Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA

by Melvin A. Goodman

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 28, 2008

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty scathing indictment of the CIA written at the tail end of the George W. Bush administration. Much of the core argument about the CIA and the intelligence community is a pretty standard liberal critique - too big, too unaccountable, too militarized, too politicized. You can get a shorter version of those critiques in a number of different places.

What I think sets this book apart is the biases of the author. I mean biases in the best possible way. The author is an experienced analyst from the CIA who understands the agency, intelligence production, and the national decision-making apparatus supported by the CIA. He has very definite views about how the CIA has erred and is willing to name names.

I'll be honest I loved reading his critiques because they are so rare - and usually so ill-informed - in any other publication. This is the sort of work you can't get from a journalist and are rarely going to get from a historian. I frankly wish the book had just been his opinions and indictments on analysis, politicization, and recommended reforms.

I don't know that I agreed with everything the author said. He's clearly a proponent of an IC with the CIA at the center and a great-power-politics dynamic between intelligence and public policy. I'm not sure that world is possible anymore at the macro level - and it's certainly not in the current political environment. For all the horror of the George W. Bush national security apparatus, they look like saints compared to the Trump years - with all indications the worst is yet to come from any future Republican administration.

I strongly recommend this book for students of the IC and national security. The author's assessments go directly at the heart of conventional wisdom about intelligence failures, organization, and frankly a number of public figures who have burnished their reputations after some pretty reprehensible behavior over the course of their careers. My own limited experiences make me inclined to take most of the author's facts at face value - though I might differ in some conclusions.