Invasion, what invasion?

In the weeks after 911, I remember hearing about the threat to American national security posed by the lack secret agents in the field. But I suppose the CIA wouldn’t compromise their agents by talking about where they are. Next time you're at the airport and there’s a man reading a newspaper, it could be Agent 56 from Control watching out for Siegfried…

It’s good to know that incompetence like this doesn’t just happen in the movies. It seems like real spies are more like Austin Powers than Jason Bourne.

In 1953 the CIA sent its first officer to Moscow, but he was so inept that he was seduced by his Russian housemaid - really a KGB colonel - photographed in flagrante and blackmailed.

During the Korean War, none of the CIA's 200 officers in the capital, Seoul, spoke Korean and many were accused of having fabricated their reports.

The CIA's difficulties in the Middle East are part of a long and undistinguished history. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Robert Gates, then the agency's head and now the US Defence Secretary, was at a family picnic.

A friend asked him: "What are you doing here?" Mr Gates said: "What are you talking about?" She replied: "The invasion." Mr Gates responded: "What invasion?"