"The National Intelligence Director needs the authority to do the job we are asking him to do. That means power over the intelligence budget. And to be effective, to be allowed to do his or her job, they must have authority over the budget"
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Boswell is making a classic Washington argument, but he’s doing it with the blunt instrument that actually matters: money. In a town where “coordination” and “oversight” can be ceremonial verbs, “authority over the intelligence budget” is the tell. He’s not lobbying for a new title; he’s insisting that the National Intelligence Director stop being an air-traffic controller without radar.
The repetition of “do the job we are asking him to do” and “allowed to do his or her job” carries a quiet indictment of Congress and the bureaucracy. The subtext is that lawmakers love the optics of reform - a central director, a single point of accountability - but hesitate when reform threatens entrenched fiefdoms. If agencies control their own purse strings, the “director” becomes a coordinator in name only, forever negotiating with powerful departments that can ignore guidance while keeping their funding intact.
Context matters: post-9/11 intelligence reforms created the Director of National Intelligence to fix fragmentation exposed by the attacks and later amplified by failures like Iraq WMD assessments. Boswell’s intent is to push reform past symbolism into enforceable governance. He frames budget power as a prerequisite for effectiveness, because in intelligence the real battles aren’t just analytic - they’re organizational: who sets priorities, who gets hired, which programs survive, what gets shared.
His line also smuggles in a political trade: if you want to demand results from a central figure, you have to grant the tools that make results possible. Accountability without authority is just a press release.
The repetition of “do the job we are asking him to do” and “allowed to do his or her job” carries a quiet indictment of Congress and the bureaucracy. The subtext is that lawmakers love the optics of reform - a central director, a single point of accountability - but hesitate when reform threatens entrenched fiefdoms. If agencies control their own purse strings, the “director” becomes a coordinator in name only, forever negotiating with powerful departments that can ignore guidance while keeping their funding intact.
Context matters: post-9/11 intelligence reforms created the Director of National Intelligence to fix fragmentation exposed by the attacks and later amplified by failures like Iraq WMD assessments. Boswell’s intent is to push reform past symbolism into enforceable governance. He frames budget power as a prerequisite for effectiveness, because in intelligence the real battles aren’t just analytic - they’re organizational: who sets priorities, who gets hired, which programs survive, what gets shared.
His line also smuggles in a political trade: if you want to demand results from a central figure, you have to grant the tools that make results possible. Accountability without authority is just a press release.
Quote Details
| Topic | Management |
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