King David

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/11/21/king_david




King David
BY AMY B. ZEGART | NOVEMBER 21, 2012

As the Petraeus scandal unfolded last week, we got a crash course on the Tampa social scene, General Allen's superhuman ability to write 20,000 to 30,000 pages of "potentially inappropriate" emails, and the romantic attraction of the six-minute mile. What we did not get was a serious discussion of whether it was a good idea to let a warrior-general run the CIA in the first place.

The real Petraeus story is about much more than a seedy tabloid sex scandal. It's about what he did on the job -- his brief tenure at Langley and the militarization of intelligence it represents.

To the outside world, intelligence and defense don't seem so different -- they're both vaguely national security-ish. But looks are deceiving. Military officers, as Samuel Huntington famously wrote, are professionals in the "management of violence." Intelligence, by contrast, is all about the management of information -- how to get it, analyze it, hide it from the wrong people, and share it with the right ones. The Pentagon's primary mission is to fight. The CIA's primary mission is to learn. Fighting and learning are related, but distinct, producing different organizational cultures, activities, and leadership requirements in the Pentagon and the CIA.

Three concerns arise whenever a military leader runs the agency. The first is the risk of tactical tilt -- that war-fighter directors will favor tactical military operations over long-term strategic assessments. Even with a $75 billion overall budget, U.S. intelligence agencies cannot do it all: Too much focus on today leaves us vulnerable to nasty surprises tomorrow.