Monday, July 19, saw the release of an investigative report by The Washington Post which concerns the health of the intelligence services of the US Government. It’s titled Top Secret America, and it is creating many buzz. The findings of the report are already being contested by big players within the intelligence field. Top Secret America has highlighted the Intelligence Community, which is a proper noun evidently, as having many inefficiency, waste, petty squabbles and disconnects throughout.
The portrait Top Secret America paints is not the greatest
Top Secret America took two years for The Washington Post to put together. Since September of 2001, the number of agencies, bureaus, and contracting for intelligence work has grown explosively. Because the Intelligence Community relies on secrecy and non-transparency, the total cost of all these new agencies and contracts can’t be calculated. The report also claims that the explosively growing intelligence community is grossly inefficient and is ill-equipped to find consensus. The piece contains references to a recent interview with Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, who bemoans the lack of focus and clear info from the intelligence field.
The Intelligence field comes back
There was a response from the intelligence business almost instantly. The national Director of Intelligence, David Gompert, easily issued a press release that condemned the report for not being truly reflective of the Intelligence Community, and that the community itself was consistently working on improving itself.
The results of the report
The report may have a major effect, and it may have none at all. The nature of the spy business is that it is secretive. If a spy operation goes well, the success of the mission might never see the light of day. There have, of course, been some embarrassing, miserable, almost tragically comic failures . The Bay of Pigs, WMDs in Iraq, for example. The Christmas bomber nearly pulled his plot off, and authorities were tipped off about him. The Fort Hood shooter was a Major within the US Army, and he had been in communication for months with Anti-American Muslim groups. However public the failures may be, it would possibly be better if we could see a victory to appreciate.
Read more on this topic here
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/ (PDF)
