Originally Posted by
polonius
I'm the last person to defend the Bush administration or the "intelligence" community, but turf-consciousness and stove-piping are, in my experience, pretty much universal human tendencies. Nobody wants to do their job so well it goes away, even if that job is ending terrorism.
I wasn't blaming Bush for it at all. If anything, it was the "post 9/11 world" that was trying to force agencies into sharing information. The IC was supposed to be set up for competitive analysis so different points of view about the same issue could be brought to the table. The theory was to get the big picture and prevent an agency from keeping the blinders on.
But theory and practice are two different things. Each agency has its own scope and it's quite possible to share information to accomplish everyone's purpose without compromising the turf each sits on. Bureaucrats just don't see it that way. They'd rather sit on the information and not share it when someone else could use it in a different way to help them. It was insanely stupid. I ended up leaving over stupid policy battles: people either wanted to protect their turfs at all costs (and often to the detriment ot the nation) or people were too lazy to do the work necessary to get the job done if they weren't opposed to the idea.
I remember a few years ago I wanted to compare something between my employer at the time and our two main competitors, so I had to get some info about all three. With a phone call or two, I got the info on our competitors, just by ringing up their customer care line. Two weeks later, our internal unit was still arguing with me, demanding to know "why I needed this information" and "what was it going to be used for". Same thing everywhere else.
Sounds like you should have called your customer service line.
