CIA Memoirs

  
"CIA memoirs offer revelations and settle scores among spies"  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/cia-memoirs-offer-revelations-and-settle-scores-among-spies/2012/06/04/gJQAVGTVEV_story.html

"[T]he ex-spies want a little credit, even if it means dabbling in public self-glorification, something seemingly antithetical to the agency’s ethos."  The "silent boots on the ground" of the CIA, as I have called them, whether in paramilitary or classic intelligence gathering roles appear to be performing well in the defense of our country.  Yet, the distinguishing character of the clandestine service of quiet, personal pride in duty honorably performed has given way to "public self-gratification" to a degree not seen in the past.  This article can only point to isolated past writings and fails to show that they generally were viewed with contempt and not as precedent by professionals at the time. 

The ethos may have degraded because of growing disdain among career professionals directed at the agency bureaucracy brought on by evolution (from the Soviet Union) or corruption (to Iraq) of mission identification and value.  A cause may be the dangerously enhanced use of contract personnel who, though sitting side by side, by definition have chosen the moneyed rather than the principled path of direct government service into and within intelligence work.  Assuredly, a cause is the changed culture from which many of these current writers came into the agency.  The direct line has broken from generations who appreciated and sought to emulate the selfless service of those in the clandestine service of the OSS or, for example, the case-officer who in Prague in 1967 bent to pick up an agent's dead drop emplaced prior to the Soviet tank and squad moving near.  These were men and women who served as Director Patraeus recently said, "never for acclaim, always for country."   

It may be somewhat unfair to brand the whole service because of these memoirs yet, if the ethos within were still strong in "never for acclaim," it would be that compact of silent duty which should have been the greatest dissuasion from self-aggrandizement.   If the ethos of the clandestine services has so changed it does not just signal a sad day for America it manifests a dangerous degradation of character within the agency and America itself.