CIA: Mostly Staying Home

Bob Baer worked for the CIA for 20 years as an operative in the Middle East before retiring in the 90's. He wrote a book that became the basis for the movie Syriana. Now he's living in Silverton, Colorado, where he was interviewed by Chris Ketcham. He said a lot of interesting things, which Ketcham weaved into one of the best things I've read about the CIA in quite a while. Read it here. Here's a little excerpt:

The real story that Syriana missed is that the CIA today has more
employees, more hangers-on in the bureaucracy, more private contractors, a
fatter budget than ever, and it still can’t seem to effectively deploy field
agents for the fundamental purpose of human intelligence. In the
long wake of 9/11, the agency, flush with money, engaged in vast new hiring, and
the CIA now boasts over 20,000 employees, equal to the size of an army
division. Most serve in the Directorate of Intelligence, the geek squad;
less than 2,000 work in the clandestine services at the Directorate of
Operations. But even the operations people are mostly staying
home. According to Ishmael Jones, some 90 percent of CIA employees live
and work in the comfort of the US, unaccustomed to drinking ditchwater and
sleeping on cots; during the Cold War, perhaps 45 percent lived stateside.
The physical evidence of the domesticity is all around Washington DC, in the
form of huge new building construction for CIA offices.