"The CIA failed in its single, overriding defining mission, which was
to chart the course of Soviet affairs." --Daniel Patrick Moynihan,
Quoted by Bill Gertz, Washington Times, May 21, 1992.
"The CIA [has] come under legitimate attack from President Clinton
for failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union." --Morton
Kondracke, Washington Times, April 26, 1995.
"The CIA itself did not make much difference in the ultimate outcome
of the cold war. Its analysts misjudged almost every major
development in the post-World War II world, including the most
spectacular misjudgment of all--the flat-out failure to predict the
collapse of the Soviet Union." --David Wise, Nightmover: How Aldrich
Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million (1995).
"Has any government department goofed up more than the Central
Intelligence Agency?... Their most egregious and expensive blunder
about the Soviet economy we are still paying for." --Mary McGrory,
Washington Post, March 14, 1995.
"Never has so much money been allocated to study one country; never
have so many academic and government specialists scrutinized every
aspect of a country's life. . . . Yet when the end came, the experts
found themselves utterly unprepared." --Richard Pipes, Foreign
Affairs (January/ February 1995).
"The CIA failed to alert the President and Congress about the
inexorable Soviet collapse. The present DCI, in his starched white
outfit wishing it all away, is in a curious state of institutional
denial." --William Safire, New York Times, April 6, 1995.
