The intel turf war

This is a pretty big deal. Since WWI, the embassies have been the core of intelligence gathering around the world, the place where the CIA semi-covertly organized all the operations undertaken. Necessarily, this gave them the preeminent role in conducting operations and intelligence gathering.

Now, there has been a long running battle between the White House and the career people at the CIA who view the "cowboy policies" of this administration as working against both the long term US interest and decades of past work establishing contacts and channels.

That's one of the reasons that Porter Goss was installed at the CIA, to rein the career folks in. Since he has been appointed numerous high level career folks have left. Then, as a second check on their influence and effectiveness, Negroponte was appointed as Director of National Intelligence.

But one thing about Negroponte's appointment is that he has no budgetary and little other control of the Pentagon's intelligence operations which constitute 85% of the intel budget. So, as Rumsfeld whispers in Bush's ear, the CIA is being cast out.

That's why when I read this, I saw it as hugely significant as it appears DoD is now setting up a parallel embassy intel program if not attempting to completely subsume the existing CIA network in the "hotter" countries.

This article actually expresses the conflict pretty well. I recommend it highly which I don't do very often.

WASHINGTON, March 7 — The military is placing small teams of Special Operations troops in a growing number of American embassies to gather intelligence on terrorists in unstable parts of the world and to prepare for potential missions to disrupt, capture or kill them.

I can't imagine this is going to go down very well at Langley. I would expect to see some seriously unflattering leaks, the CIA's stock and trade, about the Bush administration, especially about Rumsfeld and DoD, coming out of the CIA over the next few months or maybe closer to the midterms. Mark my words. Maybe torture revelations, maybe prewar intel but we on the anti-Bush side are going to get some red meat out of this.

Perhaps that's why the Bush admin has been talking about prosecuting leakers so much, kind of a preemptive for this move.