The Great Reform Act of 2002: Ending a culture of death

National Review Online ^ | 6/7/02 | Michael Ledeen

[browardchad]

I should begin by saying that I'm hopeless with wiring diagrams, and unlike so many Washingtonians I have never been fascinated by the bureaucratic balance of power, which no doubt explains in part why I was such a lousy bureaucrat myself. But I've got lots of experience with counterterrorism, and I do not believe that you can fix what's wrong with our counterterrorist program by rewiring the federal bureaucracy, however necessary that may be.The problem with our intelligence services is not structure, it's culture. For more than 25 years they've been hammered into brain death by the scandal-crazed media and Congress. They've been hamstrung by guidelines so restrictive that as of September 10 the FBI was not even permitted to clip newspaper articles for their files unless they had reason to believe the people and organizations described in the articles were engaged in criminal activity, or preparing to commit criminal acts. And the CIA was not permitted to work with people who might have had "human-rights issues" in their past.

That's half the story. The other half is political: Every president since Jimmy Carter has declared war on terrorism, but George W. is the first president to wage war on terrorists. Even Ronald Reagan did very little (we bombed Libya once, and we caught a couple of bad guys overseas and locked them away in American jails), despite hundreds of American deaths, including servicemen, spies, diplomats, and the inevitable innocents. When the policy people saw that nothing was going to be done, they automatically shied away from bringing forward information that demanded strong action, because they knew that the top people would be angry. Read Bob Baer's memoir, See No Evil, or read Reuel Gerecht's various essays, and you will find that the CIA gradually eliminated from its ranks any gung-ho officers who really wanted to get to the heart of the terror network. And that was only logical, because the top people weren't going to act, and so they didn't want to hear the gory details about the terrorists. Such information would make them uncomfortable, and they didn't want it.

Over time, these habits became rules, and the intelligence community now has a set of instincts that prevent them from getting, analyzing, and interpreting hard intelligence on terrorism. How else can you explain the fact that as of September 10 we had not a single human agent in Iran, Iraq, or Syria? Or that, even months afterwards, George Tenet was proclaiming that there could not be active cooperation between the PLO and Iran, because Sunnis and Shiites didn't work together (in fact they had been working together for 30 years).

September 11 wasn't the result of poor bureaucratic organization, or inattentive supervisors, or poor communication between the various agencies. All these existed, to be sure, but they were not the cause of the debacle, and fixing them won't transform the government's ability to get the terrorists, or bring down the regimes that sponsor them. Moreover, the reorganization plan is a distraction. We should be bringing down the regimes and killing the terrorists, and to do that well requires political will and brave leadership.

The president has to rid himself of those of his top advisers who lack the political will to wage war against the terror masters, and fire those people who have failed to demonstrate bravery in leading their people. The top people in the intelligence community need to be replaced, and those military leaders who tell the president that it can't be done, or they just aren't ready, or we need to do something else first, should be replaced as well, and the people in the national security community who have told the president that he has to solve the Arab-Israeli question before the war can start also need to go.

Bureaucratic fixes may help something, but they won't solve our current problem. We need war leaders, not compulsive negotiators or management consultants. And we must attack soon, before the next assault.

Faster, please.

[AAABEST]

When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength

Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.

Sun Tzu The Art of War Chap II "On Waging War"

---

It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face...And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces...Seems a thousand centuries ago...We went into a camp to innoculate the children. We left the camp after we had innoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every innoculated arm. There they were in a pile...A pile of little arms. And I remember...I...I...I cried... I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized...like I was shot...Like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead...And I thought: My God...the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we.

Colonal Kurtz (Marlon Brando) - Apocalypse Now

[Betty Jo]

I dont think this new Table of Organization ,Department, whatever you want to call it, is what America neds to kill the terrorists.

They are "stronger" than us, in that they dont care who they kill, even themselves.

If Bush was serious about the war on terrorism, he would kill the terrorists.

Now!

If this was WWII, and the Islamic Terrorists were the Nazis, and they were here, in uniform, wearing a disguise over their uniforms,would we not still track them down and kill them?

Would we continue to let them illegally cross our borders, and give them visas to come in legally?

Kill the terrorists.

Kill them often.

Kill them now!

[gaspar]

Another serious problem, which is rarely discussed, is also present. Under present regulations all CIA cables from embassies abroad must be cleared through the Ambassador (i.e., the Political Section) before they can be sent to Washington. Thus, any CIA plan to go after the bad guys had to be cleared by the State Department satrapy, and diplomats are notoriously fearful of any initiative that might cause trouble, no matter how worthy that initiative might be.

