Sure, that would be possible in an abstract tabula rasa sense, if we had no awareness at all of the last seven decades. At this point, we've seen quite enough evidence to conclude that they mostly do wrong, and occasionally we find out about it. Mike Pompeo and James Clapper are typical "intelligence officials", which means that there are much worse actors lurking deep in those organizations.
"Cryptonomicon", a Neal Stephenson novel, delves into the idea that you can mask your intelligence gathering by failing to act on it within some statistical margin. Numerous other ideas are explored.