In my days in the Regular Army O, I never completely trusted the Intel weenies, although almost everyone of them were very smart and very ambitious.
In my early days in the 82d Airborne Divison, I spent much of my time plotting and scheming to get more jumps, it being the number 1 metric of manliness. The Brigade Commander, in his infinite wisdom decided to make me the Assistant S-2 (Intel) which required lots of work, resulting in few extra jumps. Very shortly, I became the S-2, and shortly thereafter we were alerted to jump into Jordan to rescue hostages and several airliners that had been full of passengers, now hostages. Now, I was very, very busy and I got lots of help from the Intel Community who were complete strangers to me, but were very smart but very nervous about jumping out of an airplane. The Brigade Commander was pressured to replace me with a real intel weenie with the rank to match the job, but he decided to go with me, an Infantry type.
In the end, the crisis was resolved by the State Department weenies and though we departed Ft. Bragg, we were turned around somewhere over the Atlantic. I learned about Intel Weenies while I was at it.
My next little step on the career ladder was as a Long Range Platoon Leader in the Central Highlands of Vietnam where I learned that since my Troop Commander and Squadron Commander didn’t much care (being Aviators), I worked for the Corps G-2 (Intel) and G-3 (Operations). the G-2 decided where our patrols needed to go, and the G-3 decided if it made sense. The G-2 types were, of course, very smart, but I never saw them during the mission. Only at the mission briefing, the de-brief and at the Pleiku Officer’s Club. They did not like the getting shot as part of Intel gathering.
I became suspicious of these Intel types and at every step along the way, my experiences were reinforced by my earlier experience. Smart and ambitious and spent most of their time working to impress Colonels and Generals. I worked hard to impress the privates and Sergeants, the one who really counted. I didn’t see them when it was wet, cold, and the chow was hours late.
I can’t believe that Clapper was so willing to sell out the country for his own ambitious goals, but I guess that I should not have been surprised.
You clearly have a very limited knowledge of the Intelligence Community.