After digesting three days’ worth of the Washington Post’s TopSecretAmerica series, consider me unimpressed.
As I said in my initial post, I do generally support the series’ aim — to demonstrate that we’ve had a massive intelligence community bureaucracy sprout up since 9/11, and that oversight and public accountability seem to be lacking. That point is well-taken, and one that I support.
My critiques are simple: TopSecretAmerica is neither even-handed nor nuanced. It paints the intelligence community in a broad-brush negative light while ignoring many of its achievements in the last decade.
The series’ point of departure seems to be that the intelligence community is a secretive monster. The articles lean too heavily on the notion that big, expensive and secretive mean scary and, by implication, counter-productive: Companies put the bottom line before country, no one knows what happens at Ft. Meade, and the super-nerds of the NSA are too affluent … and … what? The country is weaker for it? We don’t know for sure, but that’s the impression I get.
Rarely do the authors acknowledge that much of the money spent in the IC actually, you know, helped keep Americans safe. KSM’s capture? Al-Zarqawi’s death? Catching the Times Square bomber in 53 hours? The Russian spy ring? The recent slate of high-level Taliban takedowns in Afghanistan and Pakistan? All these, and more, were left conspicuously off the final draft. Of course, this is the IC’s inherent PR nightmare: its shortcomings are publicly scrutinized; its successes often remain hidden.
Instead of striking a proper balance that tells a measured story of waste, overlap and needless spending mixed with strategic intelligence successes, “TopSecretAmerica” is too quick to throw the baby out with the bath water.
The lack of nuance is equally disappointing. As intelligence analysts, the contractors I worked with couldn’t have been more conscientious, patriotic employees. They were crucial components of our analytic team. Should they have been replaced by civilian employees on a purely cost basis (for purely economic reasons)? Probably, and the government is working to facilitate that transition (a point mentioned in the text). But that’s only part of the charge the Post levels against them — did my colleagues value their shareholders more than their country? No way.
And should my colleagues be lumped in with the protective service contractors who did irreparable harm to America’s mission by murdering Iraqi citizens? No, but to the intelligence novice, it’s easy to lump all contractors under one umbrella. A distinction should have been made.
Take the issue of overlap. In instances the Post highlights, yes, analytic overlap, most egregiously in the form of the “soccer ball syndrome“, creates inefficiencies that should be sussed out in better oversight.
However, overlap can provide necessary perspective to individual customers. In my old job, I was once the U.S. government’s foremost expert on maritime terrorism in the Strait of Gibraltar. That’s quite a niche, huh? I focused on all the major terrorist groups in Spain, Morocco, and Gibraltar (amongst other responsibilities) just like every other CIA or DIA analyst charged with those countries. But I did so with an eye towards my Department of the Navy customer as a maritime and regional specialist. If a group’s activity suddenly indicated a maritime inclination in that area, I took over as the lead because I was the subject expert.
Overlap makes contributions elsewhere, too. In another personal example, I worked with my agency’s team in Spain to determine, based solely on random, personal connections between my colleagues and their Spanish intelligence contacts, that Islamic extremists, not ETA as the Spanish first decreed, were responsible for the Madrid bombings of March 2004. Once we — the Navy — issued our initial report stating this possibility, other more appropriate agencies took over.
The lack of oversight in intelligence spending must be addressed, but let’s not forget the IC’s valuable successes, either.
Photo Credit: Marcin Wichary’s Photostream