[Dilbert56]

From the published investigations it appears CIA managers become wedded to notions and ignore evidence that doesn't fit. Saddam, secular + Osama, religious fanatic = no corroboration. They clung to this in the face of published news reports and internal evidence. Given that the U.S. and the U.K. partnered with Russia in WWII it doesn't take a PHD to figure out Saddam would support terrorists regardless of their beliefs. Seeing Shia Iran and Sunni Syria cooperate against us is another example. Yes, you need highly-trained, extremely intelligent people to overlook things that obvious.

What needs to happen is for the CIA, NSA & FBI to be turned into training commands. They can offer services like fingerprint analysis, domestic surveillance, overseas surveillance, asassination, eavesdropping, hacking, etc. Then various joint commands responsible for threat areas, such as the southern border, the northern border, homegrown terrorism, etc. would draw on these services as needed to address their threat areas. This would get the CIA management out of the policy arena altogether. How much demand do you think there would be for CIA analysis capabilities?

[ChessExpert]

I like your second paragraph very much. Sounds like something for our next president to consider.