Spook King

Later this year, Congress will appove a budget for a new office. I'm not talking furniture, here, but the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), also referred to as the National Director of Intelligence. Whatever you want to call him, and whomever it is that ends up with the post, we are looking at a new world in Intelligence.

Condi Rice and Porter Goss have already given signs that they're loading up their guns for hunting weasels, and the improvements to PATRIOT approved in '04 by Congress are going to start having effects this next year. It's going to be a good year if you’re on the side of the angels, a bad one if you're a mole in the CIA, FBI, or State.

The DNI is the wild card, and a powerful one. His job description, if one were to write it up, is going to look like J. Edgar Hoover's in-house control, mixed with William Donovan's to-do list, topped off with a health dose of Rumsfeld's pragmatism. Come to think of it, wouldn't it be a hoot, if Dubya answered the calls for Rummy to leave DoD, by making Rumsfeld the DNI?