National security
Bad Intelligence
After 9/11, the Bush administration identified two clear threats to America’s safety, one foreign and the other domestic. The foreign threat was Al Qaeda and its allies. The domestic threat was “bad intelligence,” the (alleged) failure of our nation’s best spies and analysts to see the attacks coming, much less stop them. And so it was decided: The country needed better intelligence—fast. The coffers opened and cash began to flow, with the ostensible aim of helping the government better understand the world. Most of the funds went to the familiar (or soon-to-be-familiar) nodes of the national-security state: CIA, FBI, DOD, NSA.