I should have posted this on Friday, but I was getting on a plane to Toronto. Here’s a piece I did for the Washington Independent about the surreal turn that Obama’s hunt for a new intelligence-community leadership has taken over the past three weeks. It’s more than Brennan, I promise. I tried to take a look at under-discussed structural flaws, like the growing tendency for the Director of National Intelligence to act as a super-CIA Director, which was exactly the problem with the old director-of-central-intelligence position that the DNI job was created in 2004 to solve!

Another source of concern emerging from the 2004 legislation is a recent directive that makes intelligence officials at overseas embassies directly responsible to the DNI, even though the National Clandestine Service is supposed to be under the control of the CIA. “It’s madness, it’s just crazy,” said a former intelligence official. “This is like two competing institutions. The DNI’s not [supposed to] have these resources. If every time he makes a demand on CIA there’s resentment and pushback, it’s a huge problem.” Such a resource struggle is especially unwelcome given Obama’s stated emphasis on killing or capturing Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, a mission that will require a significant effort on the part of the intelligence community’s clandestine service.

 But you’ll also get dishy CIA-vs-the-left shit like this:

[Former Sen. Bob] Graham urged agitated CIA officials to regain calm. “There’s been some tension [with] the CIA chafing under what’s thought to be the influence of the new administration,” he said. “People need to put those kinds of concerns behind them. There’s a need to focus on how to get the intelligence community to overcome the problems of the recent past — like 9/11 and the run-up to the Iraq war — and focus on making America more secure and giving us advance warning [of] our enemies’ action.”

Anyway.