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GEITNER SIMMONS, ROUGH RIDER

The Regions of Mind host blogs on Zenpundit’s favorite presidential personality. It’s excellent !

GOSS AS DCI AND THE WRATH OF KHAN

President Bush nominated House Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fl) to be the next DCI. This was a good move from my perspective because as a former officer in the CIA’s clandestine service during a war he understand what real HUMINT work entails. As Chairman of the House Committee on Intelligence he has a superb grasp of the entire IC. Hopefully he also has the administrative talents as well though some of these can be delegated to the Deputy DCI. The fact that the Democratic Party’s partisan hacks like Pelosi and Rockefeller object to Goss for being too qualified is itself an endorsement in my view.

The other day on Kevin Drum’s site I defended, in a roundabout way, the Bush administration on the subject of the Khan leak. Well, as of today, I’m of the opinion that Tom Ridge is:

a) An idiot.

and

b) Should be fired.

He lacks both the qualifications and discretion to handle anything related to intelligence or national security. My impression now is that his office leaked Khan’s name either out of pure incompetence or to bolster Ridge’s Washington image during the last terror warning. The warning was justified, the leak was not required to support anything but the fragile ego of Mr. Ridge. I’m on the verge of throwing up my hands in utter disgust.

Additionally, my irritation is stoked by an acquaintence in Baghdad who worked for the CPA and now works for the Army ( or the Iraqi government, I’m not entirely clear as to his current status). In part, he wrote:

“Of course we DO know a great many things about what’s going on here…but in the comedy/tragedy that is Iraq; we seem to stuggle to find someone to act on the info..the more we find out the less the Army seems to be able to react…which is very frustrating especially when you can see the next attack coming. What the Army is good at doing it cherry picking. If you are 100% sure that the information is solid they’ll go out and act on it and take credit for the whole deal. Which isn’t all that different from the real world I suppose…so maybe I’ll just stop complaining about that

It’s a bad sign in a war when the military is not inclined to act unless success is a foregone conclusion. It indicates a type of ” kill the messenger- shift the blame ” micromanagement by faraway civilians where military considerations in the field have become tertiary to domestic political concerns.

I feel about Bush today much like an abolitionist must have felt about Lincoln when the Union armies were being generaled by Hooker and Pope.

ADDENDUM: The Belmont Club has an antidote to my pessemistic frame of mind. Actually they selected a larger frame for their perspective.

UPDATE: Reports today indicate that Tom Ridge will be resigning after the election to pursue opportunities elsewhere. ( Hat tip to Ralph Luker at Cliopatria).

Gee… things are looking up.

THE SORT OF PEACE PARTY THAT SEES RESISTANCE AS AN OBSTACLE TO AN ORDERLY SURRENDER

In the campaign season it’s quite easy to fall prone to hyperbole regarding the major party candidates that exaggerate the differences. My beef with John Kerry is not that he is a peacenik but that his addiction to multilateralism, his innate caution and his dislike of taking clearly defined stands would inevitably, were he president, return the U.S. to a defensive and ineffectively reactive posture vis-a-vis Islamist terrorism. At least for two or three years until repeated setbacks and frustrations with French obstructionism forces Kerry to change policies for political reasons.

On the other hand, it would be wrong as well as unfair to confuse Kerry with the defeatist Left. They’re still out there in significant numbers, America-loathing Chomskyians, antiwar-antiglobalization neo-sixties protestors, Stalinist groups like ANSWER and what I can only call Dhimmi Academics – like this guy. He doesn’t merely prefer the defeat of the West but a smooth and peaceful transition to Islamicization, first in Europe then here in the United States. The fact that a few short years after 9/11 and months after 3/11 he feels comfortable enough to publish this fantasist screed openly indicates that this attitude may run much deeper in some segments of the academic world than the public realizes.

