That makes me feel so much better!

Belmont Club - It's Broke and Ain't Gonna be Fixed

Reuel Marc Gerecht's phenomenal article on the sorry state of US intelligence in the Weekly Standard has one major theme: that the CIA lacks the operational methods to penetrate its targets. He describes the heart of the problem as a reliance on recruited foreign agents of indifferent quality as the metric for promotion within the organization. A kind of bizarre sales target without a point or even a purpose.

Under this system, thousands of agents were recruited abroad neither for their intelligence-reporting potential nor their operational utility. They were put on the books--case officers often referred to the sport as "collecting scalps"--because that is how CIAoperatives earned promotion. With some exceptions--extraordinary handling of foreign agents could win you bonus points--the "head count" was the way to professional success. For most case officers, the Cold War was a backdrop for the constant search for an easy "developmental," somebody who could be quickly turned into a "recruitment" for the annual performance report.

It was busywork, a carnival on the periphery while the inner sanctum of the enemy remained inviolate. Nor is there is any bureaucratic probability that things will change. Those in charge today owe their positions to being agent bean counters par excellence -- salesmen of the month -- and are unlikely to alter the game.

As I've said before, prime evidence of the dysfunction is the fact that the CIA paid money for the services of bloviating crapsack Joe Wilson and his goofball spouse.