Posted on 01/01/2006 5:55:58 PM PST by ricks_place
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former CIA counterterrorism officer who tracked Osama bin Laden through the mountains of Afghanistan says the U.S. spy agency could need a decade to build up its clandestine service for the U.S. war on terrorism.
Gary Berntsen, a decorated espionage officer who led a paramilitary unit code-named "Jawbreaker" in the war that toppled the Taliban after the September 11 attacks, said CIA Director Porter Goss faces an uphill battle to fill the agency's senior ranks with aggressive, seasoned operatives.
"He's probably more aggressive than most of the senior officers in the clandestine service. So I think he's having to pull them along a bit," Berntsen said in an interview.
"(Goss) is trying to improve the situation. But it's going to be tough. The rebuilding is going to take years. A decade, at least," he told Reuters late last week.
The CIA, widely criticized for lapses involving prewar Iraq and the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, has seen its clandestine staff dwindle to less than 5,000 employees from a peak of over 7,000, intelligence sources say.
Experts blame a post-Cold War downturn in recruitment for a current lack of seasoned clandestine operatives that has been exacerbated by a rush to lucrative private sector jobs in recent years.....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Frank Church..
Why does it take a decade to fire the useless political people (Plame, Clarke etc), and hire guys who know what they are doing and don't run to the NY Times when they don't get their way?
Yes and now the Democrats want our technical collection capability crippled too!
I cannot understand why there aren't massive dismissals in the agency under Goss.
Frank Church AND Otis Pike.
You can't gut the team in the middle of the third quarter.....you play with the players on the field....and say a prayer.
There have been a number of people who have quit....
Guess they don't like living under Goss' expectations
but are these guys even playing on our team? at some point, consolidation under a smaller but more focused set of managers makes more sense. private industry functions this way all the time.
Where is Jack Bauer when you need him?
The dismissal cases are being assembled, no doubt. It seems many of the rats are feeling the pressure and either squealing (revealing secrets), jumping ship (resigning), or both (Plame).
in re-runs on A&E.
That and they have concentrated on recruiting people with Master's Degrees from prestigious universities who not the kind of people who would likely give up their $500,000 homes in Potomac or Georgetown to go live with the Taliban for three or four years at a time like John Walker Lindh did.
Exactly..
What he is really saying is that it will take a decade to cull all of the Clinton holdovers left on board the CIA and establish a new agency made up of Patriots that can and will do the job.
Another poster stated that Goss is putting pressure on these floks and they are responding with leaks, that mayvery well be. Lately it certainly appears to be so.
Mr, Bush waited far too long to start this effort , it should have been started the day he was Inaugurated.
How many generals did Lincoln go through before settling on Grant? I recall one of them was so opposed to what Lincoln wanted, that he ended up as the opposition candidate for the '64 elections. Imagine trying to run the war with him (McClellan) still in charge of the Army and politically opposed to Lincoln.
Better: "24" DVD's from Netflix. No stupid commercials whatsoever. I love it.
I watched the first 3 seasons last year and now I'm in the middle of watching the 4th.
Jack Bauer is my alter-ego. :-)
Just get it done. Even if it takes the ten years.
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