Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Obama's Ideas For Intelligence Community Reform (The New Republic)

The New Republic has an interesting article that contains some facts and speculation about how Senator Obama might try to change the intelligence community should he become president. The author, Barron YoungSmith, quoting the Washington Post states, said that Obama "would give the Director of National Intelligence--who currently serves at the pleasure of the president--a fixed term, similar to that of the Federal Reserve chairman." The intent behind the move is, the author claims, to make the intelligence community an "independent assessor of empirically-verifiable facts; that intelligence assessment is a non-ideological exercise in finding out what's true and what's not." Certainly worth the read...

2 comments:

Pat said...

I disagree with the author's suggestion that truth and fact can be achieved in intelligence work if the intrusion of policy is minimized or somehow eliminated. I think Obama seeks objectivity from his intelligence service. Colbert would object to this idea of truthiness as a potential outcome of the intelligence cycle.

Anonymous said...

Well that's entertaining. If you could be certain about intelligence it wouldn't be intelligence but fact. I see the jr senator has much to learn on the subject.