David Ignatius’ Intelligence Pony-Hunt
No other single intelligence reporter/analyst drives me as bonkers as David Ignatius. Sometimes his Washington Post columns are straight-up brilliant, since
Jul 31, 202053.7K Shares716.6K Views
No other single intelligence reporter/analyst drives me as bonkers as David Ignatius. Sometimes his Washington Post columns are straight-up brilliant, since he’s got an inside knowledge of the intelligence community that few can match (certainly I can’t). Other times he’s a sluice gate for the community’s feelings about some issue or other, in which case what he reports is barometrically significant. And then still other times he writes material as vacuous as this column about whom Obama should appoint to lead the intelligence community:
“„The right answer? Find the [Warren] Buffett-like manager who can create a truly great U.S. intelligence system at DNI, then let that person pick a CIA director who will be nonpolitical.
Why didn’t Ithink of that? Obama should appoint someone who can create a truly greatintelligence structure! This appointment problem was a huge, tangled Gordian Knot of complexity until the razor-sharp insights of David Ignatius cleaved that sucker in two.
What kills me is that the column contains a number of jewels. For instance, this is a real problem Ignatius zeroes in on:
“„The [director of national intelligence]‘s hand got heavier in July with a new executive order that specifies his authority — especially to second-guess the CIA. The spy world is now in a dither about a new directive that would allow the DNI to designate a non-CIA person as his representative in foreign capitals, gutting the authority of the local chief of station. These bureaucratic machinations have left foreign intelligence chiefs wondering who’s in charge.
Totally 100-percent true. That directive completely undercut the entire rationale for having a DNI who’s distinct from the actual functions of the community, and in essence recreated the position of Director of Central Intelligence that the DNI was supposed to obviate. It’s a real fakaktemess. More on this in a forthcoming piece.
Rhyley Carney
Reviewer
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