"The Genoan Sailor" is an opponent of President Bush's foreign policy, and the Talking Points Memo assertion he quotes is just flat-out wrong, but he's asking some of the right questions and linking to some interesting materials.
I watched former CIA officer Howard Hart myself on C-SPAN2 the other day. It was a compelling, down-to-earth chat from someone with a long career in Clandestine Services and a fine sense of humour. Even my sweetie TBP, who normally has little time for such things, was paying close attention. Hart's notes about the difficulty of obtaining intelligence and his take on recent intelligence reforms are worthwhile food for thought, delivered in an honest and entertaining way. If you want to view it yourself, The Miller Center for Public Policy has Howard Hart in RealPlayer video discussing "Can Today's CIA Conduct Tomorrow's Espionage?" (turn the volume way up).
On a related topic that's near and dear to my heart, WSJ offers the story of CIA/FBI moles Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen - from the KGB's point of view. Counter-intelligence is a key aspect of a good intel service, especially one as reliant on information from foreign intel services as the CIA. This aspect of "intel quality control" has all sorts of dimensions, too, as Chez Nadezha notes in its post about the CIA's work with Pakistan's infamous ISI during the Afghanistan conflict. "The CIA was not going to have its jihad run 'by some liberal arts jerkoff'" is a worthy read, and ties in nicely with some parts of Hart's Miller Center talk re: CIA Clandestine Services.
FOLLOW-UP: The Genoan Sailor has some more thoughts, and Parapundit has a summary of Howard Hart's Miller Center talk.
Comments are once again open.
Todays CIA cant conduct todays espionage. That should be answer enough.
Just curious, what's flat out wrong with the TPM piece he quotes?
Davebo,
The idea that more Americans have been caught spying under this administration than at any point in history. That's just ridiculous. Cold War, anyone?
That was even within JMM's living memory... but of course, he'd have to be paying attention to intelligence as a serious issue worth studying up on, rather than a focus for uninformed generalizations and political grandtsnading.
The Genoan Sailor is also no fan of the present administration, but his subsequent approach and questions advanced the debate in useful ways and struck me as far more intelligent.
I was rereading Robert Kaplan's Soldiers of God; his take on the Afghan War, and this attitude
of preference toward Hekmatyar, Haqquani, Khalis
(Mullah Omar's sponsor according to Coll) are
apparent. So was the neglect of Abdul Haq, Ahmed
Shah Massoud and the NIFA; from whence Karzai
sprung. This dictated future trends as was collaborating with the likes of Hamid Gul, which
men like Bearden, did, to our regret. You see
this attitude still appear in some places; like
Ted Rall ; but more significantly in the work
of Mr. Scheur; AKA Anonymous.
The real problem is the scandals dating back from the 1980's. Reagan and Casey had on CIA payrolls a lot of bad guys, including folks who assasinated Archbiship Romero of El Salvador and Nuns in the same country.
Well, the reaction was predictable, but the choice was pretty clear: have a morally "clean" CIA with no ties to bad actors, with the result of not having critical info on people like drug smugglers, guerillas, death squads, and terrorists. Or, we can pay these people, have them on our payroll, and take the info they can feed us along with the moral tarnish that takes.
We weren't gonna get Jennifer Garner or Kiefer Sutherland into the Taliban or Al Queda. We can however pay people who are there to get info, which we can then check and double check.
The WSJ article detailing the Soviet handling of Ames and Hanssen shows how espionage really works ... paying people betray their organizations, most of them aren't nice people.
Well, since you are talking about intelligence today, might be a good time to talk about the spectacular failures of such. Just a small little story - not getting much airplay, I hear...
And of course, the Poor Man has the best handy-dandy chart..
I like the questions in the cited article, as well.