I listened to a Pearl Harbor survivor today who described in somewhat horrific detail his experiences on the USS West Virginia on December 7, 1941. He was a dynamic speaker, with a great memory for detail, especially considering he celebrated his 90th birthday recently. What struck me was that towards the end he brought up his belief that the U.S. government was aware the attack was coming and did nothing to prevent it. It made me think of the "truthers" in our generation who want to blame 9-11 on a conspiracy. It seems that there are always conspiracy theories to explain events with complex causes, because we can't accept their complexity. Even the sinking of the Maine has been attributed to a conspiracy by the U.S. government.As someone who has experience in government, as well as some knowledge of intelligence operations, I can tell you that hindsight is a great thing to have, when discussing the clues that some untoward event was going to take place. In a government as vast as ours, with responsibilities for intelligence gathering split, by necessity among so many agencies, it amazes me that we figure out anything ahead of time. I liken the problem of predicting adversary actions based on intelligence to solving a jigsaw puzzle, except that you don't have the picture available to guide you and some joker has added thousands of extra pieces to a puzzle of only a few hundred.
Stupid things happen, people are occasionally incompetent, agencies protect their own turf rather than share. All this is human nature as it manifests itself within government. "Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity" is a good rule of thumb for evaluating a bad situation.
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