Or the CIA is actually horribly incompetent, and the things that worked only worked because it was a new fragile system they were attacking with much more resources to use.
What people always forget about the CIA during the cold war is that it was staffed exclusively by the kind of people who genuinely believed there were reds hiding round every corner. This is not conducive to high levels of competence at spy craft.
Then again, the KGB weren't much better. After several failed attempts to kill Tito, he wrote Stalin a letter, which read “Stop sending people to kill me… If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send one to Moscow, and I won’t have to send a second.”
