I've long contended that Robert S. McNamara
was either the most brilliant person in the world or the USSRs best mole. Tending toward the latter...
I'm now convinced that the unnamed person on the Committee who pushed for a DNI is the current Great Mole.
(Which begs the question of why we attempt to operate and govern by Committee, Commission and Special counsel -- surely it cannot be to evade responsibility???)
Bureaucrats to the left of me, bureaucrats to the right of me...
Pogo was right, we have met the enemy and he is indeed us.
To the point; prepare for a DNI power grab and a major turf battle inside and near the Beltway that will make La Affaire Plame look tame.
Of course you're both correct.
Competition is the answer. If Langley, BIR and DIA were reasonably funded and worked their proper beats and if NSA, NRO and NGIA were tasked to support all of them (and the uniformed services without filtering by DIA...) and the NSC was the refereee with clout, life would be better for everyone. Regrettably, our bureaucratic elephant -- and Congress -- won't tolerate that. Too many pet rocks out there. So we're stuck with a DCI for a while at least. We'll see how it pans out. I'm not overly hopeful but McConnell or his successor(s) may surprise me and I 'd be more than happy if that occurs (provided I'm around long enough to see it :D).
Truman certainly erred in allowing the dysfunctional DCI setup; can't change it now. Same note, Bush erred on rolling over on the DHS setup -- we're stuck with that and the FBI having the counter espionage and counter terror functions as well.
No one ever said we can't do dumb stuff...:mad:
The good news is that a lot of people bust their tails to make it work in spite of the flawed design so I'm not despondent or even angry, just mildly irked. :cool:
Assessing the Tradecraft of Intelligence Analysis
RAND, 27 Feb 08: Assessing the Tradecraft of Intelligence Analysis
Quote:
Most public discussions of intelligence address operations—the work of spymasters and covert operators. Current times, in the wake of September 11th and the intelligence failure in the runup to the war in Iraq, are different. Intelligence analysis has become the subject. The
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Commission was direct, and damning, about intelligence analysis before the Iraq war:
“This failure was in large part the result of analytical shortcomings; intelligence analysts were too wedded to their assumptions about Saddam’s intentions.” To be sure, in the Iraq case, what the United States did or did not collect, and how reliable its sources were, were also at issue. And the focus of post mortems on pre-September 11th was, properly, mainly on relations between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and on the way the FBI did its work. But in both cases, analysis was also central. How do the various agencies perform the tradecraft of intelligence analysis, not just of spying or operations? How is that task different now, in the world of terrorism, especially Islamic Jihadist terrorism, than in the older world of the Cold War and the Soviet Union?
The difference is dramatic and that difference is the theme of this report. The United States Government asked RAND to interview analysts at the agencies of the U.S. Intelligence Community and ask about the current state of analysis. How do those analytic agencies think of their task? In particular, what initiatives are they taking to build capacity, and what are the implicit challenges on which those initiatives are based? Our charter was broad enough to allow us to include speculations about the future of analysis, and this report includes those speculations. This report is a work in progress because many issues—the state of tradecraft and of training and the use of technology and formal methods—cry out for further study. This report was long delayed in the clearance process. It has been updated and remains a useful baseline in assessing progress as the Intelligence Community confronts the enormous challenges it faces.....
Complete 76 page report at the link.
They talked to alot of people, but nothing groundbreaking
This report is one of hundreds that have come out since 9/11 on how to fix analysis. I am sure this report was well funded, and the researchers did their homework and talked to alot of people. The most important issue was that analysis do not need lots of new tools or technology. A new system is not the silver bullet. Only through long term investment in people will analysis improve.
The rest of the report just repeats what all of the other reports have said. The authors seemed to only have a very basic knowledge of the IC
Quantico, VA
New Boss same as the Old Boss
Quote:
One DCI after another proved incapable of providing objective leadership to the entire community. Not because they were jerks, but because the system sucked
Unless you can fire people or zero out budgets, you are not the boss. Perhaps the corollary might be, the more complicated the title, the less power you actually will have ( "Hey, anybody hear much about the "Drug Czar" or the "War Czar" these days ?).
Toward a Saner Surveillance Strategy
Threats Watch, 05 March - The ongoing fight over what the US intelligence community is allowed to do under pending revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation has been clouded by suspicion, hyperbole, and a lack of knowledge regarding the intelligence business.
Quote:
The Way Forward
Regardless of the political party in executive power, the need to detect and monitor the communications of our enemies will not abate and neither will the technical and legal problems. Passing a revised FISA law that focuses on people – those who need protecting and detecting - and not a given technology or physical boundaries will help reduce the chances that we will have to fight this battle again in the future.
Political operatives do not implement intelligence policy: career professionals do. As someone who has conducted foreign intelligence eavesdropping missions, I cannot stress enough just how seriously the privacy of Americans is taken. The government’s career foreign intelligence eavesdroppers would sooner walk off the job en masse than “spy on Americans,” but there is no serious effort to explain just how strongly and how often intelligence officers are cautioned about our duty to our fellow citizens and the law. Clearing what is essentially administrative material for public release could help assuage concerns about the seriousness with which US intelligence agencies handle privacy issues.
While the protocols in place that are designed to avoid gross violations of the law are generally successful, the reality that mistakes are possible necessitates strong and vigilant oversight capability is essential for the protection of civil rights. The fact that the Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board is effectively defunct and legislative oversight of intelligence in general has not been what it could be needs to be addressed in the pending legislation. Boosting oversight committee staff or allowing the GAO authority to act on behalf of oversight committees would show that the privacy and security are not mutually exclusive goals.
The long war against terrorism is primarily an intelligence-driven war, and the US needs to equip itself in the best manner possible if it is going to succeed.