The Center for International Security and Cooperation is a center of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Foreign Policy
October 10, 2012
CISAC Faculty Member Amy Zegart outlines how the CIA's mindset has not changed since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Fifty years since the crisis, the CIA and other intelligence agencies still operate in an organizational and psychological mindset that favors consensus and consistency. Zegart argues that these "invisible pressures" led to intelligence failures in Cuba in 1962 and Iraq in 2002, where dissenting opinions or internal disagreements were downplayed. The CIA and other intelligence agencies will continue making these mistakes until they recognize their flawed organizational mindset.