Repel The Intel Swell

Maybe it's a good thing that Obama has appointed Leon Panetta as director of the CIA. Looks like we need some experienced administrators to streamline the intelligence bureaucracy. From Eric Anderson at the Huffington Post:

Bloat and redundancy have turned the intelligence community into a full-time "make-work" program for approximately 70,000 federal employees and over 30,000 contractors. Why do we employ so many people to cull through so few secrets?

Consider the following. A recent RAND survey of intelligence analysts found many analysts were uncertain about their mission and how to deal with a National Intelligence Priorities Framework that identifies 150 key targets, countries or issues. How does one identify a top priority when confronted with a list of 150? Further, RAND discovered the analysts felt caught in a maelstrom of demand for current reporting (analysis of events in the last 24 hours), buffeted by continuing investigations and reforms, and perhaps most troubling, largely ignorant of their counterparts at other agencies.

The establishment of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) with a staff of over 1,700, has done little to remedy these problems. In fact, it is sorely tempting to conclude the DNI is little more than another layer of bureaucracy in a veritable sea of managers. The number of intelligence analysts--including contractors--with the highest level of security clearances can be estimated at approximately 30,000 and for each productive intelligence professional, there are at least three support or managerial staffers.

That's a significant support ratio, particularly when you figure most intelligence analysts are college graduates or highly-evaluated military personnel. Do we really need all that supervision? What are we getting from all this overhead? Certainly not efficiency.