My Experience with Military Intelligence Was Over 50 Years Ago,

[Warpy]

55. True, through interpreters in both Congress and the White House

who boil it all down into a more organized form that politicos can understand.

They were still caught flatfooted.

Part of the problem was that it was such a closed system. Those do tend to collapse with little warning. What caught the CIA by surprise is that a rapid collapse at the top led to an abandonment of enforcement at the borders, a collective "you're on your own" for eastern Europe and central Asia. All of a sudden, people were on the Berlin Wall with pickaxes and sledge hammers and nary a cop nor Stasi goon was to be seen and that's the part that had politicos and spooks alike standing with their mouths hanging open.

I think they learned their lesson, we weren't caught flatfooted this time. We were just slow to respond, reactive instead of proactive.