That’s rather ridiculous. That our top-level intelligence officials are pining themselves over such idiotic things as who gets to pin a gold star on the best James Bond – in each country. A gold star like all medals given by the intelligence community is: A) classified; and B) “shown to the agent in a the basement where all the medals are kept” (Former CIA Station Chief).

A further fact gleamed is that until now I don’t think it was known generally by the public that the Intelligence Community awards the “top American spy” in each country, as if this was still fifth grade and we’re still vying for the student of the year award. We knew that spy’s were given awards and medals, but not that it was country specific < or plural for that matter.

J.E. Dyer on June 9, 2009 at 8:16 PM

Just wondering what institutional change has taken place that precludes ODNI from playing the same game with the media and Congress that the CIA has? I mean they have to justify their budget and protect their people like everyone else. The DC swamp has certain rules and either everyone plays the game or they get swallowed.

elduende on June 9, 2009 at 9:40 PM

The pressure point you identify is properly on Congress, elduende. This is something that most folks don’t get. It isn’t actually possible to “fix” the intel community by reorganizing it, as long as the incentive remains for those in it to cultivate Congress by undermining administration policy.

This is actually a more active phenomenon when a Republican is in the White House, and the Democrats in Congress are looking for ways to undermine his policy. The Republicans don’t engage in this.

At any rate, the vulnerability of CIA before the reorg was that the DCI and his staff supervised the budget — hence policy — for the whole community (including DOD intel), AND the Agency wrote the NIEs. The vulnerability here between community policy and national policy should be obvious to anyone who knows Washington.

The big idea behind strengthening the DNI (who already existed before the reorg) was to shift community policy and budget authority to a level above the DCI. Separating the policy and straight intel/assessment functions was to institute a check and balance between the two functions.

It’s actually a good idea, IF it can be implemented honestly. It mimics the way the military runs its intel policymakers and its intel agencies — assessment mills — as separate entities.

But of course, it wasn’t implemented honestly. The biggest problem in that has been Congress, which allowed dishonest implementation because that was to the Democrats’ advantage.

There have, of course, been bureaucratic turf wars between the DNI and DCI, but the most significant way in which the intent of the reorg was undermined was in the institution of a special office in the DNI to “ensure quality of analysis” — in other words, vette analysis coming out of the Agency.

The man put in charge of that office was Thomas Fingar, a rabid opponent of Bush’s policies and long-time State Dept employee. (He later moved to chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the position Chas Freeman was nominated for this spring.) The Wall Street Journal recounts here how he and others with an agenda influenced the wording of the 2007 Iran NIE’s unclassified version.

Migrating analysis, or analysis oversight, functions into the DNI was not the intent of the intel reorganization. But it was no accident that this foothold for putting intel policy/budgetary functions and analytical oversight back together again was only enlarged with the new Democrat-controlled Congress, in January 2007. Readers may remember the flap over Pelosi’s choice of the more partisan and loyal Silvestre Reyes to chair the House Committee, over Jane Harman, a moderate Democrat with years of experience (and seniority) on the Committee. Even the Washington Post was disappointed in Pelosi’s and Reid’s decision not to overhaul Congress’ oversight structure for the IC, as reflected here.

Insiders reported that the previous collegiality of the intel committees in both chambers suffered greatly in the 110th Congress, under the new leadership of Reyes in the House and Rockefeller in the Senate. In a little-remarked move at the outset of the current 111th Congress, Pelosi stacked HPSCI more than ever before, shifting the Democrats’ advantage from 12-9 to 13-8 over House Republicans. Views of this move from both sides of the pundit spectrum.

With Obama in the WH and the Democrats exercising the intel oversight, we can expect intel to serve their agenda. But that is all a separate issue from the merits of the 2005 reorg attempt to separate the policy/budget functions of the community from the analysis. That attempt actually does have merit. It just has very little chance of being implemented with an honest approach by Congress — or the federal bureaucracy.

To think there is any other organizational approach that would work better is to err. Congress should not have let Fingar & Co sneak analytical, NIE-editing functions into the DNI office — but they did because he was Fingar, a source of bureaucratic opposition to Bush’s policies, and one that served Democrats in Congress well. No organizational scheme can overcome such powerful political forces.

The IC has had to change to meet ever mor sophisticated and low tech foes, ones who use simple methodologies to defeat technology. They can only hide artifacts, however, and those artifacts show up in a number of realms beyond the obvious. If you can look for them. Currently, we cannot easily do so. Even something as simple as using federal sources to pinpoint and neutralize the drug trade in Afghanistan is difficult due to ‘turf wars’. Your tax dollars go to subsidize big agribusiness, and yet the skills to locate drug production areas, understand local climate, find alternate cash crops, and fund a basic infrastructure to grow them does *not* go to Afghanistan but to places like Monsanto and Conagra.

