For starters, like any CEO, the DCI will have other people who are following individual areas of interest. As an administrator, the DCI may not be familliar with the individual details of each and every operation in progress, that duty has been delegated.
But let me also put it this way.
What is the DCI supposed to tell them?
If you were DCI, and testifying before Congress in open forum (otherwise it would not have been quoted), just how much would you tell them you knew?
Would you risk the charge of 'contempt of Congress' for not providing further details?
There aren't a handful of people on Capitol Hill I would trust with any serious national security secret.
Aside from that, without the context of the question to which the response was made, I can't address the comment.
But the massive intelligence gathering bureaucracy has become dysfunctional.
No argument there is disfunction present. Much of the business is 'What if?' and shades of gray in a fluid and often unclear world.
But part of the disfunction is induced from within other aspects of the Government, and that goes back to the Gorelick Memo, the squelching of Able Danger, and other activities which have been directed at the Intelligence community for the purpose of concealing other internal Executive (and possibly Legislative) Branch behaviours which have had a cumulative and negative effect on the country.
While it also eliminates the tendency for 'follow-the-leader' and 'echo chamber' intelligence projections, stovepiping data is different from stovepiping the interpretations.
Realize what seems inefficient can be the redundancy inherent in having multiple channels within even one agency, isolated, with separate sources, but that redundancy also cuts down on the chances of an entire operation being compromised with one error or leak, and otoh, multiple people reaching the same conclusion independently can refute or verify conclusions.
It may seem disfunctional to not put all the eggs in one basket, but it is also prudent.
I'll accept that sort of disfunction over the sloppy machination and fraud present in others--at least the intelligence community has a Constitutional purpose, involved in the mutual defense. Much of the Government does not even have that.
The politicians have consistently undermined our intelligence operations and have have weakened the intelligence gathering operations while increasing the size of the bureaucracy.
Panetta is a partisan scumbag who has never been honest or right about anything in his entire life.