President Donald Trump Nominates Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte To Be Director of National Intelligence – Time To Reflect
Bill Pulte has been nominated to be the next Director of National Intelligence. It seems appropriate at this moment in time to reflect on where we stand with our Intelligence Community and where we need to go next. Leaving the status quo intact does not seem a viable option.
(OSS officer Virginia Hall transmitting from a safehouse inside Occupied France in World War II)
The Intelligence Community is in rough shape. It is not performing at anything like the level required. It must be repaired on an urgent basis. To make the necessary changes, we must first face the reality of how bad the situation is, and we must understand how we got here.
The creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) after 9/11 was a mistake. We already had someone in charge of the IC. That was the CIA Director. That individual, however, did not have anything like the power necessary to actually ride herd over the IC. He was a figurehead not unlike the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in earlier times.
The creation of the ODNI did not fix that. It simply created another layer of bureaucracy on top of the existing structure. It added more strata of management and generated more paperwork and slowed down an already arthritic intelligence bureaucracy. In the field, the same relative handful of actual operators struggled to do something meaningful, while back home, new buildings were built and new Jason Bourne-style “ops centers” were constructed, and more money was spent.
And while we did all that and wasted money and time and resources on things that enhanced American national security not one whit – we did nothing at all to fix the real issue – Collection.
The horrible truth is that 9/11 was not a failure to connect dots. It was a failure to collect the necessary dots in the first place. We were not running the sources we needed. We were not in fact doing much of anything to actually recruit those sources or collect the intelligence we required.
Osama Bin Laden had been telling us for years that he intended to take the fight to the “far enemy.” That was us. He had blown up two of our embassies. He had come perilously close to sinking a U.S Navy destroyer in Yemen. He wasn’t talking smack. He was deadly serious.
We knew all that. Everybody on the planet knew all that. And, yet, year after year, a creaking, Cold War relic of an intelligence bureaucracy did everything it could to stop us from collecting the necessary intelligence and pretend like espionage was still a “gentleman’s game.” As a Chief of Station in the Near East, even years after 9/11, I remember vividly getting a “back channel” message from CIA Headquarters telling me to “stop wasting time with counterterrorism.”
That was the response to station officers having successfully penetrated a terrorist group and prevented a series of IED attacks on American servicemen. That was Washington’s attitude toward the value of saving American lives.
Nothing has changed. We are still not getting the job done.
We are in the middle of a war with Iran right now in which intelligence on the inner machinations of the Iranian regime is of critical importance. I can guarantee you, as can anybody else with any insight, that we know effectively nothing about what is happening at the senior levels in Tehran. The same goes for the actual status of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, or any other topic that is critical to our winning this war.
The problem is not confined to the Middle East. We lost our edge a long time ago when it comes to intelligence, espionage, and keeping Americans safe in their beds at night. We allowed a business that is supposed to be all about creativity, imagination, audacity, and handfuls of very special individuals stealing the “crown jewels” to become just another bureaucratic swamp. Intelligence is no longer the province of bold thinkers and risk takers. It is now populated by drones and mandarins who focus more on domestic politics and empire building than they do on protecting the nation they serve.
Pictured above is Virginia Hall. She was an OSS operative inside occupied France in the Second World War. She operated alone and ran a network of sources that provided critical intelligence in support of our efforts to crush Nazi Germany. Hall had a wooden leg, the result of a tragic hunting accident before she joined OSS, and when it came time for her to be pulled out of France, she walked out under her own power to Spain, evading the Gestapo the whole way.
We lost that kind of focus and tenacity in the IC long ago.
Well over a decade ago, I wrote this in Beyond Repair, my prescription for how to fix the CIA.
“Donovan (General Bill Donovan, founder of the OSS) recruited to the OSS a wide cross section of America, searching for the best and the brightest, but also those with exceptional creativity and daring. OSS wanted “out of the box” thinkers – individuals who were unorthodox, brilliant, perhaps even eccentric. Recruits included Ivy League professors, safecrackers, former Communists who fought in the Spanish Civil War, professional baseball players, actors, and paratroopers. They were all, in the words of Donovan, his “glorious amateurs,” and they lived by the same mantra he did: “If you fall, fall forward.” Donovan would not make it in the CIA today.”
My focus when I wrote that was on the CIA specifically. The same is true for every other piece of our intelligence apparatus. It needs to be fixed as fast as humanly possible.
Are we prepared to do what is necessary to make that happen?
Sam, I agree with your assessment and have read your book, "Beyond Repair." Our men and women in the IC truly are the "tip of the spear." The frustration you expressed in your book, as well as in this article is what I fear. The bureaucrats that preside in the "People's Houses," Congress, White House, and the Courts who are suppose to look after our interests no longer. Loyalty and patriotism for God and country only exists in the hearts of those who actually lay their life on the line to protect our freedom and way of life. There will always be patriots who will stand and defend our country. Unfortunately, our highest institution is compromised. Many in our government who legislate, enforce, and preserve our constitution no longer believe in their oath. Our enemies had imbedded themselves in every vital institutions that shape our society. During the cold war, the KGB worked towards the control of our society. Today, our enemies have succeeded in what the Soviets started. From the molding of our children to the most sacred branches of our government, our enemies have gotten a strong foothold. I had a communist professor told me a long time ago, to change society all they have to do is redefine its meaning. This is what our enemies have accomplished through our learning institutions, legislators, executive, judicial branch, and news media. From the Communist Manifesto: "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society." Change the meaning and you control society.
Sam,
I agree with you 100%, but it was not only the intelligence agencies, our premier national police agency the FBI was as responsible if not more responsible for 911 terrorist attacks and other catastrophic terror attacks including the 1993 truck bombing explosion under the United States Customs House, 6 World Trade Center underground garage, in the World Trade Center Twin Towers complex.
The response of the United States by
President George W. Busch #43 was talked into creating the largest Cabinet Level agency in the U.S. Government consisting of over 250,000 employees under the new Cabinet Secretary Tom Ridge.