Consider all the money we spend annually on intelligence in the United States (around $80.1 in FY10); now consider the fact that Washington was caught flatfooted on Egypt. It should prompt you to question the efficacy of our intelligence apparatus–even after the massive post-September 11 re-organization. Last fall, Paul Pillar wrote an outstanding article in which he argued that the reorganization (and establishment of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI)) was more of a knee-jerk political response than a value added restructuring of a bloated enterprise.
The real deficiency is a failure to communicate and share information. “Information sharing” is a buzz word these days among the various executive departments and agencies, but the reality is that genuine information sharing…