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According to the Washington Post, there are some new spies in town:
The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA’s historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld’s written order to end his “near total dependence on CIA” for what is known as human intelligence.
It’s unfortunate that the currently existing espionage agencies are so mismanaged that a new one may be required. On the other hand, the article reports that there are indications that this unit is doing well:
...Navy Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, expressed “utmost confidence in [unit commander] Colonel Waldroup’s capabilities” and said in an interview that Waldroup’s unit has scored “a whole series of successes” that he could not reveal in public. He acknowledged the risks, however, of trying to expand human intelligence too fast: “It’s not something you quickly constitute as a capability. It’s going to take years to do.”
Given the dangers presented by terrorists, I think it’s good to have this new capability in place. Hopefully the older agencies will be streamlined while this one is in operation.
#1
#2You raise an interesting question.
Unless I'm a complete idiot, not proven either way yet, I'm under the impression that the CIA was specifically chartered by Congress to manage clandestine operations.
Isn't the Defense Department overstepping its charter by taking on this kind of operational behavior?
I'm all for maximizing our intelligence potential, but it shouldn't be up to individual secretaries to decide what their department's function will be.