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| The Real Intelligence Failure? Spineless Spies |
| 2008-05-29 |
| By Mark M. Lowenthal The U.S. intelligence community has failed. We have failed as a public institution and as a profession. We have failed not because of 9/11, or Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, or Iran's supposed WMD, or the horror stories about renditions and detentions. We have failed because we have not explained ourselves adequately and comprehensibly to the public -- describing our role, the limits within which we work and our view of what can be reasonably expected from us. We have failed because we have allowed ourselves to be caricatured, vilified and misrepresented by people who do not know us, do not like us and do not understand us -- or simply see us as convenient fall guys. We have been, in a word, supine. And the net result has been a misguided restructuring of the entire intelligence community based on faulty premises. Inside the community, our passivity has meant crippled morale; outside the community, it has meant a severely diminished view of the value of the crucial, difficult tasks we perform. And we have allowed others to burden us with entirely false and unrealistic expectations. |
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| #11 He did get one thign right: "And if we are going to be serious about improving intelligence analysis, we have to stop publishing the end products -- even in redacted forms that can show up in the pages of this newspaper." |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-05-29 18:15 |
| #10 This guy is full of it. My view from inside the IC shows his type to be the problem. Hide bound, spineless spinners, trying to always paint with a political brush. With nitwits like this as ADCI its no wonder our intelligence failed. And yes, failed analysis is a FAILURE. Ignore those trucks headed to Syria because they make supporting your little fiefdom's conclusions nearly impossible. Guys like this one, ivory tower types, screwed up ops, and PC-ized the hell out of the analysis branch. They became the woods in which the leakers and other politically driven people hid. Read more carefully folks - at every point he pushes the "Bush was going to attack anyway" theme. And he smears the efforts in Iraw that are now succeeding, and he NEVER casts blame on the morons in CIA who backed the idiots at State and their screw ups. Sure sign of another whiner trying to pass the buck. Note that he also does NOT come close to addressing politicizations like the is doing, and politicized leaks as well as bias against thit administration in decisions like allowing certain info to be published and muzzling anyone trying to speak contra these golden boys. And one thing rings particularly unrtue: if he hasn't heard 1, 2 or 10 things we could have done differently, then he has his ears stopped up because his head is squarely up his ass. Yes we need to be more direct in representing our profession, and yes it has its limits and inherent flaws. But those are not excuses to tar others with -they are yardsticks by which to measure ourselves and our actions, and useful to un-f**k a broken system. And this jackass and those like him are part of the reason why the IC is hosed so bad. Real Intelligence Failure? Failure of Bush to fire the lot of them for failing at their job. Starting with Tenet. Failure to hunt down and JAIL *ALL* those leaking to the NYTimes and other places. Failure to discipline the PC crowd who covertly and overtly worked COUNTER to the administration intent and orders. Thats the failure - to allow clowns like this to continue to screw up the IC. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-05-29 18:13 |
| #9 And here I thought I was an orphan. |
| Posted by: Failure 2008-05-29 17:43 |
| #8 Perhaps the most important reform for the intelligence agencies would be the prohibition against employing Ivy League graduates. They are an institutional cancer in both corporations and government organizations. For this reason, recruitment should be limited to State Universities, much like ROTC is used to provide the vast majority of officers to the military, and to some extent, for the same reason. The US military academies had this same problem prior to the creation of the ROTC program in 1862, and having ROTC in competition with the academies has caused a distinct improvement in their quality. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-05-29 17:27 |
| #7 After reading this article I feel so sorry for the people in the intelligence community, hardworking professionals who have sacrificed themselves to work for the good of the country without regard to the political winds of the day, people like Valerie Plame. Real heroes. And I know there are some, but I am now convinced they are in a small minority. It's broken. Let's get a new one. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2008-05-29 17:04 |
| #6 Damn good article. I hate this continual blame game by the MSM and these feckless politicians. The old axiom "Success has many fathers, failure only one" surely applies here. All most folks here about via the MSM are the "failures." Celebrating and publicizing IC successes is extremely counterproductive. Lots of things have changed within the IC since the Carter years. Is there more room for improvement? Of course there is and a damn good place to start would be with the Defense Intelligence Agency. As far as WMD and Iraq, the IC got it right! Saddam was an evil bastard just like that idiot in Iran. Just my two cents worth. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2008-05-29 16:37 |
| #5 Summary: US intelligence is a politicized, hidebound bureaucracy, but it's not their fault because nothing would improve even if they did their jobs right. Huh??? Sounds to me like it's time to completely dissolve the FBI, CIA, and NSA, then rebuild espionage and intellegence services new, from scratch. |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2008-05-29 14:50 |
| #4 Our culture is continually creating inaccurate expectations of government agencies of all sorts. An example is FEMA. People have been led to believe it is an emergency response organization and when crap becomes disastrous in a disaster, they blame FEMA. FEMA's job is to get the states the resources they need to respond, not to be the responder. Same thing with intelligence. The job is to collect and analyze data within the law. Had we been able to intercept both sides of an international conversation prior to 9/11, things might have been different. Many times different people will reach different conclusions from analysis of the same data and it is up to some middle level bureaucrat as to which analysis will be give the most weight and passed up the chain. People seem to expect the intelligence agency to be the data collector, analysis center, AND to then take action on that intelligence. You can't go around saying the government is moronic and then fault them for not doing the superhuman. Its kinda like the "truthers" who claim Bush is such a moron but was able to completely rig 9/11 after only 8 months in office. One major problem with the intelligence community has been individuals attempting to "make the world a better place" by coloring their product with their own world vision. Another problem is that whenever you get a lot of very smart people together you get a lot of prima donnas. And when two or more prima donnas reach different conclusions, watch out. The fur is going to fly and the knives will start slipping into people's backs. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2008-05-29 12:17 |
| #3 ...and the failure to find WMD in Iraq. Oh, and do stuff this in the Orwellian memory hole. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-05-29 12:10 |
| #2 We have failed because we have allowed ourselves to be caricatured, vilified and misrepresented by people who do not know us, do not like us and do not understand us -- or simply see us as convenient fall guys. Oh, and don't forget being a sock puppet for one political party to feed selected information to your like thinking friends in the MSM. Remember getting the 'right' people in power is more important than the republic. Yeah, I know, it's all for our own good in the end. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-05-29 12:07 |
| #1 good article. |
| Posted by: Broadhead6 2008-05-29 12:04 |