Legacy of Ashes (The History of the C.I.A.) by Tim Weiner

Author:Tim Weiner
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780385514453
Published: 2010-10-10T20:00:00+00:00

In retrospect, you see, I really do not believe that an intelligence organization in this government is able to deliver an honest analytical product without facing the risk of political contention. By and large, I think the tendency to treat intelligence politically increased over this whole period. And it’s mainly over issues like Southeast Asia and the growth of Soviet strategic forces that were extremely divisive politically. I think it’s probably naïve in retrospect to have believed what most of us believed at one time…that you could deliver an honest analytical product and have it taken at face value…. I think that intelligence has had relatively little impact on the policies that we’ve made over the years. Relatively none. In certain particular circumstances, perhaps insights and facts that were provided had an effect on what we did. But only in a very narrow range of circumstances. By and large, the intelligence effort did not alter the premises with which political leadership came to office. They brought their baggage and they more or less carried it along. Ideally, what had been supposed was that…serious intelligence analysis could…assist the policy side to reexamine premises, render policymaking more sophisticated, closer to the reality of the world. Those were the large ambitions which I think were never realized.

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