https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/28/fbi-diagnosed-with-cia-disease/
The Justice Department’s inspector general this month reprimanded the FBI for the manner in which it recruits and supervises its “confidential human sources.” To the layman, this seems about technicalities. In fact, it shows that one of the CIA’s deadliest dysfunctions now infects the FBI as well.
This disease consists of choosing and rejecting sources for the purpose of indulging the agencies’ and their leaders’ private agendas rather than to further intelligence work on the public’s behalf.
Necessarily, the language of the inspector general’s November 19 report is vague: “Ineffective management and oversight of confidential sources.” This means the FBI has failed to use “adequate controls” in its validation of human sources, which has resulted in “jeopardizing FBI operations, and placing FBI agents, sources, subjects of investigation, and the public in harm’s way.”
The inspector general’s concern with the FBI’s source management stems from the investigation into the FBI’s involvement in the 2016 presidential campaign, including by taking seriously the infamous Steele dossier that it knew was a fabrication as well as, likely, some Russian communication intercepts that also should have been rejected on strictly professional grounds. In short, the FBI departed from its tradition of professionalism and honesty in pursuit of domestic political influence.
Choosing and recruiting sources, validating and managing them, is the very heart of intelligence. Doing it badly, taking sources that come easy—especially dispensing with due skepticism about the ones that contribute to one’s own agendas—is professional corruption. But doing it right is hard. To the extent that intelligence agencies find it difficult to fulfill expectations, they are tempted to substitute such corruption for the competence they lack. The pursuit of agency interests or even personal agendas takes over.
