Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein would have had a much stronger article if he hadn;t tried to make an unfavorable comparison between the CIA's approach to collection and analysis, and that of journalists. Truth is, both do a pretty questionable overall job, and it's pretty much for the same reasons. But this bit from "Obama Faces Gaping Holes in U.S. Intelligence" was interesting, and may be eye-opening to some:
bq.. "So," I asked a former intelligence agency head over seafood this week, "if I'm President Obama, and I call Leon Panetta into the Oval office and ask him to tell me how Hamas leaders are holding up under the Israeli assault, will he be able to tell me?"
The former official shook his head, nearly blushing.
No. "That's not the kind of information" they focus on.
"Well, what do they focus on?" I asked."
p. Good question. You'd think that sort of thing might be very relevant. The Israelis, who are coordinating their military activities with Shin Bet (FBI equivalent) and enjoying much better success as a result, certainly do. Improved use of armor also helps, and upgrading their approach to the information war helps even more. Hope people in the USA are learning from both of those intel/information steps forward.
This bit on an attempt to use open source methods and approaches in the CIA was also very interesting:
bq. "After much resistance, CIA and DNI finally did set up an Open Source Center with analysts, some of whom don't even have security clearances, working from unclassified material. And they've proved to be very good, some experts say, giving the spy agency a fresh view on developments ranging from Iran to North Korea. The final verdict is far from in, but one well informed former official said that on at least one subject he was familiar with, the regular CIA analysts "couldn't hold a candle" to the Open Source Center's product."
Anyone who had read Dan Darling's material here at Winds, before he started to do those sorts of things as a job for various employers, would not be surprised by that outcome. At all.
"And what, especially, should be done to fix the CIA, with all those floors upon floors of people scattered across Northern Virgina gathering and analyzing secret information? "
"Blow up the place," my lunchtime guest said, "and start over."
The number of times your here this, half kidding, and often from people on the inside, is shocking.
Kind of like NASA...
Just as a WAG I'd think they'd subcontract that kind of intelligence gathering out to the Israelis.
,,,who have their own axe(s) to grind. Not to bring up the USS Liberty again, or anything...
If you could take the CIA out of Washington it would probably be far more successful. Furthermore, if it were a private agency that did work for the government, it would be far more successful primarily because it wouldn't be run like a typical government bureaucracy, hampered by all the typical government workers. I know CIA likes to crow about cherry picking the best and brightest right out of the Ivy League, and that's part of the problem as well. See the current financial fiasco our nation faces courtesy of the "best and brightest" of those same institutions.
Not just that, but considering the security implications its not so simple to just hold a press conference.
This whole 'then what do they focus on' question is the crux of the entire matter. What the CIA wants to be doing is not what we need them to be doing. Thats a huge problem.
It kinda reminds me of the public school and NEA response to standardized tests, ie 'we dont want to give the tests because then we are just teaching to the test'. EXACTLY. Because that's what the people who pay your salary are telling you to do! If you don't want to teach the arithmetic and grammar as the test judges it, what exactly are you trying to teach?
These examples are canaries in the cave. We have gotten to a point with our institutions that they are becoming more powerful than the sum of their parts, and that is very dangerous in a democracy. When a significant portion of the nation is working directly for the government, the impetus to not rock the boat is strong. The CIA showcases the worst case scenario in this vein. Somebody should take a chainsaw to the organization.
[Drive-by, trolling. Deleted. We welcome substantive discourse here. Care to try again? --NM]