Word: zegart
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National-security experts like UCLA's Amy Zegart say that since 9/11, intelligence agencies have increased the amount of information they circulate to one another, but that can cause confusion as well as clarity. "There's a lot of paper shuffling, not true integration," Zegart says. And yet, some critical pieces of info apparently were not shared: the State Department neglected to alert the NCTC that Abdulmutallab had a valid U.S. visa...
...This was a symbolic fight - it's about who's in charge of the playground," says Amy Zegart, a UCLA professor and national-security expert. "Blair was trying to show who's boss, and Panetta was trying to protect the power of an agency that's going through a difficult time...
...Zegart, a UCLA professor and national security expert, says the differences are more fundamental: the agencies have divergent missions and requirements. In any interrogation, she says, "they're looking for very different things: for the military, it's what's over the next hill; for the Bureau, it's evidence that will hold up in a courtroom; for the CIA, it's information that gives the President decision advantage." Reconciling all these interests may be impossible...
Nevertheless, many CIA watchers take the opposite view. Panetta's handling of the secret program was "the one bright lining in this whole business," says Amy Zegart, a national security expert and professor of public policy at UCLA. By immediately shutting down the program, he "signaled that he has turned a new page at the CIA," she adds...
...think he doesn't fully understand the intelligence business, and that hurts," says a former high-ranking operations official. An intel veteran, he argues, would have recognized the program for what it was - little more than an idea - and not rushed to inform Congress. But others, like Zegart, say Panetta's political chops may have saved the agency from even greater criticism. In any case, she says, "we don't know the counterfactual: How much worse would it have been [for the CIA] if Panetta was not the director?" (See the top 10 unfortunate political one-liners...