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   During a recession, should college presidents face the same pay cuts as CEOs?
 Forty years of writing from Taylor Branch, James Fallows, Katherine Boo, Marjorie Williams, Joshua Micah Marshall, and more.
 With help from Washington, the for-profit college industry is loading up millions of low-income students with debt they'll never pay off.
 The best recent memoir from republican Washington is a hoax. That should tell you something.
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May 24, 2006
By: FIXING THE CIA....One of the CIA's most serious failures over the past few years has been in the area of analysis. David Ignatius reports:
I didn't know that, and it makes me think more highly of Negroponte. For more on INR, see here. —Kevin Drum 12:13 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (36)Comments
I dunno, he's still got the whole "Death Squad" thing to overcome....he's still a net loss as a human being, IMO. Posted by: Cap'n Phealy on May 24, 2006 at 12:15 AM | PERMALINKBased on this and his non-crazy comments on Iran, Negroponte strikes me as being more in the "evil but pragmatic" camp of Daddy Bush, as opposed to the "evil and destructively insane" camp of Cheney. Not much of a difference but I'll take what I can get in these depressing times. Posted by: M.A. on May 24, 2006 at 12:20 AM | PERMALINKYes, I too think more highly of Negroponte. All that death-squad business in Central America is past, anyway. Let bygones be bygones, I say. Posted by: chuck on May 24, 2006 at 12:36 AM | PERMALINK手机铃声免费下载 The CIA's problem was not analysis, it was Tenet's acquiescence to the Bush administration's fraud. We should award a medal to Tenet for cravenness. Oh wait, nevermind! In October 2002, Knight Ridder reported, "Intelligence professionals and diplomats...privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war. These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses [and]...charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Hussein poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary." The reporters quoted one anonymous official who noted, "Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books." Posted by: Essjay on May 24, 2006 at 12:41 AM | PERMALINKI didn't know that... Brill is another significant appointee. Fingar also chairs the NIC (produces NIEs). Both are also notable for the number of neocon antagonists they have managed to accumulate.
How long before Fingar is marginalized? They don't want to hear what they don't want to hear. Posted by: craigie on May 24, 2006 at 1:10 AM | PERMALINKNot sure if you know this. CIA is no longer relevant, it serves no purpose, other than being a rubber stamping mouthpiece for this admin. This admin has make a mockery of the CIA, and render it defunct. The Defense Dept, NSA and that secret agency is now our spy agency and enforcer. Posted by: eo on May 24, 2006 at 1:12 AM | PERMALINKThe "evil and destructively insane" camp? Evil, incompetent and/or destructively insane. When Negroponte was our man in Baghdad, he showed flashes of common sense: > A senior administration official quoted in the New York Times said Negroponte "made clear to everyone every time he came back that 'I've got to get out of there. " > No pinhead he. Posted by: gcochran on May 24, 2006 at 1:40 AM | PERMALINKYes, the dude who pretty much invented the whole "death squad" thing isn't so bad because he made a decent personal decision. That bar is set so low earthworms don't have to jump to get over it. Posted by: Dan on May 24, 2006 at 1:51 AM | PERMALINKEssjay nice link. There's so much more. Anybody remember what the UN WMD inspectors were saying, or the IAEA? Plus what we now know about British inteligence that the Repubes keep pointing to: "They said it too!" DNI Negroponte is already double planned staff and double budget -- so much for not claiming territory and building bureaucracy. In the linked article I didn't see one mention of Human Intelligence, just analyst this, analyst that. That needs careful rebuilding because it is an immeasurable hole. God knows they've got enough directorates and bureaus that all trample each others feet. Needs real structure and central pooling with re-analysis. eo points out the weakness of the present arrangement. All the power is now within the DoD; the civilian side is castrated. There's no balance. NSA should be cooperating through the FBI for domestic intelligence, but that seems to have gone by the board. Finally you need to know what went wrong before you can put it right. Whether 11th September or Iraq, it is now quite obvious that the knowledge was there. So how did it get missed. Of course, to come to the right conclusions you'd need to get to the truth. Even if it was to remain secret, the chief executive doesn't want to know; he's not going to order everyone to give full access and cooperation. So you've already lost the best tool to diagnose corrective action. Now it's all finger-pointing. Does it really matter who Bush appoints? Isn't Hayden coming into the job with the stigma of being 2nd choice anyway? Is the CIA really going to cooperate with a president