Bob Graham. Reassure me that the Bob Graham we saw over the last 12 months was his dumb twin, or that he misplaced his meds.

The anti-Bush left is loving this (Bush lied, etc)
I wonder if the administration is avoiding something like sacking Tenet or going after the CIA in that they think it might be perceived as an admission of fault which will begin a feeding frenzy for change that leads to Bush himself.

MG:

Listen to him here:

http://www.wamu.org/dr/shows/drarc_021202.html

I think the intelligence community has had a lot of successes that we never hear about. They only get publicity for their failures. Also, with all of the starving of the intelligence community in the 1990's is it any wonder that they have failures? Don't get me wrong. I think there should be some changes but let's give them some credit.

Read anything by Marc Reuel Gerecht. He's a former agent and has long listed the operational failures within the CIA and shows how it's due to a bad organization. The problem is not "funding." And he's complained about it way before 9/11. The first time I read an article of his was in the Atlantic Monthly in 1998.

The President should have cleaned house after 9/11. He didn't, and I doubt he'll do it now.

Some mid-level people should have bitten the dust after 9/11 but then or now is not the time to shake up the troops in the CIA/FBI. When we get bin Laden and his Egyptian doctor this year, early 2005 would be the time, if required.

One idea comes from McCarry's Better Angels (1979)
A very prescient take on a world obsessed by a nihilist Islamic fundamentalist terror network
(the Eye of Gaza). In the aftermath of some Watergate or Halloween Massacre type scandal,
the President reorganizes the CIA, into the
Federal Intelligence Service; an apolitical
organization, that operates under what would
now be called NOC business fronts; with regional bases in Paris, Sao Pablo & Beirut. One of the
plot threads involve an operation to thwart a
series of attacks using WMDs, which involves
assasinating an Arab princeling involved with
the Eye of Gaza. The fact that a John Kerryish
liberal president commisions the dead, and that
the FIS has to fix the election electronically
in order to prevent a President very much like
the current incumbent (complete with a space
fixation) is doubly ironic)

The last word has not yet been written in this chapter. The book is not yet closed.

And when things come to light, Bush will be doubly accused of making it look as though he were lying.

"The accusation's the thing...."

Orrin:
You want to "...blow up the intelligence services--which have been wrong more often than right, and massively wrong on every big issue."

And how long would it take to constitute a better intelligence service, which will be right more often than wrong, and massively right on every big issue?

narciso:

McCarry's series of novels is the most underrated American literature of the past half century.

Henry:

Who cares? If they're always wrong--as I'd argue--aren't we better off knowing nothing?

Personally, I'd use Poidexter's idea of information markets.

They are not always wrong. If they were always wrong, they would be less trouble than they are.

The known history of intelligence over the last century indicates that the real failures come at the top of government, not in the intelligence agencies.

The problem comes when politicians either refuse to believe good intelligence, or fall in love with bad intelligence.

Usually, intelligence is partial at best, as obviously was the case with Iraq, because -- duh? -- it's a secret!

But even intelligence that is 100% correct is often (usually?) used wrongly or simply disbelieved. Stalin's suspicion of Sorge is the classic case but there are plenty of others.

They consistently overestimated the Soviet threat, which is the only one that mattered for fifty years. Only Ike (in military terms) and Reagan (in political) understood how weak they really were. But you could throw in things like thinking the Cubans were in Nicaragua because they spotted baseball fields or assuming Saddam wouldn't attack Kuwait or any number of others.

I was talking about all intelligence agencies, not just ours.

Intelligence tends to be much the same across borders. The kind most people think of when the word is used is not of much value.

Signals intelligence is much more valuable but is not exciting. Nobody writes novels or makes movies about sigint.