I think I'd disagree a bit with this last. I think the CIA *ought* to try to catch up to CNN and have a better idea of what is happening than the news media do. True, the CIA should perhaps rely on reading the newspaper for day-to-day events-- though if the news media can have 50 reporters in Baghdad, perhaps the CIA could have 1-- but for week-to- week events, the CIA ought to be on top of what's happening. ... [permalink: 04.06.24d.htm]The criticisms of the CIA were contained in committee findings and recommendations attached to a bill authorizing the fiscal 2005 intelligence budget. Goss, the committee's chairman, has been frequently mentioned as a possible replacement for Tenet, who is resigning from his CIA post in July.
The report said the Directorate of Operations, which collects intelligence with agents in the field, is mismanaged and has a "dysfunctional denial of any need for corrective action." The committee also charged that too much emphasis is being placed on counterterrorism.
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The committee's report also criticized the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, which collects and analyzes intelligence data, as having a culture in which rank-and-file analysts believe "senior DI managers do not want risk taking -- however calculated, caveated and warranted -- and that they will not stand by an analyst who has made the wrong prediction."
The report also said the intelligence directorate should spend less time on gathering information about current events and more time "on the longer-term, predictive, strategic intelligence forecasting that was once the strength of the DI."
"Instead of 'chasing CNN,' as the committee has observed in the past, the DI should be devoting much more of its resources to doing the kind of all-source, in-depth analysis that cannot, and is not, being done elsewhere in government or through media outlets," the report said.
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