CIA DID EVERYTHING BUT READ THE PAPER

The Central Intelligence Agency, as portrayed on the huge screens in movie theaters, is an all-knowing bureaucracy that uses all the latest high-tech gadgets and gizmos to keep track of everything -- and everyone -- on the planet. The CIA even has spy satellites that can take photographs showing a pack of cigarettes tossed out of a automobile window -- and the intelligence branch of our federal government can tell you what brand.

So the CIA has been taking a lot of heat in recent days, because it somehow failed to learn beforehand that India was planning some nuclear testing.

India tried to soften the blow a little for the CIA. One Indian nuclear researcher said it wasn't so much a matter of poor intelligence by the CIA. It was more a case of better deception by the Indians, who knew the spy satellite schedule and purposely avoided activity that might be detected by the CIA.

Clever, huh?

However, this explanation still doesn't entirely explain why the most powerful nation's spy system didn't know what was going on, satellite con or no satellite con. After all, India announced the nuclear tests -- in advance -- in some of that nation's major newspapers.