[Man of the Right]

Reform is possible if you have something to reform, and the will. That's not the case with the FBI.

If you were creating a counter-intelligence agency from scratch, you'd want a lot of extremely driven, extremely bright, creative, entrepreneurial, eccentric people with useful skills -- Arab language, Muslim culture, spycraft, people skills, organizational skills, technical skills, and above all, sources in terrorist organizations and the societies that host them. There's none of that in the FBI. Not only is there nothing to build on, the people who are in the FBI are the last people on the planet you'd want in a functioning counter-intelligence agency. They're not cops, they're not investigators, they're not prosecutors, they're just time-serving bureaucrats with no useful skills, personal qualities, or contacts.

[American Soldier]

Ugh... Talk to a CIA or FBI recruiter sometime, it's ridiculous. They act like they're hiring for a bulge bracket bank or a Wall Street accounting firm. HELLO?? We need people to infiltrate the dirtbag community, not the fatcat community!

Qualifications for intelligence work should be based more on raw intelligence and cultural experience, not level of education. The types of things you learn (if they learn anything at all) in graduate school generally will not help them in intelligence work. (I am mostly referring to folks like law school graduates, whose skills are really not applicable...of course someone who took an Asian or Arabic studies degree could be useful in certain situations).

Probably the biggest source of recruits for the FBI and CIA should be military - but NCOs, not so much officers. NCOs are more likely to have the intensive interpersonal experience needed. I thought that this might actually make Tom Ridge a good Homeland Defense secretary, but I haven't figured out exactly what that agency is going to do yet...