Overhauling Intelligence

[JeffC]

It's been going on for awhile. The CIA is fighting for it's life, between this new level of bureaucracy (the Office of the DNI) and Rumsfeld's creation in 2005 of the Pentagon's Strategic Support Branch, on top of examining it's own pre-9/11 mistakes. No wonder that 70% of the current intelligence budget (for all agencies) is spent on contracts.

[Ken White]

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 ).

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...

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.