Dear John:
You have been in office as the first director of national intelligence for about a month now. Wishing you were back in Baghdad? I understand. The law that created your job was filled with compromises designed to satisfy Don Rumsfeld and the Pentagon's backers in Congress. As a result, the law is, to be charitable, ambiguous about your authority over Defense Department intelligence agencies and the F.B.I.
Obviously this "Dear John" is to Negroponte. I confess to being a big fan of Clarke's, and this letter is worth reading both for the tone...
Get Rumsfeld's toys: Outside experts estimate the American intelligence budget at more than $40 billion a year... If Rumsfeld threatens to fall on his sword, let him. The president has to decide who is running these agencies, and if it's not you, walk.
and the content:
Stop recruiting kids straight out of college, giving them a portfolio they know nothing about and then moving them to a new topic seven or eight times over 20 years.
It is rather incongruous for the CIA to send recruiters to Universities across the land every May seeking intelligence analysts. I interviewed with them in 85. They didn't pay well, and honestly at 22 years of age... well, I'm trying to keep the easily confused insults down.
The CIA does have a sense of humor about human resources efforts.
-- Zap
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