“I ts subsequent transformation is the subject of “The Mission” by Tim Weiner, who won a Pulitzer prize in 1988 for his reporting on the cia. Mr Weiner’s book covers the agency’s frantic post-9/11 years, including the distortion of its intelligence prior to the Iraq war. Mr Weiner meticulously documents a level of chaos, deception and politicisation in the upper echelons of the cia that put in perspective current debates over Donald Trump’s own efforts to reshape and purge the agencies. “The very survival of the agency” was in question in 2004, he recalls.
Mr Weiner also shows how the cia’s role in counter-terrorism changed the identity of the agency. The naiveté of the 1990s was replaced with machismo: in the early 21st century the cia “looked much more like a paramilitary organisation than a spy service”. The 500 cia personnel in Baghdad were obliged to travel in convoys of three armoured vehicles, which “was not conducive to conducting clandestine meetings with Iraqis”, remarks Mr Weiner. Incompetently designed covert-communication systems contributed to the collapse of agent networks in Iran and China.”