Comments on: CIA to Obama: Don’t Point the Finger at Us

By: balconesfault

balconesfault — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:53:31 +0000

Newbigtech: It comes down to NAPOLITANO, having a year to change any defaults in Security and not taking action. Showing she is inept, not qualified to keep America safe.

By extension, shall we presume that all the Bush Homeland Security Chiefs were inept and not qualified to keep America safe, since they left in place the defaults that Napolitano didn’t change?

Are you the same person who was arguing the other day that the US should immediately impeach any President who has a successful domestic terrorist attack occur on his/her watch?

By: Reality Chick

Reality Chick — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:37:03 +0000

These conclusions are logical; centralize intelligence, get rid of the barriers, have both machines and humans coordinate intelligence info etc. etc. Not much one can disagree with given the world today; but, just like the hundereds of layers of bureaucratic inefficiency that plague this country this is another one that may never be improved. In this case, it’s a matter of life and death. Maybe that will motivate changes to be implemented faster than usual.

By: Newbigtech

Newbigtech — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:35:23 +0000

It comes down to NAPOLITANO, having a year to change any defaults in Security and not taking action. Showing she is inept, not qualified to keep America safe.

How many TERRORIST suicide bombers from Nigeria, somolia, or Saudi Arabia are there here in the UNITED STATES?
Our southern Borders are still WIDE OPEN!

By: RalfW

RalfW — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 05:41:40 +0000

It hardly seems like breaking news that insiders at CIA are unhappy to have been called on the carpet and are willing to anonymously complain.

That said, I’m confident that things can be done better going forward. I don’t personally get the sense that Obama wants to layer on more bureaucracy. The lean, mean suggestion of jreb is appealing, but I think balcones is right that in this current mode of using every possible angle as a means of attack on Obama that he’d be ripped appart (or, tehy’d try, anyway) if he proposed something that sweeping.

It is one of the ways that hyper-partisanship is making actual, effective governing nigh impossible. What happened to fighting on domestic issues, but that stops at the water’s edge? (I have my ideas of what happened, and that answer tends to involve a sort of Beck-Rove-Gingrich sort of tactical precedence over really putting America first).

By: rbottoms

rbottoms — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 03:53:31 +0000

It is hard to believe it is 2010 and we still don’t have an integrated intelligence system that works.

Not when you consider who was in charge 1/2001 - 1/2009.

By: balconesfault

balconesfault — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 03:46:49 +0000

jreb – if Obama proposed that, could you imagine the screaming that would take place? I can already imagine the list of features here about how this is just a power grab and Obama is destroying our security so he can install his political cronies throughout these new agencies.

By: jreb

jreb — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 03:27:34 +0000

From the Wall Street Journal opinion article entitled “What Our Spies Can Learn From Toyota” the authors suggest streamlining from 16 separate intelligence agencies to four primary agencies:
(1)a foreign intelligence agency
(2)a military intelligence agency
(3)a domestic intelligence agency
(4)a technical data intelligence agency (satellite mapping, electronic interception, etc.)

The Director of National Intelligence would be a coordinator rather than combining the role of a coordinator with that of the president’s senior substantive intelligence officer.

By: jreb

jreb — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 02:57:58 +0000

Sounds like reasonable suggestions:
(1)elimination of inefficient or redundant bureaucracies or bureaucrats
(2)ability to share information databases between agencies
(3)more aggressive tone in gaining actionable intelligence
(4)appropriate more money for the agencies to hire and train people that can specialize in different areas of expertise where they can work together
(5)fallback system where more than one analyst looks at the same raw data
and
(6)retain and recruit intelligence professionals

By: anniemargret

anniemargret — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:41:57 +0000

sinz: “….better use of our tax money would be to completely modernize and integrate the databases used by FBI, CIA, DIA, State Dept., TSA, etc. Anyone logging on from any of those agencies should enjoy “one-stop shopping” of all the data the Government has available (with security protections against privacy violations).”

hear, hear! Great suggestion and one they should implement immediately. It is hard to believe it is 2010 and we still don’t have an integrated intelligence system that works. And even more difficult to believe that we are still all discussing it almost 9 years after the worst terrorist attack on US soil.

By: rbottoms

rbottoms — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:18:57 +0000

If the automated systems don’t spot red flags, the human operators won’t either.

If Google can filter billions of records in seconds and make recommendations why can the TSA do the same. Hell, hire Google to build the damn thing.