The Washington Post published a report on Monday, July 19, about the Intelligence Community, in public and private sectors. It is titled Top Secret America, and it is creating many buzz. The findings of the report are already being contested by big players in 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. The amount of agencies, bureaus and contractors working on intelligence has grown exponentially since September 2001. The intelligence field is about secrecy, and also the total cost and activities of all these groups may not be knowable. The report also questions the intelligence business and it’s ability to create a consensus, focus on objectives, or even cooperate among themselves. The piece references an interview with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who lamented the barriers within the way of cooperation and focus within the intelligence apparatus.
Intelligence Community responds
There was a response from the intelligence business almost right away. Director of National Intelligence David Gompert issued a press release blasting the report for not being truly representative of the work the intelligence field does and that they were constantly working on improving themselves.
What effect the report could have
The report may have a major effect, and it may have none at all. Part of the work that intelligence agencies and operatives do is that most of their victories are clandestine. 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 authorities were alerted about the Christmas bomber, and the only reason he didn’t succeed was his bomb didn’t go off and passengers decided to beat him into submission. The Fort Hood shooter, a U.S. Army Major, had been communicating with anti-American groups. However public the failures may be, it would maybe be better if we could see a victory to appreciate.
More info on this topic
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/ (PDF)
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