Robert Spencer, a conservative author of numerous books critical of radical Islam who runs Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch, has this to say on the state of Middle Eastern academic programs:

The dhimmi attitude of chastened subservience has entered into Western academic study of Islam, and from there into journalism, textbooks, and the popular discourse. One must not point out the depredations of jihad and dhimmitude; to do so would offend the multiculturalist ethos that prevails everywhere today.

The Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA), the premier group for scholars of Islamic studies and Middle-Eastern languages, is on record against The National Security Education Act (NSEA) – in short, they do not want to train students in Arabic, Farsi, Pushtu or related languages if the students will later be employed by the Department of Defense or in the Intelligence Community. A quote:

“[MESA] URGES that its members and their institutions not seek or accept program or research funding from NSEA unless the above-stated concerns are fully addressed.”

The above “concerns” are that students not work for the Pentagon or the CIA, a requirement of NSEA scholarships that MESA “deplores”. Can you imagine a group of educators refusing to train students in Japanese or German during WWII ? Or in Russian during the last fifty years ? In fairness this position does not reflect the opinion of every member of MESA much less those Middle Eastern Scholars who aren’t members; and in a few cases it could be argued, myopically in my opinion given the prevalence of Federal grants, that the concern of some MESA members is for academic freedom. But for the majority of those MESA members who pushed for this resolution though, it’s important to remember that these folks are not out of their minds, they’re highly educated professional academics.

They just sympathize with the Enemy.

COLLOUNSBURY ON DAR FUR AND THE MEDIA

This lengthy post really should be read for Collounsbury’s detailed dissection of the ethnic and cultural nuances of the crisis in the Sudan. Incidentally, I agree with his definition of the nature of the conflict being ethnic cleansing rather than genocide. Khartoum is an miserably tyrannical regime but neither their aim nor the results, as bad as they are, rise to a legal claim of genocide. At least not yet. Not that the West has the will to do much about it in any event.

A MORE LOGICAL APPROACH TO INTELLIGENCE REFORM

The 9/11 Commission has had a number of high profile recommendations, notably establishing a National Intelligence Director, to reform the Intelligence Community.

I’ve blogged on it previously. Dan Drezner also blogged about Anthony Cordesman slamming the Commission. More or less the Commission has missed the boat. There is a problem with coordination among the 14 known agencies in the IC but we notice the problem primarily because resources have not been appropriately allocated for the tasks. We could have two agencies or fifty and it would not have mattered much if the core functions were the focus as they should have been, regardless of the number of bureaucratic offices involved.

Reform should focus on improving the ability of the IC to accomplish intelligence tasks, not on rearranging the deck chairs. The core tasks of the IC are:

1. SIGINT

2. HUMINT

3. Analysis

4. Paramilitary Covert Operations

5. Counterintelligence

That’s pretty much it. Rather than creating a figurehead ” Czar ” to stand near the president and be some kind of intelligence cheerleader a far more profitable endeavor might be creating inter- and intra –agency networking groups to work on topical problems within the core tasks. In other words, build long-term teams that are geared toward task completion instead of defending institutional turf . Giving exceptionally bright analysts the chance to see a more comprehensive data picture will change their perceptions of probable outcomes. It may also lead them to seek more open source material that currently gets ignored but is useful in evaluating the intel we do receive in context.

Arguably, this makes the job of Counterintelligence far harder by breaking down redundant, need-to know, compartmentalization that has always prevailed in the IC.

I have to question however, whether the model of Counterintelligence that even the fanatical James Jesus Angleton could not make work is really what the USG should be using when the rationale for that security regime, the USSR, no longer exists. Neither al Qaida nor a state level ” peer competitor ” like China have the capacity to penetrate our IC like the Soviets did and ” connect the dots”. Our current security structure, left over from the Cold War seems to be more effective at keeping ourselves blind than in keeping spies out so perhaps a complete rethinking of Counterintelligence strategy might be warranted.

Of course, none of this will happen if Congress takes the easy, election year route of stampeding down the primrose path of the 9/11 Commission.

UPDATE:

” Imperial Hubris” author barred from speaking out on intelligence reform by the CIA.

UPDATE II:

A view of intelligence from the field.