CIA Shakeup is Grounds for Worry

Porter Goss quit as CIA Director on Friday, and President Bush this morning announced that Air Force General Michael Hayden was his pick as Mr. Goss’ replacement. Since there was speculation all week-end about the general, many Democrats and Republicans on the Hill were complaining even before the announcement was official. The CIA looks like its still in trouble.

Many on the left equate the CIA with Lord Voldemort, Adolf Hitler and the Blue Meanies from “Yellow Submarine.” And there have been operations backed by the agency that were stupid, like the Bay of Pigs and the coup against Salvador Allende. However, the suggestion that the US, or any sovereign political entity, can function without an intelligence gathering organization is folly.

The trouble with the CIA is that it has too much competition in the intelligence gathering business, from the Pentagon, the State Department, the Energy Department, etc. Indeed, there are 16 member organizations listed on the US Intelligence Community website. All of them engage in gathering data, and since only the CIA is free from policy-making pressures, only the CIA’s intelligence can hope to be untainted by politics. Who wants to tell the boss his pet project can’t go forward because the facts don’t support it?

Mr. Goss did not give a reason for quitting, but either it was in-fighting with the John Negroponte, the national intelligence director (who incidentally is General Hayden’s boss), or due to prostitution and poker games at the Watergate (at least that would get the attention of the American media and electorate, puritanical yahoos that they can be). This journal had great hopes for Mr. Goss, none of which panned out, and there is something to be said for a man leaving before his failures metastasize.

The trouble with General Hayden, to hear some tell it, is his military background. The nation doesn’t need an officer and a gentleman in charge of the CIA, they say. Admiral Stansfield Turner didn’t do badly, however. The real problem is that personnel changes aren’t mission changes. The CIA needs its mission redefined. And so does the rest of the intelligence community. Data gathering and data interpretation must be functionally and organizationally separate. Otherwise, the troops wind up looking for chemical weapons in Anbar province that don’t exist.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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