Old political paradigms, like sagging, time-ravaged 80s hair metal bands on re-union tours, die hard.
Case in point? An appointee to Director of CIA (now a real, actual job title after the Community re-organization, unlike the previous 50 plus years) is of decisive importance. The real game is whither the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in a post-Warlord Imperial City.
The Warlord’s militarization of American policy and domestic culture ballooned the DoD/military’s budgetary preponderance in the Community. We won’t rehash all the Community re-organization pros and cons here again. Suffice to say that if the DNI is to serve as the manager of the Community — as the Director of Central Intelligence was envisioned in 1947 — DNI control = budgets = tasking = (in theory) a viable intelligence product cycle for consumers.
Can the DNI work? That’s still an open question. This macro strategic and domestic political objective transcends by far who sits at a desk in a radically diminished player.
