Posted on 06/11/2002 12:18:41 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
While the White House proposes the mother of all bureaucracies as a cure-all, most pundits continue playing the blame game. That's how it goes when our intelligence community misses clues and Americans wind up in body bags.
Remember the feeding frenzy that followed Pearl Harbor? FDR, the Washington brass and our Hawaiian commanders were cut into bite-sized pieces and barbecued over a red-hot fire.
The same gotcha drill occurred when the Reds invaded South Korea in 1950 and during the '62 Cuban missile crisis, the '68 Tet offensive in Vietnam and in dozens of subsequent intell failures, from Beirut in '83 to the self-destruction of the Soviets in '90.
Clearly, intell fiascos are a time-honored American tradition. And let's face it, our spy agencies don't always connect the dots, even with the broad strokes of a spray gun.
As always, someone's going to get nailed. I just hope the folks in the field who put the cuffs on the bad guys aren't forced to take a fall like the brass on the line at Pearl Harbor, who wound up wearing Japan's surprise attack until their recent exoneration. Sixty-one years later, it's official – no one was responsible for Pearl Harbor except the Japanese Navy, and after last summer's politically correct Hollywood extravaganza, that's no longer a given either.
For sure, the FBI's street agents should definitely not go down. They're among our country's best, dedicated to the core, people who, at great personal risk, go to the wall for us day in and day out. Devoted patriots who don't bring home big dough or draw big overtime checks for their post-Sept. 11 seven-day, 18-hours-a-day dangerous workweek like their unionized brothers in blue, they're stuck in a sick system where the career-obsessed incompetents who can't hack it on the street get promoted, end up as unit chiefs in Washington and then go back to the field to even higher positions supervising – you guessed it – the grunts on the street. Go figure.
At the top, the FBI suffers from the same problems as our military, most government institutions and almost every other organization bigger than a squad in this bureaucratized land: careerism and a self-serving attitude.
Our agents on the street are just like our uniformed warriors, suffering under top brass who've also lost touch with those at the bottom. Eliot Ness would be justly proud of this gallant bunch of unsung FBI heroes but would be blown away by the Perfumed Prince jerks and clerks now running the kinder, gentler FBI headquarters in Washington and many of its field operations.
Like the senior management – note I don't say leadership – of the Army, Navy and Air Force, these professional-manager types won't stand in the door or take any risks. They're so into CYA regulations, so worried about rocking the boat, their unchecked fears too often all but paralyze the hard-hitters out on the line. It's become almost impossible for our street agents to even say hello to a Muslim without having to worry about being accused of racial profiling.
FBI Director Robert Mueller, a valiant Marine hero who chose to serve in Vietnam, needs to get the straight skinny from his troops down where the rubber hits the track.
What they're telling me is:
Give them the freedom and assets to do their jobs, and get out of their way.
Cut the blubber at the top and beef up the grunts at the bottom.
Return to the practice of hiring action-oriented former cops and military types instead of Ivy League "zipperheads" only interested in making it to the top with minimum sweat.
Clean up the ticket-punchers, and end the multilayered system that's produced a generation of embedded careerists afraid to go to bat for fear of striking out, rather than the traditional two-fisted agents who weren't afraid to challenge the boss and make sure the job got done.
Appoint Agent Coleen Rowley as chief of a newly formed "Strange Stuff" Department. You know, to figure out suspicious stuff like why desert rats from landlocked countries are so keen on scuba-diving lessons. No question America's openness is our country's greatest strength, but it also creates our biggest exposure. Only a reformed FBI can pick up the slack.
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