The right is finally ready to reform the CIA. Don't let hatred of Trump ruin it.

We shouldn't let partisanship foreclose an opportunity to rein in the intelligence establishment

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

The intelligence community enjoys enviable status in popular culture. In shows like Homeland and films like the Jason Bourne series, the agency is presented as hyper-vigilant, super-competent, and brutally effective. Older works and period pieces place intelligence agents in a clubby, vaguely aristocratic milieu. Recent depictions emphasize their seamless immersion in foreign cultures and the high-tech resources they deploy, setting scenes in teeming souks and banks of shining computers.

By most journalistic and scholarly accounts, however, the reality is rather different. Studies like Tim Weiner's A Legacy of Ashes and Christopher Andrew's The Secret World depict an institution that has more in common with Office Space than with Sicario. A recent critique of sensationalized spy fiction notes that CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia resemble a "shabby post-office."

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Samuel Goldman

Samuel Goldman is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is executive director of the John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom and director of the Politics & Values Program. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard and was a postdoctoral fellow in Religion, Ethics, & Politics at Princeton University. His books include God's Country: Christian Zionism in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and After Nationalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). In addition to academic research, Goldman's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.