Column: How the CIA's Hunt for a Russian Mole Blinded It To Putin's Rise

War, by nature, tends to have winners and losers. The war in Ukraine, a universal disaster, seems to have more losers than winners, though. But before this conflict, few might have expected one of its few winners to be a much tarnished organization thousands of miles away.

The CIA, along with other American intelligence agencies, has dazzled the world over the past several months. First, in the months leading up to the invasion, the U.S.