Dianne Fienstein is still a twit

[pecunium]

But she reiterated her concerns that Mr. Panetta wouldn't come to the job with significant intelligence experience. While acknowledging the CIA Director's job requires an operational skill set, "it's also a clandestine and covert service agency for the country. And as such, I think on the ground experience as a station agent in various parts of the world is vital."

How to sum up.... ah!

Bullshit.

This is an area in which I have some experience. One in which, actually, I have more real world experience than she does. Being a station agent is nice. It teaches one some things. It teaches one how to run sources, control a network, collate information.

It doesn't teach one what things are needful for the big picture. It doesn't make one less likely to be played by the insiders in the community. It tends to make one, actually, easier to persuade that certain types of operations are not only useful, but needful.

It tends to make one less concerned with the potential for blowback. Agents on the ground live in a world of short term concerns. The one they care about most is keeping their sources from getging burned.

I want a CIA director (and whatever it is they are calling the new guy... the Überchief who's suppose to be managing all the intel agencies) to be someone who is used to seeing the big picture. I want that someone to know how beauracracies work. And I wan't him to be someone committed to

1: Honest product. The touchstone of a good intel collector is the truthfulness of the analysis. If the answers are contrary to expectations, she reports them. If they are consonant, swell, but the thing which matters is that what is reported is the truth as best it is known.

2: Scrupulously independant. If the President says, "give me something I can use to make "x" happen," and the information isn't there. The CIA director has to be able to stand up and say, "no sir, can't do it."

3: Inscrutably honest, and concerned with reputation. If he tells the president the data don't support the desired policy, and the president tells him to cook the books, he has to be willing to resign, there and then. If it were me, I'd have a letter of resignation under lock and key in a safe at my house... lacking all but the date and signature.

The head of the CIA doesn't need to be a spook. Decades of spooks running the place is how it came to be what it is now.

That's worked out so well.

Comments

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

All of what I know about the CIA I learned watching TV and I know that Fienstein is slinging BS here. It's so transparently bogus that she must have some other weird agenda she's trying to further here, though I cannot guess what.

Ugh. My senators make me embarrassed to be a Democrat from California.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

The boss of the agency doesn't have to be an expert. S/he has to be able to tell the experts what to do. We don't expect the president to be a brilliant lawyer-cum-general-cum-engineer-cum-agronomist-cum-architect-cum-physician-&c-&c do we?

[firedrake-mor.livejournal.com]

Feinstein has NEVER liked Panetta.

You're right about the DCI, though -- I'd rather have someone with sufficient people and project management skills, and an awareness of the significance of world events to handle the role. Station agents are professionally paranoid. They have to be. The DCI needs to be able to view reports, analyses and interactions dispassionately, and with an appreciation of how various SIGINT, HUMINT and other resources mesh to produce that big picture you speak of.

He or she also needs to know how to "package" that data and those conclusions into a clear yet digestible summary for the Executive and Legislative branches of the Government.

[sethg]

The head of the CIA doesn't need to be a spook. Decades of spooks running the place is how it came to be what it is now.

I think this is really the bottom line. If IBM's board of directors realizes that their middle management is clueless about running a computer company, then they can poach an executive from another computer company instead of promoting from within. But Obama can't exactly offer the DCI job to someone who's spent the last 20 years with MI-6. (Although I hear the NYPD actually has a pretty good intelligence operation....) So given a choice between promoting from within a badly dysfunctional agency (some of this dysfunction, of course, being caused by previous administrations' ridiculous political demands, but still, dysfunctional) and getting a director from outside, the choice seems pretty clear to me.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

There is only a slight parallel from a station agent/source manager to a police informant manager.

The latter are just trying to see to it the informant is, and remains, both credible and alive.

The former is often involved in secondary issues having to do with building netorks, running counter-spy operation and actual covert operations in a foreign country. They usually have more than one identity, are often operating somewhat undercover (or if known to be an agent, such openly on station in an embassy/consulate; have to take care to be managing cutouts to the actual sources or engaging in all sorts of, justifiably, paranoid behaviors.

I really don't want the head of PD's intel sections to be doing that. Because no small part of those sorts of operations are active disimulation/disinformation campaigns against the agencies playing in the sandbox the field agent is working in.

Which is why the things Feinstein is saying are such rubbish. It's the myth of "intel agent = James Bond" and it's bad for policy.

Feh

[libertango.livejournal.com]

The whole kerfluffle is just an example of Robert Reich's observation (quasiquote) that Senators prize their dignity above all else.

To wit:

"Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who this week begins her tenure as the first female head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she was not consulted on the choice and indicated she might oppose it.

"I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA director," Feinstein said."

{Source, LA Times}

So it has nothing to do with Panetta's experience or lack thereof. It has everything to do with Ms. Feinstein's feelings getting hurt, and proper obeisance not being paid to her.

Re: Feh

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Well yes. Senators, more than any other office, seem to think they are outside the normal run of mortals. They really need to be reminded they are just the hired help.

And she has other problems with what she thinks is her proper due. Add that she dislikes Panetta, is practically a Republican (who get vilfied by those whom she is in most accord with as a "liberal-pinko from San Francisco") and the real question is why haven't we found a decent primary challenger for her; and years ago.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it. I'd vote Republican for the first time in my life to be rid of Feinstein if the party would stop running Satan Himself against her.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

The real answer, as came out through the day, is that DiFi is pissed off because the Obama folks (stupidly) didn't kiss the ring of the Intelligence Committee before announcing Panetta. How a Senate veteran (Biden) didn't warn them against that mistake, I'll never know.

Amen on the rest of what you said.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I did that in Massachusetts governor's race when John Silber ran. Never again.

Nonetheless, my loathing of DiFI is great. According to Wikipedia, she was planning to leave politics right before Moscone and Milk were shot. Damn it.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

There is more to it than that. She wasn't consulted about the last guy (Mr. Torture is Alright With Me.), so part of it is that she doesn't like Panetta,and part of it is she buys the, "Secret Agent Man" mystique.

And most of it she's a twit.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Exactly. Intel agents give Mr. Bond the details he needs to take action; he is an assassin and protector of witnesses, not a serious investigator.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

That's worked out so well.

Learn from mistakes of the past? Politicians?

[libertango.livejournal.com]

"The real answer, as came out through the day, is that DiFi is pissed off because the Obama folks (stupidly) didn't kiss the ring of the Intelligence Committee before announcing Panetta. How a Senate veteran (Biden) didn't warn them against that mistake, I'll never know."

As I was going to answer with insightful, original commentary, both Maddow and Olbermann made the point I was going to. Curse. :)

Anyway, the answer is very probably that, in the same way they're going to an outsider who has no hint of involvement in the cooking of the intel for Iraq and "extraordinary rendition" and "agressive techniques" and all the rest -- well, they perceive DiFi as partially culpable for all of that. She voted for every single nominee Bush put forward. She never said, "No."

Or, in a great one-liner: "There are two meanings to the word, 'oversight'." DiFi's been caught on the wrong side of it (as has Rockefeller).

[zhaneel69.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I have to say I'm very confused and annoyed by Senator Fienstein's attacks and refusal of support. Generally I've found I like the Senator, but this feels like political moves to draw attention to her own movements toward the intelligence committee than an actual objections and I hate politicking like that.

Zhaneel

[john-of-arabia.livejournal.com]

It doesn't need a spook, but it DOES need someone who is lsightly experienced in National Defense. Pannetta will most likely roll back many of the tactics which have proven successful so far.