Some of the gentlemen on Capitol Hill are working themselves into a righteous furor this week about the Bogota rebellion. Why, demand the Congressmen, did not the Central Intelligence Agency, which is supposed to know what is going on everywhere in the world, know about the plots in Bogota? If the CIA did know what was going on, why wasn't the State Department informed in time? For the umpteenth time, the United States has been put into a foolish position for lack of proper intelligence work, and the Congressmen, as representatives of public opinion, are howling for investigations and blood.

Before World War II, when our role in world power politics was infinitesimal as compared to today, and when the two oceans formed a reassuring barrier, the United States could afford to limp along with disorganized and duplicating intelligence systems. However, even before the nation became involved in the war, these agencies were failing. What actually happened at Pearl Harbor and in the months preceding that disaster is unclear even today, but there can be little doubt that poor intelligence contributed to it. During the war, the German breakthrough in the Ardennes is blamed largely on the fact that the Allied command was taken completely by surprise.

Of course, our intelligence has guessed right more often than it has guessed wrong, but intelligence, like the air we breathe, is taken for granted unless it fails. The intelligence services of the United States, in all their forms, have failed too often.

All secret services in a democracy work under disadvantages which those in totalitarian states are spared. A free press which loves sensations and spy stories, a prying Congress which controls the purse strings, and a foreign policy which is inclined to vary sharply with public opinion and administration polities, all detract from the Machiavellian efficiency which is considered the ultimate goal of espionage. On the other hand, a too independent and efficient intelligence service which cannot be controlled by its own government, will always develop a tendency to make its own policy. Such a bureau, the prime example of which was Admiral Canaris' unit in Germany, will inevitably make the intelligence wing too powerful an organ of the government. Any such development, in the United States would create an extreme danger of upsetting the delicate system of checks and balances which insures free government.

Therefore, America's problem in this respect will always be to maintain a correct balance between the two extremes. To achieve this desirable equilibrium, however, the present Central Intelligence Agency must be given much more power and independence than it has at the present time. Congressional investigations which will bathe the whole system in the killing light of publicity must be avoided. Instead, the Intelligence services and the State Department must quietly and efficiently combine to clean up and rebuild the faculty intelligence agency, which is essentially their responsibility. Unless the United States can renovate its outdated Intelligence immediately, more and greater strategic blunders are in store for us. The daily headlines in the newspapers demonstrate the fact that as time goes on, these mistakes become more and more dangerous.