[Reo]

".....that Clinton/Reno et al were involved is coincidental."

To me the article seems to indicate more than coincidental involvement. Why do the great intelligence collection downgraders like Frank Church, Stansfield Turner, John Deutsch, Reno, & Freeh, all occur under Dem auspices? It's part institutional, but also part Dem emphasis and ignorance.

[bvw]

Prove that intelligence collection was useful before, when provided by such centralized agencies, and by useful let's also include economic. A few hundred billion to write very detailed and even accurate reports no one reads or uses is not useful. Intelligence gathering alone is useless -- even at times harmful. (If good intelligence it is like a charged cloud, randomly seeking a ground, and thus can do violence when it does.) It has be be gathered for a timely and obvious use -- that can be political, can be for safety and security, can be for a criminal investigation, can be military. In China they seem to have been succesful using the information for current economic benefit, here in the US that would be seem at first glance to be impossible without making us fascist.