Hot Shots: Beltway Drones Edition

Beltway Battle of the Drones: Say you’re a military kind of guy, and you’d like to wrest control of the multi-billion dollar drone program run by the CIA and associated spy agencies (as reported Tuesday by The Daily Beast's Daniel Klaidman)? What better way to boost your case than to leak a report saying the spooks are spending too much time and money on the drone program and paramilitary operations, and not enough on intelligence gathering in the Middle East, China and other hotspots? Especially when it might well be true?

So it went Wednesday when a report from a “panel of White House advisors” that included now-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and former Nebraska Sen. David L. Boren, a onetime chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was obtained by The Washington Post’s Greg Miller. The panel, according to Miller, found that “the roles of the CIA, the National Security Agency and other spy services had been distorted by more than a decade of conflict.” To some, the squabble might seem as just more bickering among the services. Not to Boren, who asked, (sensibly, we think), "in the long run, what’s more important to America: Afghanistan or China?”

Romney's 3 am Phone Call

Arguably the most memorable political ad during Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign for the White House was the “3 AM phone call.” 

“It’s 3 am and your children are safe and asleep.  But there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing. Something's happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call. Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders. Knows the military. Someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world ... Who do you want answering the phone?”

If the last 36 hours are any guide, you don’t want Mitt Romney answering that phone. In fact, you don’t want him anywhere near the White House situation room, ever.

You do want Barack Obama picking up that phone. For if Obama’s surprising performance over the past three-plus years as commander in chief is any guide, he’s calm, cool, collected--and effective--in a crisis, no matter what you think of his domestic policies or drone strikes.

Romney, in contrast, is an excitable lad. He’s exactly what you don’t want in a commander-in-chief, which is to say, he’s impetuous, not to mention shallow.

Military Oversight Chairman Snyder Aims at the Fog of War

When Rep. Vic Snyder, the six-term Democrat from Arkansas, begins to talk about the shortsighted military policies of the Bush administration in Iraq, I half-expect to see the tight-lipped outrage of the Vietnam veteran he is. But last week, the chairman of the revitalized House Armed Service Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee responded with the calm detachment of a physician — which he also is.

CQ Politics(06/06/2008)

Rent-a-Spy

Three quarters of the U.S. intelligence budget now goes to outside contractors, Tim Shorrock says in an important new book. And that ain't good. A review of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.

The Washington Post(05/29/2008)

Pentagon Intelligence Comes Off as M*A*S*H in New Book

Anyone who’s spent time in uniform will recognize the stories that A.J. Rossmiller tells in “Still Broken: A Recruit’s Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, From Baghdad to the Pentagon.” His DIA has its own versions of Hawkeye, B.J., Colonel Potter, and of course, Frank Burns.

CQ Politics(02/08/2008)

Wake Me When the Apocalypse Starts

So, the apocalypse seems to be drawing nigh, but what are the details?

As it turns out, while CNN was showcasing fundamentalist Christian authors hawking books about the “end of days,” the Pentagon was imagining a scenario that looked awfully close to the real thing.
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CQ Homeland Security (8/04/2006)