Replies

However a military-only intelligence system is potentially worse because you never develop any in-depth expertise. Military personnel systems encourage you to move on to a different job every 2 or 3 years.
There are problems with US Intel analysis are simply due to the fact that intelligence analysis is an art & not a science. This is inherent in the problem and will never go away no matter what you do. (Intelligence analysis is fundamentally an “informed guess” some people claim its analogous to medical diagnosis or forensics analysis for a legal investigation. It is certainly similar to what historians do! Historians don’t claim to guarantee and exact rendering of the past, for better or worse they interpret their data.)
What would improve US intelligence analysis:
1. More aggressive & consistent collection. You can’t analysis what you don’t collect! All the INTS have to be funded and equally emphasized, this includes HUMINT! This means a democrat administration can’t go wobbly and deemphasize HUMINT and only rely on technical means.
2. Minimize or eliminate congressional interference.
Minimize congressional interference by having 1 joint committee. Eliminate, well I know thats impossible but it would be the ideal case. The permanent select committees are a failure, though it will never be admitted! 3. Exempt the Intel community from all the federal government social engineering experiments, be it often mindlessly mandated procurement competitions or pretending that sex and skin color trump, education, training and experience. (Ruthlessly punish real racist acts against employees be it white, black, blue or green. However don't pretend that racism only flows one way!) The Intel community is actually already exempt but congressional interference force them to participate. (See item 2) 4. One IC-wide physical & personnel security vetting, as well as one understandable classification system. 4. Realistic personnel policies so that real deep expertise can be developed in language, topic & methodology. The current system so I am told has the consequence of encouraging superficiality. An honest acknowledgment and acceptance that this will take time. Much longer then the election cycles, this is why the current constant "congressional fine-tuning" is so destructive. 5. A mandarin system when it comes to promotions. (Or a straight seniority system!) The current system has too much "Got to please the Boss by agreeing with him!" in it. I know this approach would be an anathema to most Freepers but I don't know of any other way to guarantee analytic integrity as well as develop deep topic operational, & analytical expertise. 6. Honestly recognize if you want government staff with deep experience & expertise you will have to pay salaries sufficient to attract it & keep it. Yes Clinton incompetence is largely responsible for 9/11, but the seeds of the current level of mediocrity & mendacity go back to the Church committee, the standing up of the permanent congressional committees & the Carter administration & PC regulations. The stand-up of the DNI system has only made a hide-bound, bureaucratic timid system more so. The 9/11 & WMD commission recommendations have far more more bad in them then good. The likely result will be increased micromanagement, timidity when it comes to operations, & more group-think (Got to please the Boss!) when it comes to analysis.