NATIONAL SECURITY: Are We In Good Hands?

... , but unfortunately it is from people who I usually regard as having too much ideological bias to be reliable in these things.

Suck it up and let us run the place for a while...

Panetta a ‘Brave’ Choice, Says Former CIA Agent [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

“Ishmael Jones” is a former deep-cover officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. He is author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, published last year by Encounter Books. I asked him this morning what he thought of the Panetta pick and what Obama should be thinking about the CIA.

Q: Would Leon Panetta have been your CIA chief choice?

A: He’s an excellent choice because he will be loyal to the president first, not to the CIA. Mr. Obama needs someone who can be trusted, a person who will support him when the going gets tough.

A “safe” choice, viewed as inoffensive by the CIA’s top bureaucrats, would have been dangerous. Directors Tenet and Hayden were placid Washington civil servants of neutral loyalties, quickly coopted by the CIA’s bureaucracy. A military officer might have had good leadership experience but would have lacked sound partisan political connections.

The choice is a brave one because it can open Mr. Obama to charges of appointing a loyalist to a crucial post. But that is exactly what is needed at this time.


Q: What can he bring to the job?

A: Panetta has no espionage experience, but he has the only qualification he needs: the ability to bring the power of the presidency to bear.

Americans want President Obama to succeed, and for that he’ll need a CIA that can provide the intelligence necessary to protect Americans and our allies. If Mr. Obama relies less upon military strength, he will necessarily rely more upon intelligence.

Now that the Democrats are in charge, their focus shifts from winning power to holding it. A nuclear attack on America or an ally that could have been prevented through intelligence reform will severely harm the new president and his party.


Q: More generally speaking: Whomever the nominee, what’s the opportunity Obama has to seize when it comes to the CIA?

A: The superbly run Obama campaign showed that the Obama people know how to manage an effective organization. Reform of the CIA can begin simply by requiring the CIA to obey existing laws and directives: 1) The CIA must get its clandestine-service officers out of the United States and spying in and on foreign countries. The great majority of CIA employees now live and work within the U.S. 2) Its clandestine operations should move away from embassies because, unlike the old Soviet targets, terrorists and nuclear proliferators do not attend diplomatic cocktail parties. Congress has already funded this move, but the CIA has not complied. 3) Ruthlessly streamline the bloat. Terrorists have flat chains of command and no bureaucratic turfs. The CIA has dozens of byzantine management layers which, octopus-like, loop back upon themselves. Human-source intelligence collection has been effectively strangled. 4) The CIA must strictly account for the handling of taxpayers’ money, as the law already requires. Post-9/11, the CIA has become a place to get rich for contractors and former managers.


Q: What has been holding Bush back?

A: Bush felt a misplaced sense of loyalty to the CIA, a loyalty the CIA never returned.

Partisan political conflict during the Bush years allowed CIA dysfunction to thrive and grow. The CIA may have difficulty running basic espionage operations, but when its way of life is at stake, it fights like a retrovirus regardless of the commander-in-chief’s political party. The CIA’s sophisticated system of press leaks has been a textbook covert-action operation, in which journalists are given leaked information in exchange for articles which support the CIA’s agenda. CIA-stoked controversies over terrorist interrogations, wiretapping, the Libby case, and Iraqi WMD kept President Bush off balance, and at times even threatened to put his people in jail.

Former CIA director Porter Goss attempted some minor reform, but without White House support he was quickly expelled by CIA bureaucrats. Obama’s choice of a loyalist shows he understands the threat he faces from a dysfunctional CIA. That the CIA served President Bush poorly doesn’t make it the Democrats’ ally.


Q: Shouldn’t 9/11 have been a wake-up call? Was it on some level, intel-wise?

A: 9/11 gave us an opportunity to fix the CIA, but we blew it. The CIA’s failure as an early warning system and lack of accountability led to America’s vulnerability to those terrorist attacks. For six months after 9/11, CIA mandarins reeled, expecting heads to roll. When this didn’t happen, the window closed, and the bureaucracy roared back with full-throated confidence, strengthened with billions of dollars in additional funding.

We need to re-open that window of opportunity for intelligence reform and not wait for the next attack upon Americans.


Q: How would you grade Bush overall?

A: If democracy takes root in Iraq and spreads in the region, I think he will be viewed by history as a visionary.


Q: Is the CIA salvageable?

A: I do not believe incremental reform will work, because it will not address the CIA’s systemic lack of accountability. The CIA has never suffered the consequences of its failure to perform. No manager has ever been demoted, no change has occurred.

The CIA should be dismantled and its parts assigned to functioning organizations. The clandestine service should be placed under the control of the U.S. military. Because the military is subject to the consequences of its actions, it is an efficient and accountable organization. Domestic CIA activities should be placed under the FBI, and embassy and diplomatic functions should be placed under the State Department.

Morale will improve for the people who matter. The CIA’s patriotic and talented employees will welcome reform that leads to production of real intelligence. They are hungry for leadership and eager to defend America.

Morale will not improve, however, for top bureaucrats loyal only to the CIA’s way of life. Also unhappy will be the CIA’s press allies whose careers have benefited from illegal leaks. The intelligence-industrial complex of private companies which has grown wealthy on lucrative CIA contracts will also be disappointed.


Q: Has having a “Director of National Intelligence” helped matters?

A: Creation of the DNI position meant the addition of layers of management on top of the CIA, which was already strangled by too many layers of management. The DNI staff has now grown into the thousands, and like CIA managers, they squabble over turf and money but conduct no espionage. If just a few of these people were assigned as espionage officers to foreign countries, America would be a safer place.


Q: Why did you leave the CIA?

A: I saw we had few good human sources with access to intelligence on the major threats to Americans. My own operations were blocked by the weight of bureaucracy and risk aversion. I first sought to work from within, but there are no internal mechanisms for reform, and I decided I could do a better job of defending Americans by resigning and working for intelligence reform. My career record was unblemished and I resigned in good standing.

01/06 12:24 PM

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Suck it up and let us run the place for a while...

Pfff.... run the place right into the ground... no thank you.

H2O MAN wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Suck it up and let us run the place for a while...

Pfff.... run the place right into the ground... no thank you.

congratulations, oh drippy one.

of all the idiotic things that you've prattled out over the last years, that statement is by far the stupidest of them all.

Fox, you may reject the source, but unless you've got the ammo to refute the content, your observation is not even 2 cents.

T
K
O

My reading has led me to believe:
...Panetta is, in general, respected and trusted by the professionals in government.
...employs a work approach similar to the President-elect
...intends to use the expertise of the professionals in place
...knows how to get work done in big government