Big, Bigger, Biggest brother

[Gob]

Washington Post exposes US 'intelligence flaws'






The newspaper says the system is now so massive and unwieldy that it is impossible to determine its effectiveness in keeping the US safe.

The report, Top Secret America, follows a two-year investigation by the paper.

Acting US intelligence chief David C Gompert has dismissed the picture painted by the report as inaccurate.

"The reporting does not reflect the intelligence community we know," Mr Gompert said in a statement.

"We accept that we operate in an environment that limits the amount of information we can share. However, the fact is, the men and women of the intelligence community have improved our operations, thwarted attacks, and are achieving untold successes every day."

The report says the growth of the security industry - with billions of dollars of contracts farmed out to various government agencies and private contractors - has resulted in an unwieldy system lacking in oversight and with high levels of redundancy and waste.

According to the Washington Post:

* Nearly 2,000 private companies and 1,270 government agencies are involved in counter-terror work at 10,000 locations across the country
* Some 854,000 US citizens have the highest level of security clearance
* A fifth of the US government's anti-terror organisations have been created since the September 2001 attacks
* More than 250 security bodies have been created or restructured since 9/11
* More than 30 complexes with 17m sq ft of space (1.6m sq m) have been built for top-secret intelligence work in the Washington area since the attacks
* Various agencies publish so many reports that they are often ignored by officials

Intelligence failures that allowed the September 2001 attacks to happen have produced the regular refrain that the American intelligence community had "failed to join up the dots", says the BBC's defence and security correspondent, Nick Childs.

US intelligence and surveillance systems have changed dramatically since those attacks, with reforms - such as the creation a Directorate of National Intelligence to oversee some 16 agencies in the intelligence community - and a massive injection of resources.

US officials insist these reforms have led to significant improvements.

But recent incidents - such as the failed Detroit airliner bombing in December and the failed Times Square attack on New York in May - have exposed continuing weaknesses, and failures still to "join up the dots", our correspondent adds.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10681861

[dales]

Scrap the collossal mess and start over.

In the meantime, we could outsource intelligence gathering to the 'lowest bidder'.

[Lord Jim]

Up until a few years ago, I'd have said we could just outsource our whole intelligence operation to Mossad, but even they've been screwing up lately....

And of course, every major intelligence service in the world was convinced Saddam Hussein had WMD.

Sometimes intelligence just ain't all that intelligent....

It's at least some comfort to know that nobody else is any more competent at it than we are....

[Andrew D]

And of course, every major intelligence service in the world was convinced Saddam Hussein had WMD.

The people actually on the ground doing the inspecting, however, took the opposite -- correct -- view. That should tell us something about whom to trust.

[Gob]

And of course, every major intelligence service in the world was convinced Saddam Hussein had WMD.

Sometimes intelligence just ain't all that intelligent....
.

Wrong, some governments were convinced, most intelligence services had major doubts.