The CIA gets the Rodney Dangerfield treatment from the Washington Post.

So the CIA got it wrong on Iran’s nuclear program in the last National Intelligence Estimate, back in 2005. But does that mean they have got it right this time? Not necessarily. The history of the CIA is littered with spectacular intelligence mistakes. Sometimes, the correction of one error can lead to a new error, as analysts atone for past mistakes by moving too far in the opposite direction.

In the spirit of caution and skepticism, here is the official Fact Checker list of the CIA’S Biggest Bloopers, over six decades of intelligence-gathering. I have compiled it with the assistance of researchers at the indispensable National Security Archive, a non-profit group that has published more than half a million government documents. A disclaimer: the Agency has had some successes too, but I will let their public relations operation draw up that particular list.

The list makes the agency look awful. But commentator Bryan makes a good point:

60 years and only 11 times where they were wrong? I’d say this article just proved how good the CIA really is, I mean hindsight is 20/20 and we have the benefit of looking back at the mistakes they made but they have the hard job of trying to predict what’s going to happen before it happens generally that’s what the estimates do. Getting only 11 wrong out of the god knows how many times they had to do an estimate shows that we’re not perfect we make mistakes we’re allowed to do that, but it also shows that they know how to do what they were chartered to do…but that’s just my opinion.

Another comment:

If decades of Post articles were put under the same litmus test, how many errors in judgement and analysis would a researcher find?