Who watches the watchmen?
Other, sneakier, watchmen do. Thursday, a CNN article said the government has announced the creation of a new, more clandestine organization to be henceforth known as the National Clandestine Service (NCS). See? They're very clandestine. It says so right in the name.
This new, sneakier organization will oversee the operations of the 15 other federal government agencies involved in spying - including the FBI. This is all a result of the findings of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, or Silberman-Robb commission, which was formed in 2004 to investigate the intelligence failings before the Iraq War. The commission's report prompted the CIA to create this new, overreaching branch of stealthy people, in order to coordinate stealthy people around the world.
"This is another positive step in building an intelligence community that is more unified, coordinated and effective and is better positioned to meet the increasingly complex intelligence challenges of the future," John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, said in the CNN article.
This only makes good sense. With the number of Americans rapidly increasing, it stands to reason that it will become more and more difficult to stick cameras in each of our houses and - clandestinely! - wiretap all of our phones. For our safety, of course.
The head of the NCS, whose name is secret, will be charged with setting national standards for government spy tradecraft and training, and this person will report directly to CIA Director Porter Goss.
"The NCS will serve as the national authority for integration, coordination, de-confliction," - no, I'm not kidding - "and evaluation of human intelligence operations across the entire intelligence community," Negroponte said in a press release.
So they're a community? Like the gay community or the gaming community? Do they get tax cuts for being shady people? Maybe they will in the near future.
According to the commission's report, the intelligence "community" should be completely transformed, because it is "fragmented, loosely managed and poorly coordinated."
I dread finding out what they intend to turn it into.
Maybe this is just paranoia, but these people are sounding more and more like the men in black hats that paranoid people have been predicting for years. A super-super-secret organization whose leader is unknown. An organization that has control over all other spy organizations.
Just keep your eyes open; that's all I'm saying. We may see some very shady changes going on in the next few months.
Now we know who watches the watchmen, but who watches the watchers?
Does anybody?
Write to Jonathan at tenement_cellar@msn.com
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