Well the government claims that the NSA has foiled at least 54 terrorist attacks. Perhaps they are exaggerating, I really have no idea, but I believe fully that the NSA has stopped at least several terrorist attacks. They have also significantly contributed to the security of the internet, various operating systems and to the current state of the art publicly available forms of cryptography (although once they did try to sneak a backdoor in a random number generator they released). On the other hand, I cannot think of a single instance where the NSA contributed to the downfall of a criminal organization. Perhaps it is because it is classified information, but I do see there are many criminal websites that the federal police are struggling to bring down, and the NSA doesn't appear to be doing anything to help them. I agree that the government is not a big inept bureaucracy at the highest levels. The intelligence agencies are full of extraordinarily talented and intelligent individuals, and the think tanks and the most powerful politicians are not idiots either. The military is the most powerful in the world. When you go down to police agencies and local politicians and such though, they tend to be less skilled and less intelligent for the most part, and they also tend to be grossly incompetent.