The CIA had taken a beating from the press and Congress in the Seventies; it had been plagued by double agents, including, spectacularly, Aldrich Ames. Was there still a point to it? Mr. Schlesinger calmly and convincingly tells us why there is, and how some people got the idea that there wasn't. JRS: "Everything that the agency has done over the years has been authorized by the political authorities. A lot of people don't like what the political authorities have authorized, [but]... they criticized the agent rather than those who did it. When the Kennedy brothers were interested in disposing of Mr. Castro, for example, when these issues surfaced, they surfaced less as a criticism of President Kennedy or his brother the Attorney General than it was a criticism of the agency--for doing what the President of the United States through the National Security Council had authorized." WFB: "So, in other words, the idea that a headstrong agency simply went to Chile or Guatemala and said, 'It would be fun to throw the government over'--that's just anti-CIA cant? ..." JRS: "It's not necessarily anti-CIA cant, it's simply ignorance."