The quick pace of protests and two regime changes in the Middle East over the last month has stretched the U.S. intelligence community as it scrambles to keep up with events and maintain crucial counter-terrorism contacts, top intelligence officials said Wednesday.
Intelligence analysts had extensive reports on the tense economic and social conditions in the region, but were unable to predict when that volatile mix would ignite enough unrest to topple a government, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said during a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
“We are not clairvoyant,” Clapper said.
This is the logical consequence of Clinton administration policies that by 1995 or so had thoroughly gutted our human intel capabilities. The decision to [i]rely[/i] on electronic, technical, satellite, and other remote intelligence gathering methods to the near exclusion of traditional craft left us — and continues to leave us — largely ignorant of what’s actually going on.
That profound error of approach first became problematic (and obvious) back in ’01 when after Al Qaeda attacked we simply had no idea who their leaders were and where to go get them.
It is not fair to expect intel to have [i]predicted[/i] the attack, but in its aftermath we should already have known who’s who in the zoo, but we didn’t have a clue.
One of GW Bush’s important failings as President was that he didn’t go in there and clean out (and reform) our entire intel apparatus from top to bottom and restore a significant humint component to the way we attempt to understand what’s really going on.
We’re at least as ignorant about the Middle East as we were a decade ago, and that is utterly inexcusable.
Amen, Bart. Sen. Church started the emasculation of our covert intelligence agencies and it’s only gotten worse as squeamish politicians have increasingly abandoned humint for gadgets, however sophisticated and useful.
I think the important question is: what, if anything, is God doing in the Middle East?
Bismarck said, all a statesmen can do is leap and grab the hem of God’s robe, as He strides through history.