One of Ours

...So... have a Director of Central Intelligence, who by statute is supposed to be the principal intelligence officer for the United States. Yet, because the structure isn't working, we're going to create a new Director of National Intelligence and attempt to reform bureaucratic morass with... more bureaucracy? I understand the impulse to do something in response to 9/11...It may well be that we need to fix intelligence by creating a more responsive and efficient command and control structure for America's intelligence community. But I'm not convinced that this is the answer, because I see two major pitfalls in this proposal: (1) It threatens to create more bureaucracy, gumming up the system more; (2) It focuses too much at the top level rather than creating interconnectedness and collaborate relationships at the operator level, where the need is greatest...

...You cannot fight this type of enemy effectively with a conventional hierarchical bureaucracy. You will forever find yourself out-witted and two steps behind the threat; a prisoner of your own OODA loop and your own inflexibility...

...The thing is, we have an active, adaptive, dangerous enemy out there who's just waiting for us to drop our defenses. We can't afford the learning curve associated with a typical government reorganization, but that will cause a net decrease in America's security for the near term -- an operational window that Al Qaeda might use to strike. If we do this, we absolutely positively have to get it right the first time.