Very impressive thread. It would have been useful if the Congress, the 9/11 Commission and the upper echelon managers in the IC had given more credence to observations such as these before " reforming" the intelligence community.

Speaking as someone who has studied declassified and open source material on this subject I found Tom's comment re: Iraq's invasion of Kuwait unsurprising. A similar prediction had been made of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan almost a year before it occurred by the regional NIO ( I think it was Arnold Horelick) who did not seem to catch the attention and support of policy makers in the NSC until the summer of 1979 ( State rejected this prediction as unlikely and it later opposed the first Carter PDD proposal to aid the Mujahedin). Ditto the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was forseen by analysts and State dug in its heels even when Romanian diplomats came in to forewarn the U.S. and, much to the Johnson administration's intense discomfort, seek unspecified support - I am not sure about Hungary in '56 catching the U.S. off-guard or not.