A little CIA humor anyone?

You don't often hear a lot of jokes about the Central Intelligence Agency. But the CIA directors for Bushes 41 and 43 traded punch lines today about the perils of the job.

As CIA director, you learn that "when you smell the flowers, look around for the coffin," said Robert M. Gates, who served at the spook agency from 1991 to 1993, during the administration of George H.W. Bush.

Gates, now Defense secretary, recounted how he had once been presented with a CIA scheme to float balloons over Libya that were to pop and drop leaflets urging the country's citizens to overthrow their government.

Fearing that wind might blow the balloons off course, Gates said he ordered the plotters to rewrite the leaflets to specify which government they wanted the residents to overthrow. Had the leaflets drifted over Egypt, Gates said, "I imagine Gen. Mubarak would have been none too pleased."

Michael V. Hayden, the current CIA chief, recited what he said was the first lesson he learned about the intelligence business: Spy agencies always get the blame. In Washington, he said, "there are operational successes and intelligence failures."

Hayden and Gates spoke during a retirement ceremony today for Hayden, who is leaving the Air Force as a four-star general after 39 years of service but is expected to remain CIA director for the remainder of the Bush administration.

-- Greg Miller

Photo: Michael V. Hayden. Credit: Brendan Smialowski / Associated Press

Comments

[Patricia]

How would I describe the CIA after reading about this leaflet scheme?

Let's take a bunch of highly educated, very intelligent people, who are nonetheless hopelessly naive about human psychology, and let them loose on the rest of the world, protected by secrecy and working with only internal accountability.

It's the hopelessly naive part that does the most damage. It was naive to think that leaflets would convince Libyans to give up their cozy, repressive welfare state for some unspecified unknown political system that might or might not replace it later.

Ir's this kind of naivete about human psychology that got us mired in Iraq.

[Gina]

It's a joke.