Opinion

Trump needs to make heads roll at the CIA and FBI

One of the thorniest questions facing the incoming Trump administration is what to do about America’s increasingly dysfunctional intelligence community, known collectively by its acronym, the IC. Made up of no fewer than 16 different agencies, the IC includes marquee services like the CIA and the National Security Agency, as well as more obscure spook fiefdoms such as Defense Intelligence Agency (serving the military) and the National Reconnaissance Office, which monitors America’s national-security concerns via satellites.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11., George W. Bush hastily reorganized the IC, creating the elephantine Department of Homeland Security to absorb some agencies, demoting the Director of Central Intelligence (formerly the nation’s top spy) to a subaltern and placing the entire IC under the aegis of a new Director of National Intelligence, who reports directly to the president.

Result: more bureaucrats, more staffers, more buildings — but little if any improvement in national security. Indeed, you can argue we’re worse off today than we were 15 years ago.