That is my proposal. Abolish the position of Director of National Intelligence.
Here is a post on the purported nominee, current DoD Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, James R Clapper.
This confirmation process may not be all that much fun.
Regards — Cliff
"Yes" by all means abololish the DNI position. That position is an emotional and political response to the failure in performance of a complex task. That the failures are self-inflicted by the same organizational bunch that wants more layers of management to "fix it" is not surprising.
ReplyDeleteIntellingence, particularly HUMINT is a very simplistic approach to finding out what the other guy is doing, but involves complex subtrefuge on a level that the MSM finds delicious because it stokes the emotions of the sheeple...their audience....and therefore...increases ratings that increase sales.
Politically, there are too many "warring parties" within the Beltway who want to be "the lead." That there is any competition at all is the outcome of real or fabricated distrust of what the "other agency" is doing and if it meets "the needs" of the "community." Even within the DoD, there are numerous autonomous intelligence agencies at work, each in its own little stovepipe, ostensibly discovering information that its master needs in order to do his job. And it is in this plethora of snoops and spooks that we begin to go terribly awry. They literally stumble over each other in the field. And as a result of this multiple ring circus, the information we derive is muddled, omnidirectional, and requires hours of analysis to dust away the myriad perspectives that cloud the data......if the analyst can even GET the data. In the multiagency intelligence business, SCI is a disaster.
If we look across the world, the powers with monolithic intelligence agencies seem to fare much better. The exploits of the KGB are legend as is those of the Moussad. MI6 was for decades a premier and exceptionally reliable source.
If we had a national leadership capable of great things, one of those things would be to reduce this bloated intelligence community to a single entity....and..like 007...empower it with a license to kill.
If nothing else, think of the incredible savings in wages and benefits alone.
Don't look for organizational improvement of any scale any time soon though.
Anyone want to guarantee the Liz Cheney and her coven of fearmongers won't scream in shrill terms that "America will be weakened?"
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to be pragmatic when your flank cannot be trusted.