Dark side to US intelligence reform

[CHIMO]

While the media focus attention on congressional turf battles associated with intelligence reform, US President George W Bush is taking steps - largely under the public's radar screen - to create his own hidden "army" of covert spies.

Before getting into what the White House is doing, it's necessary to examine what Congress is doing and not doing about intelligence reform as a result of the collapse of the House-Senate conference attempting to bridge differences between the bills passed by each chamber.

Ostensibly, the core problem is the line of tasking authority for three "national" agencies currently within the Defense Department: the National Security Agency (communications and electronic intercepting and analysis), the National Reconnaissance Office (designs, builds and operates signals and imagery satellites), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (formerly the National Imagery and Mapping Agency). Because of advanced communications electronics, these "combat support" organizations are able to transmit to tactical commanders (division and below) near-real-time information (eg, images and locational data on friendly and enemy forces, terrain, or groups of fleeing refugees) that could influence decisions and outcomes.

The White House, which was never enamored of the 9-11 Commission or its recommendations, may simply ignore Congress and press its own "remedies" through presidential directives. That would relegate "intelligence reform" to the same category that wags assign "military intelligence": an oxymoron.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FL03Aa01.html

[PROGRESSIVE1]

1. Would these "covert spies" be called the "Brownshirts" by any chance?

[DBoon]

2. No

I think the Gestapo uniforms were black

[Village Idiot]

3. I liked this part:

<snip>
"While this unseemly wrangling about political power makes headlines, the White House has set in motion by presidential fiat other, more questionable changes to existing intelligence structures. For example, Bush has directed a study that will propose ways to increase the Defense Department's role in covert operations, a realm that heretofore was the domain of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. The study, due in February, is exploring the feasibility of turning over control of paramilitary operations to the 50,000-strong United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) based in Florida. (Again, this was recommended by the 9-11 Commission.) Given USSOCOM's much larger size, the obvious concern is that a president would be tempted to initiate many more covert operations - and as commander-in-chief, do so without informing the relevant committees of Congress as the CIA director must do now. Conceivably, this would give the executive branch a "private army" for pursuing its policy of preventive war."
</snip>

I had not understood this to be the case before...the USA is becoming a scarey, scarey country...