I completely believe that the CIA needs to be reformed after the colossal failure of 9/11, and absent other knowledge I'm encouraged by the house-cleaning being performed by CIA Director Porter J. Goss, but I wonder if things are going as badly as page two of that article implies.
"The biggest problem for CIA can be summed up in two words: No spies," said one official.The agency, in the two years since a presidential commission called for reforming human spying efforts, still has not succeeded in penetrating the major targets of U.S. intelligence with human spies, the official said.
Those targets include the terrorist group al Qaeda and the governments of China, North Korea and Iran.
But you'd hardly expect the CIA to announce how well it's doing placing spies in all those organizations, right? Then again, a CIA announcement that "Yeah, we've got several spies very high up in the North Korean military, in al Queda in Iraq, and in Iran" could eliminate a few enemies by playing on their paranoia....
You're absolutely right. Public criticsim of ongoing CIA operations is silly. We have no freaking clue what's really going on, and if they're doing their job they're not only NOT going to tell us, they're going to lie to us about it.
Regarding the sweeping by Goss: Remember all the outcry at the time? Now, you and I don't know of course, but if there weren't controversy wouldn't that mean that nothing was changing? I think the outcry was a signal that the changes were more than just superficial. Let's hope they were the RIGHT changes.