Issues in Intelligence

A superlative exploration of the challenges faced by the United States intelligence community, by the New York Times (registration required, check www.bugmenot.com for usernames and passwords).

Compartmentalization of information, technical tools that are pitifully behind the state of the art, an inability to recognize the importance of open source information – all of those flaws were ones I recognized in a previous job that touched upon the intelligence world. The proposed solutions – Intelink wikis, blogs, enabling Google-like search prioritization via link counts – sound like valid solutions. The greatest impediment to such improvements is cultural; the security bureaucracy surrounding official U.S. government secrets is moribund, hide-bound, and recalcitrant. They exist to ensure nothing will slip from their control, and the idea of doing so deliberately is more terrifying than words can convey, no matter the benefits such openness would accrue to national security. The article understated this issue with one sentence near the end: For all the complaints about hardware, the challenges are only in part about technology. They are also about political will and institutional culture — and whether the spy agencies can be persuaded to change.

The way to attack that challenge is to replace the series of Executive Orders that underlie secrecy rules with legislation centralizing everything from standards about levels of classification to granting security clearances. The biggest failure of the Intelligence Reform Act was that they didn't address this issue. Perhaps retirement and personnel attrition will begin to change the attitudes of the security bureaucracy, but in over a decade of professional experience, I haven't seen an inch of progress.


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Post-Election Thoughts

Although I usually find myself disinterested or actively put off by Congressional politics, the aftermath of last week's election has been fascinating. I was hoping that Republicans could maintain control over the Senate, although that hope didn't allow me to vote for Virginia's Republican candidate for Senator, the embarrassing George Allen, who self-destructed in the last months of the campaign. I also felt I couldn't vote for eventual victor Jim Webb, so for the first time, I went Independent Green. Why must Virginia field such unappealing candidates? Back when Oliver North battled Chuck Robb, I was grateful that Marshall Coleman ran as an independent candidate and provided a choice I could endorse. With Webb's victory, the Senate went to the Democrats and a reorganization of party leadership began.

Senator Trent Lott's resurrection as Minority Whip was analyzed by some as an indication that the Republican party is serious about getting business done with the Democratic majority. Lott's remarks four years ago endorsing segregation were appalling, yet every politician has skeletons in their closet. And the mood of the country could shift towards Republicans if the Democrats are seen as obstructionist or unable to accomplish their few campaign promises. Lott's skills in developing compromise solutions to tough issues and building consensus support could be invaluable in the coming term, so long as he truly regrets the message behind his blunder, not just its results.

The more fascinating story was in the House of Representatives, with Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi's unsuccessful quest to elevate Rep. John Murtha to the post of Majority Leader. Murtha's reputation is as besmirched as they come – pork barrel spending, cozy ties to lobbyists and industry, and a damning 1980 video where Murtha half-heartedly rejects Abscam bribes yet leaves the window open for future graft ("I want to deal with you guys awhile before I make any transactions at all, period. After we've done some business, well, then I might change my mind. ... I'm going to tell you this. If anybody can do it – I'm not B.S.-ing you fellows – I can get it done my way. There's no question about it."). Given that many of the electorate expressed dissatisfaction with the ethics of the previous Republican-led Congress, and that the Democrats beat the reform drum as one of their main campaign planks, Pelosi's conduct appears inexplicable and harmful to her future efforts.

Murtha famously called for a withdrawal from Iraq before other members of his party took up the anti-war cause, so it's possible that Pelosi felt his position on that contentious issue would outweigh his sketchy reputation. However, her efforts to tie plum committee positions to support for Murtha has alienated her fellow Democratic Representatives and bodes poorly for her leadership style.

My questions at this point involve the reactions of the Democratic faithful – are they paying attention to this scintillating drama? How do they weigh the relative importance of Iraq versus corruption with regard to Murtha? And now that Murtha's been defeated by Steny Hoyer of Maryland, will Pelosi be damaged by the fallout? If the faithful decide she's compromised, or the vast swathe of moderate American voters is taken aback, the Presidential and Congressional elections in 2008 could prove this shift in power to be an anomaly.

As a moderate myself, I'm hoping that Congress is able to compromise on domestic issues and that newly nominated Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is able to capitalize on his time with the Iraq Study Group will allow him to adjust U.S. defense policy in a way that stabilizes the volatile situation in the Persian Gulf.

And as ever, I'm wishing that both political parties could be better than they are.

Any way you slice it, the next two years will be momentous ones for American domestic politics and foreign policy.

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No Peace Dividend

I'd been skeptical of the conclusions drawn in this report ("The Human Security Report 2005"), which were publicized at the end of 2005. For one thing, the excerpts I read didn't seem to take certain types of violence into account - terrorism, insurrection, etc. For another, the methodology described seemed less than rigorous. Fred Kaplan has delved into these issues in an article on Slate. It's good reading, and elaborates on the perils of trying to draw conclusions from incomplete or narrow sets of data.

Conflicts in Africa and the Middle East have not gone away, although Latin America has certainly gotten more stable since the end of the Soviet Union. Even there, though, there are rivalries and competing interests that make military action a possibility today. The Balkans are more stable than they were in the early and mid-1990s. Asia has not seen war for a while, but North Korea's precarious economic situation and the multitudes squabbling over possession of the Spratly Islands could change that at any time.

I've been pondering writing about Iran's nuclear ambitions in the context of their larger ballistic missile and WMD programs. Watch this space.

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