U.S. spy agencies face big layoffs in government shutdown

[undeterred]

Source: Reuters

By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 1, 2013 12:50pm EDT

(Reuters) - More than 70 percent of the civilians working for U.S. spy agencies have been deemed "non-essential" employees and face temporary layoffs due to the government shutdown that began on Tuesday, three officials familiar with the matter said. The agencies affected are the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of Director of National Intelligence and 15 others, the officials said.

The CIA expects to furlough about 12,500 civilians working for the agency, according to the sources. But specific numbers for other agencies were not immediately clear, the officials told Reuters. The CIA and White House declined to comment. No uniformed military personnel will be affected, officials said. Some large spy agencies under control of the Pentagon employ as many, or more, military personnel than civilian workers.

These agencies include the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, whose secretive electronic eavesdropping methods recently become the focus of controversy following leaks by former contractor Edward Snowden.

The U.S. government partially shut down for the first time in 17 years on Tuesday as a standoff between President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans over healthcare reforms closed museums and national parks and slowed everything from trade negotiations to medical research. Federal agencies cut back services and up to 1 million workers were put on unpaid leave. Shawn Turner, chief spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence, declined to discuss specifics of the layoffs but acknowledged that the performance of spy agencies could be affected if the shutdown continues.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/01/us-usa-fiscal-spies-idUSBRE9900ZF20131001

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[inch4progress]

1. The terrorist are loving this, both the foreign and domestic(GOP) terrorists

[Katashi_itto]

2. Everybody is getting Furloughed.

[leveymg]

3. National Park Rangers do a better job of keeping America safe. Most of the spooks are redundant

and getting in each others way, particularly at DHS, which does domestic surveillance. Even the spooks themselves are saying this. Please see,

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023754223

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2013, Issue No. 86
September 30, 2013

Secrecy News Blog: http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/



TO FIX U.S. INTELLIGENCE, SHRINK IT?

Criticism of U.S. intelligence takes many forms: Intelligence agencies are too secretive, or they are too leaky. They over-collect, or they under-perform. Or all of these, and more besides.

Many of the criticisms can be reduced to a single argument: The U.S. intelligence community has become too large to be properly managed.

Interestingly, this is a view that is held by some within U.S. intelligence itself, according to a new dissertation by a CIA sociologist who studied and worked at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).

"I actually fear that the IC is too big," a CIA analyst at the NCTC told sociologist Bridget Nolan. "It's crossed the point where it's healthy competitive analysis. We've gotten to the point where we're in each other's way. We're hindering the mission."

"Something that's worth considering," another CIA analyst said, "is completely counterintuitive, which is to make the CT community smaller, not larger. I think there are far more people at CIA HQ now than when we defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War. What the hell?"

As for the NCTC itself, yet another analyst said, "If it were to continue existing, it should be about one-tenth its current size."

A reduction in the size of the intelligence community might be a sovereign remedy for many of the problems currently afflicting U.S. intelligence analysis, Dr. Nolan suggests.

"For the analysts, this would address the hindrances that come along with a bloated bureaucracy," including an avalanche of superfluous communications. "It would also help with what they perceived to be excessive redundancy, as opposed to a lower level of redundancy which was deemed necessary for safety and accuracy reasons."

[blkmusclmachine]

4. C'est la vie.

[Hubert Flottz]

5. I wondered why my phone stopped...

making those strange noises yesterday?

[jsr]

6. Most NSA operations are not affected

http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/324857-government-shutdown-unlikely-to-curb-nsa-spying
Shutdown unlikely to stop NSA spying
By Brendan Sasso