read a couple articles today. the first was talking about how the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is trying to get the U.S. intelligence community (IC) to reach out beyond its own traditional borders and tap into the talent that lies beyond these borders, meaning that the IC should be learning things that it needs to know from academia, police, the general public and anyone else who has valuable information or valuable ideas. Sounds good to me. Now all they have to do is come find me. the second article, which was linked to the first, was a classic sandbag job by the editorial department of the washington post, which published the article a couple months ago. The headline of the article was something like "The Problem With U.S. Intelligence: Spineless Spies." Now the article of interest did not even hint that U.S. intelligence officers are without backbone. The article did say that there was a limit to what any spy agency could do--that it could not predict the future, for instance. The article (written by a lowenthal maybe) did make it sound like the best the IC can do is keep the president and political leaders well informed on current affairs, presumably by keeping up with newspapers and other media outlets. The article implied that we are incapable of penetrating al Qaeda. That we cannot penetrate Iran. That we cannot penetrate Israel. That we cannot penetrate Russia. That we cannot penetrate China. That we cannot penetrate North Korea. if this is true then the author of the article's headline is correct: We (the U.S. intelligence community, if you will) are indeed spineless. It is my humblest of opinions (and I know not from a hawk and a hacksaw) that we should have a NOC (read: U.S. spy with no official cover) on every major corner of every major city in the world. Where is all the money President has been sending the IC's way going anyway?
