no idea if this is a supportable complaint, but there it is, I have indeed heard it from inside sources.
As to CIA playing in the assasinations game, I hardly see that as upping intel gathering. However, once more I have heard complaints and from my brief consideration of this path it seems it may be true, that Ops is too tied to the embassies and diplo cover. Esp in this region, diplo cover ain’t getting the connections.
On the other hand, I am not too fond of the idea of Ops people operating as say businessmen. I have enough trouble as it is denying CIA connections by mere virtue of being an Arabic speaker worming round, if it got any more real… On the other hand, people seem to believe what they want.
“Put simply, we knew where to look in the olde days. Espionage was a rather gentlemanly game and people rarely got their hands very dirty. Nowadays, we dont know what to expect”
Hmmmph. I don’t know what you consider gentlemanly but I would say the opposite is the problem. Rather than get in the muckity muck of human resources US intel has switched to “cleaner” methods i.e. electronic surveillance. It doesn’t work so well when you are more concerned with taping phone calls than having enough Arab translators to actually understand it. Or Arab speaking operatives in country to give full context.
I would also say that post-Vietnam, politicos want justification for wars(since it’s harder to run secret ones) from their intel services rather than getting a full picture. This will definately lower standards at the more politically controlled intel orgs.
IMHO.
And for pete’s sake, more effective does not mean assassination squads Brutus.
The government had no word from the CIA back in 1989 that East Germany was going to open the gates of Berlin, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall, or that the Soviet Union was going to collapse two years later.
If you believe gangster Sam Giancana’s son and brother in their book “Double Cross”, the CIA is just the Washington branch of the Chicago Mob. Don’t know if I’d go that far, but “loosening the leash” is definitely not something I would go for at this point.
I believe the problem is that American intelligence agencies have gotten more and more reliant on technological methods – spy satellites, drones, etc. – and less on “humint”: people on the ground, moles in the system, ears listening to what folks say in noisy public places. Note the dearth of Arabic translators, a problem we’re still strugging with today (not to mention boneheaded stunts like firing our existing translators just because they’re gay :rolleyes: ). Our budget allocation for intelligence is still strong, but more and more of that money is going to the hardware, which means less for staff.
Satellites are great for gathering intelligence when facing a large foe, such as the Soviet Union. They’re lousy for infiltrating terrorist cells or interpreting coded messages in context.
I think people in this thread have been watching a few too many spy movies.
How does one determine that the US intelligence agencies “suck” more than they did 50 years ago? Not to be cliche but the CIA’s successes are largely secret while their failures are generally public. Still, one must wonder why they can’t find the two most recognizable humans on the planet.
From what I understand (from Time magazine and so on) is that any shortcommings in out present intelligence agencies is due the the following:
-Too much reliance on satelite and electronic intel
-Too much information to ever process (ie millions of cell calls a day)
-lack of human intel
-Posible difficulty adjusting to the new political world.
I’ve read this in a numbe of places (mostly pre-Iraq war stuff) and it does seem to make a lot of sense. But you have to also remember the restrictions put on the CIA in recent years about not employing foreign agents with possible criminal and/or human rights issues in their pasts. This may have made it more difficult to cultivate the necessary contacts. Spying is a messy business.
Having said that, I think that all the high tech stuff is great and needs to be continued, but human intel is critical to accurate information.
During the Cold War, a number of things happened to American intelligence collection.
First, as stated above, intelligence got “clean” with the advent of satellite and reconaissance photography. Passive radio interception, photography, and other high-tech gadgetry was considered to be more reliable than humint.
Second, one reason why humint was considered unreliable is because the Commies had deeply penetrated the human intelligence side. It was simply difficult to trust anyone, and the Soviets ran some of the best counterspy and disinformation campaigns out there.
Third, the armed forces made great strides in the field of tactical intelligence through the development of such units as the LRRPs and Special Forces. Now there are all kinds of elite units–military and paramilitary–which generate their own tactical intelligence, including Delta Force, Centra Spike, and the CIA paramilitary. I suspect this aspect of intelligence collection is excellent, and probably had everything to do with the unexpected fall of Baghdad not too long ago.
Traditional “spy stuff” probably suffered because of its inherent unreliability–you gather intelligence in part by using people who by definition are disloyal and traitorous to their own country. I suspect that in the past twenty or thirty years this has created an increasing reliance upon military intelligence to supply as much of the humint side of the puzzle as possible.
I’m very generally citing The Spy Book: The Encyclopedia of Espionage, by Polmar and Allen.