It has been a year. Has anything changed?
The C.I.A. and its human spying operations are expected to benefit from changes in next year’s intelligence budget, under classified plans being drawn up by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, including a version approved by the Senate panel Thursday. Congressional officials said Thursday that John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, had signaled for the first time that the Bush administration would support big cuts in a multibillion-dollar satellite program in part to free up money for more human spying.
Current and former intelligence officials say considerable turmoil remains within the agency, particularly within the directorate of operations, which is responsible for human spying around the world. The directorate’s No. 2 official, Robert Richer, has become the most recent high-ranking official to announce his departure, and he has told officials at the White House and in the C.I.A. that he had lost confidence in Mr. Goss.
Mr. Goss’s task was bound to be complicated, partly because the agency was reduced in power and stature by the reorganization of intelligence after its failures on terrorism and Iraq.
In an interview, Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said she believed that Mr. Goss was doing better than early on, when the No. 1 and No. 2 officials within the operations directorate quit after clashes with members of Mr. Goss’s personal staff.
“Anyone who came in when he did would have had a steep hill to climb, in part because change can be difficult,” Ms. Harman said.
The problem with this type of change is that we won’t kow for years if it was change for the better.
Rick
“The Company” has been in decline for decades. Something is definitely broke, so a fix must be attempted. Shaking up the “culture” is a good start.
Cordially…
p.lukasiak
When the guy that Goss handpicked to be in charge of human spying says he has lost confidence in Goss’ leadership, I think its a pretty safe bet to say that we won’t need to wait years t figure out that Goss is gonna be a disaster…
Blue Neponset
I am a ‘throw money at the problem’ kind of a guy, anyway, so I was wondering if someone could tell me why we can’t have satellite and human spying at the same time? Isn’t intelligence gathering a top priority in the GWOT? Why are we cutting the CIA’s satellite budget in the first place? Maybe we could build one less B-2 bomber or 10 less bridges to nowhere to pay for some neato satellites for the CIA?
Trent
Of all places not to spend money…
At some point you gotta figure there’s a method to their madness. Conspiracy theories aside, i think the biggest incentive/disincentive for this administration to spend money is whether or not it ends up in the pockets of their friends or constituents.
I don’t think that the CIA is either.
DougJ
You’re being either very optimistic or very pessimistic. Optimistic if you think we’ll find out without getting it by another terrorist attack. Pessmistic if you’re assuming that we’ll find out after the next big terrorist attack.
I know I’m a smart ass, but I really believe that.
Defense Guy
If the problems really do get fixed, we might never know. That would be the point though. You might never hear about the successes in an agency that cares more for national security than the limelight or politics.
Boronx
Why would anyone be optimistic about change initiated by the only men in the nation more wrong than the CIA?
DougJ
If had wheels, I’d be a bus.
I think I have a better change of pitching a no-hitter in the Major Leagues than Goss has of “fixing the problems.”
baronelmo
The CIA is now utterly useless as an intelligence-gathering organization. Porter Goss chose to purge the agency of all those troublemakers who didn’t go along with the Bush administration’s rush to war in Iraq (you know, the ones who were RIGHT about the Iraqi threat being nonexistent) and replace them with a pack of Republican yes-men. God damn it–there’s a REASON why the CIA office was situated so far from Washington in the first place… to keep the agency focused on information rather than politics. So long to all that, I guess.