Recap

Intelligence Problems

CIA expert and best selling author, John Weisman debuted on the show to discuss U.S. intelligence services and the culture inside them. The intelligence community, he declared, has been in "horrible shape" for the last two decades, because of a "huge vacuum in leadership." Further, America is facing "asymmetrical" enemies such as al-Qaeda, who effectively employ low-tech methods that can evade our high tech solutions, he said.

We've been good at disrupting financial sources for al-Qaeda and capturing or killing some of their mid-level operatives, he noted. Yet organizations such as the CIA are weak when it comes to having agents who speak Arabic languages, and their sources for information are often second-hand, such as in the case of the supposed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he said.

Further, the CIA has been hampered by strictures imposed by Congress, stated Weisman, who called these limitations a series of "thou shall nots." For instance, after the Cold War, Russian recruits were no longer allowed to be hired. To fix some of the problems, he recommended that the CIA become less complex and more nimble. Instead of shifting field agents around every few years, they should stay in one location and become specialists, he said.

Related Articles

Earth's 'Bigger Cousin'

The discovery of the smallest extrasolar planet (about seven-and-a-half times the mass of Earth) was announced today. An artist's conception of this world is pictured on the left. It’s the first rocky world found to be orbiting a star similar to our sun, and as such "it's like Earth's bigger cousin," declared astronomer Paul Butler. Read more here.