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Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA

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This is an astonishingly well balanced book that while deeply critical of CIA and its senior management also credits its strengths and successes. The author, Melvin Goodman, spent some 34 years as an analyst within the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) of CIA. His principal criticism is that CIA directors in collusion with the executive branch have routinely politicized not merely intelligence products, but the very processes of research and analysis basic to intelligence production. He further argues that most intelligence `failures' can be traced to the practice of far too many at CIA to distort the intelligence process to support policy decisions and even to suppress sound, contrary intelligence. He also sees the growing `militarization' of the U.S. Intelligence System as further evidence that the Intelligence Community (IC) is moving from producing objective and accurate intelligence to producing intelligence that supports the ideologies and prejudices of its masters.

Goodman supports his argument with a remarkably detailed chronicle of CIA intelligence production over the last 35 years. This chronology emphasizes those instances where political pressure and the need to support a particular point of view took precedence over the need to produce accurate intelligence. Also, although he doesn't say so directly, he demonstrates the truth that intelligence is only as good as the system it serves. Unlike so many books on intelligence, this book actually identifies both the good guys and the bad .guys of CIA over the years. In particular he has a fascinating analysis of CIA Directors from Bill Casey (1980-1986) onward that is quite devastating. Although his principal target is the deleterious effect of the politicization and militarization of intelligence, he also effectively criticizes CIA's analytic and clandestine tradecraft.

This is an absolutely important critique of the course of CIA and by extension the entire U.S. Intelligence Community. However, given the controversial claims made by Goodman and the fact he actually names his heroes and villains, the reader might ask does he really know what he is talking about? In this reviewer's opinion, the answer is yes he does. Having been personally involved in a number of specific intelligence events that he chronicles, this reviewer would argue that Goodman has accurately described them. This is a book that ought to guide any effort to reform the U.S. Intelligence System.

As a 30 year veteran of CIA's clandestine service. I agree with much of what Mel Goodman has to say about the Agency: the intrusion of political bias into the analytical process, the substitution of tactical for the more insightful strategic intelligence, and the loss of objectivity, when the military - a major consumer of the product - also becomes. its principal collector. President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex, and his warning bears repeating: Crises make for good business and create high-paying jobs. When CIA's agents discovered that the missile gap was a myth, and later, that the Soviet Union was a knight dying in its armor, a great many defense contractors and their congressman became very nervous. Production lines were threatened; layoffs would surely follow, and pressure was applied to suppress or to ridicule such reporting. When the Director of Central Intelligence. "...serves at the pleasure of the president," his agency becomes particularly vulnerable to such pressures.

Like so many other critiques of CIA, however, Mel Goodman's book fails to identify a major contributor to CIA's erratic performance -- our Casanova-like approach to intelligence collection.. We turn it on when a crisis arises, but shut it down as soon as the crisis is over. With so many unmet societal requirements, why waste money on something no longer needed, particularly when it employs tactics that so blatantly offend core values of a Democratic society?

The antipathy is understandable, but its effects are devastating. Every time we close down coverage of a target, the best & brightest hands melt away. In the five to ten years it takes them to become professionals, they learn the language, get to know the territory, get to know the shakers & movers and learn how to get things done. Just the sort of people, the multinationals and the think tanks are dying for, and they are lured away by big salaries and sign-on bonuses. As James Risen observed in the New York Times, "In the mid-1990s, CIA became like an airline that had lost its senior pilots." But then, when the territory again becomes of interest, we have to start with a new batch of recruits and live with their mistakes as they learn their craft. Rank amateurism and inexperience were major contributors to the Abu Ghraib fiasco.

When Mr. Goodman dismisses CIA's operatives as risk averse, because they are protected by diplomatic immunity, it reveals that most of his experience was on the analytical and not be operational side. He ignores the large body of case officers that are under nonofficial cover, the operatives that were dropped into Afghanistan after 9/11 and well ahead of the military, as well as the technicians, often documented as tourists, that surreptitiously enter denied areas to install video and audio sensors. Three of those were caught in flagrante in Cuba and spent several years in Mr. Castro's prisons.

In summary, Mel Goodman's book very accurately captures the political winds that buffet America's intelligence efforts, and he is spot-on accurate in decrying the layers of unnecessary bureaucracy added by the creation of the Director of National Intelligence. But CIA is a vast and complex tapestry, and Mr. Goodman covers only a part of the territory.

Those who follow U.S. intelligence and its effects on U.S. foreign policy will find Mel Goodman's Failure of Intelligence an important and prophetic read. As an intelligence insider with firsthand experience he has written an insightful and revealing account of the Central Intelligence Agency's failures and clearly explains why it must be reformed. Using the fall of the Soviet Union, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Goodman clearly makes a case for guarding against the politicization of intelligence. Goodman underlines a critical issue if the U.S. is to avoid the consequences of history repeating itself in Iran.

