The arrogance of the clerks

National Review, Nov 4, 1991 by Angelo Codevilla

In January 1982 Robert Gates had read the riot act to CIAs senior analysts, He had chastised "analysts pretending to be experts who did not read the language of the country they covered ... who were unfamiliar with its history or culture ... and who argued that none of that mattered; flabby complacent thinking and questionable assumptions combined with an intolerance of others' views . . . verbose writing ... and analysis that too often proved inaccurate or too fuzzy to judge whether it was ever right or wrong." Gates had also promised to compare each analyst's papers to actual events when deciding on salary raises.

So you see why Gates is unforgivable, and why the Gates hearings were a typical Washington foreign-policy fight: they had nothing to do with the outside world. You see also why the U.S. Government should begin to reform intelligence by sending most CIA analysts to contemplate their own importance at home, on their own time.