December 20, 2004, 8:01 a.m.
The Death of Intelligence
By Mark Steyn

EDITOR'S NOTE: This column appears in the December 27, 2004, issue of National Review, in Mark Steyn's regular "Happy Warrior" spot.

Be honest. Do you think this intel "reform" bill will reform intel in any meaningful way — i.e., by reforming what's the near 100 percent failure rate of recent years down to, oh, 93, maybe 86 percent?

I don't, and I don't know anyone from the sharper end of the "intelligence community" who does, either. But who cares? The Democrats are in favor of it, because reshuffling the bureaucracy is their preferred way of demonstrating that they're not soft on national security. And that means the media are in favor of it, and so, as we're constantly told, are "the 9/11 families," as if it's some kind of national-security Megan's Law on which they have an inviolable proprietorial claim.

I don't think U.S. intelligence can be reformed in any meaningful way without abolishing the principal agencies and creating entirely new structures with none of the baggage. Like their fellow intelligence operative, Austin Powers, in The Spy Who Shagged Me, the CIA seems to have lost its mojo, and nothing proposed by Tom Kean and the other showboaters is likely to help get it back. And, in fairness to the Dems, the CIA's present incarnation as a seething swamp of obstructionist desk-jockeys is far more useful to them than the old cloak-and-dagger types ever were. Consider, for example, how many of Bush's election-year difficulties derived, one way or another, from Langley — WMD, lack thereof; uranium from Niger, Iraqi acquisition thereof; Joseph C. Wilson IV, absurd media over-inflation thereof; Valerie Plame, likewise thereof; August 6th 2001 Presidential Daily Brief, Bush's irresponsible ignoring thereof. Take the CIA-derived material out of the Democratic Bush-bashing of the last two years and there wouldn't be a lot left. The old Left were paranoid about the CIA. The new Left have cheerfully let the CIA make them paranoid about the president. They've finally found a CIA they can love...

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