Acts of Commission, Sins of Omission

The Silbermann-Robb Commission, which was apparently NOT a 70s prog-rock supergroup, released its report on intelligence failures. Michael Ledeen has this analysis:

All of which leads to two conclusions that the commission could not reach, even though, reading between the lines, it seems pretty clear they would have if they could have: First, there must be accountability, and this means that lots of people should be fired (and should have been fired long since, especially after 9/11). And second, that, instead of expanding personnel — as the president requested and Congress obliged after the terrorist attacks three and a half years ago, and as the president again requested and Congress again obliged following the dreadful recommendations of the 9/11 Commission just before last year’s elections — we should drastically reduce manpower, and then, if necessary, slowly rebuild.

If talent and accountability are indeed the crucial issues — and, to repeat, the great strength of the report is its recognition that these are the crux of the matter — then it is impossible to get a good intelligence community by shuffling the failed bureaucrats around in new configurations, and then providing them with lots of new bodies to badly train and educate. It is a guaranteed formula for worse intelligence because it produces more and more bad analysts and ineffective case officers. The intelligence community needs a big-time purge, not a brainless expansion accompanied by a monster reshuffle of boxes, connections, and interagency groups.

The commission couldn’t say these things, because they were not part of its mandate. Instead, they occasionally hint at these conclusions — I can’t imagine such a great talent as Larry Silberman (who should be sitting on the Supreme Court) submitting to total censorship on such an important matter — and probably raised the matter, verbally, when they briefed the top congressional and executive-branch officials.

How about having an intelligence community made up of people who would actually like to see America win the War on Terror, for a start?

Might be a good template for cleaning out the Augean Stables of moral equivalence at Foggy Bottom, too.