AHC: Competent CIA

Well who else is going to do it? The intelligence agencies are the ones with all of the connections and experience with doing things secretly. Also, it is better to take out our enemies by deposing their leadership than by fighting an invasion to achieve the same goal. Spy agencies really offer great bang for the buck and can sometimes pull off regime changes without anyone getting hurt at all, even the leader being deposed.

Britain used to have MI numbers 1 through 19, now only 5 and 6 exist. MI9 used to aid resistance movements and aid escapees, MI19 used to interrogate enemy PoWs, MI14 was responsible for Germany and German occupied territories.

The CIA could hand intel to specialised wet work agencies, rather than acting on their own intel and therefore skewing the take and having the tail wag the dog.
 
Well who else is going to do it? The intelligence agencies are the ones with all of the connections and experience with doing things secretly. Also, it is better to take out our enemies by deposing their leadership than by fighting an invasion to achieve the same goal. Spy agencies really offer great bang for the buck and can sometimes pull off regime changes without anyone getting hurt at all, even the leader being deposed.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to do it terribly well, or with terribly good results long term.

There is a book, "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" by Victor marchetti which seems to be a fairly landmark work.
 
The Centrral Intelligence Agency is not perfect and I am the LAST pair o' tits to claim they are, but frankly they aint so bad. I have seen worse.
 
The central criticism of the Central Intelligence Agency is that it is allegedly not particularly good at intelligence gathering.

There's a long history of spectacular misjudgements - for instance, with Iran, failing to perceive just how unstable and disliked the Shah of Iran was, failing to appreciate the significance of the anti-shy demonstrations, or anticipate the fall of the Shah, or meaningfully gauge the evolution of successor governments as they evolved.

The invasion of Afghanistan was a surprise, so was the invasion of Kuwait, the invasion of the Falklands Islands. The CIA failed to anticipate OPEC, or the Oil Embargo. They dropped the ball big time on 9/11, especially following the Cole Attack, Khobar Towers, and the African Embassy bombings.

Admittedly, this might be tricky stuff.

But even at the front of coherent analysis, of big picture, the CIA's broad information gathering capacity is deformed and compromised at pretty much every level.

There's a dearth of local intelligence gathering in foreign countries. Invariably, the CIA's information and opinions locally are captured by local elites who feed their own narratives and prejudices.

At the other end of the pipeline, CIA analysis was deformed by an exclusive and narrow internal culture, which tended to fit its own preconceptions and prejudices into its analysis.

Thus, indigenous and local issues tend to be subsumed into the cold war.

The effects, for instance, on Latin America were particularly toxic. The particular blinkers also meant that no real progress could be made in Vietnam.

Intelligence is a tough game, admittedly.
 
The Office of Strategic Services is not paved over, but, instead, remains intact after WW2 to continue to develop its impressive abilities and record.

At some point, maybe, maybe, some hand-wringer renames it the CIA.

And thus the OSS er um CIA is not just competent, but renowned as being so.
 
...

The CIA could hand intel to specialised wet work agencies, rather than acting on their own intel and therefore skewing the take and having the tail wag the dog.


That is an interesting idea.

The CIA could be thus for gathering intelligence and analysing same, with a "liaison" from the president's office perhaps recommending on actions from time to time.

With the goal of a recommendation agreed on, then, yeah, the Agency For Discreet But Nonetheless Impressive Violence could execute that.
 
The Office of Strategic Services is not paved over, but, instead, remains intact after WW2 to continue to develop its impressive abilities and record.

At some point, maybe, maybe, some hand-wringer renames it the CIA.

And thus the OSS er um CIA is not just competent, but renowned as being so.
I could see that, I could, of course it would also help if we did not see the mystification of the agency as being beyond critique.
 
The Office of Strategic Services is not paved over, but, instead, remains intact after WW2 to continue to develop its impressive abilities and record.

At some point, maybe, maybe, some hand-wringer renames it the CIA.

And thus the OSS er um CIA is not just competent, but renowned as being so.


Thank you!

honestly two pages of saying why it was crap ( with a suprising amount of defenders ) and only one POD.

Still it seems like a good one, any ideas for directors?
 

GarethC

Donor
"On second thought," said Henry Stimson, "perhaps the security of the nation is more important than being thought a gentleman."

In 1929, the State Department decides it might be a really good idea to keep knowing what everybody else in the world is saying to their various embassies and militaries, and keeps funding the Black Chamber. It is from this small set of offices in Foggy Bottom that throughout the 1930s the National Intelligence Agency grows, but still as an arm of the State Department.
 
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