A grown up's CIA

Interesting article about the way things were run in the 1980's CIA.

Obviously there were some foulups back then but after the current debacle, this is refreshing.

" Casey seemed to know everyone on earth who had ever accomplished anything, and he had a genius for flipping through his Rolodex and plucking out the one individual in the entire world capable of helping us find out whatever we needed to know %u2013 and then talking that man or woman into lending a hand.
It was always done quietly if a meeting was necessary, we held it away from the office and with no paper trail whatever. And we did it all the time. There are literally scores of individuals in Washington, and elsewhere, who during those years gave their time and energy, sometimes at personal risk to help provide information vital to our country security. Of course you don't know who they are because they never, ever talked about what they did, not even to their friends and colleagues, never gave a speech about it, and never published op-ed essays about it even if they thought the resulting Reagan policies were wrong-headed."