Clap On, Clap Out
By Larry Johnson on May 14, 2006 at 1:41 PM in Current Affairs
by
Larry C Johnson
Meet retired General James Clapper. He represents an example of Don
Rumsfeld doing the right thing (see, I’m not a Rummy basher). Clapper, according to an AP story written by Katie Shrader,
is retiring. But friends in the intel community tell me he is being
forced out. One of his departing "gifts" was to spill the beans about
the National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency (i.e., NGA) taking pictures of American soil. So, the Bush
Administration is collecting domestic phone numbers, checking out our
library activities, and snapping pictures of us from the sky. Not much
left to the imagination.
Before joining NGA, Clapper presided
over the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). A controversial tenure. My
friends who experienced Clapper first hand tell me:
Jim Clapper may have been the worst director ever of the DIA. An
Air force tactical intelligence officer, Clapper knew nothing whatever
of intelligence support to policy making when he arrived at DIA as its Director in 1992. His entire world of work up to then had been made up of target photographs and anti-aircraft weapons. He was completely unfamiliar with the fact that DIA
was a major participant in the formulation of national intelligence
estimates, and when he found out that was true he said that he “had no
intention of participating.” Accordingly he re-structured DIA’s
analytic force, which had been one of the finest in the world away from
such categories as; countries XXX, counter-terrorism, economics,
advanced weapons developments, Middle East, Islam, etc. to categories such as; tanks, anti-aircraft rockets, bombs, etc. This removed from the national analytic capability a major asset which would have been invaluable in the period before 9/11. As a result of his destruction of their career fields, hundreds of the most senior and esteemed analysts retired early. DIA
has been trying to re-construct the fine capability that it had at the
end of the First Gulf War ever since Clapper left the job of Director.
While he was director Clapper spent much pf his time politicking and scheming to take away from the Director of the CIA any and all moneys that were budgeted for any support to the armed forces. He
wanted to make himself “Director of Military Intelligence,” a new
title, so that he could receive his fourth star as a full general. He was defeated in this attempt by the then DCI James Woolsey.
Clapper wanted to make DIA
a budget and management place so that all the analytic work would be
done in the JICs that he created in the combatant commands and so that
he could portray DIA as the office through which he managed everything. To that end he ripped most of the analytic slots and the money to support them out of DIA
and sent it to the combatant commands to create the JICs which have
never done good analytic work because they are too far away from the
center of power and information. This was all part of his strategy for personal advancement.
It remains to be seen whether Clapper’s legacy at NGA will rival his time at DIA. You have to wonder if he has any pictures of naked sunbathers in the United States taken from satellites overhead? Good luck in retirement General.
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by 
* (Included in the 
* 
.by David Fredosso who wrote 2008's 
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