NewsReal Blog Book Club: David Fosmark Recommends a Very Important Book Now in Paperback for the First Time

NRB’s David Forsmark has today’s book recommendation:

A VERY important book now in paperback for the first time, with an update from the author.

Of course, radical leftists want to shut down the Central Intelligence Agency because they think it spends too much time undermining hostile governments, assassinating terrorists, arming pro-U.S. resistance groups, and invading the privacy and just being mean to nasty people who would like to slaughter American citizens.

Conservatives, however, have grown to dislike and distrust the Agency for its real problem — It actually spends very little time doing those things.

Even worse, CIA case officers who are itching to run operations to get the bad guys, identify threats or cultivate sources in foreign countries are constantly battling roadblocks; even their low-risk proposals are scuttled. And trapped in a classic bureaucracy, they are working against a reverse incentive. Spending time abroad protecting the country is the surest way to slow-track their career path.

If you want to get ahead in the CIA, don’t spend your time in Baghdad, Moscow or Beijing. Hang around Langley, VA.

“Ishmael Jones” — the pseudonym of a retired CIA case officer — blows the lid off the culture of the CIA in a mind-boggling new book, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture. In fact, “dysfunctional” doesn’t even begin to cover what could be called a systematic scam of taxpayers that leaves the United States vulnerable to terrorist attacks….