I have mixed feelings about the presence of clandestine organizations within a Democratic Republic. On one hand, contra Pelosi et al, I tend to think most governmental actions should be carried out in daylight. On the other hand, I admit that, in areas where you're on a war-like footing, there's a military-like need not to announce what you're doing, what you know, etc. Then there's the question of the use of deception, lies, coercion, and other negative tactics which I rather dislike.

The other problem is more practical: our particular clandestine intel organization, the CIA, has been of rather questionable utility in the last several decades. The CIA was terribly wrong when they insisted Kim Jong Il was not developing nuclear weapons in the late 1990s. But he did, of course. So when it came to Saddam, the CIA wasn't going to be fooled again: Saddam most clearly was stockpiling WMDs, the CIA promised Bush. Which also turned out to be false. Shaken, the CIA overcorrected again, insisting in the 2007 NIE that, of course, Iran had abandoned its nuclear program back in 2003. Which, once again, turned out to be completely wrong.

Like a newbie playing the stock market, they bought high and sold low over and over again on the questions which mattered most to us as a nation. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Frankly, we could have done better with a coin flip. (It certainly would have been cheaper.)

So, if that's so, should we do away with the CIA, or its function?

Michael Rubin, writing over at NRO, notes an earlier failure of the CIA, and then draws what strikes me as the correct balance (bold added):

So there you have it. Right before the Soviets decided to withdraw, the CIA concluded that nothing could force the Soviets to withdraw. I always look at this document as a useful reminder to the importance of separating intelligence analysis from policy. Intelligence should color policy, certainly, but it should not supplant it. While raw intelligence can be useful, often the intelligence community's consensus documents are not. At the very least, they must be taken with a grain of salt. After all, a natural conclusion from this document — perhaps the one which the Agency was pushing — was that we could not win by sponsoring insurgency in Afghanistan; perhaps diplomacy would be better. Men like Charlie Wilson may have been in the minority, but fortunately they were in the right place at the right time and had a president serving over them like Ronald Reagan.

In other words, shut up and sing. Do what you're supposed to be good at. We want your facts, not your opinions.

Sadly, from what I hear (I hope the "ground truth" is different) the CIA has had insufficient human intelligence in recent years.