Anyone else worried about the national intelligence czar?

[Barret]

I'm surprised I haven't heard very many concerns raised about this position.

From what I understand they want to put a single person in charge of the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. Now does this seem like a VERY bad idea to anyone else?

Part of the original idea behind keeping the FBI and CIA separate (for example) was to help safeguard against unethical CIA sponsored domestic activity. Yet now they are proposing putting all of these agencies (which have a history of unethical activity as it is) together under one person. It seems to me that this (appointed?) person would immediately become one of the most powerful people in the world.

This just screams corruption, and quite frankly it reminds me of the set up the Soviets and the Nazis employed.

I wonder what fascist bush would appoint to this position...

[John Q. Citizen]

1. Yeah, i'm a little bit worried about

this too.

[still_one]

2. It is really a joke

1. He has no authority to hire or fire people
2. He does not have a budget, other people control that

It is just a token position.

The last national intelligence czar we had was Richard Clarke, and they ignored him

[Barret]

3. From what I understand

he can operate the agencies... Putting a single person in the position to operate these kind of agencies (when it is common practice for their activities to be hidden from public eye) is where he will derive his power from...

Do you really think the republican congress won't give all the money needed?

[asjr]

4. And it is just another rung on the beaurecratic ladder. The President

of the U.S. is supposed to be the watchdog and when we get a Democrat in the WH we will have one.

[jjmalonejr]

9. Clarke wasn't an intelligence czar

He was a counterterrorism czar

[nookiemonster]

5. Again

just another scapegoat to take the fall when the next "9/11" occurs.

Intelligence failures my ass.

[spanone]

6. I don't think it's gonna happen. These turf wars will run deep.

He'll probably try to appoint some Nazi like Kissinger or maybe some little nazi like Norm Coleman...who knows? But I don't think it'll happen.

[reprehensor]

7. Sibel Edmonds might have something to say about it...

Tonight on KPFT

[Barret]

8. Wow you listen to KPFT?

What do you think of the show they have "The Other Side"? IMO the hosts of that show should get a national audience...

[reprehensor]

13. Not really, I am...

...an Air America addict. Someone else listens regulary on DU and posts whenever someone cool is scheduled.

Please do the same, or nobody will know!

[olddem43]

10. They'll find a J.E. Hoover clone

Just what they want, McCarthyism and secret police.

[niyad]

11. thought all this was the national security adviser's job???

[screembloodymurder]

12. You bet

More power in the hands of the President is a bad idea. More power in the hands of this president is a catastrophe.

[tom_paine]

14. Yes, I am quite worried not only about the position but the MONSTER the

Imperial Family would appoint.

I wonder if Joseph Mengele is still available?

[SoCalDem]

15. and we need one because???

our National SECURITY ADVISOR FAILED in her job.. It's OUR money we paid you...GIVE IT BACK..

our Sccretary of Defence FAILED in his job.. For pete's sake, His OWN headquarters was hit while he was "out of the loop" (or just plain loopy?)

our President could not decide what to do, so he did NOTHING as people plunged to their deaths or burned alive or were crushed..

our Vice President actually thought that planes had been shot down, when they had not..

our CIA did not know what to do and were unable to press the importance of the little information they DID have..

our FBI was more interested in office politics and petty punishments for whistleblowers than they were about catching the "bad guys"..

our Homeland security doofus, can't seem to figure out whether we should run and hide under our beds or go to the mall..

the keystone cops in DC apparently want to hermetically seal the city.. if they could only get rid of those pesky people who live and work there


maybe there is a need for coodination, but if they are going to call him a czar...maybe they could look for a guy named nicholas... oh wait.. that didn't turn out too well either..

[jmowreader]

16. Compartmentalization drove the original separation of intel

First, read http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB23/07-11.htm. This is United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18, which governs collection against US Nationals. There's another one that governs collection against allies, but since I can't find it on line I won't tell you the number. (Yes, I know the number.)

To make a long story short, USSID 18 (and the corresponding regulation that every other US intelligence service has) says you can't do it.

The proscription is pretty severe. This directive includes corporate personhood. Short war story: they sent the Chief Counsel of the National Security Agency to my unit to teach classes on this directive. I raised my hand: "Let's say we found out the Baader-Meinhof Gang was going to blow up the McDonald's at the Zoo in two hours. McDonald's is a US person. Does this mean we can't send out a critical-intel report saying McDonald's is a target?" The lawyer said no, absolutely not, you cannot say McDonald's is gonna be hit...but if you had the information and you accidentally screwed up and named McDonald's, in this case we'd let you slide.

The idea was to keep the people who weren't supposed to spy on Americans (everyone except the FBI) away from the people who did it routinely, so you wouldn't get intermixing of product and have to throw away actionable intel.

The real worry I have is that you're trying to tell sixteen agencies who historically have hated each other to play nice and share, and it ain't gonna work. I would make ONE agency, that compartmentalized domestic work as normal policy, and put a cabinet officer in charge. But first we need to get rid of Bush, who would turn this into the KGB quicker than you could say KGB.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. A bunch of bungling thugs with or without a Czar.

The bunglers at the CIA seem to be better at toppling democratic governments (Congo, Chile, Guatamala) and arming terrorists (the contras, Jonas Savimbi, the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan) than finding their own ass.

Do we really want an "intelligence community" that's even stronger and better funded than we already have? I sure as hell don't.