Posted on 10/21/2005 12:11:50 PM PDT by aculeus
The most dangerous moment in any transition is halfway through, when the old structure is badly weakened but the new one isn't yet strong enough to carry the load. That's where the Bush administration stands in its incomplete effort to restructure the intelligence community.
The intelligence reshuffle was the product of two warring impulses that have been apparent in this administration's foreign policy from the start -- a "realist" support for strong, independent spy agencies and a "neoconservative" mistrust, bordering on outright hatred, of the CIA as a supposed obstacle to the president's goals.
The intelligence-reform impulse led President Bush, after some foot-dragging, to back the recommendations of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission by creating a director of national intelligence to oversee the nation's 15 spy agencies and appointing veteran diplomat John Negroponte to fill the post. But before the new structure was in place, the president tapped Republican Rep. Porter Goss as director of the CIA. Goss was accompanied by a team of right-wing congressional staffers, quickly dubbed the "Gosslings" at Langley, who set out to cuff the CIA's headstrong Directorate of Operations into line.
The aim was to revitalize U.S. intelligence. But rather than consolidate and streamline the overlapping agencies, the new system has added even more boxes to the organization chart. The result has been a further layering of the intelligence community's bureaucracy and further demoralization among career intelligence officers. "Adding more layers causes indecision and confusion in the ranks, and leads to a wait-and-see, risk-averse attitude," warns Richard Stoltz, a former head of the CIA's clandestine service.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"Neoconservative"
OK, what's this word a code word for this time?
Uh, how about a little balance here explaining why WH mistrusts CIA?
Could it be that CIA malcontents sabatoge WH policy by leaking & spreading misinformation to the media?
Could it be that CIA had forgetten: they're job is to gather intel and advise POTUS, not create foreign policy?
WaPo was making some progress in being more fair & balanced, but this article is BS propaganda. Shills.
/their not they're
Seems with all the resignations in the DO, there's a few less layers now. We can "thank" the 9/11 Commission for the new DNI layer instead of increasing budget control and reach of the DCI.
I thought it was a good thing that some of the old guard at CIA quit. In particular, I could see that Michael Schuyer would have been insufferable.
This little bit nicely illustrates the problem we have with the entrenched liberals at CIA.
Keep in mind the president's speech was NOT in the middle of an election campaign.
The president made a major speech detailing our national policy in the WOT. And the CIA objects to having anything done by it being used to actually support the national policy.
My sense of the problem at CIA is similar to that at the elite universities -- over many years, through hiring and promotion, a liberal political mindset has been able to establish itself and exclude all other points of view, with disastrous effects on our intelligence-gathering and analytical capabilities.
Agreed on all points.
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