Why the American Intelligence Community Is Strikingly "Dumb"

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/why-american-intelligence-community-strikingly-dumb


The National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, as seen from the air, January 29, 2010

If we are so smart why are we so dumb? I am referring to the “intelligence” that our spy agencies have gathered at great cost in both massive secret black box budgets and, much more important, the surrender of our personal freedom to the snooping eyes of our modern surveillance state.

“We know everything but learn nothing” would be an honest slogan for the NSA, CIA and lesser-known spy agencies that specialize in leading us so dangerously astray. For all of their massive intrusion into the personal lives of individuals throughout the world, it is difficult to recall a time when the “intelligence” they collected provided such myopic policy insight.

Take the revelations in The New York Times’ exhaustive six-part investigation published Saturday demonstrating that the devastating 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, was an intelligence disaster. The Times “turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault” that led to the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. Instead, a local militia leader on the side of the U.S.-supported insurrection in Libya with no known affiliation with al-Qaida is a prime suspect, and he and others allegedly responsible were not on the radar screen of the 20-person CIA station in Benghazi because they were part of the insurgency the U.S. supported.

As for the vast collection of phone and email intercepts maintained by U.S. spy agencies, it turned up only one bit of information, a phone call from someone involved in the mob attacking the U.S. post. He called a friend elsewhere in Africa who allegedly knew some folks in al-Qaida, but the friend “sounded astonished” at the news from Libya, “suggesting he had no prior knowledge of the assault,” according to U.S. officials. In short, the only evidence turned up by the vast spying apparatus was evidence that inconveniently contradicted the al-Qaida connection, so it was not made public.

[daleanime]

1. K&R....

[n2doc]

2. Because the brute force method requires less skill and makes more money n/t

[GoneFishin]

3. Yep. For 1/1000th the cost they could step up local law enforcement activities

following actual leads with probable cause and warrants.

But then the money would be "wasted" on paychecks for real human beings instead of overpriced technology that can be marked up 10,000% and funneled into the pockets of the 1%.

And there would be real oversight, as each warrant would need approval from different regional judges with diverse political dispositions.

Plus, you wouldn't end up with a juicy database on all current and future politicians, judges, political activists, and business leaders.

[rock]

4. Summarizing: politics

!

[jeff47]

5. Because you don't hear about the successes.

When the "intelligence community" is successful, it doesn't make the news.

[Demeter]

6. If there were any successes, believe me, they would have released it

Eric Snowden has eaten their lunch, dinner and breakfast for the foreseeable future.

They CANNOT justify their costs, their unconstitutionality, nor their continued existence

UNLESS they are truly in the blackmail/extortion/industrial espionage racket, which is all they can do with their illegal dragnet activities.

[jeff47]

8. They don't have to justify anything to the public.

They have to justify their existence to Congress and the President. They get classified briefings. The public doesn't.

That's the major source of the disconnect between the public's perception of them and Congress's perception of them.

[Blue_Tires]

7. Quite simply because they ingest more information than they can effectively process and filter

even if they had a hundred times the staff and computing power...Remember it's not just the NSA, there is an entire CITY out by Dulles Airport which is made of nothing but *private* security/intelligence contractors/corporations and information brokers....

And naturally the more bloated the industry becomes, the more bogged down it becomes from inertia and the longer it takes for them to get anything productive accomplished...