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Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA Hardcover – January 28, 2008

by Melvin A. Goodman (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 13 ratings
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The time for serious soul-searching regarding the role of the Central Intelligence Agency and the intelligence community in general is long overdue. The recent intelligence failures regarding the unanticipated collapse of the Soviet Union, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq war demonstrate a CIA and a $50 billion intelligence enterprise that cannot provide strategic warning to policymakers and, even worse, is capable of falsifying intelligence to suit political purposes. It will not be possible to reform the enterprise until we understand and debate the nexus between intelligence and policy, the important role of intelligence, and the need for an intelligence agency that is not beholden to political interests. The recent appointment of three general officers to the three most important positions in the intelligence community points to the militarization of overall national security policy, which must be reversed. The military domination of the intelligence cycle makes it more difficult to rebuild strategic intelligence and to provide a check on the Pentagon's influence over foreign policy and the use of force. Failure of Intelligence is designed to inform such a debate and suggest a reform agenda.

In this timely and important book, the author offers a provocative mingling of historical description with contemporary political analysis and reform prescription that challenges the conventional wisdom on clandestine collection. The book ultimately and persuasively asserts that the failure to have diplomatic relations has led to the inability to collect intelligence.
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  1. Print length
    400 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
  4. Publication date
    January 28, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    6.46 x 1.31 x 9.35 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0742551105
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0742551107
  8. See all details
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  • Retired Reader
    5.0 out of 5 stars Tough Love for CIA
    Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2008
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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.
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  • evillurksathome
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2014
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    No problems. Quick service.
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  • stan grayson
    4.0 out of 5 stars stumbling along to uncertainty
    Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    A historical review of the many stumbles in the intelligence gathering game and how they impacted decisions in war and peace for the USA. It confirmed my suspicions about the influence of confirmation bias and other pitfalls in the assessment of danger. The book gives real life events and outcomes including the reasons why.
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  • LVT06
    3.0 out of 5 stars Symptoms or the Disease?
    Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2008
    Verified Purchase
    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.
    12 people found this helpful
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  • S. Gonzalez
    5.0 out of 5 stars Goodman's Counterintelligence Failure
    Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2009
    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
    11 people found this helpful
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