The job nobody wants

President Barack Obama last week fired his intelligence chief, Dennis Blair, without an immediate successor teed up. People familiar with the matter said the White House had expected Mr. Blair would stick around until a replacement was found. Mr Blair declined.

Expected? Is this any way to run a government? It smells of incompetence. The job of DNI was not properly structured, nor its job description defined, leaving the DNI in governmental bureaucratic limbo. But to fire a symbolically important figure and not have a replacement ready is to hand the opposition a bludgeon, and to look incompetent.

Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta turned down a White House offer to become the next director of national intelligence. Former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, co-chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, was another, they said. A person familiar with Mr. Panetta's thinking said he "finds the job of CIA director rewarding and challenging, and that's where he plans to stay." Mr. Hagel was traveling Wednesday and couldn't be reached for comment, an aide said.

 In the age of cellphones Mr. hagel couldn't be found? Perhaps he didn't want to be found.

"Anybody in their right mind would turn the job down," Missouri Sen. Kit Bond, the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, said Wednesday after speaking to National Security Adviser James Jones about the post. Mr. Bond said the post of director of national intelligence lacks authority and presidential support.


Oops, even a Republican thinks so.

Congress established the job in 2004 as a result of the findings of the 9/11 Commission, which identified shortcomings in the coordination of the country's disparate spy agencies. While the intelligence director enjoys titular authority over all intelligence agencies, in practice past directors have had limited control over budget and personnel and found it difficult to impose their will on agencies such as the CIA. Mr. Blair, a retired admiral, was the third director in five years. Intelligence officials said Wednesday that the director's job description was too vague to attract qualified candidates.

Failures

A Senate investigation into the botched Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest Airlines jet found 14 intelligence failures that prevented the government from stopping alleged bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before he boarded the Detroit-bound flight in Amsterdam. No U.S. government agency sees itself as responsible for tracking and identifying terrorism threats, and information-sharing technology among intelligence agencies "is not adequate," according to a Senate intelligence committee report released Tuesday.

8 years after 9/11 the US government still does not have a streamlined, efficient intelligence service. Billions of dollars have been spent on personnel, hardware and systems, two military wars are being fought, and different bureaucracies within the federal government still will not cooperate with one another to defend the Homeland?

Petraeus: Times Square bomber likely acted alone

On 7 May this item was released by the AP.

Gen. David Petraeus says the Times Square bombing suspect apparently operated as a "lone wolf" who did not work with other terrorists. The general who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan tells The Associated Press that alleged bomber Faisal Shahzad was inspired by militants in Pakistan, but didn't necessarily have direct contact with them. Authorities say Shahzad told investigators he went to a terror training camp in Pakistan, but they have yet to confirm that. Shahzad is a U.S. citizen, accused of an attempted terror attack nearly a week ago in New York's Times Square. He was caught late Monday night trying to leave the country

Immediately, my question was: how does he know? He's military. Why is he saying that? Does a military get the right to make policy judgments? Is this for future use, if the General decides to run for public office.

Now that the government has said that it is probable that Shahzad had collaborators, what does the General think?