that outs its agents as a matter of political retribution? I give Hayden 12 months before he's out of there. Posted by: Rove on May 24, 2006 at 2:52 AM | PERMALINKSomething has changed in the administration during the last few months. Negroponte, for all of his past sins, is a seasoned pro. He seems to be promoting competence in his subordinate positions. Hayden might not know much about the 4th Amendment but he does know the intelligence game. More telling is the fact that Negroponte has brought a highly competent and popular victim of Goss's excesses out of retirement to be Hayden's deputy. Now he fingers Fingar as his deputy for analysis. Is it possible that the star of the Cheney/Rumsfeld foreign policy team is in decline? Is Doug Feith's failed faith based intelligence shop being marginalized? You know, Iraq has been an abject failure on many, many levels. One of the most important is that our invasion of Iraq is a giant victory for the Iranians. At the worst continued civil war in Iraq keeps Iraq weak. At best as the Shiites gain power Iran could find itself with a new and powerful client state. No matter how things turn out for the forseeable future the US is tied down and humiliated in Bagdad. I think Bush might be beginning to understand that Cheney and Rumsfeld were played for suckers by Iranian foreign policy operators. That is embarrassing considering that Iran is a third rate power run by mad mullahs. I bet holiday dinners have been frosty at the Bush household as Daddy Bush has pointed out that son's team has been repeatedly out played by Iran. Posted by: Ron Byers on May 24, 2006 at 4:01 AM | PERMALINKRon Byers -- I agree it is all too late. This administation is toast. Bush has totally squandered any chance he ever had to do anything right. At best we can hope he doesn't screw up any more. I think most of the civil liberty excesses and the money/crony problems can be traced to the activities of Cheney/Rumsfeld. It is almost as thought the realists have regained a seat at the table, a seat that is gaining more importance as time goes by. I think the 6 generals have had a greater impact on the inside than a lot of folks would acknowledge. Also notice that Scooter Libby has been indicted in the Plame case. Scooter Libby was Dick Cheney's right hand. That has to be a sign that the Vice President is under some considerable pressure from somebody. My guess is that somebody is the President. I wouldn't be surprised to learn in 40 years that the President has awoken to the notion that his place in history is going to be dismal. The Bush family takes care of its own. Bush Senior is a realist. I have heard that he is still relatively sharp mentally. He has friends who have felt abandoned but they are pretty good heads. Obviously, I don't know what goes on behind the scenes, but something has changed. The atmospherics are different. If Cheney and Rumsfeld were fully in control Negroponte wouldn't be gaining power. He sure wouldn't be promoting greater competence in the intelligence apparatus. Posted by: Ron Byers on May 24, 2006 at 4:36 AM | PERMALINKObviously, my tea reading above cries out for real reporting by professional reporters. Too bad there aren't any in sight, at least none covering the political beat in Washington. Posted by: Ron Byers on May 24, 2006 at 4:43 AM | PERMALINKRon Byers -- Unfortunately (more for the victims than him), he'll never distance himself from Iraq and all the prison/torture/habeas corpus mess even if Cheney and Rumsfeld were the architects. And I'll be truly disappointed in the country if the whole unitary executive and associated legal games aren't slapped down at some point. I've been around since Nixon as an adult and this is truly the scariest I've seen. Shown again how vulnerable the whole edifice is. Constant vigilance. Another sickening masochistical display by the Vichy democrat's Vichy democrat. What a fraud to advertise as this craphound Drum's brown-nosing as the ' Political animal!' Ultimately this is the basic problem, reported by David Ignatius: "Half the analysts in the intelligence community have five years' experience or less, and this "newbie" problem will get worse with a planned 50 percent increase in CIA analysts" The world is full of bad guys, and right now we have 15,000 analysts watching them and their plots. From the article Kevin linked, Thomas Fingar is conecting them up across agencies, like group blogs, a blog for each bad guy and his plot. Rather than hire all these analysts perhaps we should just start publishing, safely, as many of these ongoing plots on public web sites and let the academics and bloggers and policy fanatics do the analysis, directly for the citizen. Sort of an Army of Analysts. Why not just tell us exactly what we know about Mr. Chavez and his ploting with Iran; or just tell us when some government is preparing the nationalization of the gas fields; or how many bombs Mr. Kim has; or how accurately China can shoot at an aircraft carrier; or what the Arabian Wahabis are up to. De-classify and publish as much as possible without compromising sources. Let us have the information, we paid for is and we can do our own analysis.
