I get the feeling that most upper management roles are just putting out fires caused by other people. Also I think the era of assassination and coups was pretty detrimental to America's interests, at least in the long run. Quite a few times we supported coups in favor of someone far worse -- and then we complain about illegal immigration. You'd be doing us a favor.
A summary of Cold War intelligence I saw on Reddit once went something like this:
* Pretend to be competent, while flying by the seat of your pants
* Spend most of your time reacting to events at the last minute
* Meanwhile in Russia, everyone is also pretending to be competent
* Something goes wrong in Russia: oh no, let's not go to the gulag
* Blame Western spies for missing production targets
* Western spies don't deny the "victory", because why would you?
* This happens a few times, and Western intelligence gets a reputation for competence
* Actually commies are just incompetent in general
* CIA still flying by the seat of their pants
* Let's try psychic powers, maybe they work?
A summary of Cold War intelligence I saw on Reddit once went something like this:
* Pretend to be competent, while flying by the seat of your pants
* Spend most of your time reacting to events at the last minute
* Meanwhile in Russia, everyone is also pretending to be competent
* Something goes wrong in Russia: oh no, let's not go to the gulag
* Blame Western spies for missing production targets
* Western spies don't deny the "victory", because why would you?
* This happens a few times, and Western intelligence gets a reputation for competence
* Actually commies are just incompetent in general
* CIA still flying by the seat of their pants
* Let's try psychic powers, maybe they work?
"Kitto daijoubu da yo." - Sakura Kinomoto