The White House Searches for Intelligence

PRESIDENT CLINTON and several of his top aides have been grumbling lately about the quality of the information they are getting from the CIA on China, North Korea and, most recently, Japan. White House officials complain that the CIA led them to believe Tomiichi Murayama, the new Prime Minister of Japan, was an unreliable ideologue. But aides say Clinton found him to be “nonideological and very pragmatic.” One intelligence official says the White House amateurishly expects too much and that “it costs a fortune to try and get” what it wants.