But because their masters in Moscow wanted to hear there
  was potential for a first-strike, to please their bosses,
  that’s what the spies delivered.

  “These people were close to the West, they lived in the
  West and knew there were no plans for a first strike but
  they reported what they were told to report,” Jones
  explains. 
  [...]
  It was a dangerously vicious circle. “It’s a failure of
  the Soviet system,” says Jones, “Soviet intelligence did
  not act rationally.”

Modern western governments will do precisely the same thing; the politicians ask for a dossier saying Iraq has weapons of mass destruction they can launch in 45 minutes? Then that's what they get.

I always assumed this was seen as a feature rather than a bug - i.e. that politicians choose and instruct spy agency bosses to be politically compliant, rather than to produce reports that are unbiased and strictly factual.