“In 1976 when we were both based in Brussels, my BBC mentor, the great Charles Wheeler, came back to the office from a grand US embassy party one evening and remarked: ‘The cleverest and most entertaining people at these things are always CIA. Makes it all the harder to understand why they get everything wrong.’ An exaggeration, of course, but one with a degree of truth to it. Why has an organisation with huge amounts of money at its disposal, a record of recruiting the brightest and the best, and the widest of remits, failed to notch up a better record? It’s true that we may not know about many of the CIA’s successes. But we know about a lot of its failures, and some of them have marked US history ineradicably.” — John Simpson, The Guardian
Tim Weiner, who wrote the classic Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2007), returns with a book that will become another classic, The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century. Weiner shows how the CIA’s power has slowly been eroded after the debacle of 9/11 where rival intelligence agencies withheld information about a possible terrorist attack. Yes, the attack on the Twin Towers could have been prevented with some data sharing.
Weiner shows the disaster Trump is causing to America, and to the CIA today. Weiner’s example of the incompetent John L Ratcliffe, given the job of CIA Director by Trump, who unhesitatingly complied with Trump’s extraordinary demand that the CIA should send the White House the first names and initials of every recent CIA recruit by non-secure email. An incredible intelligence breach! And that is the tip of the serious intelligence violations…
The Mission explains why the CIA and our other intelligence agencies won’t protect us with the DOGE cuts and Trump’s fools running the organizations. Things are grim for our National Security. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Prologue: The spy and the scribe — 1
- The dark horizon — 7
- Denial and deception — 15
- “It was all sadly absurd” — 25
- The Bay of Goats — 32
- The new world — 41
- “We were all making it up as we went along” — 56
- Unprecedented trouble — 72
- What you do when you do not know — 92
- Sufi mystics and walking zombies — 105
- A beautiful operation — 119
- The butcher’s bill — 131
- Guerrilla warfare — 140
- The black cloud — 160
- “How far were we prepared to go?” — 177
- The god’s-eye view — 189
- No middle ground — 200
- The keys to the castle — 213
- The right side of history — 228
- “Someone is always watching” — 238
- Lethal and legal — 251
- Face-eating baboons — 265
- The useful idiot — 280
- Ring-kissing and kneecapping — 298
- The enemy of intelligence — 310
- “We are on the way to a right-wing coup” — 326
- The glory gate — 343
- Human intelligence — 358
- The morality of espionage — 371
- Epilogue: Autocracy in America — 388
- Acknowledgements — 397
- Notes — 399
- Index — 441
Let me quote Jeff, quoting Bill Crider: “We’re doomed!”
Jerry, the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies have been gutted. That ups the DOOM FACTOR.
Exactly, Jerry.
I bet Bill would be surprised at just how doomed we are. Doom is deeper than what he had in mind.
Patti, Bill Crider would be appalled at the ruination of the FDA, CDC, FBI, CIA, and pretty much all the U.S. Federal Government.
As are all sensible people, who are desperately lying to themselves some more (atop convincing themselves that Drumpf was a conservative, vs. a career-criminal malignant narcissist fool who is now increasingly senile).
Todd, it just goes to show you what some people will do and say to get Power.
Then again, the full-scale corruption of such agencies, and every other federal agency, as opposed to the Usual Run of corruption, got a notable boost under Reagan and they have never fully recovered, before the current clown car arrived. My folks were federal employees when they met in the FAA in 1963, my mother having come from the National Archives and my father from the USAF…which got them out of mining economies of their childhoods, and gave them an inside view over the decades. Not a happy arc for them, if better than the alternative of Staying Home.
Todd, so much of the current activities of the Trump Administration is to distract from the Epstein problems.
That was, some of the more diehard conservative sensible people, dancing as fast as they can to not have to face what we’re dealing with. When the current admin manages to alienate Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rand Paul, we know which few remain Served.
Todd, and some groups–Religious, Conservative, etc.–partnered with Trump because he was just a tool to get them to political positions.
Indeed, most obviously Marco Rubio. I see the pain etched in his face in every appearance caught on camera of having to work daily with Drumpf.
Todd, Little Marco–like J.D.–are maneuvering to be Trump’s replacement.
The US intelligence agencies were initially compromised by Obama and have been going downhill ever since!
Bob, remember Obama and his intelligence services got Osama bin Laden.
Seems like the greatest failures happened under Reagan and Shrub.
And spied on political opponents!
Bob, is spying on political opponents better than setting the Department of Justice on them???
You mean like Biden and Obama did? No, that’s not right!
Bob, but TWO Wrongs don’t make a Right!