Today's a NYT article on the difficulties that John Negroponte is having trying to coordinate national intelligence sounded awfully familiar, because I've been reading the aforementioned "History of U.S. Communications Intelligence During WWII: Policy and Administration." (If you must know, I'm doing some research for the VSNP [Very Secret Novel Project].) Basically it's a bureaucratic history of the cooperation, competition, and rivalries among all the agencies striving to produce intelligence during WWII. The Army (including the SSA which became the NSA), the Navy, the Coast Guard, the FBI, the OSS (forerunner of the CIA), and even the FCC were all battling with each other over who was responsible for what, and what information was given to whom. (The British had separate relationships with many of these agencies, and sometimes played one off against the other.) The Navy and the FBI hated each other, especially. I won't even begin to describe all the internal battles within each of these agencies.
"It's amazing we won the war," I told Debbie, the in-house historian.
"Well, if you think our squabbles were bad, the Nazis were worse. Their system was set up to divide power so no one would have too much."
So there you have it -- the intelligence war is decided by who has the worst bureaucracy.
| VSNP | NSA | CIA | WWII | Military | History | VSNP |
I know it's VS, but does the VSNP involve writing an N? Best of luck on the P, whatever the S is!
Comment #1 :: link :: February 28, 2006 09:26 PMIt's S, but not really VS. (Sort of tongue in cheek [TIC?] there.) But yes we are both writing an N. That part isn't S, but I wouldn't describe the whole N here -- got to watch out for those Dan Brown types who steal other peoples ideas and make lots and lots of money off of them!
Note to Mr. Brown's lawyers: TIC.
Comment #2 :: link :: March 1, 2006 10:31 AMFollowing this conversation reminds me of when Lisa Simpson and family were invited to Washington, DC due to her super smarts.
They were to get the "VIP" treatment, and the conversation went something like this (apologies to the die-hards who can get this dialogue perfect from memory, but I think the basics are here):
Homer: "Ah, 'VIP'. One question - what does the 'I' stand for?
Other guy: "Important"
Homer: "Ah yes, and what does the 'P' stand for?"
Other guy: "Person"
Homer: "Of course, now one final question - what does the 'V' stand for?"
Other guy: "Very"
Homer: "Yes, of course, now what does the 'I' stand for?"
Comment #3 :: link :: March 1, 2006 11:54 AM
