It almost seems  as if the paradox of running a secret spy agency in a Democracy if further convoluted by the selfish manipulations by the political elite who ran t. Rumsfeld and Bush running operations against each other while in the CIA is the most crazy crap . You can’t wriite this material.

Journalist Tim Weiner discusses future President George H.W. Bush’s appointment to Director of Central Intelligence under Gerald Ford.

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In his balanced, and thus all the more disturbing, history of the CIA, Tim Weiner tells how an agency intended to inform the President about the world became so mired in cloak and dagger politics that the US now lacks the intelligence it needs to operate effectively on the world stage.

Why is it that the agency intended to provide us with intelligence about the world became a tool to shape our perception of that world for political purposes?

Why, for decades, did the agency acquire a shining reputation despite misreading nearly every global crisis?

How did the CIA misread Castro’s Cuba, chances of victory in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union’s staying power?

Mr. Weiner argues that these C.I.A. missteps have encouraged many of our gravest contemporary problems: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and terrorism – World Affairs Council of Oregon

Tim Weiner is a reporter for The New York Times. He has written on American intelligence for twenty years, and won the Pulitzer Prize for his work on secret national security programs. He has traveled to Afghanistan and other nations to investigate CIA covert operations firsthand.