Those who have retired from the IC or otherwise have left the IC for other life venues continue to worry about the problems that were present and ongoing when we left. Taming the turf wars requires changing the playing field. This can be seen just in the white world information available and needs no special access or knowledge, just a knowledge of how government turf battles operate. The IC is no different from the rest of government in that regard, and it is always shocking to those who put some special capability in the IC to actually be efficient, thorough-going and competent that, on average, the IC (outside of pure military realms) is no more efficient, capable or competent than, say, the Dept. of the Interior. Actually closer to the Dept. of Agriculture and that is damned scary…

To get to that playing field the ‘turf’ must be removed in the way of personnel control and bureaucracy for it, and a cross-analyst system for ALL elements of the IC set up that concentrates on doing tasks and using skills to do them. Agencies then become responsible for the skills necessary to complete tasks in sub-areas: they are expected to be competent, put out levels of competency and what they mean and give everyone an understanding that any analyst with that level of competence can actually do that job.

I immediately recognized, when Panetta’s appointment as Obama’s CIA Director was announced, that a major part of his job would be to keep the CIA from doing to the Obama administration what it did to his predecessor’s administration, i.e., to reprise his CIA mission under Clinton. I somehow doubt this mission extends to protecting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from the CIA. And Panetta is a very effective, and discreet, hatchetman.

We should consider awarding style points for what happens to her.

rogersnowden on June 9, 2009 at 10:25 PM

We do?

NNtrancer on June 9, 2009 at 10:16 PM

To paraphrase Montgomery Burns, “I like the cut of your jib.” :-)

NNtrancer on June 9, 2009 at 10:11 PM

As a few of us used to say at the Agency, each time we had to suffer through yet another reorganization, “The need for constantly reorganizing is the sure sign the guy at the top has no clue as to what he is doing.”

coldwarrior on June 9, 2009 at 9:46 PM

Amen brother! Good to hear.

How’s your boy Woolsey doing? ;-)

elduende on June 9, 2009 at 9:40 PM

Doing quite well, actually. Making the rounds, still working on alternative bio-mass energy, and doing speaking engagements, and turning more and more to the Right with each passing day.

Obama needs to impose an immediate solution between the two…

Yeah, President W/Vast Executive Experience will get right on that! PRESENT!

J.E. Dyer on June 9, 2009 at 8:16 PM

Just wondering what institutional change has taken place that precludes ODNI from playing the same game with the media and Congress that the CIA has? I mean they have to justify their budget and protect their people like everyone else. The DC swamp has certain rules and either everyone plays the game or they get swallowed.

coldwarrior on June 9, 2009 at 9:30 PM

How’s your boy Woolsey doing? ;-)

elduende on June 9, 2009 at 9:24 PM

Panetta’s defense of CIA from the Pelosi attacks was a good indicator. A less confident appointee would have caved to such an influential member of Congress, and of the Party. Panetta gained brownie points at Langley for that in a big way.

His fight to keep the EIT results memoes under wraps is also something that should be applauded. We can take down the Dems assertions that EIT’s do not work by using other means, and without providing the bad guys a point by point lesson plan to thwart future efforts by doing the logical political thing, releasiong the complete set of memoes, as many have called for.

Panetta is resisting this, while his titular boss, Blair, seems inclined to get them out, regardless.

This turf battle is about more than who gets to choose the COS for each overseas station. The ODNI wants operational control over intelligence, especially covert ops and recruitment of assets, rather than serve as a final filter and clearinghouse for communitywide intelligence, as its original charter directed.

gience

coldwarrior on June 9, 2009 at 9:09 PM

I’m disinclined to give Panetta the benefit of the doubt because of the poisonous pedigree he carries but since you say you hear some in the agency are warming to him…who am I to argue? I know no one over there anymore.

Obama needs to impose an immediate solution between the two …

I would submit that it doesn’t matter much at this point. The morale of the CIA has been shot to hell in a handbasket between Obama’s condemnation of waterboarding and Nancy Pelosi’s “they lie all the time” charge.

It’s like the Star Trek show, where the Enterprise drops out of Warp and suddenly realizes the shields are broke and there are 5 Klingon Bird’s of Prey waiting.

We are now flying without a net.

elduende on June 9, 2009 at 8:47 PM

Casey was also very successful in using a career’s worth of business contacts across the globe to facilitate entree for CIA ops and to get key members of various foreign governments to lean to the Right when necessary. Yes, as posted above, Casey’s actual intelligence background was limited to WWII and the OSS, but he never stopped being an operator, made him a very successful businessman and a key political figure behind the throne more than once.

As for Panetta, his charge when he was given the DCI post was to get CIA’s house in order. And he is working toward this, following the lead former DCI Michael Hayden set, and Panetta does consider CIA as “his people” thus he works hard to protect and provide for them, at almost a personal level, at the same time he is pushing the Agency from the analysts to the operations officers to do more, better, with less, but to get it right above all else, and he is trying to end the roadblocks and boundaries between various collectors and various analysts as well as encouraging the best from academia, following Bill Donovan’s lead, it seems, to enhance CIA’s capability in getting it right above all else.

From the fragmentary commentary I’ve seen over the past few months, CIA has warmed to him considerably.

Blair, on the other hand…

As DNI Blair could in his capacity force a sit-down, even if Obama won’t. And, as a professional one would expect this sort of thing rather than the public bickering and turf chunking sort of thing we’ve seen as well over the past few months. Kids do that sort of thing. Professional intelligence officials one would hope would disdain that sort of thing.

My opinion? Blair is out of his league. He should do the right thing, disband the ODNI and return vital assets to those agencies and organizations that had them Shanghied in the first place, when that monstrosity ODNI, was established.