Clancy, I'll say it again. You got all of the greatest FR people in the world working on it, buddy.
Video piracy became the priority of our Intelligence Agencies in 1995Now a agency like the CIA has no direct Constitutional authority ... the authority to form and operate it is indirect, it is an overreach of executive power. Not that what we'd want to be done is an overreach -- the collection of intelligence, but to place that collection in a seperate, unaccoutable agency. Seperate from the Army, Navy, Justice, Customs and Immigration -- all of which not only have the grant of Constitutional authorization, but most importantly for any such spy agency to be effective, are the actual end-users of such information.
CIA directed in 1995 to seek Video Pirates
It is utter folly, and risks mulitiple disasters, to give intelligence over to any organization which has no means to use it. You have the constant situation of an agency seeking a customer. That is what Frank Church saw, and why the agency did then, and will again, if allowed, G-d forbid, to run reckless out of control, a will-less wonder seeking whatever fancy.
Ultimately in such malformed, misbirthed, agencies there does becomes one customer. That customer is the employees themselves. Lacking a grounded mission, their perks and pensions become the product.
The Navy's Intelligence service has a clear minimal mission, it is at least to protect the ships, ports and sailors. When that intelligence mission fails men are held to account. The agency corrects itself.
In an ungrounded, mission-less, whatever-mission-comes-along-today agency like the CIA, the agency sends out its most valued asset -- PR and the crack team of excusers. Pensions must be protected at all costs.
So when follies like the Clinton-era video piracy missions come along the men and women pensionaires have no choice but to go along.
G-d bless Linda Tripp.