Homeland Intelligence CzarFollow

The bill is pending final passage by the Senate and will soon be off for the signature of the president.

I would like to hear the thoughts of the forum as to who would be the best-worst candidate for Intelligence Czar (and a couple GFY would be nice).

(This should be good).

How about Porter Goss ?

I'm just enchanted by the irony of seeing the word 'intelligence' in a post by King of the Fu[i][/i]ckwits onionrockr!

A true delight!

+1 for "Great Black Father Totem"

Totem

Edited, Wed Dec 8 16:29:12 2004 by Apprehensive

Totem dat you?

Nevermind, you're a phoney. Fu[b][/b]ck off.

I prefer the term "Dune 'Coons"

Then shut the fu[b][/b]ck up and stop using Totem's name unless you suck his **** on the holidays. Even then, shut up.

You are just adding to Totem's searchability ,and thus, pissing off Sk33t.

a 30 second blurb on CNN. that is all the "compromise" rated to get the bill passed.

the compromise........

the pentagon retains controll of the intellegance spending, and controll of primary assets, namely satilites and such.

what it means...........

any intellegance operation that is contrary to the goals of the addministraition......does not get funded.

any ongoing intellegance operation that uncovers material that will hurt the addministraition......has its assets reassigned....

in the end...........

the same ole same ole. you either tell the addminsitration what they want to hear, or your budget gets cut, and your assets get reassigned.

OMFG, this is EXACTLY the problem the 911 commission uncovered about our intellegance system. this is EXACTLY why we did not have the information we needed to make an informed decision about iraq.

the bill was gutted.

what is getting passed is a front man for the american people to look at, and nothing more. a dog and ponie show.

the 911 commision wanted an intellegance operation that was independant, and not beholdoing to partisan politics.

what got passed was an addministraition shuffle to confuse us into thinking they are doing what was asked.

4 more years.

What you've described is a good thing. These are not problems. There is a reason we have the CIA, DIA, FBI, ATF, NSA, DOD, Secret Service, State Department etc, etc. It's another series of checks and balances within the executive branch. The structuring of agencies was set up with enough foresight to understand that too much power in the hands of too few people always, always leads to bad things.

It's unfortunate that this structure is not fully constitutionally protected and provided for. So if the Bush administration wants to dismantle what other administrations have built upon for the last 80 years then they probably will. The 9/11 commission was for a good show, these guys intended to do it from the beginning.

As far as not being on the same page, you have to remember that different agencies are charged with handling different intelligence responsibilities both foreign and domestic. For example the CIA is responsible for foreign clandestine activities where as the FBI fills the role of domestic law enforcement. It should remain that way. This is not to say that agencies shouldn't share information when the need arises like in the case of foreign organizations planning domestic terrorism. More often than not, however, the FBI doesn't need to know what the CIA is doing and vice versa.

When these tasks are incorporated into a singular agency you first over estimate the efficiency of large bureaucracy. Secondly you undermine the ability of the other branches of government to provide oversight of nominees and appointments. For example the new Czar of intelligence will be much more directly influenced by the administration than a group of individual department heads would otherwise be. The sphere of influence is contracted and focused and congress has less opportunity to object to nominees simply because there are less people to nominate. That is a dangerous thing, without question. Inter-agency secrecy wasn't the largest problem with regards to 9/11. The intelligence required to stop 9/11 was for the most part already sitting on file at more than one agency. Additional information coming in that could have set off the proverbial warning siren wasn't being processed quickly enough. When the new leads finally did reach individuals who could have made recommendations, they weren't being taken seriously. Some people in the CIA and FBI knew where the threat was coming from, they just weren't being listened to.

It should have started on the ground floor of the FBI with a team of people looking at individual objects of intelligence instead of one guy deciding what to forward and what to toss out. That represents a problem with internal policy at the FBI and others. The most important change they could make is to start paying attention to threats even if they don't seem plausible or severe on the surface. After what happened on 9/11, this is being done.

I don't want to sound like I personally know how small items of intelligence are handled at these agencies. I'm basing my view on George Tenets testimony to congress and the words of several former FBI and CIA agents. Tenet himself tried to make a case for more inter-agency cooperation but couldn't deny the failure of his own bureaucracy. This was the opinion of the people actually doing the work. People like this guy.


Edit: Fixed link.

Edited, Thu Dec 9 10:28:03 2004 by Jonthejon