George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, foreground, in March 2003. Mr. Tenet now says there was never a “serious debate” about the Iraq threat. Credit Eric Draper/The White House
Washington Times: George W. Bush inherited ‘crumbling’ intel community from Bill Clinton: Tenet
GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump blames Bush for failing to stop 9/11 attacks
As Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump hammers away at former President George W. Bush for not stopping the September 11 attacks, another factor could be added to the debate: Mr. Bush inherited from Bill Clinton an intelligence community in terrible shape.
This fact comes not from a Republican partisan but from George Tenet, President Clinton’s CIA director, a post that at the time made him the country’s top intelligence officer.
Mr. Tenet wrote in his memoirs, “At the Center of the Storm,” that Mr. Clinton left Mr. Bush with a CIA that was in “Chapter 11.” The eavesdropping National Security Agency was “crumbling” and “going deaf,” he said.
It is one explanation for why the intelligence community failed to discover and stop the September 11 plot.
Mr. Clinton is an integral part of Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign. The record shows that, as commander in chief, he shrunk the CIA at the very time al Qaeda was expanding.
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WNU Editor: And is it better today? Conducting surveillance on us .... definitely. Conducting surveillance on the Islamic State, Al Qaeda .... I have to wonder.
6 comments:
All intelligence entities are reflections of the political environment they exist in. This includes their operational style, goals, and ultimately their vision of what is "real" about the world.
James,
In the US, other than the CIA, ( which reports directly to the President), all the non-military Intelligence Agencies are supposed to be staffed with non-Partisan Civil Servants, and the military Agencies, with Military officers.
The process by which the Agencies in the US and Britian, was a long and slow prosess of Politicians rejecting dissenting opinions, appointing Senior Management to manage political "alignment",
Which in the US and Britain culminated in the Bush/Cheney's Office of Special Plans and Blair's "Cooking".
The self imposed purges, ( professionals quitting) and the top driven purges, mean that today, those Agencies craft intelligence to conform to the prevailing "group think", which is currently torn between the "Piviot" crowds, and the Neocon/R2P Neolib crowds.
Other countries, like France, Germany, Russia, China, Israel, Iran have avoided this by first and formost, keeping their organizations Professional, apolitical, quite often by having legislative limits on "political" appointments.
Once upon a time, in almost all Western Governments, the #2 and on down positions in all Departments and Ministries, were staffed by Professional Civil Servants, who had "climbed" the Civil Service ranks by abilities, under dozens of elected Governments, of all political stripes.
It helped keep the actual "Governance" part of Government, apolitical and responsible to "The People", not just one Politician, Political Party or Political Phillsophy.
This changed after WWII with the assorted "witch hunts".
"be staffed with non-Partisan Civil Servants, "
Despite the Hatch Act, partisanship is strong in the Civil Service.
But how would a business owner in the cabinetry business in Canada know this.
Louis Lerner ring a bell?
All one has to do is study the Mandarins and their pernicious effect on Chinese dynasties.
The Persians could have done a better job.
Or the Turks.
I stand by my comment.
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