That the Cold War had ended peacefully with America's subsequent unipolar moment did not translate into re-election for George H. W. Bush, the only president to be a former Director of Central Intelligence. The election of 1992 would sweep Arkansas Governor William J. Clinton into the Oval Office, and the difference between his relations with the CIA and those of his predecessor could not have been starker. For those working in Langley, the Potomac River separating them from the White House seemed to have broadened into a gulf. ‘It wasn't that I had a bad relationship with the President. It just didn't exist,’ recollected Clinton's first DCI, R. James Woolsey. ‘Remember the guy who in 1994 crashed his plane onto the White House lawn? That was me trying to get an appointment to see President Clinton.’ Perhaps it stood to reason. The Soviet Bear menaced its Cold War foe no longer, and Clinton had run on a domestic agenda. Many wondered, sometimes aloud, what the CIA was for. As late as 1997, newly appointed DCI George J. Tenet appeared on a panel which sought to answer the question, ‘Does America Need the CIA?’

Perhaps inevitably, the demise of the Soviet Union led to a ‘peace dividend’; the great enemy was no more. Like the rest of the national security apparatus, CIA's budget was shrunk and its staff recruiting efforts dwindled to approximate those of a rural fire department, at times not even keeping pace with retirements. As Tenet recalled: ‘We lost nearly one in four of our positions. This loss of manpower was devastating, particularly in our two most manpower intensive activities: all-source analysis and human source collection. By the mid-1990s, recruitment of new CIA analysts and case officers had come to a virtual halt.’

If the White House seemed distant, Capitol Hill was outright hostile. In his proposed legislation, the ‘End of the Cold War Act of 1991’, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) suggested CIA should be shuttered, the superfluous vestige of a bygone era. Given the apparent hostility in the legislative chamber to CIA as a relevant tool in the post-Cold War world, CIA attempted to reground itself firmly under the executive branch in its mission statement for 1991: ‘Secret Intelligence aims to further our knowledge and foreknowledge of the world around us – the prelude to Presidential decision and action’ (emphasis added).