"The watchword, really, of our national intelligence strategy is 'integration,' " Negroponte said in a luncheon speech at the National Press Club.

Intelligence Director Says His Office Is Making Progress

Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte defended his first year on the job yesterday by saying he has made progress in integrating the work of the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, adding it will take time "remaking a loose confederation into a unified enterprise."

Negroponte Cites 'Innovations' in Integrating Intelligence

For the U.S. intelligence community, the warning lights are blinking red.

Fix the Intelligence Mess

Economists who insist that "offshore outsourcing" is just a routine extension of international trade are overlooking how major a transformation it will likely bring -- and how significant the consequences could be. The governments and societies of the developed world must start preparing, and fast.

Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution? - Alan S. Blinder

With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an important moment of transition, says Yochai Benkler in this thought-provoking book. The phenomenon he describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today’s emerging networked information environment.

In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing—and shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront us and maintains that there is much to be gained—or lost—by the decisions we make today.

"In this book, Benkler establishes himself as the leading intellectual of the information age. Profoundly rich in its insight and truth, this work will be the central text for understanding how networks have changed how we understand the world. No work to date has more carefully or convincingly made the case for a fundamental change in how we understand the economy of society."
- Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law, Stanford Law School

The Wealth of Networks : How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

In this fourth and final excerpt from "Patriots Act: Voices of Dissent and the Risk of Speaking Out," Daniel Ellsberg talks about why he should have released the Pentagon Papers sooner, the dangers in following one's conscience, and his fear that the White House will use a terror attack as a "Reichstag fire to close down democracy."

Daniel Ellsberg: Still blowing the whistle

The top Republican and the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee have disagreed publicly about many things, but on one issue they have recently come together. Both are disquieted by the first-year performance of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

In New Job, Spymaster Draws Bipartisan Criticism

From Publishers Weekly
If necessity is the mother of invention, then the U.S. government's midwife for much of the Cold War was a small, brilliant and fiercely independent cadre of physicists who assembled each summer to make scientific reality out of pie-in-the-sky ideas. Ingenious problem-solvers to a man (they were, for decades, an all-boys club), "the Jasons" (a nickname of uncertain origin; it's either taken from the Greek myth, Jason and the Argonauts, or an acronym for the months of July through November) agreed to help the government-and cash its checks-on the condition that their work be free from political influence; if the Pentagon or White House proposed a project the group found absurd or ethically reprehensive, they would say so in their typically blunt, intellectually arrogant manner. However, the smartest people in the room weren't always the savviest, and the Jasons found their work manipulated by the military to suit its own purposes. At least that's the story as told by Finkbeiner, who spent two years interviewing dozens of Jasons past and present and doesn't hesitate to give them the benefit of every doubt that's arisen in the group's shadowy, five-decade history, particularly those dealing with the Jasons' involvement in Vietnam. Nonetheless, Finkbeiner offers a rare and valuable look at the intersection of world politics, military strategy and scientific discovery.

There's a recent Wired article about the book. You can read another review at NYSUN.

The Jasons : The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite, by Ann Finkbeiner

President Bush's new chief of staff said it was time to "refresh and reenergize the team" and told senior White House aides who might be thinking about quitting this year to go ahead and leave now.

Joshua B. Bolten laid down his directive at his first meeting with top presidential aides. Bolten replaced Andrew H. Card Jr., Bush's staff chief for the first five years of his presidency.

NYT coverage is New Chief of Staff Sends Message: The White House Exits Are Open.

"It's a smart, savvy move," said Kenneth M. Duberstein, a Republican lobbyist. "It's the symbolism and it's the message and it's the reality: they're serious about a revitalized, re-energized team."

Bush's Chief of Staff Invites Aides to Leave

This is a review of "First In".

The success of jawbreaker offers lessons for US intelligence, but it would be hard to codify them with regulations or formal procedures. Rather, it requires officials who can balance competing goals.

For example, intelligence organizations need to reward initiative and innovation by individuals, but they also need to ensure that the organizations do not lapse into confusion. They need to turn over staff so the young, the eager, and the ambitious can find opportunities, but they must also avoid simply forcing good people out. Organizations need to be efficient, but they must also tolerate seemingly unproductive supporting activities that might provide big payoffs in the future.

In short, taking advantage of these lessons requires that hard-to-quantify trait called leadership — the ability to identify clear strategic goals, articulate a vision to the troops, and then make the day-to-day decisions to strike a balance between competing objectives. No set of rules and procedures can guarantee success, but one can craft rules that give officials the authority and the responsibility they need to strike this balance and then hold them accountable for their decisions.

Left to themselves, bureaucracies reward people who master the established process — that is, good bureaucrats. The challenge for intelligence organizations is to do the routine stuff while also stirring up the pot enough for innovators and risk-takers to have a chance to do their magic. This depends as much on leadership and imagination as it does on regulation and statute. Without them, there will be fewer Gary Schroens in service of their country, and the country will be poorer for it.

What they really need is jazz.

About this book, Warren Bass, a former member of the 9/11 Commission staff, wrote in the Washington Post in 2005:

The author is relatively laconic about battlefield blunders, but he is far less forgiving about what he sees as a massive strategic error: the Bush administration's shift of its focus to Iraq at the expense of the country he helped liberate from the Taliban. The only way to get bin Laden's head on that pike, Schroen warns, is to win full cooperation from Pakistan's balky military, beef up the CIA presence in the region, bring back the indispensable Special Operations units that had been pulled out "as early as March 2002" to prepare for the Iraq invasion, and launch a relentless, coordinated manhunt on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani frontier. This is deeply informed advice, ignored at American civilians' peril.

A Hero's Tale, Review by Bruce Berkowitz