WITH the overwhelming backing of Congress, the United States is about to embark upon an overhaul of its intelligence services. The task will involve not only the CIA and the FBI but the 13 other intelligence agencies — for all of which it is expected that a single coordinator will be appointed.

There has indeed been muddle, rivalry and poor communication between these organizations but are the coming reforms anything more than political window dressing? Will they really improve the quality of US intelligence which has been so full of misinformation and misjudgment during Washington’s war on terrorism? It might just have been possible to stop the 9/11 attacks had all the clues been assembled and analyzed. Had the CIA done a better job of penetrating the Al-Qaeda organization, which it armed and trained so enthusiastically when its members were fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan, it might have learned about the attack before it happened.

There were of course security analysts who warned that Al-Qaeda had the mainland US in its sights but they were dismissed as alarmists by the politicians as well as the intelligence community. Herein perhaps lies the root of the problem. Spies are often tempted to tell politicians what they want to hear. This is especially true if the network of agents on the ground is inadequate. No spy chief wants to admit to his masters that he does not know what is going on or that his minions do not know. By contrast, he will earn praise if his reports mesh with the current political wisdom. Thus the CIA hugely overestimated both the military-industrial capacity and the order of battle for the old Soviet Union because it fitted in with President Ronald Reagan’s “Great Satan” thesis.

There is also a cultural dimension sharply exposed by deeply flawed US intelligence on the Middle East, not least on Saddam Hussein’s WMD capacity. Americans find it hard to see the world through the eyes of anyone except themselves. The overwhelming sense of their own power blinds them to the subtle and complex realities of other countries and cultures. Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan have been characterized by grave miscalculations prompted by this US unwillingness to become aware.

There are of course excellent minds and deep insights available within the State Department but the Bush administration is not much interested in that kind of expertise. It seeks simple, sweeping solutions to all problems and does not easily admit complex nuances and deep analyses. When George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld quiz their intelligence chiefs, they anticipate getting the answers they want. Thus the present planned overhaul of the US intelligence community has been prompted as much by their own political misjudgments and prejudices as by any inherent failings among the intelligence gatherers themselves. America is deeply concerned about its own safety but reorganizing its spies and counterterrorism structures is not necessarily going to make it any safer. It can only secure itself if it really understands the nature of the threat and why it exists in the first place.