Thursday, August 10, 2006

Captain's Quarters: Did Pork Push Out Counter-Intelligence Officials?

Captain's Quarters looks at the WaPo article, Counterintelligence Officials Resign, and asks, "Did Pork Push Out Counter-Intelligence Officials?":

...The creation of a new bureaucracy lends itself to this [the Defense Department's Counterintelligence Field Activity agency] kind of expansion, and also to the temptation to use this as a lever for legislative favors. As we noted last month, [former Congressman 'Duke'] Cunningham exploited secret budgets to pay off his contributors, especially those who made special, personal contributions to Cunningham. Burtt [the individual discussed in the WaPo article] used a retired general employed by one of the firms implicated in the Cunningham case, MZM, as a consultant -- and MZM wound up with millions of dollars in CIFA contracts.

The simultaneous departures of Burtt and Hefferon should raise eyebrows in Congress. If the description of this agency is correct, CIFA's funding and budding empire should also get some attention. How many of these umbrella agencies do we need in our intelligence community? And why are we building these expensive bureaucracies instead of spending the money on field operations?

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