Part of the purpose of this super-secret arm of the Defense Department was to remove much of the traditional intelligence gathering responsibility from the CIA, increasingly seen by the neo-con right as hamstringed by the Constitution. Instead the branch will do the spywork, unhampered by Constitutional Congressional oversight, and the CIA will function as a PR instrument for the Executive branch, creating plausible arguments for unpopular (and perhaps illegal) foreign policy. As Seymour Hersh reported last January:
The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.Well, now even Congressional Republicans are becoming concerned about this bald-faced (and probably un-Constitutional) powergrab, which not only makes the CIA redundant, but also the new Directorate of National Intelligence under John Negroponte.
"We see indications that the D.O.D. is trying to create parallel functions to what is going on in intelligence, but is calling it something else," Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview.
Mr. Hoekstra said he believed that the purpose might be to obscure the extent of Pentagon intelligence activities and to keep them outside Mr. Negroponte's designated orbit.
Where are the "liberal media" Howie keeps talking about? Why doesn't anybody know about this? Where's the ruckus?
God, help us.
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