For more than a year now, there has been a deluge of stories and op-ed pieces about the failure of the American intelligence community to detect or prevent the September 11, 2001, massacre. Nearly all of these accounts have expressed astonishment at the apparent incompetence of America's watchdogs. I'm astonished that anyone's astonished. What strikes me about this article is that there is no need for the government to set up such an entity. Why do you have to be a state? Stratfor is the model here. Start a company. Sell the intelligence. Sell it to the US government. Don't sell it to people you don't like. Governments are very risk adverse. The reason you are having so much trouble changing the culture there is because people are AFRAID that if they think for themselves rather then following the time honored methods they will fail and people will die. People trust established methods and they fear the uncertainty this sort of thinking brings. For these reasons such an effort is far more likely to work if it is established outside of the control of the government, where risk taking is OK and fear will not dominate decision making. 'Why Spy?' | John Perry Barlow in Forbes ASAP | 
