How I'm going to fix the Intelligence problem

[jmowreader]

Let me first tell you the story of the Two Headed Crocodile, for it sums up the problems that putting a National Intelligence Director in place will cause.

It seems that the greatest zoologists in the world convened a meeting to determine the meanest animal in the world. After rejecting such usual candidates as the lion, the rhino, Dick Cheney and the warthog, a scientist from Louisiana stood and said that the world's meanest animal is the Two Headed Crocodile, which lives in the swamps around New Iberia. He pulled out a photo of this beast, which has a head where the tail would normally be.

"Doctor Boudreaux, you say this beast has a head at the front and another at the back?" asked an incredulous researcher from England.
"Sho'nuff, a two headed crocodile has two haids, one where his haid is s'posed'ta be and 'nother where his tail should be," answered Dr. Boudreaux.

The Russian delegate stood and asked, "if he has two heads, how does he shit?"
'Well...he can't. That's why he's so fuckin' mean."

* * * * *

Okay, back to business. The United States has long had a "national intelligence director." We call him the Director of Central Intelligence. To put an intelligence czar who reports to the president into the cabinet to supervise the DCI, who also reports to the president, will create a two-headed crocodile with a security clearance. Not only will these two guys' riding each other create the world's meanest animal, he won't be able to shit because of all the infighting. Unfortunately for America, in this case the shit is actionable intelligence.

You don't fix a problem requiring major surgery by applying bandages. You fix it with major surgery. Our intelligence system is designed to chase the Soviets; by putting a NID in the cabinet, you've bandaged the problem.

Now check this out: We have at least fifteen different intelligence agencies. All but one of them are chasing the same things. (The exception is the FBI, which has a domestic counterintelligence mission.) Let us say you've got a trail on Osama. CIA will report what it knows about Osama. DIA will use everything the military collectors find to report on Osama. NSA, NRO, all those alphabet soup agencies, will report what they know on Osama. All of it will read slightly differently, because intel is a human pursuit and no two people write or think alike.

Would we not be better off having one Osama desk at one all-source agency report everything it gets on this guy?

When John Kerry is elected, I am going to volunteer my services as the National Intelligence Director. Here's what I'm going to do:

First, I am going to eliminate all of the nation's separate intelligence agencies. All of the buildings, the people (which I will be expanding as I get permission to do so) and the equipment will be rolled into a National Intelligence Center.

Next, all of our intelligence computing capability will be rolled into one database. We will use PROMIS because it actually works. We will hire Bill Richardson at INSLAW, settle all of the government's past grievances with him, and nationalize his company by giving Mr. Richardson a hell of a lot of money for it. Then we are going to use the sanitization features in INSLAW's product line to bring the sub-federal law enforcement agencies on line with the federal government.

How sanitization works: Let's say we have a file on Mohammed Atta. It has some unclassified information, some restricted information, and some information in various levels of classification. If a cop shop that's cleared for restricted information but no higher punches up Mohammed Atta's name, they should be able to find out everything about him that they're cleared to know. You guys all saw My Cousin Vinny, right? Remember that at the end of that movie, we found out that the people who murdered the clerk had been busted in another state for stolen car and possession of illegal firearms. With this system, Chachi would have been released before trial and the guys in the other state would have been arraigned for murder and flight across state lines.

I will then pull all of the Military Intelligence people away from the units they're working with and station them all on a currently-shuttered base. They will still be required to meet the standards of their units--troops from the 313th MI at Bragg will still make parachute jumps, for instance--and will go to war with their units, but right now, I can walk onto a base that has troops home from the war and find MI soldiers pulling weeds all day, because that's all the MI battalion commander can convince the division commander (who would trade his MI battalion for 450 pastry chefs in a heartbeat if he had the opportunity) to let him do with his troops. When the MI troops arrive at their base, they will do intelligence work.

And finally, I will eliminate the Fifteen Desks bullshit. Since we're doing all-source intel instead of disciplinary intel, instead of having a CIA, a DIA, an NRO...desk working the steel trade, which means fifteen desks all assigned to analyze the steel trade, I will have a steel desk and then fourteen other desks working fourteen problems we didn't have the manpower or resources to task against before I got here.

It's got to work better than what we do now.