by Ralph McGehee:

   John Deutch said he was shocked by the CIA's Directorate of Operation's 
"inability to formulate solutions." The Directorate did not have the 
desire or ability to reinvent itself. "Compared to uniformed officers they 
certainly are not as competent or as understanding of what their relative 
role is and what their responsibilities are."  

   Tim Weiner of the New York Times reported from his interview with Deutch 
that the deep rot of the DO in Guatemala is a core sample of the deep rot of 
the overall DO. The curse of old boys on Deutch is the patrimony of an elite 
secret society that degenerated into an elitist bureaucracy, an inbred tribal 
culture. Rules and laws were not for them. The Director Casey in 1980s hired 
thousands of new spies of questionable quality (many apparently were
chosen to run CIA paramilitary operations -- not to be basically
intelligence officers).  Milt Bearden, the last chief of the Soviet Division, 
says, "out of 5000 people, you've got 1,500 buggy-whip makers," in the 
spies' ranks. There's nothing worse than having a couple thousand more 
troops than you need....their mission is greatly reduced.

   The problem is not solely that of the Directorate of Operations - in many 
cases the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) is just as bad.  The DI is so 
bureaucratized that legitimate intelligence cannot survive or cannot survive 
intact. The other major problem is the politicization of intelligence. John 
Gentry's incisive review of those problems are recorded in his book, "Lost
Promise: How CIA Analysis Misserves the Nation."