A lot of cloak, not much dagger and a bit of genius

sunjournal
Deservedly or not, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has enjoyed a formidable reputation for omniscience, omnipotence and dark doings ever since it was founded in 1947. In most of the world, this view of American intelligence probably still obtains, notwithstanding the findings of recent investigations. How can the United States, with visible power that is so overwhelming, not also be possessed of invisible powers and secret intentions that boggle the imagination?

There is a certain justification for regarding the CIA as some sort of parallel universe. It is, after all, secret. Its resources truly are enormous (although no one but the president and a handful of lofty government officials know just how enormous).

It lives by different laws of moral physics than the rest of the U.S. system. The purpose of an intelligence service is to commit on foreign soil acts that would be illegal in the homeland. As one of the men who trained me when I was a CIA rookie half a century ago cheerily observed: "Espionage is a criminal enterprise. Every time you recruit an agent, you suborn him to treason, which is a capital crime in every country in the world."

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