A New Clandestine Service
Just ran across a paper by Reuel Marc Gerecht (former CIA analyst) titled A New Clandestine Service: The Case for Creative Destruction (PDF). Good piece that points out the inherint flaws in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations – which is what the CINC, the DNI and the incoming Hayden want the agency to focus on – and which is what Goss was opposed to (which led to his firing).
Hayden’s going to face this problem, and the one of the ever expanding DOD, led by Rumsfield who wants in house core collectors. (BTW – do we often promote managers who failed on 9/11, failed on Iraq, and violate the Constitution?)
The phrase “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” comes to mind.
I read that the Intelligence Czar wants to diminish the CIA’s anayltical role, and so the CIA might not really be central any more. Bush says Goss led to a decrease in CIA morale, as if the Plame case had nothing to do with that, but I don’t know what will happen when they downsize CIA analyists or whatever this Negroponte wants to do. I don’t really know what is going on. No one does. I don’t know if I trust all the analysis to be so close to the President, being done by one of his friends, as opposed to CIA personnel who may or may not agree with his political philosophy. Maybe the CIA is mad at him for fluffing up their intelligence to suit his purposes. One of the CIA directors resigned because he didn’t want to particpate in Nixon’s Watergate. Maybe years from now we might see it is something like that.
Nevermind. That might all be true. But I don’t know what I’m talking about.