United Press International: DoD breaks with Bush over intel reform

DOD Breaks With White House:

And, as usual when this happens, DOD is right.

The most senior U.S. military official has publicly broken with the White House in the ongoing controversy over reforming U.S. intelligence.

In a letter to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Gen. Richard Myers makes it clear that he does not support the White House-backed proposal to give a new national spy chief budgetary control over three key intelligence agencies inside the Department of Defense.

"The budgets of the combat support agencies should come up from the agencies through the secretary of defense," reads the letter, signed Thursday by Myers and obtained by United Press International.

There's a whole lot of good reasons for this. Reason number one, though, is that the CIA has been wrong about absolutely everything from the Soviet missle counts, to the collapse of the Soviet Union, to... well, take your pick.

Having DIA as a fully independent intelligence apparatus makes a lot of sense. Bad practices in a "unified" command mean bad practices in every intelligence product produced by the US. Having competing views is utterly healthy in the intelligence world. We would be fools to undo this aspect of our intel setup.