#1 Obama has created a scandal where one did not need to exist, for reasons I cannot fathom. Picking a fight with the IC is a very bad idea, as anybody acquainted with how Washington, DC, works is well aware. When “thrown under the bus” by any White House, the spooks retaliate with leaks that are often highly damaging to the administration; this is a venerable game inside the Beltway that wise politicians avoid as a lose-lose situation. This about turf, not ideology: ask George W. Bush what happened to his plans for war with Iran once the IC, led by CIA, put out its dovish 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Tehran’s nuclear program, escorted by a barrage of anti-White House leaks.
The IC is a behemoth of seventeen different — and sometimes mutually hostile — agencies residing in six different cabinet departments. Turf issues matter, and the addition of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI — that’s Clapper) in the aftermath of 9/11 has added another layer of bureaucracy rather than fix fundamental problems with the American intelligence model, some of which are caused by its gargantuan size rather than mismanagement. There was debate inside the IC about the rise of ISIL, and Obama’s opening the IC’s performance on this issue to public scrutiny on national television means that we have to get to the bottom of this. |