Intel re-structuring


ANSWERS: Robert Steele for Brandi Sling (P) on CIA John Brennan’s Re-Organization One Year On…

1. Is DCI Brennan’s analogy to the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 apt given the short falls which necessitated the passage of that Act and the changes needed, if any, to the CIA today?  Do you feel that the alterations changes announced by Brennan are as grand in scale as those affected by the Goldwater-Nichols Act?

Brennan’s analogy is stupid.  The CIA, at roughly $10B a year, is a pimple on the ass of the DoD/IC donkey ($1 trillion / >$75 billion a year counting black and off-budget funds). What Brennan has done is destroy the integrity of the collection, analysis, and science & technology disciplines, and the career management function within those disciplines. He has radically reduced performance accountability within each discipline. He has failed to reconceptualize the CIA beyond the fads of the day. The mission centers are a juvenile idea – a form of political play – that will always be far removed from the reality that each discipline must be able to address all threats in all places all the time. This is not to say that the disciplines were effective in their previous state – I rate them all at mediocre to failing – but Brennan has made it worse.

CIA stopped doing serious collection and requirements definition some time ago – if the Collection and Requirements Evaluations Staff (CRES) in the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) were doing its job, there would be no need for mission centers or other cosmetic changes.