Is CIA best spy agency in history ?

They've had an incredible impact on the world, as well as keeping the US hegemony

so I suppose, yes

No. They fucked up way to often and in critical moments. Bay of Pigs or the islamic Revolution in Iran for example.

Where does MI5 rank?

nah

Chinese foreign intelligence is so good you can't even name an agency.

if the jews were succesful using their diaspora imagine the chinese

In terms of resources and size likely, though the KGB is a close contender. In terms of goals and competence I am not so sure. British intelligence during ww2 might have been better, the KGB had less scruples (or wasn't restrained as much) and could achieve more not sure who the best is though.

Mossad hasn't done 1/1000th the things or the influence the CIA has. Not too mention even the DIA and other intelligence agencies are legion in the US.

Somewhere between MI4 and MI6.

Gotta go with NKVD/KGB

CIA is close second

The best one is the one you haven't heard about

The British and Russians have been at it along time going all the way back to the Great Game.

The Poles were pretty effective in intelligence gathering prior to and during WWII. It was they who first started work on breaking the enigma machine code.
During the war they supplied an enormous amount of intelligence from occupied Europe. As many Poles were pressed into forced labour by the Nazis they passed on nuggets of information about economic and military activity across the Reich to be picked up by receptive ears collated and fed back to their Government in exile in London who in turn passed it to the British and Americans.
>The Germans have got us building something in a place called Peenemunde....

Unfortunately for the CIA it's mostly their cock ups which receive the attention. particulalry during the early years. Syria in 1949, again with Operations Straggle Wappen and Straggle in '56 and '58 and in 1953 Ajax in Iran. Perhaps it was just Dulles and Kermit Roosevelt who were fucking up.
Given the scope of their operations they proably do a pretty good job.

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Best books about the CIA?

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Underrated post

The CIA is very incompetent at anything that isn't intelligence gathering related, which makes all the Russian conspiracy theories about them doubly hilarious. It's like those shitty MS paint comics.

>agent clark my operative
>yuou have choice
>overthrow oppressive communist government for democracy
>or traffic drugs for yuou personal gain
>*Lockheed L-100 full of heroin crashes into jungle*

SIGINT: CIA
HUMINT: Mossad/SVR

It's the most technologically advanced and by far the most funded, so most likely yeah.
A more interesting question would be, which spy agency gave the greatest advantage to their sponsor country considering the resources available to them?

'Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.' Tim Weiner is popular, but not very good according to Nicholas Dujmovic at the CIA website. He suggests
John Ranelagh (The Agency, 1986) and Christopher Andrew (For the President’s Eyes Only, 1995).
cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no3/legacy-of-ashes-the-history-of-cia.html

Thank you.

its the one who falls the hardest i know that much

>SIGINT
>not the NSA
>not the agency specifically built to do SIGINT and nothing else

Banana republic hegemony was largely in part to the CIA. That's two nations you've mentioned out of dozens.

As a % of GDP (or gold res), really?

The best spy agency is the one we don't know about

Apparently when it was first founded it was pretty cool and comprised of upper-class cultured, even liberal, Ivy-League Humanities grads hence the creation of projects such as the CCF. I think it would have been a very interesting place at the time.

Some cool reading:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_for_Cultural_Freedom

independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html

CIA = Cocaine Importation Agency
drugs for guns for hostages

They paid for some pretty cool art.

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