If failure deserves never to be rewarded, the Central Intelligence Agency’s paymasters clearly did not read the memo. It makes little difference what event the CIA has missed, its budget and scope only appear to grow.

 “The CIA gets what it wants,” President Barack Obama told Leon Panetta, the agency’s then director, who had just read out a list of requests. Obama’s reaction was “uncharacteristically and bracingly decisive”, writes Panetta. Unfortunately, he cannot specify what goodies Obama so readily agreed to. Just as the CIA gets the drone strikes it wants, so it can delete passages from memoirs of former employees – even ones as august as Panetta.

Almost all the publicity around Panetta’s Worthy Fights has focused on the handful of paragraphs critical of Obama. “Too often, in my view, the president relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader,” he wrote. That, indeed, is true. But it is hardly news. Panetta’s follow-up interviews have been far stronger. Obama has “l(fā)ost his way”, says his former Pentagon and CIA chief. From Islamists in Syria to Putin’s encroachments on eastern Europe, the world’s challenges threaten to overwhelm him. There are few more loyal and discreet Washington operators than Panetta. The fact that even he – like Brutus – is wielding the knife says a lot about the emperor’s waning authority.