At the American Thinker Herb Meyer, who was Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council during the Reagan administration, has written a lucid and exceptionally worrying analysis of the malaise in American intelligence gathering and the hopeless inadequacy of the measures being taken to put it right. What is required above all at such a time as this is talent -- lots of it. Instead, the curse of managerialism has struck, submerging the CIA under an infrastructure of bureaucracy that will surely asphyxiate any talent that happens to be lurking underneath:

'... after two presidential commissions and a half-dozen Congressional inquiries, the Administration and Congress decided to create a new position of Director of National Intelligence (DNI), to sit on top of the DCI. He will be supported by a Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and an associate director who will serve as chief-of-staff. But since the new DNI and his two aides would be suspended in mid-air, so to speak, several positions that had been in the DCI’s office have now been shifted to the DNI’s office. These include a Deputy Director for Management, another Deputy Director for Collection, a third for Analysis, and a fourth to be in charge of “customer service.” (This last one sounds like a job more appropriate for an executive at a cell-phone provider than for one at an intelligence service. What’s the poor guy supposed to do – run around Washington assuring that key consumers of intelligence are happy and not thinking of switching their accounts to another country’s intelligence service?) It’s envisaged that up to 1,000 officials will be required to support this new bureaucracy, and rather than locate the DNI and all these people at CIA headquarters – from which most of the 1,000 officials required for the new bureaucracy will be taken – they will be housed at Bolling Air Force Base, just outside Washington DC, until permanent headquarters can be established somewhere else.'

As Meyer tells it, the history of American intelligence gathering is one of blithering incompetence by Congress punctuated by spasmodic interludes of outstanding brilliance -- such as the war-time Office of Strategic Services (OSS) -- when inspired intelligence chiefs got their act together and recruited operatives of conspicuous ability. From the mid 1980s, however

'... the CIA was managed by bureaucrats whose objective simply was to not cause trouble, and our country itself went on a holiday from history that ended catastrophically on September 11, 2001...In the aftermath of 9-11, we had a chance to build a new intelligence service that looked like the OSS. Instead, we are building one that looks like General Motors... Judging from all the telephone calls and emails flying around right now among intelligence veterans, the mood is one of disappointment and genuine concern. A common thread in all these conversations is that – alas -- it will take another horrific attack before the political will is there to create the kind of light, fast, razor-sharp intelligence service we used to have and now need. Perhaps. Or perhaps Washington has become so muscle-bound and partisan that even should Dallas, Chicago or another of our great cities become a pile of radioactive rubble its only response will be yet another Presidential commission which probably will conclude once again that “structure” was the problem -- and will recommend that we create a Director of Inter-Galactic Intelligence, to sit atop the Director of National Intelligence, who sits atop the Director of Central Intelligence.'

Is this the way the west will end, not with a bang but a bureaucrat?