Intelligence gathering systems

MODERN PROBLEMS

AGENCIES
August 12, 2006

There are more Intelligence Agencies and acronyms now in the US than there are letters in your daily alphabet soup. CIA, FBI, NSA, ATF, DEA, DIA, NRO, NIMA, AFI, AI, NI, MCIA and the US Secret Service form a giant aggregate of bureaucracy power going mad. If you prefer alphabet cereals, there is more: the infamous CTU for those watching the ''24'' TV series, the new Department of Homeland Security, a new office of Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and all the other agencies that the government contemplates or intends to create.

What's now becoming apparent is that the mere size of this overgrown bureaucracy has damaged the U.S. intelligence capabilities. The solution is not to add yet another layer of bureaucracy, on the contrary, the administration must go on a diet! The failure to detect the 9/11 terrorist plot due to improper coordination among U.S. intelligence agencies poses the very basic question of ''why do we need Intelligence Agencies at all''? Could a mere intelligence department inside the national police force do the same thing, and perhaps more efficiently?

Such a questioning of the usefulness of Agencies stems from a series of five historical failures that have plagued the intelligence community for decades. The first two: the impossibility to foretell either the first Russian and Chinese nuclear bombs (1949 and 1964), number three and four: the unability of the US to predict or foresee the first nuclear tests of both India and Pakistan, and last the powerlessness to prevent the attack on September 11, 2001 in spite of the extraordinary sophisticated observation- and detection means of the American military. We might add to that the failure to foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union (1989).

If anything, proof was made recently that technology does not replace human intelligence and is not a universal solution to modern problems. Worldwide monitoring of telecommunications is a fine achievement, but if in crucial times military intelligence couldn't see it coming for over 60 years, perhaps good old fashioned strategical- and political intelligence should be reintroduced. The fight against small, agile terrorist groups cannot be won by piling added levels of management on top of existing layers of administration in intelligence agencies. The CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and the DNI’s National Counterterrorism Center that are doing the same job is not exactly a good idea.

One may wish to come back to old times when there were only two types of intelligence: positive intelligence (MI6, CIA) and counterintelligence (MI5), and when field operations were of two types also: field operations abroad (CIA, 2ième bureau) and defense of the national territory (NSA, FBI and the French DST). Those were happier days!

CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)
FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
NSA (National Security Agency)
ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms)
DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency)
U.S. Secret Service (Presidents' bodyguards and forged currencies)
DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency)
NRO (National Reconnaissance Office)
NIMA (National Imagery and Mapping Agency)
AFI (Air Force Intelligence)
AI (Army Intelligence)
NI (Naval Intelligence)
MCIA (Marine Corps Intelligence Activity)
DNI (Director of National Intelligence)

Sorry, We're still working on the rest.
 

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