Half the story

IN THE NEWS
There are some attractive ideas in Senator Pat Robert's proposed legislation to revamp the intelligence community. Before digging into the specifics of Roberts' proposal, however, I have to ask two questions:

1. Shouldn't this proposal wait on the alleged Phase II of the Senate select committee's investigation into the Iraqi intelligence debacle? It's not enough to criticize the CIA, then start revamping the entire intelligence community. The other half of the Iraq story has to be told, by the Senate, for the benefit of the American public, before forging ahead on reform. Otherwise, the door remains open for future Administrations to abuse and misuse the intelligence community the way the Bush Administration did.


2. Shouldn't the federal government as a whole prove it can make the Homeland Security work before it starts any other experiments in bureaucratic re-organization? As far as anyone can tell, an integrated Homeland Security Department has accomplished nothing tangible that its independent parts couldn't have done on their own. Worse, Tom Ridge's visible priorities--much time jiggering alert levels and giving alarmist press conferences; little time spent demonstrably making airports, ports, and borders safer--calls the whole venture into question.

On the second question, you could make the argument that we learned from our mistakes in Homeland Security, and we won't make them again in the revamped intelligence and covert action bureaucracy. However, there's no way around the first question. Why did the national security "community" behave like a dysfunctional family, whose self-destructive psychodramas led to the great failure in Iraq? To answer that question, you can't just drag Junior into family therapy. Dad has to face the music, too.

Comments

[Oscar]

Some commentator at Investors Daily today said that Congress needs to look at its own record of Intelligence oversite before trying to fix the Intelligence community. That seems to fit right in with your thoughts.