Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Sharpening Strategic Intelligence
- 1 Strategic Intelligence and American Statecraft
- 2 Debunking Cold War Myths
- 3 Stumbling after the Cold War
- 4 Blundering in the “War on Terrorism”
- 5 Spies Who Do Not Deliver
- 6 Analysts Who Are Not Experts
- 7 Facing Future Strategic Intelligence Challenges
- Notes
- Selected bibliography
- Index
3 - Stumbling after the Cold War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Sharpening Strategic Intelligence
- 1 Strategic Intelligence and American Statecraft
- 2 Debunking Cold War Myths
- 3 Stumbling after the Cold War
- 4 Blundering in the “War on Terrorism”
- 5 Spies Who Do Not Deliver
- 6 Analysts Who Are Not Experts
- 7 Facing Future Strategic Intelligence Challenges
- Notes
- Selected bibliography
- Index
Summary
The cia, much like the rest of the u. s. national security apparatus, had lost its bearings and stumbled while searching to regain a central focus during the post–Cold War period. The term “post–Cold War” awkwardly describes the period between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the attacks of 11 September 2001. The CIA's senior management was bewildered by the evaporation of the Cold War rivalry that had shaped the worldviews nurtured throughout their careers.
The CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) managers were especially befuddled and, at least initially, had wanted to continue to place a priority on spotting, assessing, developing, and recruiting Russian agents even though these DO business practices had produced less-than-stellar human intelligence results during the Cold War. The DO's perpetuation of these failed practices produced even less impressive results in the post–Cold War period. As a former senior DO official, Milt Bearden, who had a justifiable hallway reputation in Langley as a free-wheeling and aggressive case officer, lamented of the difficulty the DO had in the transition from Cold War to the post–Cold War period, “Too much of the CIA's clandestine collection effort had too little relevance in the fast-moving new world. Landing a Soviet defector had been our bread and butter in the old days, but now we found ourselves simply in the resettlement game, with no real evidence that we were getting much of anything useful in return.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Sharpening Strategic IntelligenceWhy the CIA Gets It Wrong and What Needs to Be Done to Get It Right, pp. 53 - 68Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007