Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Directorate of Intelligence (DI) facing crisis

John A. Kringen, the CIA’s director of intelligence, had an interesting piece Monday in the Washington Post on the steps being taken within the intelligence community to minimize “group think” and find new ways of monitoring and assessing long-term strategic threats.

"Nearly one year ago, President Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction released its report identifying shortcomings in the intelligence community. Many of the commission's judgments dealt with analysis, the discipline I lead at the CIA. The primary criticism was that our analysts were "too wedded to their assumptions" and that our tradecraft -- the way we analyze a subject and communicate our findings -- needed strengthening."


"When Porter Goss (CIA Director) selected me as director of intelligence, he expressed his concern that for too long we had concentrated on satisfying the daily demand for current intelligence assessments to the detriment of preparing for the strategic threats and opportunities of tomorrow. What are the implications of rapid advances in technology for U.S. national security? What are the challenges and opportunities posed by Islamic political activism in the Middle East and South Asia? Is there another A.Q. Khan proliferation network out there?"
continues here


Douglas Farah, in his "What Is the Price of Current Intelligence Reform?" writes:

"The truth is the DI has lost decades, if not centuries, of experience as older analysts have fled through the door, many from senior positions. Not all change is bad, but what is left is essentially a group of young and undeniably intelligent people with little real-world experience and little historic knowlege of issues that they must now be analyzing and briefing on."

read more here

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Douglas Farah may be right. All the older experts are having meetings amoung themselves and including the general public. The "Intelligence Summit" which met in Arlington Virginia in February was a four day gathering of the best minds the US has to offer in intelligence. (I was invited by the way, but could not attend.)

Coming April 29, also in Arlington, Virginia, the "Underlying Roots of Terrorism" symposium is being held. While much smaller and only lasting one day, the limited group of speakers are some of the best.

None of them are actively employed by the government intelligence, they are in private intelligence. They get more done than the government.

12:47 AM  

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