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| 2008-12-14 |
| By ART BROWN THIS is the article I never intended to write. For former C.I.A. officers, the tipping point between debate-generating critique and "if they had only listened to me" pontification is easy to cross, and I had hoped to avoid the latter by simply refraining from attempts at the former. So let's be clear, I am not claiming to have been prescient. It took more than three years outside the agency for me to truly understand its problems and to see a possible solution. To start with the bottom line, the C.I.A.'s human spy business is not answering the hardest questions. How can I know this, three years out of touch with the secret stuff? The answer is rather simple: because Osama bin Laden is still the head of Al Qaeda. And no one has been held accountable for failing to catch him. |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #6 OP: There used to be an old codger shuffling around G group at NSA in house slippers. You could hear him coming three offices away. I wonder if he's still there. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2008-12-14 20:00 |
| #5 OS - Amen, brother! As one SCIF-rat to another, I know exactly what you're talking about. I've worked with various branches of the CIA at a number of assignments. There are good people, and there are political people. You very seldom find one kind among the others. What's killed the CIA is too many Ivy-League "miracle workers" and too few intelligent, capable recruits from reality. Most of the photo people are ok, but then two-thirds of them are ex-military! I also think NSA has a grip on reality, but again, there's a lot of military "leavening" among the squirrels there. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-12-14 19:53 |
| #4 Been preaching to the choir here about CIA for years. Insular, ignorant and politically focused on internal empire building instead of lateral working with other departments and agencies... Silos. FYI, the "No Blackberries" doesn't come as a surprise, but not because the employees "leave them in the car". They are FORCED to leave them outside the SCIF, and if they have a camera on them, up until a couple years ago, you couldn't even bring the cellphone with a camera into the parking lot. Now they at least allow you to bring it into the secured area parking lot, as long as it is pwoered off the entire time its there. So no Blackberries in the office = Security regs prevent them. You cannot bring in MP3 players either -- they are memory devices. Cell phones in a SCIF will cost you your job. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-12-14 16:17 |
| #3 And he's just talking about operations. An admittedly limited sample of analytical work over the years yields a very mixed and overall unimpressive assessment of that business. The craptacular, poltiically motivated b.s. we know about (ridiculous "NIEs" on Iraq, Iran, etc., all designed to back equally dumb talking points of the Beltway media and political class) through the press. Worse news is, lots of the other stuff is just as sophomoric. Problem is, much as when dealing with most State folks, one rarely gets the feeling you're talking with an intellectual or real-world common sense peer. Mostly mediocre public employment shlubs. Some with goofy establsishment ideological blinders installed. Pretty stupid about the focus on getting OBL, however. Obviously defeating AQ in the real world, thwarting their attacks, is vastly more important than bringing anyone in particular "to justice". |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2008-12-14 13:02 |
| #2 at least they have Moussad covering their ass, not to mention The Brits. |
| Posted by: reality check 2008-12-14 10:54 |
| #1 bureaucratic knife-fighting by employees who would rather see the quest fail than give credit to "amateur" operators Been a pox on this outfit for years. Ask anyone in the DoD who has every worked in the community. Farm grad or not, anyone outside the Klingons .... cooties, bad juju. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2008-12-14 08:39 |