Yes, yes, Kevin. Point well taken. I used to have a knee jerk aversion to Adolph Hitler too. But when I did some reading and found out that he had Heinrich Himmler to run the Final Solution. At least Himmler wasn't purely Jews-are-evil this and Jews-are-vermin that. Hitler could have hired someone who was all anti-semitic demamgogue but instead he cared enough about the policy to hire someone as effete but as effective as Himmler, so I thought much better of him. Posted by: The Fool on May 24, 2006 at 7:31 AM | PERMALINKWait 'till he makes the entire country glow in the dark to save his ego. And he'll still be President for another two years after that. you'd better get your country's military ready to deal with this crisis ! and don't come back until you've solved it. thanks. Posted by: cleek on May 24, 2006 at 10:11 AM | PERMALINKInteresting suggestion from Matt. Maybe the intelligence data sets could be modified to make it safe to share them with the public -- sorta like asking for advice with the old "I have a friend who has this problem with a girlfriend" dodge. Or, maybe set the intelligence data into a computer game scenario. Let the masses play the game and see if anybody can come up with tactics and tricks to figure out what's really going on. Posted by: ferd on May 24, 2006 at 10:33 AM | PERMALINKMaybe it's just good to have a fellow like Fingar under your thumb. Who replaced him, one of Negroponte's buddies from Central America? Posted by: toast on May 24, 2006 at 10:56 AM | PERMALINKrather, Porter Goss's thumb. And BTW, apparently Fingar does not have a permanent replacement yet. Posted by: toast on May 24, 2006 at 11:23 AM | PERMALINK.One of the CIA's most serious failures over the past few years has been in the area of analysis. highly of Negroponte. For more on INR, see here. No. The biggest problem with the CIA and U.S. intelligence in general has been the blatant politicization of the work. Period. The CIA didn't get Iraq wrong. In fact, if you read its pre-war reports they clearly state that there was no good evidence to suggest that Iraq was a threat to even its neighbors. George Tenet, apparently, feared for his job, and decided that he'd do whatever the White House wanted. Sad, as between him and Powell they could have put the kibosh on it from the beginning. But neither one had the courage, and therefore deserve to be scorned as failures at the highest levels. Posted by: JeffII on May 24, 2006 at 12:40 PM | PERMALINKSomething has changed in the administration during the last few months. Negroponte, for all of his past sins, is a seasoned pro.Posted by: Ron Byers Pretty pathetic state of affairs when a fucking cretin from the Reagan years like Negroponte starts looking good. Posted by: JeffII on May 24, 2006 at 12:44 PM | PERMALINKYeah, that Negroponte's one smart motherfucker, alright... ask those murdered nuns in el salvador... "I didn't know that, and it makes me think more highly of Negroponte." Unless it's yet another case of Sun-tzu's 'Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer'. What better manner to muffle the truth ? I didn't know that, and it makes me think more highly of Negroponte. Well, given his past, there is very little that could make me think less of the man. I'd have to go with this: "If I hear a few hundred more examples that he doesn't continue to be a murdering fascist, I might consider despising him less." Ignatius is parroting the Administration's line that something was wrong with the CIA rather than with the White House. Bullshit. Posted by: SqueakyRat on May 24, 2006 at 2:57 PM | PERMALINK１：法语培训-法比加欢迎您法语培训 ２：钟表-天津钟表厂欢迎您!（天津市恒久钟表) ３： 发电机|发电机组|柴油发电机|发电设备|康明斯|发电机出租(康诚伟业发电设备) ４：家用中央空调,格力中央空调[北京宏远嘉祥中央空调网] ５：网站建设,网站推广,网页设计，网页制作－－［北京博众世纪］ ６：助听器-中华助听器频道网,助听器报价,助听器验配,助听器保养,助听器 ７：助听器-中国助听器百科网,品牌助听器,助听器网上咨询 ８：助听器-中国助听器公众网,斯达克助听器，奥迪康助听器，峰力助听器 Kevin: Re Ignatius' column, you omitted mentioning that In "Avoiding Another 'Slam Dunk'" he lent his name and pen to repeating the line from the White House that it made a mistake in the invasion of Iraq because it was given improper intelligence. Methinks nothing Negroponte (he of the very checkered past) and the DNI come up with, will have any effect upon the trajectory outlined in the White House. I am disappointed in Ignatius. Posted by: Celeste on May 25, 2006 at 10:41 PM | PERMALINKKevin:>" If we must have evil bastards in charge, I prefer the competent ones." The better to accomplish the evil, eh? Or are you actually *afraid* of the big, bad Al Quada? Ooooogie boogie!! Posted by: Joey Giraud on May 26, 2006 at 1:28 AM | PERMALINKDiscount online pharmacy - no prescription! Cheap meridia - buy differin - 
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