Panetta as CIA Director

[82redleg]

Wasn't CIA originally started to provide a single point of consolidation for all national intelligence?

The bureaucracy (CIA) we had didn't work, so we added a level of bureaucracy(DNI), resulting in them inconflict over roles & responsibilities. Go figure.

Better to have fired someone (or multiple someones) for the 9-11 failures, and to removed some bureaucratic bull$hit, than to have created a new level.

Not that it is any different than what we do in the military every day.

[Entropy]

birdman,

The 2004 intelligence reforms took away a lot of the CIA's long-standing authority and gave it to a new organization, the DNI, and some CIA people are not happy about it. The CIA used to be the budgetary manager for the IC as well as the gatekeeper for Presidential-level intelligence. Those functions, and more, now rest with the DNI.

[birdman]

Entropy,
I think that is the point. The DNI is now the purse holder, manager of the IC and the direct link to POTUS. But we have an operational guy running the DNI. The CIA is the operator in the IC and we have a budget manager running it who is used to having the ear or POTUS. Seems that somehow this process is stuck on stupid.