According to TheWeek.com, the “Turkey coup attempt was a surprise in diplomatic and intelligence circles, says House Homeland Security Committee member“.

Is this a rare lapse by the CIA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence establishment? No, if you believe Tim Weiner’s book Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. Using mostly primary sources and declassified government documents, he makes a surprising but very strong case that the CIA was never very good at spying. This is why major historical events like the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11 have caught our government completely by surprise, and why we have had trouble competently prosecuting wars from Korea to Vietnam to Iraq. The government and military just don’t have an accurate picture of what is going on or an understanding of the complex cultures and conflicts they are dealing with, and it leads to disaster. The CIA is pretty good at buying intelligence from allies that are good at spying on their neighbors, like Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, South Korea, etc., which explains our strong ties to many of these countries. So it is not too surprising that if something is going on inside one these countries itself, we would not be the first to know.