9/11 Report

Recently I've been reading through the 9/11 Commission's Report. Overall, it has been a very informative read--doing a great job of detailing everything pertaining to 9-11 as well as giving the reader some good insights into the inner workings of our governement. I thought the following excerpt from the report captures the essence of part of the problem plaguing the CIA:

"The CIA had been created to wage the Cold War. Its steady focus on one or two primary adversaries, decade after decade, had at least one positive effect: it created an environment in which managers and analysts could safely invest time and resources in basic research, detailed and reflective. Payoffs might not be immediate. But when they wrote their estimates, even in brief papers, they could draw on a deep base of knowledge.
"When the Cold War ended, those investments could not easily be reallocated to new enemies. The cultural effects ran even deeper. In a more fluid international environment with uncertain, changing goals and interests, intelligence managers no longer felt they could afford such a patient, strategic approach to long-term accumulation of intellectual capital. A university culture with its versions of books and articles was giving way to the culture of a newsroom."