>What boggles my mind is after decades and decades of truly scummy, bottom of the barrel activity (not only in this case, but in the torture they inflicted on prisoners, assassinations, drug running, overthrows of governments, etc), the CIA still manages to recruit people.

I saw some CIA recruits, they were not bright boys.

Three letter agencies were and are looking for a specific type of personality in recruits, types that are convinced that whatever they do is right, invariably of what they were told to do.

Three letter services are afraid of hiring people with brains, and even if they do hire ones, they favour people who can be said to be "intelligent, but witless"

Google Ryan Fogle.