Lo avrebbe segnalato qualche mese fa al Presidente degli Stati Uniti il suo Intelligence Advisory Board, secondo il quale l’eccessiva focalizzazione dell’Intelligence (CIA, in particolare) sulle attività paramilitari per il contrasto ad Al Qaeda avrebbe distorto le Agenzie americane da altre priorità, quali la Cina ed il Medio-Oriente.
A panel of White House advisers warned President Obama in a secret report that U.S. spy agencies were paying inadequate attention to China, the Middle East and other national security flash points because they had become too focused on military operations and drone strikes, U.S. officials said.
Led by influential figures including new Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and former senator David L. Boren (D-Okla.), the panel concluded in a report last year that the roles of the CIA, the National Security Agency and other spy services had been distorted by more than a decade of conflict.
The classified document called for the first significant shift in intelligence resources since they began flowing heavily toward counterterrorism programs and war zones after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The findings by the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board may signal a turning point in the terrorism fight. The document was distributed to senior national security officials at the White House whose public remarks in recent weeks suggest that they share some of the panel’s concerns. […]
“The intelligence community has become to some degree a military support operation,” said Boren, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who serves as co-chairman of the Intelligence Advisory Board. Boren said the deployment of intelligence personnel and resources has become so unbalanced that it “needs to be changed as dramatically as it was at the end of the Cold War.”
Another panelist, former congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), said traditional espionage “has suffered as the CIA has put more and more effort into the operational side.” Hamilton was co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, whose findings helped usher in far-reaching intelligence changes, including shifting huge resources to counter the terrorist threat.
Now concerned that the shift has gone too far, Hamilton said that it is time to “redirect the war footing that we’ve had, the focus on counterterrorism . . . and go back to the traditional functions of gathering and analyzing.”
U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged that demands on spy agencies have grown in recent years, driven by political turmoil associated with the Arab Spring, the cyber-espionage threat posed by China and the splintering of militant groups in North Africa. The pressure has been compounded by shrinking or stagnant budgets for most agencies after years of double-digit increases.
In breve: il calo nella percezione della minaccia terroristica, i limiti al budget, gli eventi in Medio-Oriente e la continua ascesa cinese nel Sud-Est asiatico consigliano di ritornare, dopo la fase degli anni Duemila post-11 settembre, a fare “business as usual”.