Goodman's book offers a valuable angle on how and why the CIA failed to know about Soviet nuclear testing, failed to foresee the collapse of the USSR, and how it regularly buried intel at odds with White House policy (glasnost, Vietnam, China, Iran, Iraq, the list goes on an on). In all this Goodman conveys much needed background on the miserable CIA failure concerning events leading up to--and including--9/11.

But, apparently, due to its hurried publication, it is annoyingly repetitive, filled with typos, and, overall, very poorly edited. Chapter and section headings have no particular or useful meaning.

That said, Goodman presents the last 40 years of CIA bumbling in the context of the political ideologues, bureaucratic incompetence, and abuse of executive power under Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and the Bushes. He gleefully and repeatedly skewers current Sec. of Defence Robert Gates and his rise as William Casey's Cold War Flunkie, Team-Player, and Yes-Man.

Perhaps because Goodman resigned in the early 1990s, or perhaps because of legalistic or ideological limitations on his part, this book places little emphasis on the increased reliance of U.S. intelligence services upon foreign governments, the outsourcing of intel to Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, to name a few, and even to private firms, each with its own agenda. Providing the basic outlines of this particular trend would be the icing on the cake, but in the intelligence world which Goodman-As-Author inhabits, he is content with something less ambitious. (For more on CIA failures and fiddling, without the office infighting and I-told-you-so's, see Joseph Trento's The Secret History of the CIA and Prelude to Terror: the Rogue CIA, The Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network the Compromising of American Intelligence.)

Most books about the CIA are written either by liberals/leftists, who blame the CIA for every alleged failure, or by conservatives/rightists, who give the Agency credit for every alleged success. (I use the word "alleged" twice because in the field of intelligence and espionage things are seldom what they seem.) Recent extreme examples of this type of books are James Risen "State of War" and Rowan Scarborough "Sabotage." All of these books, without an exception, belong to the trashcan of history.

But Goodman's "Failure of Intelligence" is a different kind of book. Despite of the fact that Goodman, like every one of us, has his own biases, his only commitment seems to be to truth -- something quite surprising coming from a person who worked for many years for the CIA, and organization that, like all intelligence services, have made lying an art form.

Probably one of the most revealing parts of the book is when Goodman tells how after every "intelligence failure," some of the analysts directly responsible for it are given big cash bonuses and promotions (pp. 91-93, 136, 183). What Goodman does not mention, however, is that this new generation of ethically challenged intelligence analysts at CIA are the direct product of a system of education that brainwashes students by telling them that truth is a social construct and ethics is not absolute, but changes in every different situation. In that sense, this new generation CIA intelligence analysts is not different from the new generation of university professors and scientist who, in order to keep their juicy grants flowing, give their full support to unscientific, religious theories like Darwinian evolution and global warming.

Therefore, without even finishing reading the book (I am currently on page 202), I am giving Goodman's book five stars. His serious research and his intellectual honesty deserve it.

This doesn't mean, though, that the book is perfect. Actually, it has its shortcomings, like repeating verbatim the fairy tale that Sherman Kent's National Intelligence Estimate of October 14, 1962 (the now infamous "September Estimate") stating that it was unlikely that the Soviets deploy strategic nuclear missiles in Cuba was wrong, because four weeks later "photographic evidence" proved the contrary (p. 94).

Despite so many scary "close to the brink" articles and books, and the testimony of drunk ex-KGB liars who told the people who generously paid for their trips to the U.S. what they wanted to hear, the presence of medium-range strategic missiles and their nuclear warheads on Cuban soil in 1962 was never proved.

Moreover, as a former intelligence analyst himself, Goodman should know that the so-called "photographic evidence" is not evidence at all. Due to the fact that there were never CIA officers in the field, the "missiles" were never touched, smelled or weighted. Their metal, electronic components and fuel was never tested. Their heat signature was never verified. Even more important, the radiation from their nuclear warheads was never recorded nor reported in any CIA document.

In the field of intelligence and espionage, "intelligence" is just information that, after careful analysis, has been evaluated and an assessment about it has been made. But, even before Adobe Photoshop, photographs have always being a poor source of intelligence. A photograph is nothing but an iconic sign pointing to a real-life object.

The CIA photo interpreters who accepted the U-2s photographs as the ultimate proof of the presence of Soviet medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba remind me of the case of the man who mistook his wife for a hat. Neither the high-altitude nor the low-altitude photos taken by the U-2 or Voodoo recognizance planes show any Soviet medium-range strategic nuclear-capable missiles on Cuban soil in 1962. Most of these photos are currently available in high-resolution in the Internet. I challenge the readers to find any of this type of missiles in those photos.

