If he is right, I think the decision to deceive the Soviets in the way we did was highly unquestionable, if not disastrous, in the final analysis. Most of us think primarily of things like terrorism or armed conflict when we think of national security. The Post, as it happens, published a story this past Sunday saying the National Security Council now views AIDS as a national security threat. It seems as if every time a Commission comes out with findings, nothing changes. The playing field has, in some very important way that we're all still coming to grips with, been leveled, and the advantage the spy agencies enjoyed for many years has been eroded.
Open sources threaten their reason to exist.
I read recently criticism of the Intelligence Community that it is too insular and that its analysts fail to utilize outside experts. It recognizes, especially in areas like economic analysis, that it has to be much more involved with non-secret, outside experts. And, as I said, it is taking steps to factor the thinking of those experts into its work. I CIA analyst cannot just pick up the phone and dial up and expert at Harvard and have a conversation. There are a number of intelligence reformers out there who basically don't think the analytic side of the CIA, the Directorate of Intelligence, needs to be secret at all.