Revisionist History?

[Fred]

A guess would be that firing the CIA heads would be like shaking up the military, something that we can ill afford at the moment.

If people are afraid of losing their jobs, they might in the future avoid giving us less than certain intelligence in fear of being humiliated and put on the rack. Precisely the type of info that could have stopped 9/11.

Its a tough call IMO

 

[DemoCoder]

Problem is, the Church commission went too far in the other extreme. CIA HUMINT got devasted and the analyst wing of the CIA fell in love with the NSA/NRO SIGINT. Wireless SIGINT ain't that great if everyone knows about the NSA/NRO already, they can take steps to avoid it (e.g. courier, modern encryption, underground cables, etc) Even BinLaden stopped using his sat phone after Clinton used it to target a cruise missile attack.

There was a time when the CIA was much better at running agents, "boxing" them (polygraph), etc. It seems today's CIA are nothing more than a bunch of foreign affairs students working behind desks writing white papers on abstract and vague information.

Atleast, if your read any books by retired clandestine service operatives, it seems that way. Even the FBI seems way better at infiltration and running snitches and agents now. (see Mafia operations)