Eyes Wide Shut

Gabriel Schoenfeld, in today's Wall Street Journal, makes an exellent case for our recent intelligence failures being a consequence of attitude rather than resources or management structure.

The CIA's hierarchy apparently developed a Vietnam era "blame America first" philosophy that, difficult as this is to believe, is sympathetic to Osama Bin Laden and his fellow terrorists.

In addition, during the Clinton years, "promoting diversity" became a higher priority than intelligence gathering.

By 1995, under John Deutch, Mr. Clinton's second director, the effort to remake the agency in the name of "diversity" had intensified markedly. Mr. Deutch began his tenure by advancing a "strategic diversity plan" and installing a 40-year-old Pentagon official, Nora Slatkin, in the agency's executive-director slot to carry it out. Ms. Slatkin soon formed a Human Resources Oversight Council aimed "at improving the agency's efforts to hire and provide career development for women, minorities, the deaf, and people with disabilities." The need for such measures, according to HROC, was clear from its own study of shortfalls in "recruiting, hiring, and advancement":

Minorities in the agency's workforce--particularly Hispanics and Asian-Pacific employees--remain underrepresented when compared with Civilian Labor Force (CLF) guidelines determined by the 1990 census. Hispanic employees in FY 1995 accounted for 2.3 percent of the agency workforce; CLF guidelines indicate Hispanics nationwide account for 8.1 percent of the nation's workforce. Asian-Pacific employees comprised only 1.7 percent of the agency's workforce; CLF guidelines indicate Asian-Pacific minorities comprise 2.8 percent of the nation's workforce.

To reduce these statistical discrepancies, Ms. Slatkin declared "a goal that one out of every three officers hired in fiscal years 1995-97 be of Hispanic or Asian-Pacific origin." She moved no less aggressively to alter the ethnic and sexual complexion of the CIA's higher levels. In just six months, she was able to report, "42 percent of officers selected for senior assignments ha[d] been women or minorities."

Inevitably, working relationships were affected by these shifts. According to Ms. Mahle, some male officers became "very supportive of the diversity program and ma[d]e a point of mentoring female officers under their command." But there was also "a perception among some male officers that the CIA now use[d] a quota system for assignments and promotions." And this perception, she adds, was "probably true."

Read the whole thing. I cannot do it justice with snippets and summaries. I will only say that this makes even more comfortable with Porter Goss's purge at the CIA.