Is the CIA bad or merely misunderstood?

At the modern-day CIA, doing nothing was usually the desirable course of action. If you did something, it was bound to make someone angry, and then they would start asking questions and demanding answers.

On sex between colleagues being discouraged at the CIA but accepted at MI6 (p.197)

We don't have the same rules about not sticking your pen in the company inkwell.

On life (p.307)

They say the biggest mistakes we make in life are the ones we make with our eyes wide open – the ones where we know what we are doing, and decide to do it anyway.

On US foreign policy relying on military solutions (p. 372)

"Harry my friend, some people like to bomb. It makes them feel like they have a strategy, when they send the military in."

Ignatius will no doubt write many more knowledgeable novels about life in the CIA. His increasingly colourful cynicism is probably present in Bloodmoney (2011) about the CIA and that unfortunate custodian of the Islamic bomb Pakistan. A world with an additional nuclear weapon wielder, Iran, may well be too volatile for the US to happily control. Whatever happens the CIA is sure to cop the blame.