Based on my experience with it, I am not a big fan of the American intelligence establishment as I wrote here. I saw too much obsession with personalities, compartmentalization, confidence in mere techniques and a certain tendency to re-write to please superiors. (Not, by the way, that it is unique in the intel world in these respects; although the personality obsession does stand out.)

But I never said that I thought that it just made stuff up. And nor do I now.

Watching the catastrophes, incompetence and mendacity of the Obama era in which the fantasies of the neo cons have been joined to those of the humanitarian interventionists I have begun to suspect that these idiocies are being perpetrated without support of the intel establishment.

Here are a few small things I've noticed that made me suspect a small group at State Department and the White House are the authors and that the intel world is cut out of the loop.

Small items to be sure, and none conclusive. But maybe we have moved to the next stage in which the intel people actively object in public.

Intel people are supposed to do their work in secret and then retire and keep their mouths shut. The nature of the business is that you will sometimes be wrong, often ignored but you still keep quiet. You have signed pretty formidable silence undertakings. Having worked in and around the business, I can assure you that, to to be driven to the point of formally complaining (and risking your jobs, pensions and possible freedom) only happens after years of frustration.

Stay tuned. No doubt Russia's intervention in Syria, which is blowing the whole incoherent US policy apart, will bring more revelations. After all, no one wants to take the blame for catastrophe and failure. Especially when they're not responsible for the bad advice, airy projections and falsified information that got into the mess.