Department Of Defence
CIA
FBI
Homeland Security
Secretary Of Defence
Anti-Terrorism
All of these do similiar jobs, would it be better if just one agency did all that shit? Or reduce it to just two that covers all those areas(which are not that different)
I have heard some of those dont even share information with each other.
Im no expert . this is just opinion.
What about the Navy and Marines?
Last edited by Colossus-Big C on Jul 3rd, 2012 at 04:31 PM
No good comes of combining agencies for the hell of it. They need to be doing very similar things. For the most part these ones aren't.
DOD = Everything Military, including the Army, Navy, and Air Force (the Secretary of Defense is the head of them whole thing)
Self explanatory. Already an enormous department.
CIA = Foreign Intelligence Gathering
FBI = Domestic Intelligence Gathering
Those two are completely different from legal and practical standpoints.
DHS = Non-military Domestic Defense
Lots of boring administrative and legal stuff plus recovery from all kinds of disasters in the states. Technically they're anti-terrorism too, but I get the impression that the FBI and CIA are more important. Like the DOD this is already an enormous department.
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Work at any medium-to-large company for a while, and then tell me this is a good idea. Increasing efficiency is always good. Arbitrary mergers are not.
1. Terrorism. CIA, DoD, and the DHS also cover this.
2. Counterintelligence. CIA and DoD do this.
3. Cyber Crime. DHS, DoD, and CIA do this.
4. Public Corruption. Definitely a DoJ function so this one is good.
5. Civil Rights. Definitely a DoJ function, so this is good, too.
6. Organized Crime. Overlaps, quite largely, with what local and state law-enforcement does.
7. White-Collar Crime. Overlaps largely with what local and state law enforcement does.
8. Violent Crime and Major Thefts. Overlaps largely with what local and state law-enforcement does. However, the "Indian reservation" jurisdiction is necessary.
So is there hope of consolidating the FBI's functions? Sure.
CIA:
Mission
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an independent US Government agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior US policymakers.
So, pretty much, the CIA could be dissolved, immediately. It has been threatened multiple times, over the years, of being dismantled. Pretty crappy that I hold this opinion because I may end up working for them, one day.
NSA:
The NSA/CSS core missions are to protect U.S. national security systems and to produce foreign signals intelligence information.
Could be dissolved and responsabilities taken over by the any of the armed services branches (having their own security programs in place). However, it is probably better than the NSA exist rather than not. But, some people do not like the idea of so much secrecy. They keep stuff secret...and they do counter-cyberterrorism work. So maybe we could shift the focus from the FBI to the NSA?
DHS:
This one should be dissolved, immediately. No question about it. It was one of the biggest messes. My coworker's father is one of director's there and he visits our office every now and then. Tells us stories about how assbackwards it is there. Just a mess.
So I would dissolve DHS and the CIA. Remove tons of the FBI's functions. And keep the NSA. I would give more work to the NSA.
Actually, the US has often been historically regarded as being over-agencied. They spend a lot of time in turf wars with each other and their co-operation is generally close to zero. You end in in situations where you have the FBI and the DEA and the ATF all scrabbling over areas where just about every country entrusts the job to just one organisation, and then you give your darn customs agency (which, amazingly, you have TWO of) the exact same sort of counter-intelligence powers as well and they get thrown into the law enforcement mess. You pay out huge amounts in tax dollars for the complex bureaucracy of each organisation and to absolutely no greater effect on the crimes concerned (and this is after the DEA was already merged from competing agencies beforehand). Just give it all to the darn FBI, and let customs just do customs work.
During Vietnam, the DEA and CIA were pretty much on opposite sides. It crossed the line from turf war to virtual shooting match. It's madness, and the plethora of organisations doing similar jobs encourages it.
The very reason the DHS was set up was in recognition of the fact that there were too many competing agencies doing the same sort of job and not co-operating at all- but it does start to look like that it's just adding to the confusion rather than rectifying it.
