How the CIA Lost Its Way

On June 21, "Tonight," he proclaimed, "I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success," with those facilities "completely and totally obliterated."

- SCOTT ANDERSON

Trump's triumphalist tone was swiftly undercut by a preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analysis that found the airstrikes were likely to set back Iran's nuclear capabilities by a mere few months. The furious president not only doubled down on his "obliterated" claim but insisted that further analysis would confirm it. Sure enough, his Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, John Ratcliffe, soon scurried forward to cast doubt on the DIA's assessment and to insist that "new intelligence" from an unidentified source confirmed the sites had been "severely damaged," not quite Trump's adverb of choice, but close.

Nothing on the ground is any clearer now, but to many observers one thing is: These events served as yet another example of the rank politicization of America's pre-eminent intelligence agency. As Tim Weiner demonstrates in The Mission, this trend is likely only to accelerate with Trump in the White House.

Both as a one-time reporter for The New York Times and as a book author, Weiner has made tracking the fluctuating fortunes of the American intelligence community his life's work. His masterly "Legacy of Ashes," detailing the CIA's first half-century, won a National Book Award in 2007.