Intelligence Failure Two words now joined at the hip. Remember when our alphabet agencies - CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI - were actually competent? Are you sure? Maybe they were just better at burying their mistakes. . . . Our spooks have been playing games with other governments for half a century. Allies and enemies alike have gotten tired of our grubby fingerprints all over their national interests. Gearheardt's answer? Be sure to wear gloves Gearheardt - apparently back from the dead, or maybe Laos - wants to play for all the Mexican marbles, and he insists he needs Jack's help to do it. Just like the last time in Vietnam, he claims to be working for "the Company." Jack really "is" in the CIA now, temporarily running the Mexico City station at the embassy, and ought to know better, but Gearheardt's sexy assistant with the disdain for clothes is "so" darn cute and Gearheardt's insane resolve is just "so" darn convincing. (Even though it's true that the last time around they failed spectacularly in their attempt to get Ho Chi Minh to retire to Hawaii, and then they didn't even shoot him either.) But does the Agency really want the "Cubans" to take over Mexico? The worlds of espionage and subversion are as unpredictable and absurd as any other form of warfare. Working in the tradition of Graham Greene's "Our Man in Havana" and his own "Nam-A-Rama"," "Phillip Jennings gives" Goodbye Mexico" riotous relevance with a clear-eyed look at how the right hand of our intelligence establishment often doesn't know what the left hand is doing. The result is laughter too loud to be covert and the haunting suspicion that truth may be stranger than fiction. If you thought the Vietnam War of "Nam-A-Rama"""was crazy, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Say hello to "Goodbye Mexico" and the CIA and our foreign policy will never look the same again.