By CKR
Q. How is the CIA like the Los Alamos National Laboratory?
A1. Both have an independent knowledge base, and a dedication to maintaining it.
This is irritating to those who spin policy out of ideology.
Today’s New York Times says that a memo from Porter Goss said "As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies," but it seems to have left out the other side: that if the CIA doesn’t do policy, then the employees do not identify with, support or champion the administration and its policies. Neutral down the middle.
You want to get Bin Laden? You need to know where he is and where he’s likely to be. You need to analyze his habits and his strategies. Michael Scheuer and a group at the CIA were given the assignment of gathering this information. They overstepped into policy when they urged particular actions. At some point, somebody in the Agency got frustrated enough to let Scheuer publish a book with some good analysis and some prescriptions for action.
A policymaker and manager could deal with this by taking the information while settling down that urge toward policy. Information-gathering and analysis will always slide over into policy. Policy-makers have to weigh the consequences of action or inaction and then deal with them.
A2. Both are secret societies that exhibit the good and bad effects of secret societies.
Growing a dysfunctional culture is one of the bad effects, and there seems to be some of this in both places. It gives a handle for change to those who want change.
Rumor has it that Porter Goss’s aides, who had earlier been discharged from the Agency, have hit lists that are now being acted upon.
Los Alamos is still writing up self-criticisms and other tools of organizational reconstruction, six months after the shutdown that was supposed to last two.
The Soviets had an ideological problem with Darwin’s theory of evolution: it seemed to owe too much to Adam Smith. A fellow named Trofim Lysenko came up with a politically acceptable theory that the ideologues liked better. Biological science in Russia is still catching up to the rest of the world.
We’re not seeing Lysenko purges at the CIA and Los Alamos. Yet.
Recent Comments