[blackdog]

Not limited to State. This cancer is embedded from top to mid level at every agency. It is the brass ring. They ain’t gonna let go.

[palmer]

One thing about the Cold War is that it made the CIA into an agency that sounds a lot like that State Dept 7th floor. It was far easier to attend swanky parties in Paris with the enemy agents than to actually counter the enemy. Might have seemed like the right thing to do at the time even though it was not.

The end of the Cold War blew up that rice bowl and a lot of people never got over that. The neocons evolved from that crowd. 9/11 lit a fire under the CIA and a lot of folks started doing the right thing. Not all, obviously, but enough to make a dent.