Intelligence Agencies

Re " 'Spy Czar' Isn't the Answer," editorial, July 21: The argument over whether there should be an intelligence "czar" is useless and irrelevant. The question should be: Why do we need 15 intelligence agencies? For decades, none of these agencies seemed to have had a clue about what's going on in the world, starting with the overthrow of the shah, through the collapse of [the Soviet Union], right down to Sept. 11. These expensive bureaucracies have been spectacularly inept.

Re "How U.S. Fell Under the Spell of 'Curveball,' " Nov. 20 I was appalled to read about the state of affairs at our intelligence agencies. To buy into an ex-convict taxicab driver's account about Iraq's biological weapons and using his uncorroborated theory to drag a nation into an unnecessary war is unfathomable. I only wish they conducted their "exhaustive investigation" not postwar but prewar. VEENA MATHEW Corona Some call it "whipping a dead horse," or "shooting yourself in the foot," or "a self-fulfilling prophecy."

The CIA turned 60 last week, but there wasn't much cause for celebrating. The storied spy agency has become a shell of its former self -- demoted beneath a director of national intelligence, dogged by criticism and bureaucratic turf wars, and demoralized by the fact that its glory days (which were never so glorious) are fading fast.

The FBI disclosed to a presidential board that it was involved in nearly 800 violations of laws, regulations or policies governing national security investigations from 2001 to 2008, but the government won't provide details or say whether anyone was disciplined, according to a report by a privacy watchdog group. The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation sued under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain about 2,500 documents that the FBI submitted to the President's Intelligence Oversight Board.

Facing new pressure to make sense of the international drug trade, the nation's intelligence agencies have so far come to only one consensus: Not enough is known. The Bush Administration's solution? Create another agency. Thus, from the alphabet soup of government spy shops--CIA, DIA and NSA; DEA, CNC and C3I; even FINCEN, EPIC and INR--may soon emerge a new abbreviation: NDIC, the National Drug Intelligence Center.

The commission that investigated U.S. intelligence agencies and what they know -- or mostly, do not know -- about weapons of mass destruction produced a 600-page report Thursday that has something for everyone, and at least one dubious conclusion. Led by Republican federal Judge Laurence H. Silberman and Democratic former U.S. Sen. Charles S.

A wave of espionage cases this year, culminating in the arrests of four people on three separate spying charges during the last five days, represents the fruits of a decade's strengthening of U.S. counterintelligence abilities, some intelligence officials now say.

U.S. intelligence agencies weighed seriously the possible impact of using nuclear weapons against China during the Korean War and after the French defeat in Indochina, according to newly declassified CIA files. "If atomic weapons were used, the Communists would recognize the employment of these weapons as indicative of Western determination to carry the Korean War to a successful conclusion," the CIA and other intelligence agencies concluded in June, 1953.

A year into a broad overhaul of U.S. intelligence operations, top officials said Thursday they have gained greater confidence in their intelligence assessments, in part by incorporating dissenting views into their analysis. In a rare, on-the-record briefing, 10 top intelligence officials said that because of improved coordination through a new national intelligence office, they are confident they can avoid the mistakes they made in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

Re "Bush Defends Reasons for War," July 13: I'm not sure how anyone in the executive or legislative branches can seriously blame the intelligence gatherers for the faulty data upon which many of them now claim their decision-making on a preemptive invasion of Iraq was predicated. If our intelligence agencies were unable to uncover a long-planned, well-coordinated attack within these very United States, why would anyone think these agencies could provide information with an acceptable level of certainty about existing weapons in a country across the world to which access was largely cut off?