After working through Bob Drogin’s Curveball and parts of Tim Weiner’s account of the CIA’s history, I get the impression that both Colin Powell and George W. Bush—unlike figures such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz—did not intentionally lie about Iraq’s alleged weapons. Instead, they were genuinely misled by the CIA with unreliable information. If anyone was responsible for that misinformation, it seems to have been George Tenet, then head of the CIA, who, in his eagerness to please the White House, began acting with extreme recklessness.
As for the CIA itself, opinions differ on its post-Cold War decline. During the Cold War, the agency was involved, to varying degrees, in the overthrow of democratically elected governments that the U.S. deemed too left-leaning. More often, it instigated hopeless (civil) wars that brought only suffering. Another task was the spread of misinformation, which resulted in both the public and politicians being worse informed than before, eventually fostering widespread distrust of all news. Given these activities, it might actually be a positive thing that the CIA is struggling. Even as an intelligence-gathering agency, the CIA was often ineffective during the Cold War, with the rare useful intelligence usually obtained by chance, such as when a high-profile defector offered their services voluntarily.
Tuesday 26 May 2009