On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 1:15 PM, The Doctor <drwho@virtadpt.net> wrote:
On 08/12/2013 10:25 AM, Kyle Maxwell wrote:
Or that different departments / teams have different enforcement priorities, or that they don't cooperate well with each other...
Sometimes the right hand and left hand don't know what each other are doing.
Sometimes the right and left hands are on entirely different bodies on different sides of the continent.
In my limited experience with the spook agencies, this understates the case. The left hand refuses to share a thing, making the smug claim "We're listeners, not talkers." The right hand is working to stab the left in the back and take control of the two fingers it thinks are doing anything useful. The left hand is doing the same to the right. I could go on, but I think the analogy is starting to fall apart. Eugen Leitl pasted up an article recently, describing the delusions, incompetence, dirty dealing, and dirty characters involved in Britain's MI5. That matched pretty well what I know of my own knowledge of US operations. Please note that my experience was entirely on the US Army side of things, as a low-ranking officer. I was mostly insulated from political considerations except for budget battles. However, I dealt with other groups and I kept my eyes and ears open and couldn't help noticing things.