I don’t like the Obama administration’s plan to vastly increase the spying role of the Defense Intelligence Agency. I don’t particularly care whether the DIA or the CIA conducts this operation or that. What I care about is oversight. The Intelligence Committees in Congress have a pretty good idea what the CIA is doing in terms of covert operations. They have no idea what the Pentagon is doing.
If we’re going to rely much more heavily on the Pentagon to spy on other countries, we need to update the law so that at least some members of Congress are aware of what is being done in our name.
I wouldn’t care if Obama shredded the CIA into a thousand pieces and scattered them to the four winds, but at least the CIA has to submit to oversight. The Pentagon does not. And that needs to change.
I didn’t know you were an “advocate” of getting rid of the CIA. Good to know 🙂
Seems to me that Presidents talking about tearing the CIA into little pieces brings bad luck.
Seems to be outside of the DIA specialty. I’m in favor of people doing what they do best and I don’t think the DIA is the best vehicle for this particular problem.
If the military wants to get in the spy game then the DIA makes perfect sense to handle that mission. They already do humint. Their logic is that more spies under their own control will lead to better intel.
A more intelligent foreign policy and less arms funding of authoritarian regimes around the world would reduce the perceived need for the existing level of US spies. Considering the pathetic track record of US spies/intelligence, fewer of them would likely preclude many future blunders.
Do you really think you know enough about the CIA’s record to make an informed judgement?
Except for the drone strikes, we only hear about CIA operations when something goes wrong.
Whatever made you think that my comment was limited to the CIA? Would have been silly of me to have done so since it’s well known that its budget is dwarfed by DOD “intell” activities. So, we don’t know exactly which agency (agencies) have generated all the crap “intell” that has led this country to make so many big mistakes. Do know that the CIA never saw the collapse of the USSR coming. None appear to have seen the Arab Spring coming either.
OK, replace “CIA” with “intelligence agencies.”
What makes you think you know enough about the track record of the intelligence agencies to make such a statement?
Do know that the CIA never saw the collapse of the USSR coming.
This is pretty much universally known.
None appear to have seen the Arab Spring coming either.
I don’t think that’s true. The timing, certainly, but getting the exact timing of a broad, popular, spontaneous political event is pretty much impossible. What’s more important is that the intelligence agencies and foreign policy realized that the day of reckoning was coming soon. You can see this awareness in the President’s Cairo speech. It probably helped that we’ve been funding democratic/civil society groups for years for the specific purpose of bringing about such movements.
Bullshit.
The don’t have a clue.
Maybe. Too many blind alleys, too many ways to lie. But when you get right down to it, Congress doesn’t even have a clue regarding what it is doing. The hustle is always on.
The hustle to get votes, the hustle to raise enough money to buy those votes through media control.
Why would you dream that most of the the congresscritters have enough time, money and intelligence to do anything other than try to get re-elected (and/or establish PermaGov fall-back positions in case they do not get re-elected) so that they can afford to continue to belong to the upper-middle and one-percenter classes.
The law!!!???
What’re you, kiddin’ me or what?
What “law?”
The law that allows a president to declare what is essentially martial law on any segment of the society that opposes his dictates with any effective actions?
Please.
We need “oversight” on the overseers!!!
Please.
People often take exception here to my continuing efforts to wake the moderate left the fuck up.
And then you write this tripe.
Wake the fuck up.
There are already so many intelligence agencies overseeing our daily life that one more can only further muddy the waters. Bring ’em on. The more the merrier. Maybe if we get enough of them they will compete with each another to the point that the whole fabric of the nanny state falls apart.
I can’t wait, myself.
Ah cain’t wait!!!
Petraeusville, USA.
“Intelligence!!!???”
Couldn’t tell the difference between an obsessed groupie and a professional purveyor of academic bullshit.
Head of the CIA my royal Irish ass.
Just another social-climbing fool looking to get his dick sucked.
I got yer “intelligence.”
Right here!!!
