Faddis: The CIA Is Broken – It Will Take More Than A New Director To Fix It

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This article is intended as a response to the recent article by Dan Hoffman in the Washington Times entitled “Some Leadership Lessons for New CIA Chief Ratcliffe to Ponder”.

The premise of that article appears to be that a change of leadership at the top of CIA will be sufficient to put it on the right track. With all due respect for Mr. Hoffman, who I know personally, he is wrong. CIA needs major reform from top to bottom. The twin cancers of politicization and bureaucratization have rendered it effectively incapable of doing its job.

Politicization:

This is more than just DEI, although the impact of that insidious ideology has been catastrophic. Long ago senior leaders at CIA began to involve themselves inappropriately in American domestic politics. The aftermath of the attack on our facilities in Benghazi in 2012 provides a graphic example.

The CIA base in Benghazi was attacked by a radical Islamic militia. Our consulate in that same city was overrun and our ambassador was killed. Only by the heroic efforts of the men on the ground did we avoid an even worse result. Every report by everyone on the ground told the same story. more