Commentary: U.S. intelligence can be spectacularly right — or wrong

[babylonsister]

Commentary: U.S. intelligence can be spectacularly right — or wrong
By Roy Gutman | McClatchy Newspapers

* Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2007


WASHINGTON — After the latest U.S. intelligence about-face on Iran, it's reasonable to wonder whether Americans can trust intelligence agencies to tell us what's going on in closed societies, especially when it's a question of war and peace.

The discussion is long overdue. Americans for too long have viewed the secret gleanings of secret agents as the inner truth, especially about places where the United States has no diplomatic relations.

Every so often, the Central Intelligence Agency has been uncannily accurate, predicting, for example, the violent breakup of communist Yugoslavia in 1991. The CIA also was the only U.S. government agency to have any contacts with the Afghan opposition after 9/11, which helped bring about a rapid defeat of the Taliban.

But the CIA has missed some big ones, including the fall of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, and it predicted weapons of mass destruction would be found in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The CIA also overlooked the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in 1996 and Osama bin Laden's effective hijacking of the Taliban regime by late 1998 — two events that at the time were thought to be minor.

Based on four decades covering foreign affairs, much of it focused on closed communist societies, my observation is that intelligence officers, however well trained, equipped and motivated, are only as good as their human sources, which in dictatorial regimes, are scant.

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/23170.html