But after the catastrophic attack on the World Trade Center, there was virtually no finger pointing; the nation righteously could direct its anger at the man directly responsible-- Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaida (like the Japanese in Hawaii) had hundreds of agents scattered around the U.S. before their attack. The United States had suffered two massive failures of intelligence, separated by almost exactly 60 years.
But little has changed to this present day.
During and after World War II, the U.S. intelligence forces (O.S.S.- CIA) had done their jobs well. The CIA had succeeded in stalemating the KGB during the early Cold War years. The agency had been led by highly capable men such as Allen Dulles during the Eisenhower years, and John McCone during the Kennedy administration.
In 1953, the CIA played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular pro-communist Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh-- the democratically-elected leader who had nationalized Iran’s oil industry.
In "Operation Ajax," the CIA had argued (correctly) that Mossadegh was soft on communism, and that the Tudeh (the pro-Soviet Communist party) might soon control Iran.
Mossadegh was ousted, and the Shah-- Mohammed Reza Pahlavi-- assumed power.
Throughout the next 25 years-- under the watchful eyes of the CIA (and its well trained agents)-- U.S. interests were well-protected in the Middle East.
But in 1976 came the election of Jimmie Carter, and his disastrous dismantling of a once-proud, highly-motivated intelligence organization.
Carter (like all liberals) was obsessed with being "fair". So what did Carter see as the first place to single out for reforming? Of course-- it was those nasty, dastardly, secretive, immoral CIA brigands.
After all, hadn't the CIA taken part in the overthrowing of "sovereign" governments? Had they not taken part in assassinations, deception, blackmail, torture, and other knavish misdeeds?
In January 1977, Carter made one of the most ill-conceived presidential appointments of all time: For his CIA director he chose Stansfield Turner-- Carter's college roommate at the Naval Academy-- who had no agency or intelligence experience of any kind.
Carter probably would have done just as well to appoint Mr. Magoo, because Turner-- like his liberal president-- was blind to the fact that indeed, America had many implacable enemies, ESPECIALLY in the Middle East.
On October 31, 1977 Turner (with Carter's blessing) circulated a photocopied memo informing 800 astonished CIA staffers (mostly Republicans) of their dismissal. Most of these were highly seasoned agents, going all the way back to the OSS spy agency of World War II. A lot of them spoke Arabic, Farsi, and were fluent in other foreign languages.
To the joy and disbelief of our enemies, word spread that the U.S. had decided to delegate its intelligence priorities to only "non-human means"...satellite observations and listening posts. Carter had unilaterally chosen to disarm America from the spy wars-- a decision that to this day, resulted in the single worst intelligence debacle in US history.
Now link all this with Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served between 1977-81 as Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, and the disastrous advice he gave to Carter about Iran:
In 1978, our "crippled" CIA had no idea that the pro-American Shah of Iran was in grave danger of being overthrown. Once the situation became apparent, Brzezinski--after considering military intervention (which Carter feared)-- recommended that Washington drop support for the Shah and gave the green light to the fundamentalist Islamic opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Brzezinski's "theory" contradicted reality: he held that the Shah was "expendable" because Iran was also expendable, and could be used an "American puppet" vs. the expansionism of the highly-aggressive Soviet premier, Leonid Breshnev.
Russian threats...Soviet aggression ... Soviet invasion of yet another Muslim state; Brzezinski assured Carter that if the Shah were deposed, Khomeini's fundamentalist Islam would thwart any further Russian "adventurism" in the Mideast, and the US military could then turn its attention elsewhere.
But in December, 1979, the Soviet Union went ahead and invaded Afghanistan; and Khomeini's fanatics instead had turned their wrath on the Great Satan America, remembering that a generation ago, the CIA had undermined their revered Prime Minister (Mossadegh), and it had not been forgotten -a grievous miscalculation by Brzezinski.
But would this fiasco have occurred if the CIA had not been castrated by Carter only two years earlier?
Without actionable intelligence, Carter was easily pressured into withdrawing American support for the Shah.
Without actionable intelligence, it had been Brzezinski's foolish notion that all the "Muslim peoples" would rise up against regional Soviet power.
And without actionable intelligence, the U.S. had not realized what Ayatollah Khomeini was all about, and the colossal series of errors that let him seize power in Iran, with its tremendously negative long-term effects for American foreign policy.
In retrospect, we see that the Brzezinski mind was incapable of thinking clearly about Islam. He was a child of the Cold War, possessing a "fixation" on the USSR-- resulting in his delusion that Muslim extremism could be transformed into a geopolitical weapon in FAVOR of the United States.
Despite what any liberal may profess, it was tha CIA that had kept Communism in check; it was the CIA that kept the Cold War from boiling over; and it was the CIA that had enabled the U.S. to know what was actually taking place on the ground in Asia and the Middle East.
In 1979 when the Shah was finally overthrown, the United States lost its chief ally and all its outposts along the Russo-Iranian border regions-- as well as our military installations-- including all of our electronic monitoring stations that were aimed at the Soviet Union.
And exactly thirty years later, we have the greatest of ironies-- we have gone full circle:
Now, with the advent of a second Iranian revolution, once again we have no idea of what is taking place in that enigmatic country, simply because we have NO intelligence-- a situation where Sergeant Schultz would be proud: we know NOTHING.