Friday, June 02, 2006

30 Flew Into the Cuckoos Nest

TomDispatch - Tomgram: Proliferation Wars in the Intelligence Community:

"All this news involving what we call 'intelligence' -- and much more -- played out on the front pages of the nation's newspapers and on TV, replete with copious leaks from within the intelligence community, threats from the White House to prosecute journalists reporting those leaks, outraged press editorials about sundry intelligence topics, and a great deal of heat and noise.

Each scandal came and went, the news spotlight flickering from one to the next; and yet, as Hayden's testimony before the Senate made clear, just about no one seemed to have the urge to ask the obvious what's-it-all-about-Alfie question. Nobody wondered what this thing called 'intelligence,' over which so many tens of thousands of analysts, code breakers, and agents labor with so many tens of billions of our dollars, really is; what sort of knowledge about our planet all those acronymic intelligence organizations really deliver. The value of the 'intelligence community' to deliver this thing called 'intelligence,' whatever mistakes or missteps might be made, is simply taken for granted. "

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