The James Clapper Affair and Our Bloated Bureaucracies
James Clapper, the director of national intelligence--the "DNI" as it's known inside the Beltway--was recently embarrassed on national T.V. for his ignorance of the recent arrests of suspected terrorists in the U.K. While humiliating for Clapper, there is a bigger lesson here: the fault is not just in the man, but in the boxes (with all due apologies to Shakespeare). In gov-speak, boxes refer to the organization of the different agencies and bureaus of the government.
Clapper's failure to keep abreast of the most important intelligence developments is yet another sign that the bureaucratic response to 9/11 was wrong-headed. For those not keeping a scorecard, after 9/11, the answer to the failures of our intelligence community was even more bureaucracy.
Congress created--over the initial objections of the Bush administration--the Department of Homeland Security, a mega-agency to supervise the many different bureaus with a hand in counter-terrorism. Then it created a new national intelligence directorate to sit on top of all of the already existing intelligence agencies (like the CIA, NSA, DoD, etc.). This directorate, in the claims of its supporters, would be able to coordinate and synthesize all of the intelligence throughout the government.
I've long argued that the answer to 9/11 should be less bureaucracy, not more. A few years ago, I wrote in the LA Times that the FBI should get out of the business of catching kidnappers and bank robbers. I also argued for the need to create a smaller agency in charge of counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism.
But Congress and the Bush administration's response to 9/11 was to create an unwieldy bureaucracy with ever more layers of management, with more and more authority concentrated in smaller numbers at the top, something like the old GM.
We should have created a flatter bureaucracy, with more flexible and nimble units that access raw intelligence and analyze it to predict the intentions and capabilities of our enemies and competitors. Our problem is not the collection of intelligence, but its analysis.
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: The James Clapper Affair and Our Bloated Bureaucracies
Businesses long ago learned that elaborate hierarchies are inherently inefficient.
Bureaucrats and politicians believe the solution for inefficiency is more bureaucracy.
Nov '10
Re: The James Clapper Affair and Our Bloated Bureaucracies
Bureaucracy is like manure; if you spread it around and keep it "flat," it does some good. If you pile it in one spot, it just stinks. The dunghill of federal bureaucracy is now a veritable Everest.
May '10
Re: The James Clapper Affair and Our Bloated Bureaucracies
Hear, hear. Among the signs that Robert Gates is a genius is the fact that he passed up the DNI position.
Question for Prof. Yoo: What do you make of the NCTC?
Jul '10
Re: The James Clapper Affair and Our Bloated Bureaucracies
While the terrorists are free to kill, the "intelligence" agencies are arrested by bureaucracy.
Dec '10
Re: The James Clapper Affair and Our Bloated Bureaucracies
Lady Kurobara
Bureaucracy is like manure; if you spread it around and keep it "flat," it does some good. If you pile it in one spot, it just stinks. The dunghill of federal bureaucracy is now a veritable Everest. · Dec 31 at 8:57am
I always look for the Blue Lady avatar in the comments.
This is why. Your "-isms" rival those of my father, who is a true master of the art.
Edited on Dec 31, 2010 at 7:13pmNov '10
Re: The James Clapper Affair and Our Bloated Bureaucracies
CoolHand
Lady Kurobara
Bureaucracy is like manure; if you spread it around and keep it "flat," it does some good. If you pile it in one spot, it just stinks. The dunghill of federal bureaucracy is now a veritable Everest. · Dec 31 at 8:57am
I always look for the Blue Lady avatar in the comments.
This is why. Your "-isms" rival those of my father, who is a true master of the art.
Thank you, CoolHand. I like to inject a little "color" into the Ricochet forum. And your father sounds like a very colorful fellow.
Dec '10
Re: The James Clapper Affair and Our Bloated Bureaucracies
Lady Kurobara
And your father sounds like a very colorful fellow. · Dec 31 at 10:07pm
Indeed.
All the "-isms" I've collected through my years have either come from him or older guys I've raced with. Unfortunately, though undeniably funny, the great majority of them are of a stripe which I would not consider particularly suitable for "polite company".
Humor that is perfectly acceptable in the pits at a race track or over the machines in my shop, would almost certainly get me throw off Ricochet in short order.
I will endeavor to interject those acceptable few when it seems appropriate though.
One of the many excellent aspects of living out here in flyover country is our unique linguistic expressions (another of the myriad things that city folks euphemistically refer to as "local color", generally observed as they peer condescendingly out the locked windows of their hybrid).
May '10
Re: The James Clapper Affair and Our Bloated Bureaucracies
CoolHand
Lady Kurobara
Bureaucracy is like manure; if you spread it around and keep it "flat," it does some good. If you pile it in one spot, it just stinks. The dunghill of federal bureaucracy is now a veritable Everest. · Dec 31 at 8:57am
I always look for the Blue Lady avatar in the comments.
Edited on Dec 31 at 07:13 pm
Kurobara means black rose.