SENATOR DANIEL MOYNIHAN, thirty years ago, had a related idea. Break the CIA in two, he said. The intelligence function—the writing of learned research reports about the political situation in various countries—should go to the State Department, which had been doing it all along anyway, and the operational, paramilitary, counterinsurgency side should go to the Department of Defense.

Nicholson Baker, Baseless- My Search for Sec…, loc. 315