Very interesting analysis by Herbert E. Meyer.
He served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to the director of Central Intelligence, and vice chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council
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An amazing read. Quite long . .but very intriguing.
The part about the U2s over Cuba before the Cuban Missile crisis is interesting.
Good article, but I have a quibble:
The danger is that these two very talented officials won't have the time to actually "do Intel." Having been convinced by the two commissions that the recent intelligence failures were caused by structure rather than by people, official Washington is obsessed with restructuring the intelligence community.
Some of the pre 9/11 problems appear to have been structural, not people problems. The overly cautious restrictions on sharing information between the foreign and domestic sides of the intelligence community was a structural problem put in place by the Clinton Justice Department. Agents wanted to but were prevented from sharing info that would have enabled them to connect many of the dots and pointed them in the right direction.
Of course, one could say that this was also a people problem, the problem being Bill Clinton and the people he appointed. So, I guess my quibble is that Herbert Meyer didn't come out and say this in his article directly. But by connecting a few dots (praise of Casey, silence on Tenet) my intelligence estimate is that Mr. Meyer does not have a high opinion of how the Clinton Administration managed the intelligence community.