The CIA was founded in 1947 to brief the President and conduct covert operations overseas. It has no monopoly, coexisting with the State Department, Pentagon and branches of military intelligence, the FBI and a plethora of other agencies. The US "never has had and does not now have a co-ordinated intelligence system." From the immense amount of data, government reports, books and memoirs and allowing for the historical context where the threat (levels of paranoia) and the political environment changed radically, just how do you produce a history of the CIA in 514 pages? The sins of selection, omission, emphasis and over simplification accepted, this book is nothing if not ambitious. It is excellent journalism, a credible work.
Weiner relates the history of the CIA in six parts grouped by presidential office holders (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy/Johnson, Nixon/Ford, Carter/Reagan/Bush Snr, Clinton/ Bush Jnr). The relationship between the President and the CIA is crucial; it has never been solid, always imprecise and often confrontational. The CIA missed the Soviet bomb, the Korean War, misread Eastern Europe, the Cuban crisis (Bay of Pigs and missiles), the Arab Israelis Wars, Kuwait and much more. It was terrible at assessing intentions and strengths of the Soviet Union. In seeking to secure regime change in the third world countries, it has a track record of bringing down bad governments to be replaced by nastier ones. It's often farcical and tragic - for example Saddam Hussein went from close friend through to the Weapons of Mass Destruction. Even in soft intelligence, the CIA often has little more than a newspaper clippings agency collects. "While the Soviet state withered away, the CIA was constantly reporting the Soviet economy was growing" (page 429). The CIA has not gone unchallenged, "The Pentagon (has) moved stealthily and steadily into the fields of overseas covert operations, usurping traditional roles, responsibilities, authorities, and missions.........the militarization of intelligence accelerated as the nation's civilian intelligence service eroded." (page 505). Here we come full circle, at inception the Pentagon wanted the CIA to be still born.
Weiner does not dwell on the ethics of the CIA but essentially catalogues its' incompetence, billons of dollars have been squandered and American interests (it's raison d'etre) very badly served. And millions have died in events in which the CIA played a large part. This book is not a rant; his sources are typically from the establishment. Weiner gives you enough to answer the fundamental question: has the CIA done more harm than good.
Where I found this book engrossing lies in how political intentions (the need to create an espionage entity) translated into a bureaucratic structure, how it defines its goals and is run. The bottom line is the management of, and within the CIA, has been appalling. Government agencies are set up by amateurs (what professional qualifications must politicians obtain before taking office) with imprecise goals that are not measurable (the profit motive in the private sector does have its uses). It does what public servants do best - infighting with each other and rival departments while inflating it's own reputation. Weiner's final page states "For sixty years tens of thousands of clandestine service officers have gathered only the barest threads of truly important intelligence - and that is the CIA's deepest secret (p514).
