rssExperience and Intelligence Go Hand in Hand
Wednesday, December 03, 2008 at 10:40 am
- 2 Comments
In the wake of John Brennan’s withdrawal from consideration to be President-elect Obama’s CIA director, Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post explore what it’ll take to run the intelligence community post-Bush:
“An outsider will get eaten alive,” said Amy Zegart, an associate professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and a former security adviser to both the Clinton administration and President Bush’s 2000 transition team. “The next CIA director has to walk a fine line between taming the building and transforming it. He’s got to be part cheerleader and part skull-cracker. There is just no room for on-the-job learning.”
This is the conventional wisdom, and a large part of the rationale for why Obama warmed to Brennan. I’ll have more on this in a forthcoming piece.
Update: You, unlike me, shouldn’t miss Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane’s piece about Obama’s intelligence chief in today’s New York Times.
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2 Comments
Comment posted December 8, 2008 @ 11:25 am
If the question is do you want an intelligence agency that is out of control or no intelligence agency then I vote for housecleaning. When the tail starts to wag the dog it is a simple clear cut sign that egos have gotten in front of brains. When the people say that its our way or we won't play its obvious that “intelligence” is not the primary product. When internal politics start to effect an organization the product suffers, and in the case of the CIA the product is too essential, too needed to allow anything to interfere.
Compromise is a poor solution many times.
Comment posted December 8, 2008 @ 7:25 pm
If the question is do you want an intelligence agency that is out of control or no intelligence agency then I vote for housecleaning. When the tail starts to wag the dog it is a simple clear cut sign that egos have gotten in front of brains. When the people say that its our way or we won't play its obvious that “intelligence” is not the primary product. When internal politics start to effect an organization the product suffers, and in the case of the CIA the product is too essential, too needed to allow anything to interfere.
Compromise is a poor solution many times.
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