A recent example of the problems the CIA and FBI faced was the Cole bombing after which US Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine threw innumerable roadblocks in the way of investigators sent from Washington.

[Betty Jo]

One of those investigaters being the late John O'Neill of the FBI.He had said that his work was being hindered by BIG-OIL-BIG-BUSINESS-SAUDI-BUSH connections.

[WIMom]

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[gaspar]

O'Neill (who just happened to be a Janet Reno pet) blamed Ambassador Barbara Bodine, a Clinton apointee, for blocking his investigation -- not the Saudis, big oil, or Bush. Bodine made him persona non grata, and she was personally responsible for decisions that put FBI agents at risk in Sanaa.

[AAABEST]

Kill the terrorists.

Kill them often.

Kill them now!

We let the bastards walk amongst us freely because "they're not breaking any laws". Well they never break any laws until they kill your daughter or spouse for the great crime of going about their daily business.

We don't have the will to solve the problem yet. Until we aquire that will we will not prevail. This is just common sense not rocket science.

Instead we'll spend huge amount of our public treasure, create giant new useless bureaucracies and drive the good citizens or our country crazy.

One small part of the solution: "Hi Mr Potential Terrorist, we heard you were at that Mosque stirring up the crazies and declaring 'Jihad' against us. Here's your bullet BAM"

I like your Keyword.

NOW

[browardchad]

O'Neill (who just happened to be a Janet Reno pet)

I haven't heard that before -- any references/instances you can give?

[Kermit]

Yesterday, it was reported that there was a Confererence of Terrorists in Tehran on Monday, June 3rd. Why didn't we bomb it? What's really happened in the war on terror since mid-November?

[AAABEST]

Why didn't we bomb it?

Sigh. You old timers on this board are just getting silly. We spent 40 billion on a nice color coded system and now you want to start killing our enemies.

[browardchad]

He had said that his work was being hindered by BIG-OIL-BIG-BUSINESS-SAUDI-BUSH connections.

Those accusations were printed posthumously (after O'Neill died in the WTC 9/11 attack) in an alleged interview that conveniently supported the view of the authors of a French book, "Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth" -- and can never, conveniently, be verified.

However, it has been independently verified that he was blocked by Bodine in the Yemen investigation for "lack of sensitivity" to Arab culture. (retch)

[Alas Babylon!]

We succesfully defeated Nazi-ism and Japanese imperialism in 1945--with a great deal of effort and hardship, but defeated they were. What is the key difference between then and now? In my opinion, it is JOURNALISM. Big media, leftists talking heads, so-called investigative journalists with an agenda, call it what you will.

They are all over every story, every effort, with recriminations, second guessing, red herrings, looking for American misdeeds no matter the mission or the importance of stopping terrorists. They NEVER cease. From the lie that 3,000 Afghani civillians being killed by American forces, to global warming hysteria, to George W's "Selection", to enabling Clinton, promoting Palestinians, they work at it every day. Telling lies, half-truths, using innuendos and smears, allowing left wing politicians to spin without question, and a host of other tactics are their major weapons against conservatism, pro-Amemericanism, and capitalism.

This was absent in WWII. It is the standard operating procedures of journalists since the 1960's.

[browardchad]

What is the key difference between then and now? In my opinion, it is JOURNALISM

Yes, but you have to combine that with American ignorance and apathy. I've been reading by "Mobocracy" by Matthew Robinson, and he makes the point that "Since the New Deal and especially the Great Society, the incentive to follow politics has slowly withered as the size of government has grown and its ability to respond to the the citizen has disintegrated."

Add to that the lack of basic civics education, (and the decline of education in general) and you get a populace easily swayed by the leftist media agenda.

That's also why I agree with Ledeen in his characterization of this "Great Reform Act" as a "distraction." Here we are spending time debating yet another expansion/reorganization of bureaucratic entities and structures that are obtuse and inaccessible to the ordinary American, who, I imagine, just walks away with a shrug of the shoulders and a scratch of the head, saying "whatever," while, in essence, it accomplishes nothing tangible in correcting the culture of our intelligence and defense structures, which are crucial to winning the war.

[browardchad]

any CIA plan to go after the bad guys had to be cleared by the State Department satrapy, and diplomats are notoriously fearful of any initiative that might cause trouble, no matter how worthy that initiative might be

I doubt that will change, and if you can slog through the 149-page report of the Hart-Rudman U.S. Commission on National Security/21 st Century, January 2001, (link to the PDF file posted by Pete, on this thread).

