![\"050114\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/050114-427x281.jpg\")
\n(The Director and Deputy Director of a major suburban combat support agency who have elected to retire this fall.)<\/p>\n
\n(The Director and Deputy Director of a major suburban combat support agency who have elected to retire this fall.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been to this movie before,\u201d I declared firmly and put down my glass of happy hour white a little harder than normal for emphasis. \u201cWe completely screwed ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you raving about now?\u201d growled old Jim.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just shit-canned the Director of the Agency where I used to work, and they got the Deputy Director, too. It is just like the end of the Cold War and the chaos of downsizing and re-organization to do more with less.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jim has been around the block in DC and he knows how things work. \u201cNormally you do less with less.\u201d He took a sip of Budweiser and said:<\/p>\n
\u201cWho\u2019d they piss off?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was everyone at the Agency, their boss at OSD, Mike, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA and Congress in about that order.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShouldn\u2019t come as much of a surprise, then.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, it was still dramatic. I had to turn off my cell phone there were so many calls. There were rumors that it was a done deal late last year. He was trying to take DIA in a direction the rest of the Department didn\u2019t want to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere on earth was that?\u201d asked Jon-without. He was drinking a bottle of imported beer, part of his strategy of trying to mix it up a little.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe General wanted to take advantage of the budget pressures and the demand for a more adaptive agency to bring change and find efficiencies.\u201d I said. \u201cHow is that for some buzz words.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDIA is a bloated bureaucracy with overstaffed analytical elements still focusing on requirements that have been overtaken by applications in technology,\u201d said an anonymous fellow down the bar.<\/p>\n
I looked in his direction and the man turned his gaze from our little group at the apex of the Amen Corner to the basket of Willow\u2019s excellent fish and chips in front of him. There was a trench coat still wet from the pelting rain outside slung over the back of the stool.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you from Langley,\u201d I asked. The man shrugged.<\/p>\n
\u201cClose enough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Deputy was one of you guys,\u201d I said. \u201cThe Director of National Intelligence seemed to want one of his guys there, or maybe it was that the General did not want a career insider from the Agency as his Deputy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI may have said too much,\u201d the man said. I studied his profile as he took a bit of fish from the basket and dipped it in Tracy O\u2019Grady\u2019s home-made tartar sauce. \u201cBut trust me, no one in town thought we needed another clandestine service. The one at Langley should be enough, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know he got the job because he proposed radical change to the way the national intelligence agencies supported forces in the field,\u201d I said. \u201cI used to go to the weekly VTCs at the Pentagon with the General when he was the top intel dog at the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Then we lost the contract and my Pentagon access badge got suspended. They duck-marched me out to South Parking and that ended my time in the Five-sided Adult Care Facility.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMust have been a sentimental moment,\u201d said Jon-without.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will never forget it,\u201d I said. \u201cBut I have to say that leaving the place was oddly liberating.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe General is probably feeling the same way,\u201d growled Jim.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are letting him stay long enough to have the time-in-grade he needs to retire as a three star,\u201d I said. \u201cSo it is not exactly like getting terminated with extreme predjudice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSure it is,\u201d said the gray man down the bar. \u201cPart of the agenda was to provide the SecDef with his own spies. That goes back to Rumsfeld\u2019s time when he didn\u2019t think Defense was getting adequate support from Langley.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUncle Don did not trust anything that wasn\u2019t under his control. In the meantime, the General was Stan McChrystal\u2019s spook in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then he wrote that paper that said we needed to provide more intel guys on the ground at the battalion and brigade level, and less irrelevance from the national agencies. They rewarded him with command at the Agency.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember the line,\u201d I said. \u201cIt was the Pottery Barn Rule. If you say something is broken you are rewarded with the opportunity to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. I remember hearing about when he arrived at the Agency and announced that if people were reluctant to embrace his agenda he would move them or fire them. I think he transferred like a hundred senior executives in the first two months he was there. Now the wars he was supposed to fix are over. I don’t know where that leaves you when they are taking the resources away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSounds like the stun-gun approach to management,\u201d said Jon-without as Chanteuse Mary walked in, damp but not wilted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you reprobates talking about?\u201d She asked, hopping on the stool next to Jim.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing important. Bureaucratic politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs there anything else in this town?\u201d she said with a smile.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I know,\u201d I said. \u201cBut now the fun begins with who is next in the seat. I have heard a rumor\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brett the bartender alertly filled up my glass again before I could get to the part about how the DCSInt at Army was a strong candidate, and if she didn\u2019t want the job, who would be in line after that to be elevated to take on the Agency. And what agenda might come with whoever it was.<\/p>\n
The Gray Man down the bar threw a couple twenties on the bar- didn\u2019t want a paper trail, I assume- and shrugged on his trench coat. He gave a crooked smile. \u201cYou kids have fun tonight,\u201d he said, and walked off toward the rear entrance to the parking garage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was all that about?\u201d asked Jim, waving at Boomer to get another beer and a glass of the white for Mary.<\/p>\n
\u201cFaces and spaces,\u201d I said. \u201cMore crumbling bricks and brittle sticks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cClever,\u201d said Jon-without. “I think maybe I will switch to vodka.”<\/p>\n
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com
\nTwitter: @jayare303<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(The Director and Deputy Director of a major suburban combat support agency who have elected to retire this fall.) \u201cI have been to this movie before,\u201d I declared firmly and put down my glass of happy hour white a little harder than normal for emphasis. \u201cWe completely screwed ourselves.\u201d \u201cWhat are you raving about now?\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7750,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7748\/revisions\/7750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}