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The CIA has been failing miserably in its primary mission, the collection of Human Intelligence, for years. HUMINT networks in very high-interest areas are virtually nonexistent. I worked extensively with “Christians in Action” overseas while I was on active duty and do so now, albeit to a lesser extent, as a civilian and the change in how case officers even think about intelligence is absolutely striking.

I recently met with a couple of case officers with long-term experience at a couple of the largest stations and they’re nothing but intelligence bureaucrats. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “Oh, we don’t do that” or “We don’t do things that way” and they have no clue about how to locate, integrate or exploit information from other sources, even open sources in the public domain.

As for Clapper, I posted the following a couple days ago in an entirely different thread:

“If you had ever had a substantive, face-to-face discussion with Jim Clapper, you’d probably think otherwise. Reasonably articulate and pretty glib, but “there’s not a lot of there, there...” - and I’m referring to Clapper. I briefed him when I was a major and he was a three star. Walked out of his office thinking he was probably the dumbest flag officer I’d ever met and that it was a complete waste of my time. That was 1994, I’ve spoken with him a number of times since and I haven’t changed my opinion.

Any doubts, listen to some of his open testimony on Capitol Hill.”

> The CIA has been failing miserably in its primary mission, the collection of Human Intelligence, for years. HUMINT networks in very high-interest areas are virtually nonexistent. I worked extensively with “Christians in Action” overseas while I was on active duty and do so now, albeit to a lesser extent, as a civilian and the change in how case officers even think about intelligence is absolutely striking. I recently met with a couple of case officers with long-term experience at a couple of the largest stations and they’re nothing but intelligence bureaucrats. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “Oh, we don’t do that” or “We don’t do things that way” and they have no clue about how to locate, integrate or exploit information from other sources, even open sources in the public domain.

HUMINT acquisition has been a problem for the CIA since the '90's which is a major problem when dealing with 7th century minded savages isthe Middle East. They got too comfortable with news journalists doing their leg work for them and publishing them inthe public domain which was a whole lot easier to do. Now there is a whole new generation that posts all over the Internet and some of that info can be helpful but the problem is you have to identify their online hangouts and translate their conversation that's written in foreign languages such as Arabic or Urdu.

The CIA needs to begin retraining their case officers more in field craft and deploy good candidates who have the appearance of the people living in the environment that they will be injected in IMHO. HUMINT is more timely, typically more credible, and more effective in removing serious threats in the Middle East. You can't identify them with open sources...