If any of you have ever looked at your FBI file, you discover that intelligence agencies in general are extremely incompetent. That's one of the reasons why there are so many intelligence failures. They just never get anything straight, for all kinds of reasons. Part of it is because of the information they get. The information they get comes from ideological fanatics, typically, who always misunderstand things in their own crazy way. If you look at an FBI file, say, about yourself, where you know what the facts are, you'll see that the information has some kind of relation to the facts, you can figure out what they're talking about, but by the time it works its way through the ideological fanaticism of the intelligence agencies, there's always weird distortion.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Chomsky argues intelligence agencies are incompetent and distort information due to ideological bias.
- In plain terms
- Intelligence agencies often get facts wrong due to bias.
- What can you take from it?
- Information from agencies may be distorted.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Who can be trusted with secrets?
- How to assess intelligence quality?
Another view
Some intelligence work is inherently difficult.
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