as Ken White succinctly pointed out on page 1 of this thread:

The real problems with national level Humint did not arise until Nixon had Schlesinger start the dismantling of the DO in 1973, the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee did their thing and James Earl Carter and Stansfield Turner completed the massacre. The Agency has never fully recovered.
IMO: the agency had a consensual adult relationship with the Oval Office during Eisenhower (Dulles bros) and Reagan (Casey), but at other times was either a presidential plaything or ignored. So, there have been lots of things to bitch about - and, thus, the Jones book and many others.

The Nixon-Schlesinger thing was particularly disruptive to the then-called Directorate of Plans, which became the Directorate of Operations - less about a 1000 officers. You will find differences of opinion as to whether that shift in emphasis was good or bad - and in terms of whether some deadwood should have been removed.

I suppose that names do not necessarily mean anything; but the picture after that seemed to reflect a shift from HUMINT to more of a paramilitary concept. The latter was necessary to the effort in Afghanistan ("Mr. Wilson's War"); but query, to what extent paramilitary efforts should be a function of the DO.

Anyway, a read of Jones' book would be worthwhile - and a compare to those written by Bob Baer. Guess I'll order it from Amazon. Three reviews of the book by retired folks at the end of the Amazon page, which is here:

http://www.amazon.com/Human-Factor-D...1875405&sr=8-1

The first one calls for the final completion of the Nixon-Schlesinger massacre, which seems rather drastic IMO.