Too Much Intelligence The Protracted Conflict

There’s no doubt about it: hubris does come before a fall. I would have boasted myself one of the last persons on earth who could have been snowed by CIA. And I’ve just learned that those rascals hornswoggled me as neatly as if I’d been a college president. They had me so thoroughly convinced that Victor Marchetti is a noaccount, sorehead, publicity-seeking, anti-American, leftist, double-agent, fellow-traveling boob that I dismissed from consideration anything he might write about CIA without feeling the need to read a word of it. I almost wept for the poor old Agency as it struggled through court after court to prevent him from bringing the nation down in ruins by revealing those Eyes and Ears Only Super Secrets he had managed to scrounge out of Langley headquarters while infiltrating our intelligence community disguised as a trusted employee.

So the matter rested until ten days ago, when I happened to notice, outside the door of a local stationer’s shop, a wire basket marked “overstock—40 per cent off,” in which a hardcover copy of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, topped a motley array of literary wallflowers. Having just cashed my tax rebate check, I felt the purchase would help discharge my duty to the economy.

JB

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James Burnham

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There’s no doubt about it: hubris does come before a fall. I would have boasted myself one of the last persons on earth who could have been snowed by CIA. And I’ve just learned that those rascals hornswoggled me as neatly as if I’d been a college president. They had me so thoroughly convinced that Victor Marchetti is a noaccount, sorehead, publicity-seeking, anti-American, leftist, double-agent, fellow-traveling boob that I dismissed from consideration anything he might write about CIA without feeling the need to read a word of it. I almost wept for the poor old Agency as it struggled through court after court to prevent him from bringing the nation down in ruins by revealing those Eyes and Ears Only Super Secrets he had managed to scrounge out of Langley headquarters while infiltrating our intelligence community disguised as a trusted employee.

So the matter rested until ten days ago, when I happened to notice, outside the door of a local stationer’s shop, a wire basket marked “overstock—40 per cent off,” in which a hardcover copy of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, topped a motley array of literary wallflowers. Having just cashed my tax rebate check, I felt the purchase would help discharge my duty to the economy.