National Security is Everyone's Business

April 24th, 2024 | 1:40 AM ET

Considering a Domestic Intelligence Service

Posted: July 5th, 2016

By John Sipher

John Sipher worked for the CIA’s clandestine service for 28 years. He is now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a co-founder of Spycraft Entertainment. John served multiple overseas tours as Chief of Station and Deputy Chief of Station in Europe, Asia, and in high-threat environments. He is the recipient of CIA’s Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal.

After the San Bernardino terrorist attack there were the usual cries “to do something” to better protect the nation. We will surely again hear similar concerns in the face of the brutal massacre in Orlando.  To this point, however, not much, if anything, has happened.  However, another domestic terrorist attack—especially during a Presidential election cycle— will certainly lead to increased calls to reform our domestic counterterrorism (CT) and intelligence systems.

Unfortunately, the way we tend to make big and important change is to wait until it’s too late, overreact to a crisis, slap together a hasty bill of available options, re-order some organizational blocks, and then have a politically-inspired fight that produces a solution that satisfies no one.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Subscriber+

Categorized as:UncategorizedTagged with:

Related Articles

Search

Close