Courtesy of Mish
The US currently has sixteen intelligence agencies. The Secretary of Defense now wants yet another agency, and the only logical conclusion is the sixteen existing agencies simply cannot get the job done.
Collectively US intelligence agencies missed 911, Egypt, Libya, events in Iran, and they thought Hussein hid weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Currently they do not know if Iran is attempting to build nuclear weapons or not. Alternatively, they do know, but do not want us to know what they know because it might make the oil embargo look downright silly.
Occasionally the agencies get something correct, such as finding Bin Laden after nearly a decade of looking. However, given the overall track record, one has to wonder if that discovery was simply an accident as opposed to careful analysis.
The Mark comments U.S. Creates New Spy Service Because 16 intelligence agencies just wasn't enough.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the Pentagon will soon launch a new intelligence agency to be known as the Defense Clandestine Service that will be tasked with tracking issues of "global strategic importance," such as nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea. The DCS will become the 17th active intelligence agency within the sprawling U.S. government and is expected to complement Defense Intelligence Agency, which is more focused on finding out information on battlefield tactics and maneuvers of enemy combatants. DCS, then, will take a broader approach to military intelligence, which is sort of what the Central Intelligence Agency already does, but hey, at least it means someone in the U.S. government will be doing some hiring in the near term.
Do we really need yet another intelligence agency, complete with yet another bureaucracy? I suggest we don't. In fact, I think we should collapse all of the existing agencies under one umbrella (assuming of course they are worth keeping at all). Unfortunately, that is debatable.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
