This is the story of one of those assessments, and how two CIA operations called Soft Touch and Touchdown provided the data to make it accurate. During the first decade of the East-West conflict, the CIA was a new organization, without many of the tools, personnel, and processes that would make it so effective later. This was hardly the case in the early days of the Cold War, however. They then turn it into reports, presentations, briefings, and assessments, delivering them with an efficiency that would impress Federal Express. Today, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) controls a vast array of satellites, aircraft, ground stations, and covert operatives to gather a mind-numbing stream of data. Such decisions affect a nation’s policy on military procurement and overseas deployments, as well as relations with potentially hostile foreign powers. This is then collected into intelligence assessments, which give national-level political leaders and military commanders the ability to make informed and thoughtful decisions. More often than not, the most important information comes from analysis of raw data collected by agents and operatives who have no idea what they are gathering. The reality of intelligence-gathering, though, is usually quite different. Movies and novels about spies and espionage usually portray brave and sexy secret agents going deep behind enemy lines to grab some invaluable and potentially destabilizing piece of information.
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