Bashing the Intelligence Bureaucracy

Having added the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as another layer of bureaucracy in the intelligence chain of command in late 2004, members of Congress are now complaining that the office, well, adds a layer of bureaucracy to the intelligence chain of command. USA Today reports that the House Intelligence Committee is concerned that DNO John Negroponte actually wants to add staff to meet the daunting mission Congress and the White House have given it to improve the nation's capacity to detect terrorist threats. That, says the panel's ranking Democrat, Jane Harman of California, is just not how we do things in the government of the 21st century. Negroponte "needs to focus on capability, not on buildings, billets and bureaucracy," Harman told the paper. So how exactly do you build capacity without people or buildings to put them in? "Leadership, leadership, and leadership," says Harman.