Interview on Intel

Slate's got an interview with Bob Inman (I got this from kottke) - '[formerly] director of the National Security Agency, vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, director of Naval Intelligence, and deputy director of Central Intelligence Agency...In the 1990s, he was asked by Bill Clinton to run the CIA as director and also offered the job of secretary of defense. He declined both offers to enter the private sector.' His views:

Reasons for 9/11: intel budget cuts and the wall between the FBI and CIA.

We need spearation between intelligence collectors and intelligence analysts. The analysts, in the current set-up, can't resist the temptation to try to make the collectors look good.

There's a lot of ugly politics in intel and defense, including leaks.

Intel would get back notes on info they sent up that said 'Why don't you withdraw that? It's potentially politically embarrassing.'

Rumor: 'Rumsfeld, as chief of staff, had persuaded President Ford to appoint George H.W. Bush as director of Central Intelligence, assuming that that got rid of a potential competitor for the presidency...He was looking forward. You know, Ford was going to run in '76, so Rumsfeld had his eye on '80.'

Bill Casey was slimy, including having held Oliver North's strings.

'Rumsfeld didn't get the job in Defense through personal loyalty to Bush; he got it because Cheney was his sponsor.'

'If Rumsfeld were to be there for the next four years there will be a lot of my military colleagues who will be very unenthusiastic about it.'

'[Wolfowitz and the neocons] don't want to take the blame. … [T]hey were willing to take credit for things earlier; they don't want to take blame.'