CIA Missions Overseas Will Not Be Controlled By The DNI

National Intelligence Director To Evaluate CIA Missions -- L.A. Times

Dennis Blair moves to assert greater authority over clandestine operations amid mounting tension between the intelligence agencies.

Reporting from Washington - Sensitive CIA operations overseas will face new scrutiny from the nation's intelligence director under a plan approved by the White House and outlined in a memo to the espionage workforce last week.

The move marks an attempt by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair to assert greater authority over clandestine operations at a time of mounting bureaucratic frictions between the CIA and Blair's office.

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My Comment: The White House through the Director of National Intelligence is now asserting its role in intelligence matters. If I was working for the CIA, I would be getting the impression that this administration does not have any confidence in what I was doing .... hmmmm .... I guess this is another nail in the coffin for morale in the CIA.

Obama Needs to Pick His Uber-Spook First, Before Filling CIA Job

From CQ Politics/Spy Talk:

One of the smartest guys writing about the intelligence world, for my money, is David Ignatius, the prolific Washington Post columnist and novelist of Middle East intrigue.

Ignatius generally argues that the CIA needs to be chopped up and put back together as a lean, mean spying machine, maybe even shipped somewhere far from the furnace of Washington politics.

But it's the Directorate of National Intelligence that needs attention first, he wrote Thursday.

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My Comment: I can appreciate the reluctance among many to serve the President in such a capacity. The Intelligence Community has become so politicized in the past few decades that the idea for qualified personnel to now serve is an exception not the rule .... I mean .... who wants the publicity.

One need to only look at what has happened in the past five years .... the leaks that were coming from the Intelligence Community against President Bush were reaching epidemic proportions .... completely undermining what State and the President were trying to accomplish vis-a-vie Iran, rendition of known terrorist targets, and foreign policy engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is nice to think that a manager is what the Office of National Intelligence needs .... in reality .... a slick politician is what is now required.