August 24, 2004
De-CIA?
One of the many fallouts from the 9/11 Commission is the suggestion that the CIA should be broken down into three separate agencies...but some are not so enthusiastic about it, as reported here.
Apologies in advance for the NewsMonkey post, but I thought it interesting that the CIA was founded to be the centralised plumbing system co-ordinating US intelligence, and despite criticism of 'hey, we're not co-ordinated enough', the suggested response is to break up co-ordinating bodies and add to the list of some 78 federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies operating in the USA. For extra amusement, watch the Pentagon drag out 'national security' as a reason not to chip away their empire.
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America, the most policed country in the world. How many different law enforcement agencies does one country need?
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Pat Roberts wants the CIA to be an intelligence angency that doesn't gather intelligence. His plan sounds like election year politics. I actually hope so because I sincerely hope that he isn't stupid enough to believe this.
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Blood and souls for Roberts!
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If they dismantle the CIA, who will send instructions to my dental fillings regarding the talking otters and their leering Honduran overlords?
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Well, obviously the CIA is not happy about the whole situation, but I really thought the Republicans were smarter than that (I guess I was wrong). They want to dismantle an intelligence organization and put a different, but same, one in it's place? What, exactly, is changed that you couldn't achieve by overhauling the current agency? Do they realize that it will be a lot of the same people working for the new agency? Furthermore, what do you do with the old workers? You can't whack 'em all (well, I guess maybe you could and a lot of them know too much to turn them loose on society like a bunch of unemployed Russian nuclear scientists. I'm really starting to wonder if Bush's stupidity is catching or something, because a lot of Republicans are just coming up with even more whacked out ideas these days.
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I've found (working in corporate environments) that managers need to change *something* when they really don't know what else to do to fix a difficult problem. Sometimes, it's the product name, sometimes,it's the logo, and sometimes it's re-engineering the structure. Again, in my experience, the last is the most disconcerting, since those given the task are generally those who know the least about the details and who think that if the can get rid of the watchdogs they can make everything better. In the meantime, they move their most valuable employees into jobs that don't really fit their expertise. I'm not sure that my analysis extends to this reorganization, so we'll just have to watch and wait. But, dude, it really sounds link re-engineering.
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Re path's re-engineering: that's been my experience with corporate environments too, where upper management feel the eye of expectation upon them to do *something*, so they end up doing *anything*, and reshuffle the cards, swap a few middle managers, and say 'see? We've changed!'. It's sadly much the same in the public sector, and it scares the hell out of me when they think they can apply profit-oriented corporate thinking to (theoretically) service-oriented public organisations.
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Re path's re-engineering: that's been my experience with corporate environments too, where upper management feel the eye of expectation upon them to do *something*, so they end up doing *anything*, and reshuffle the cards, swap a few middle managers, and say 'see? We've changed!'. It's sadly much the same in the public sector, and it scares the hell out of me when they think they can apply profit-oriented corporate thinking to (theoretically) service-oriented public organisations.
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hmmm, I think I broke my Monkey. I posted, de nada. I posted again. Then end up with my reply, twice, at the *top* of the thread. Now it seems to have sorted itself. Apologies for the double-postage.
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Yay, more bureaucracy, that'll tighten things right up!