You forgot to specify, “Air Force General Hayden”. An intel guy too.
mark:
May 6th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
hi Sonny
The NSA chief is by default always one of the smarter general or flag officers in their time.
The Lounsbury:
May 7th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Afraid I really find these kinds of comments hard to credit, they sound party political and don’t match my sensation from the folks I knew.
Of course they were field people and they’ve all left that service in the past three years.
mark:
May 7th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Hi Col –
Field people are a totally different kettle of fish – I have the utmost respect for them as a group. I’m speaking about the very senior bureaucrats who ran the agency, not the Milt Bearden types who ran clandestine operations out in God knows where.
Of the recent ex-CIA author turned pundits, Scheuer, who is no cheerleader for the administration, has a much harsher view of his former superiors than I do. Ditto for Baer. Their complaints are not new, they have been dribbling out for over a decade, really since at least the early 90’s.
If you want ” non -party” commentary, Goss, for his part, could not cut it as DCI ( I have no idea if this poker scandal involves him or if he is simply being tarnished) even though he had the luxury of an enormous surge of funding, something few appointees sent in to ” clean house” enjoy. Bush is at fault for not clarifying what he wants his DCI and DNI to actually do ( titles are meaningless here, what matters is “juice” which is why Negroponte is not another ” drug czar” and Goss is out) Or more obscure posts like the Counterintelligence executive who has also been given the boot ( or is about to, I have not checked).
So, the CIA is a mess. It might weather this crisis through institutional inertia or it might be pulled apart by Negroponte. When bureaucracies are too resistant to change it is easier for administrations to simply build new ones.
Sonny:
May 6th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Mark,
You forgot to specify, “Air Force General Hayden”. An intel guy too.
mark:
May 6th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
hi Sonny
The NSA chief is by default always one of the smarter general or flag officers in their time.
The Lounsbury:
May 7th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Afraid I really find these kinds of comments hard to credit, they sound party political and don’t match my sensation from the folks I knew.
Of course they were field people and they’ve all left that service in the past three years.
mark:
May 7th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Hi Col –
Field people are a totally different kettle of fish – I have the utmost respect for them as a group. I’m speaking about the very senior bureaucrats who ran the agency, not the Milt Bearden types who ran clandestine operations out in God knows where.
Of the recent ex-CIA author turned pundits, Scheuer, who is no cheerleader for the administration, has a much harsher view of his former superiors than I do. Ditto for Baer. Their complaints are not new, they have been dribbling out for over a decade, really since at least the early 90’s.
If you want ” non -party” commentary, Goss, for his part, could not cut it as DCI ( I have no idea if this poker scandal involves him or if he is simply being tarnished) even though he had the luxury of an enormous surge of funding, something few appointees sent in to ” clean house” enjoy. Bush is at fault for not clarifying what he wants his DCI and DNI to actually do ( titles are meaningless here, what matters is “juice” which is why Negroponte is not another ” drug czar” and Goss is out) Or more obscure posts like the Counterintelligence executive who has also been given the boot ( or is about to, I have not checked).
So, the CIA is a mess. It might weather this crisis through institutional inertia or it might be pulled apart by Negroponte. When bureaucracies are too resistant to change it is easier for administrations to simply build new ones.