Originally Posted by
Bart
OK. Fair enough. But please don't confuse inter-agency rivalry for disrespect.
OK, sounds disrespectful to me, but I'll go along.
Originally Posted by
Bart
<snip>Bottom line: the FBI is indeed good at its job. As with any agency, I've seen good FBI special agents and I've seen bad.
OK, I'll take that as your current word.
Originally Posted by
Bart
As for the CIA, my prejudice is a bit more pronounced and my contempt a bit more harsh. But if I set aside my emotions, I clearly understand why some of their field officers operate in the manner that they do. The culture clash is that CIA outsiders find themselves in tough situations when they must trust their CIA contact with absolutely no guarantees that trust is well-placed. Different than the military culture where you don't necessarily have to like the guy you're working with, but you know you can certainly trust him when the ju-ju turns bad. But the CIA is good at what it does. I just don't approve of some of the back-stabbing methods used by their field operators. Compared to my peers, I've had more positive experiences dealing with the Comedians. However, I think that's because I always kept one eye on the bad guys and the other on my contact. I tried to never get stuck holding the bag.
Complicated, but OK.
Originally Posted by
Bart
There are other players, but these are the primary ones I've had the most dealings with. And while I've been out of the family business for some time now, I most certainly hope things are better in terms of inter-agency cooperation. My 20+ year experiences still leave me somewhat skeptical, if not downright cynical. But in terms of each agency performing their jobs, I've never indicated that they cannot.
Unfortunately, that leads us to the newest poor cousin, the TSA. In all seriousness, it is not clear to me, and to many others, what value the TSA has brought to the TLA table. TSA is a backstop to all the other TLAs. In six years, what have they done besides cost the US economy millions in indirect costs (most direct costs would have been spent even if TSA didn't exist).
Any direct benefits have to be put on the books as the term-of-art "goodwill".