I spent some part of my life peripherally involved in a military system. The sheer amount of fucking and sucking going on is awe-inspiring. Among the troops away from their families; among the families away from their troops, among the lower ranks and among the higher ranks as well.
90% hustle, 10% battle.
Bet on it.
Wake the fuck up.
“Intelligence?”
Cain’t wait!!!
Dumber than shit. Up and down the line.
Bring ’em on.
AG
I am in a Facebook discussion with something I didn’t know existed – Black Christian Libertarians. I’m being “schooled” on “statism” and its adverse effect on the Church – too funny.
They’re right. In medieval times the Church did many of the things the state does now. Moving from a Church to a state dominated society changes the dynamic completely. For one thing, you don’t have to be a believer to benefit or avoid persecution. It also takes power from unelected theocrats and places it in the hands of elected democrats who are open to criticism and debate without charges of apostasy. The voter becomes sovereign whereas before he had to be a submissive obedient servant.
In the eyes of religious libertarians, rolling back the power of the state gives them a chance of getting into the game again. People become dependent on their megachurch charity instead of state welfare. Kind of gives you a lot of power over people withou the need for messy elections which might result in the election of Muslim Kenyans, “community organisers” and other lowlife who compete with the Church for the hearts and minds of people.
That is why their “God” keeps predicting the end of the world if they don’t get their way. It IS the end of THEIR world, or at least their overlordship of it.
Isn’t there some law precluding the CIA spying domestically on Americans within the US? Wouldn’t tasking the DIA to do that job get around that little problem? What if most future terrorists are white Americans?
Yes, there is such a law but in reality the FBI already does or can do what you are talking about post-Patriot Act. Worst case, the government would simply ask their friends in MI6 or whatever the Canadian spy agencies are to collect intel on Americans. I don’t think they bother resorting to that.
The DIA isn’t needed for this because there is already an agency for domestic “threats”.
The DIA won’t be operating the US, either. The Posse Commitatus Act applies. This is an overseas agency.
Domestic counter-terrorism intel is done by the FBI, which zealously guards it turf.
Wouldn’t the Armed Services Committees have oversight authority here?
Also, this makes no sense: Unlike the CIA, the Pentagon’s spy agency is not authorized to conduct covert operations that go beyond intelligence gathering, such as drone strikes, political sabotage or arming militants.
The civilian covert agency has the authority to conduct armed operations, but the military’s covert agency doesn’t. That makes no sense.
Perhaps, instead of the Pentagon horning in on the CIA’s intel-gathering turf, the “drone strikes, political sabotage, and arming militants” efforts should migrate over to the military.
DIA doesn’t do operations. The military has large special operations units for clandestine warfare. Air Force does drone strikes.
The military’s covert intelligence agency doesn’t. DIA is not the only covert agency.
I think the original division of turf was that the military does it in theaters of war and CIA does it globally. With the declaration of the “global war on terror”, those geographical areas of responsibility get duplicated.
What give you this impression. Both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to me seem to be captives of the agencies they are supposed to oversee and so in awe of their priviliged access to intelligence information for political purposes that they are not about to oversee anything.
And the rest of the Congress know little beyond what the citizen in the street knows, if that.
But we know that a lot of money goes down the rathole of the sixteen agencies in the intelligence community, that they deal with shady contractors and have no accountability for funds, and that Congress is forbidden by law from reviewing their budgets. Also that the NSA is scooping up all information in the US and storing it with zettabytes of purchased storage. But CIA or DIA cannot get accurate targeting information about terrorists in Pakistan sufficient to avoid killing innocent civilians. And that the CIA was surprised both by the collapse of the Soviet Union and by the Arab Spring.
We don’t just need oversight, we need a complete institutional reorganization. And then a means of dealing with disgruntled ex-spies. (Remember is was ex-spies angry with the oversight of the Church committee who allowed William Casey to violate the Logan Act and cut a deal with Iran in order to defeat Jimmy Carter.) And you have to wonder who is feeding McCain and Graham the crap about Benghazi.