Roger Morris on the Clintons and the Intelligence Community

Scoop ^ | 8 July, 2007 | S. Mazur

[Tenega]

Roger Morris: The government is hardening up. And the CIA is arguably worse now than it’s ever been in its history. It’s more far-flung, it’s more powerful. You’ve got this whole shadow world of mercenaries. The Agency always had contract people out there, but it’s true now you’ve got literally a shadow armed forces in the mercenaries, in the Pentagon. You’ve got a shadow intelligence operation in the Pentagon. (snip)

It’s a huge shadow world. And the reason it’s come into existence is that it’s occupied a vacuum. There’s no one on the other side to even look at it. The average Congressman, even a newly empowered Democratic committee chairman in the House or the Senate, looks at all of this with a sense of being overwhelmed and not even knowing where to begin (snip).

When I was a kid there was a movie called Sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne. (snip) And at one point the nervous young Marines are gathered around John Wayne on the ship. This is the night before they land the next day and they say: Gee Sarge, what have the Japanese got out on that island out there? And he says: Well I don’t know boys, but they’ve had 40 years to put it there. And the camera pans back to these worried faces.

It makes the point that we always have to remember about the National Security Establishment. This thing hasn’t happened overnight. It didn’t just happen in the George W. Bush administration. This is a product of a very long, convoluted, very well financed, in some respects well planned and in other respects entirely spontaneous and almost random development of a process which is now HUGE. It’s now vast.

[Tenega]

Worth a read. A remembrance of things past, and future?