The whacky North Korean leader revealed a few things recently. One is that the country has learned how to make hydrogen bombs. The other is that our intelligence agencies ain’t got much of what they are named for.
In other words, the agencies missed whacko’s h-bomb. They figured he was a few years away from this bomb.
This will make another plaque on the walls of the CIA. And the other 19 or so intelligence agencies. It will sit nicely alongside the plaque for missing the ICBMs of North Korea. Our intelligence guys assured us they would not arrive for years.
We ought to admit the obvious. That the only difference between the CIA and you is the money. You don’t know when the North Koreans will do something significant. Neither does the CIA. But they get paid to know nothing.
In the last few months we have seen transcripts of our president’s chats with foreign leaders. We know what Trump and Mexico’s leader said to each other. We know the conversation between Australia’s leader and Trump.
Wow! Somebody revealed the secret conversations of the leader of the free world? We had better catch that bird. Right. We have thousands of intelligence agents. None of them know who leaked the conversations.
The Russians interfered with our elections. Yes, yes! We have a dossier here… Wait a minute. We have emails here… Wait. Well, we have something around here somewhere that proves something or other.
Yes or no: Did Saddam have an active program for weapons of mass destruction? Intelligence agencies said yes. Answer was no.
The agencies made similar screw-ups with Gaddafi in Libya. And with the results that would come from the uprisings in the “Arab Spring”.
The agencies bungled information that should have warned us of 9/11.
Imagine the boasting that must go on at reunions of the old agents. “You screwed up nine-eleven? That’s nuthin’. We missed the collapse of the Soviet Union. That was a biggie.”
“Wait a minute. You missed the collapse? We got the population of the Soviets wrong by about twenty million. Top that!”
“Okay. How about the Iranian revolution? We missed that. And the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Pretty hard to miss that one, guys.”
How do we justify paying these guys? I mean what is the point of having these agencies and their army of agents? Surely we could find better uses for the money. And if these agents are on tenure maybe we could set them to painting the White House fence.
While they are doing that they might stumble over the idiots. The ones who keep climbing over it on their stroll across the lawn to the White House. Thank you Secret Service. Whose motto is “What happens in Washington…we’ll get back to you on.”
Here is another money-saving idea. We could hollow-out these agencies. Sack all the agents, the lot. But pretend that we still employ them.
Then we could pay a couple of kids to use their IT skills to tell us what we need to know. They could hardly do any worse than the many agents for which we pay millions.
Or we could outsource all of our intelligence gathering to the Israelis. They seem to know what is going on in the undercover world. We surely don’t.
The first thing they could reveal to us is where the North Korean generals get those stupid-looking hats.
From Tom…as in Morgan
You can write to Tom at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com. You can read more of his writing at tomasinmorgan.com.