What the photos show, though, are canvas-covered objects that, perhaps with the help of a fertile imagination, may be construed as medium-range nuclear-capable missiles (or Cuban royal palm trees if you wish) and their support elements, similar to the ones seen in photographs of strategic nuclear sites in the Soviet Union. But the only proof that these sites in the USSR actually were what they seemed to be are U-2 photos, because, as it happened with the ones in Cuba, no CIA officer in the field ever came closer to the supposed sites in the USSR. Therefore, what we have is a "proof" based on a classical circular argument.

Even more difficult to explain is that, despite that Sun Tzu's dictum, "all warfare is based on deception," was widely known by CIA officers, the word "deception" is totally absent from all CIA documents about the Cuban missile crisis.

Strange!

But that is not the weakest part of Goodman's book. Page after page he shows in extreme detail, mentioning the names of the culprits, how, in every case, a senior government official has pressured CIA analysts -- sometimes in very strong terms -- to distort their intelligence estimates in order to use them to support their preconceived ideas. The repetition of the same mistake over and over points to a systemic failure in CIA's intelligence estimates as a result of these outside pressures.

But, coming from the CIA's area of intelligence analysis, it is obvious that Goodman has no experience in counterintelligence.

There is a saying in the military stating that "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times enemy action." But intelligence, and particularly counterintelligence officers leave no room for happenstance or coincidence. For them once is enemy action, and all coincidences are potentially deceptive. Therefore, it is curious, to say the least, that the long chain of CIA's "intelligence failures" described by Goodman have been the direct result of outside pressure from U.S. government officials who, almost without exception, belong to a treasonous organization whose open, publicly expressed goal is to destroy this country "making an end run around national sovereignty, and eroding it piece by piece."

Very strange!

The Founding Fathers of this country were not stupid or crazy. When they included in the oath of allegiance "to serve and protect the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic," they knew very well what they were doing

Goodman's overall premise -- the politicization of intelligence has crippled the CIA -- is dead-on. Much of this book centers on the two most glaring examples of that thesis, the fall of the USSR and the rush to war in Iraq. Yet Goodman overlooks some of the lower-level organizational problems in the Agency to spotlight the top-tier policy dynamics. The corporateness, risk-aversion and lagging creativity that are evident at all levels affect retention, promotion, operations, analysis and interagency relations. The good officers walk out in frustration for many of the reasons Goodman alludes to, while the remaining automatons and careerists flourish and rise. His account remains politically balanced, as he takes equal shots at both Democrat and Republican administrations. But his personal dislikes of specific individuals from his time in CIA shine through. Goodman's praise of Paul Bremer and Stansfield Turner as "luminaries" leads the reader to question his criteria of solid leadership and sound statecraft. There is also a overarching tone of idealism, if not naivety, in his views of intelligence collection, particularly in HUMINT operations. The editing is a bit rough and cut-and-paste text redundancy detracts from the book. Much of the Iraq material has been thoroughly covered by other authors.

You'll be impressed with the candid and complicated details of the CIA's loss of independence and evolving politization.

After forty years as a CIA insider, Melvin Goodman has produced a sweeping account of the agency's history and political entanglements that combines the solidity of good research with the readability of lively writing. Goodman's rich historical context and depth of detail, and the new insights he brings to familiar figures (and not-so-familiar characters) add dimension to his narrative. But while it's a fascinating read, it's also a dispiriting one. Goodman contends that, not long after the CIA's beginnings, in the Truman administration, the agency was used, not for objective strategic information, but had already devolved into a policy arm of whatever government was in power. (Need political justification for the invasion of X? Call the CIA.) Goodman goes into detail regarding covert operations during the Cold War, the CIA and the threat of terrorism, and he and also goes into great detail about the Iraq War and the political climate surrounding that. It would be wonderful if the information in the Iraq chapters were available to every American (including--and especially--our political leaders!). Interested in politics, history. and foreign affairs since World War II? Read this book! Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA

Melvin Goodman spent many years in the CIA and taught at the War College. His insight and critique of foreign policies, on both sides of the aisle, are astute and well presented. A must read for the news junkie, or serious student of world politics and foreign affairs.

This is the first book on the CIA by a CIA insider who was with the directorate of intelligence analysis. It examines and explains three key intelligence failures: the failure to predict the decline of the Soviet Union, the absence of strategic intelligence on the 9/11 attacks, and finally the falsification of intelligence to permit the Bush administration to go to war against Iraq. The book explores the need for reform and accountability, and suggests specific steps to be taken. This is must reading for anyone interested in national security and American foreign policy.