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No other single intelligence reporter/analyst drives me as bonkers as David Ignatius. Sometimes his Washington Post columns are straight-up brilliant, since he’s got an inside knowledge of the intelligence community that few can match (certainly I can’t). Other times he’s a sluice gate for the community’s feelings about some issue or other, in which case what he reports is barometrically significant. And then still other times he writes material as vacuous as this column about whom Obama should appoint to lead the intelligence community:
The right answer? Find the [Warren] Buffett-like manager who can create a truly great U.S. intelligence system at DNI, then let that person pick a CIA director who will be nonpolitical.
Why didn’t I think of that? Obama should appoint someone who can create a truly great intelligence structure! This appointment problem was a huge, tangled Gordian Knot of complexity until the razor-sharp insights of David Ignatius cleaved that sucker in two.
What kills me is that the column contains a number of jewels. For instance, this is a real problem Ignatius zeroes in on:
The [director of national intelligence]’s hand got heavier in July with a new executive order that specifies his authority — especially to second-guess the CIA. The spy world is now in a dither about a new directive that would allow the DNI to designate a non-CIA person as his representative in foreign capitals, gutting the authority of the local chief of station. These bureaucratic machinations have left foreign intelligence chiefs wondering who’s in charge.
Totally 100-percent true. That directive completely undercut the entire rationale for having a DNI who’s distinct from the actual functions of the community, and in essence recreated the position of Director of Central Intelligence that the DNI was supposed to obviate. It’s a real fakakte mess. More on this in a forthcoming piece.
Crossposted to The Streak.
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Especially as Warren Buffett isn’t a “manager”, he’s an investor, and one who believes in never interfering with the executive management of the companies he buys into.
Perhaps it should be headed I vs. I
Maybe he’s getting his ideas from old Python sketches:
Alan: … here’s Jackie to tell you all how to rid the world of all known diseases.
Jackie: Well, first of all become a doctor and discover a marvellous cure for something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there’ll never be any diseases ever again.
Alan: Thanks, Jackie. Great idea. Now, how to play the flute. Well here we are. You blow there and you move your fingers up and down here.
Noel: Great, great, Alan. Well, next week we’ll be showing you how black and white people can live together in peace and harmony, and Alan will be over in Moscow showing us how to reconcile the Russians and the Chinese. So, until next week, cheerio.
Yeah, I read that column this AM and was actually looking for him to name a specific person. A lot of build up for such a trivial ending.
It isn’t spring, but the sensible thing is to clean house in the whole intelligence ‘community’.
It isn’t a wonder that things seem more fouled up with a DNI than before. We have too many agencies fighting for turf and seeking to speak/act for the US.
Keeping these miscreants that brought us torture and rendition and intelligence estimates that were nearly wholly wrong is not change. Off with their heads! (Actually forced retirement, with no freedeom to join some think tank or whatever influencers might be interested in dead wood).
Wouldn’t it be nice to have one competent agency? There is no model among the FBI, DHS, and CIA/NSA/et al worth replicating.
Now, I readily admit, it surely would help if the President, Secy’s of State and Defense, and Nat. Security Council Dir did interesting things like ask real questions and demand more than pabulum. An incompetent, incurious Preznit like GW Bush just makes things even worse. An evil, agenda-pursuing Vice Preznit (Cheney) and assorted accomplices (Feith, Wolfowitz, et. al) makes for great circus acts and not much more.
Talk about pouring money down rat holes: the feeble-intelligence world we have is worthy of maybe Zimbabwe, but demands answer to the question of whether we are better off with or without this clown act.