How About Google Replaces the CIA

In Legacy of Ashes the History of the CIA Tim Weiner has written a book that should give us all pause. The CIA has not worked. Harry Truman thought of it as a sort of big newspaper that would inform the President of news that both made and did not make the papers. But that is not what the OSS boys who formed the CIA culture desired. They wanted to play at overthrowing governments that leaned the slightest bit leftward; they might go communist. Weiner writes that they were bad at it because the first generation of operatives, many of whom were active alcoholics, did not have a clue as to what they were doing. They did not know the history, language nor culture of the nations they were assigned to radically change but brimming with arrogance and misplaced American can do optimism they forged ahead. Their ventures were supposed to be secret and not traceable to the United States. But the CIA never learned to be subtle. Funds would suddenly pour into the coffers of parties and politicians they supported. The people realized immediately that the money was coming from outside their country and they wer all somewhat acquainted with the country that had more money than it knew what to do with. They simplely added two and two to get CIA and the Americans. When Generals would get some training in the US and return to establish a dictatorship to protect their people from communism. Those people were not fooled; they knew the US had purchased that General.
What about the intelligence? What about the President's newspaper of the printed and unprinted stories of the governments of the world? Well as Weiner has documented, the CIA knew next to nothing of what happened in other countries and was surprised by major developments time and again while misdiagnosing situation after situation. The CIA's focus on covert (i.e. goverment overthrows and other foreign medling) action ate the budget keeping people from being trained in the languages and cultures of subject countries so that they could be productive as operators or analysts. Secrecy covered up the wrong doing and the incompetence and allowed for the creation of an international reputation for omnipotence that the CIA decidedly did not have. When nations blundered or were beset with bad luck they wrongly saw the hand of the CIA in their misfortune. All of which brings me to my point.
Lets disband the CIA and replace it with Google...