The Daily Background

This is a bit of a background article. From today’s NYT:

President Bush’s selection of Gen. Michael V. Hayden to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency sets the stage for new wrangling with the Pentagon, which is rapidly expanding its own global spying and terrorist-tracking operations, both long considered C.I.A. roles.

[…]
The Pentagon has always been a behemoth in the intelligence world, largely because it controlled agencies with multibillion-dollar budgets like the National Security Agency and National Reconnaissance Office that are responsible for eavesdropping and satellites. What is different now is that the Pentagon is pushing deeper into human intelligence.

The C.I.A. has always been a much smaller organization than the Pentagon that served both the military and senior policy makers in Washington, including the president. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon felt it had to step in to fulfill many of its own additional intelligence needs that the C.I.A. could not.

This activity has stirred criticism from some lawmakers who express concern that the Pentagon is creating a parallel intelligence-gathering network independent from the C.I.A. or other American authorities, and one that encroaches on the C.I.A.’s realm.

Apparently it’s no good to have two agencies that are competing for funding now competing for jobs. And apparently this leads to fighting over an overlap and resentment of marginalization at least on the side of the CIA. Who woulda thunk it; when you start trying to take over somebody’s territory they get pissed. Weird. In any case the idea is that if Hayden is appointed, it’ll inflame the situation which has apparently become more tense since 9/11. Another reason why it’s a bad choice. Full article.

Filed under: Hayden, Z-TDB Blog