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Last edited by Ushgarak on Jul 4th, 2012 at 08:59 AM
And yet you don't actually propose any mergers that I can see, just eliminating everything that isn't the NSA.
(countdown to a hysterical freakout by dadude begins now)
1 - I agree that can be left to the DoD.
2 - Yeah, DoD and NSA
4, 5 - Definately should be a DoJ job.
The issue with 3, 6, 7, and 8 is that the FBI is federal agency which has inherent value. A bunch of disorganized, underfunded local cops aren't going to do much to stop crimes that stretch across the country. I could see transforming the FBI into an advisory and legal agency with no armed agents but the fact that it is tasked with looking at the whole nation is important, otherwise you leave the door open to any number of crimes with vague jurisdiction.
Why remove the nation's foreign intelligence service? You didn't provide any justification.
That means eliminating the country's disaster relief programs and the entire customs service. I think those, at least, would have to be moved somewhere before cutting the DHS.
__________________
Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
I did propose mergers. The mergers I proposed was responsibility shifting (merging roles) and agency elimination.
And the second statement is actually trolling. You should probably avoid those. But I do get amusement out of them.
lol
Looks like we agree on quite a few points.
The idea of local law enforcement not being able to take on large criminal organizations is false (I know that is not your idea, I am just speaking against one of the justifications that people give).
The idea of the FBI is a national level police force. But they could be reduced to a regulatory/advisory position for interstate crime like you suggested (and something I would want, anyway).
In the GDF, I did not think I needed to outline why the CIA could be dissolved especially when I mentioned the congressional threats of dissolution. However, since you asked, I will provide.
1. The CIA is a Cold War Agency. It was created with specific goals and functions during the Cold War. That may have been necessary at the time, honestly. But is the existence still justified in the absence of a true cold war?
2. The CIA seems to have more than just an "intelligence gathering" function. Why were they directly involved in the Bay of Pigs? Why were they allowed to overthrow Iran's government? One word: Watergate. Why were they allowed to give weapons to Iran-Contra Affair?
3. Much of what the CIA does is also done by the FBI, DoD, DHS, and NSA.
4. The CIA actually has a military section. Well, some areas have been successful with their efforts.
5. It is a black hole of money, intelligence (the military kind), and people.
6. I had to google search his name but I found it: Daniel Patrick Moynihan advocated the dissolution of the CIA and even introduced two bills (iirc...it may have been just one). Here is an article about it I just found: http://www.carnegieendowment.org/20...lishing-cia/qf6
DHS can be dissolved and some of the functions turned over to existing institutions (which includes local law enforcement). We did not have ICE before 2002 but it can easily be its own agency (it's huge). We had FEMA before 2002. I think FEMA, if you want something like that, should be improved/overhauled. Additionally, many of the subsections of DHS existed before DHS. I could be wrong but the idea of DHS was to combine all of those groups to have better function (mostly because of how fractured and uncommunicative the agencies were with each other, as Ushgarak pointed out). Do their solution was to create a mega-agency that combined their efforts. That's why there is so much...mess.
Furthermore, here is a snippit of the abstract of a paper written by Professors John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart:
to be fair, the whole Iran-Contra thing was a prolonging of support for the anti-Sandinista militias in Nicaragua, which was the baby of Oliver North and No Such Agency.
I'm not sure if they moved it to the CIA after congress forbid direct weapon sales to the militias, but for sure it was the NSA who had oversight and operational control.
EDIT: shoot, I have confused the NSA with the National Security Council.
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Last edited by tsilamini on Jul 6th, 2012 at 06:17 PM
I could have sworn that the CIA sold some missiles during that affair?
I seriously do not have the will-power to google search this. But they sold some missiles to Iran. I do not know if they actually delivered them (it was Digiorno).
for sure they did, but it was part of North's program. I don't know the nitty gritty (North had those documents burnt in fact), but I'm pretty sure they did it at the behest of the NSC
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Jul 3rd, 2012 04:28 PM
