'Top Secret America': New WaPo Series Indicts American Intelligence Community

The Washington Post series Top Secret America promises to be an indictment of the American intelligence community. They are offering up plenty of stories about bureaucratic inertia, duplication of efforts, and money wasted in an effort to keep America safe. The Post thrives in this kind of environment: taking shots. Good for them. That is part of their job. But entirely missed is that fact that we are likely to see more of this kind of bureaucratic inertia when it comes to intelligence rather than less… and the Washington Post and Obama Administration is propelling us precisely in that direction. Namely because they have both worked to take the best source of intelligence about pending attacks, interrogation of detainees, has been taken off the table.

As Marc Thiessen has recounted in his book Courting Disaster, and others have written about extensively, interrogations have yielded a bonanza of information about future attacks. But The Washington Post didn’t like interrogation and beat the drums about how it was bad policy. The Obama administration came in promising to halt these interrogations-and even read Miranda rights to suspects. So this effective intelligence tool has been largely cut off.

So what is the likely result? The intelligence community, tasked with preventing future attacks but with its hands tied, will continue to push for greater and greater resources in the hopes that throwing money at the problem will somehow fix this deficiency. We should expect more of the waste stories that the Post is now reporting. It’s called CYA.

Having first condemned interrogations, and now gone after intelligence contractors, one must ask: precisely what does the Washington Post propose as the best means to keep us safe? Don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer.

The Washington Post needs to stop simply trashing intelligence efforts and start providing suggested solutions to protecting this country. And don’t let them slip into their “we’re just journalists” mode. They seemed all too eager during the health care debate to explain what they saw as the answers to our “health care crisis.” Now put up some answers when it comes to intelligence. You are playing with our security.