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June
7, 2002 9:00 a.m.
What’s
Up
The
reorganization speech.
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resident
Bush was really in a hurry to get through his speech last night, I wonder
why. It's the first time I've seen him in that rushed mode. Was he uncomfortable
with it?
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Anyway,
since I like him a lot I want to look at the positive side first. Above
all, it wasn't as bad as I had feared. He says he doesn't want a new bureaucracy,
even as he creates one. He says he isn't going to ask for more money —
it's just moving boxes around into different locations, presumably. None
of us Washington people believes that, we know that new agencies obey
a higher authority: Parkinson himself. But still, there is a very handsome
pony under all that merde, and that's bringing together the intel
in one central place so that analysts with different skills and different
cultures will be forced to talk to one another. That is a very good thing.
It's what Casey did at CIA in the mid-eighties when he created the Counterterrorism
Center, and it certainly improved things there. This will help on the
domestic side. I haven't seen the details yet, but there doesn't seem
to be any CIA reorganization, so it's FBI and state and local things.
I presume that Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will be in there, which is
good because they need adult supervision. I don't understand why FEMA
is there, but I'm sure I will by noon today.
This
is all provided that Ridge really leads, of which there has been no evidence
to date.
So
okay, it's not a terrible thing and there are some good things in it,
so if he feels so strongly about it and it calls the Democrats' bluff,
so be it.
But
what worries me — what has worried me from September 12 — is
that he has yet to call anyone to account. It would be nice for him to
announce a compassionate purge of the failed agencies as he folds them
into Homeland Security. Without that, the bureaucrats will not believe
that anything serious has happened.
And
they'll be right.
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