Commentary: Intelligence in the White House

I, for one, am happy with Obama's choice for CIA Director in Leon Panetta. In fact, I'd say that the best asset of Panneta is exactly the one thing that rankles the "Intelligence" community so much - the fact that he's an outsider.

When I was in Naval Intelligence the community was a series of fiefdoms where there was a lot of duplication of effort - the idea being that you could never have enough eyes on any given situation. The CIA looked at the entire world. The DIA did so as well. The DEA had their guys. The FBI had their people. NSA did their thing. And nobody listened to anybody else. The CIA guys were convinced they were right and didn't need to be questioned by DIA guys and vice versa.

But despite all that rigamarole, in general the intelligence was good because the person in the White House knew all about the system and how to glean the best intelligence from the community (Bush Senior used to be the head of the CIA). Clinton didn't have a clue about intelligence matters, but did the next best thing - he ignored them as much as possible. "W", on the other hand, had some very manipulative bastards running his intelligence gathering. With the same information sources his father had so effectively used, W's people managed to massage the intelligence to get it to say whatever they wanted. WMD's in Iraq? Sure. And they're an imminent threat too!

The Intel Community with an "expert" in charge managed to completely miss 9-11, and followed that up by getting us into a war in Iraq with faulty intelligence. And yet, the naysayers are demanding of Obama that someone from the Community be put in charge of it.

No, I like Obama's decision because while Panetta won't be an expert on Intel matters, as former Chief of Staff he also won't be so easily manipulated. He should be able to sift through Intel issues and figure out what's good, what's bad, and what smells like last year's fish. He'll be above the in-fighting and ought to be able to bring some much needed, outside, reform to the Community - instead of the lip-service that's been paid to the idea of Intel reform since 9-11.

The Head of the CIA doesn't create the intelligence, so that part of our capabilities will not be affected, but he does decide how that intelligence gets disseminated. And for that, I think its good to have someone who can smell politics a mile away in charge.