CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Office of Director of National Intelligence Should Not Exist

The New York Times posted a long editorial last week to make the case against choosing Bill Pulte as the acting director of national intelligence.  That was not a difficult case to make, but it didn’t question whether we should even have an Office of National Intelligence.  The answer to that particular issue requires an understanding of why the intelligence failure of 9/11 took place and why the many investigations of the failure came up with the wrong answers.

There have been two major strategic intelligence failures over the past 85 years—Pearl Harbor and 9/11.  In each case, nearly three thousand lives were lost because of the intelligence failures that accompanied Pearl Harbor and 9/11.  In both cases, there was sufficient intelligence available to prevent—or at least mollify—the attacks.  In both cases, the intelligence analysis was unimaginative, divided, and diffuse.  The lack of intelligence sharing was central to the failure at Pearl Harbor, but the problem of sharing was exaggerated in the case of 9/11.

There was one major difference between Pearl Harbor and 9/11.  The surprise Japanese attack led to a major reform of the national security community in the form of the 1947 National Security Act, which created the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Sadly, all of these institutions have been politicized and weakened in the Trump era.

The Intelligence Reform Act of 2004, which followed 9/11,........

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