The Problem with American Intelligence

In my experience, this author is exactly right.

Let’s be honest about what it would mean to fix the problems Morell describes. CIA officers would have to get out of protected enclaves to spot and recruit the principal agents who, in turn, could find sources within the jihadist lair. Staying “inside the wire” isn’t just ineffective, it’s dangerous...

The agency has been wary of sending case officers onto the streets in war zones without bodyguards from the paramilitary Global Response Staff. But John Maguire, a veteran of many dangerous CIA assignments, says officers traditionally understood the rubric that “you will not be captured.” Under a special training program called Case Officer Defensive Action, operatives were taught to evade surveillance and, if that failed, shoot their way out of trouble. This course was abolished, Maguire says....

For decades, the CIA and the military have tried to fix intelligence problems by relying on National Security Agency surveillance. But the jihadists have gone to school on the leaks about U.S. capabilities and learned to mask their operations. Gathering intelligence against this 21st-century jihadist adversary, paradoxically, will require the kind of old-fashioned spying and resistance operations we associate with the CIA’s founding generation in the OSS.