“A steady stream of intelligence failures in the 1990s occurred in every facet of CIA activity, from intelligence collection to analysis to counterintelligence to covert action,” writes John Diamond in a new book on “The CIA and the Culture of Failure.”
This is of course well-trodden ground, and the author himself reported many of the underlying episodes for the Associated Press, Chicago Tribune and USA Today.
But Diamond probes beneath the familiar surface of events in an effort to understand the dynamics at work, and to show how individual intelligence failures interacted cumulatively and dialectically to yield the CIA of today.
“The events of the 1990s both stemmed from and led to a steady erosion of intelligence capability, contributing to a series of intelligence lapses and alleged lapses and to a consequent decline of confidence in the intelligence community that left the CIA critically weakened,” he concludes. “These processes fed off and fueled one another, leading to a fatal cycle of error, criticism, overcorrection, distraction, and politicization.”
Diamond writes without identifiable animus towards the CIA, and gives due weight to the agency’s defenders and the critics of its critics. Even on well-rehearsed topics such as the CIA’s failure to anticipate the collapse of the Soviet Union, he adds significant nuance and avoids cliche.
See “The CIA and the Culture of Failure: U.S. Intelligence from the End of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq” by John Diamond, Stanford University Press, September 2008.
The new alignment signals a clear shift in priorities: offices dedicated to clean energy and energy efficiency have been renamed, consolidated, or eliminated, while new divisions elevate hydrocarbons, fusion, and a combined Office of AI & Quantum.
We came out of the longest shutdown in history and we are all worse for it. Who won the shutdown fight? It doesn’t matter – Americans lost. And there is a chance we run it all back again in a few short months.
Promising examples of progress are emerging from the Boston metropolitan area that show the power of partnership between researchers, government officials, practitioners, and community-based organizations.
Americans trade stocks instantly, but spend 13 hours on tax forms. They send cash by text, but wait weeks for IRS responses. The nation’s revenue collector ranks dead last in citizen satisfaction. The problem isn’t just paperwork — it’s how the government builds.