America's principal foreign-intelligence agency, established in 1947 with the express purpose of avoiding strategic surprise such as Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor six years earlier. It is part of America's intelligence community, the collective term for 18 intelligence agencies and bodies. Its director is John Ratcliffe.
John Brennan, who led the CIA from 2013 to 2017 under Barack Obama, reorganised the agency by creating 11 "mission centres" in which operations officers were mixed with analysts. Many senior officers were pushed out. The changes dramatically reduced the power of the directorate of operations, which had long held top-dog status within the agency, and created a more top-down service. Several subsequent CIA directors pledged to reverse the moves; all failed. The reorganisation has made the agency more pliable for Trump.
The Trump administration has sacked large numbers of intelligence officers for little reason other than their past involvement in probes related to Trump, such as inquiries into Russian meddling. It fired one of the CIA's most senior Russia officials, as well as the chief data scientist at the NSA. Within the CIA many senior officials have retired earlier than expected, and those below them have left at an unusually high rate. Two officials in the agency's Americas mission centre—an assistant director and a deputy assistant director—recently departed, not long after Trump's strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific; the CIA was involved in that campaign, which was widely believed to be illegal.
Current and former intelligence officers describe the intelligence community as roiled by revenge-driven purges, chaotic leadership and politicisation. "Morale is in the toilet," says one source—a stark contrast with Ratcliffe's upbeat testimony to Congress. Many analysts are frustrated not only by the risk that their work will be distorted but also by the lack of demand for it.
Clay's Conclusion: Creativity is great, but plagiarism is faster.