The report appears to be the prototype for the Homeland Defense agency, but in many ways it may also be a roadmap for this administration’s foreign policy..

In reference to your comment about the State Department as a vehicle for CIA communications, the report recommends:

“The basic structure of the U.S. intelligence community does not require change. The community has implemented many of the recommendations for reform made by other studies. This Commission’s focus is on those changes in intelligence policy, operations, and resources needed for the full implementation of recommendations found elsewhere within this report.

Among those “recommendations” in the report:

This Commission has emphasized that strategic planning needs to be introduced throughout the national security institutions of the U.S. government. We have also emphasized the critical importance of preventive diplomacy.(A term used often in the report). Both require an intelligence community that can support such innovations, but current trends are leading in the opposite direction.

”the State Department needs to be strengthened well beyond the designation of a strong Secretary of State.”

”U.S. Ambassadors and embassies play critical roles in promoting U.S. national security goals overseas. We therefore recommend that all other Ambassadors, including the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, be brought under the authority of the Secretary of State for policymaking and implementation, without altering their representational role on behalf of the President.”

”Direct the Secretary of Defense to have regional CINCs institute a process through their Political Advisers to involve the Ambassadors in their region in their military planning”

The report recommends massive spending to reorganize bureaucracies (most importantly the State Department as the lead agency in world affairs), and promote scientific education.

[Alas Babylon!]

Now that I think about it, maybe journalism is just one face of a multifaced monster. Since you mention the dumbing down of the public, you made me think about what caused it, or did it always exist? Then it struck me. Hollywierd. Television.

That's what did it. Yellow journalism has a what, 100-150 year history? But with the advent of television in the late 1940's, early 1950's, we see a culture that sponsors immediate gratification, anti-family, or at least "Dad" as a big dummy/stick in the mud, and questioning the experience/wisdom of our leaders/elders. Surely this has some blame to the state of things today?

[Mind-numbed Robot]

As you and others seek the "answer" to our present malaise in the symptoms of journalism, poor education, misquided bureaucracy, etc., you ignore (perhaps purposely because it is so self-evident) the root cause - communism, or its hybrids, socialism, liberalism, progressivism, and even the militant Islamic terrorists. All seek to gain power over us by taking over and changing our form of government. Some do it seriptisiously, others aggressively. For at least eighty years the academic elite and other useful idiots have worked diligently to undermine our beliefs and our institutions. We see the fruits of that in the things you and others mention - the media, the school sytem, the bureaucrats, the politicians, etc. Each has an equal and important role in our destruction.

All this power has accumulated in the hands of the minority who then effectively control the majority through the methods described. Through these outlets they present themselves as the majority and the rest of of us, the true majority, as minority obstructionists. Proof? Talk radio! Conservative talk radio is a phenominal success with millions of daily listeners who listen because they have found alternatives to the mainstream media, alternatives with whom they agree. Liberal talk radio? Almost non-existent.

When will the politicains and political consultants snap to that fact? Maybe never or maybe they already have. Political consultants and most politicians, left and right, are basically like bureaucrats, afraid of making a misstep and losing their jobs so they keeep their heads down. Because the left controls most information outlets (that is why they want to regulate and control talk radio and the internet), these politicians and consultants have legitimate fears. Yet, time and again the straight talkers receive wide and unexpected approval and support while the meally mouthed are simply tolerated as the norm. Again, the success of conservative talk radio is better than any stylized poll but the consultants and politicians continually overlook that fact. America is conservative but we are being controlled by the minority and our own fears and timidity. The politicians are, that is.

[Betty Jo]

Oh, I know all about Bodine.

Go back and read some FR articles of the time period.

I was speaking to the roadblocks that O'Neil encountered in his other investigations.

The bicameral intelligence investigation underway now will asssuredly show why O'Neill's work did not go very far.

The pattern of protecting Saudis will paint a sickening little pix for us.

[gaspar]

Sorry for the delay, I've been following the nags (horses that is). I made a quick check, for the Reno-O'Neill relationship you might want to start with New York Magazine, December 17, 2001.

[wildcardsteve]

Interesting, isn't it, that the idea never occurs to so many people who derive their vague liberalist ideas about capitalism, business...and conservatives from television and movies; Hollywood, and the news media are big business! And they are bankrolled by monied interests that are quite ruthless, and have nothing but contempt for freedom and the ideal of the democratic Republic.