Jim Dunnigan on US Intelligence Services

Jim Dunnigan writes:

The United States decision to create yet another office to control all intelligence, is largely avoiding the real problem. And that problem is getting each of the intelligence agencies to play from the same sheet of music. To even have a hope of doing that, the proposed "intelligence czar" must have control of the budgets for all the "cooperating" organizations. That is not going to happen, because each intelligence agency has it's own little fan club in Congress.

With fifteen different intelligence organizations, the problem of coordinating all of them is nothing new. The CIA was created in the 1947 to coordinate intelligence activities for the president. Unfortunately, each of the fifteen organizations has a different boss, a different mission, different traditions and, well, you get the picture.

Fifteen different intelligence organizations? Yikes! You must wonder how much of their time they spend accomplishing anything to do with National Security and how much time keeping tabs on all the other agencies.