This article starts from the flawed premise that the “intelligence community” (those two words make me almost as sick as “serving your country”) has some sort of interest in “keeping us safe” which is laughable. Their only real interest is in “keeping us scared” so that mountains of money keep flowing to these mercenaries. The fact is, we’d be far better off with NO spook community than with these Nazi’s.

bernheim:  It’s not just “rot at the top” in my opinion.  The “top” will do whatever the “bnottom” and the “middle” allow them to do—will even cooperate with them in doing it.
  The country runs on the myth that everybody can get to the “top” through hard work or some other demeaning enterprise such as obeying orders,charging interest, cheating,lieing,pretending, buying cheap and selling high. 
  If you don’t succeed at this, you are nobody. Unfortunately, the huge majority of Americans believe this, and at the moment are killing people thousands of miles away just to preserve the system. Evidence of other possibilities is ignored.
  This “top-down” myth destroys sympathy and understanding.  It breeds selfishness and greed.
The “top” in their “general headquarters” (army language not accidental) care little or nothing for the “bottom” 90%.  Proof:  They do little to help anybody but themselves and do everything in their power to maintain the status quo, such as it is.
  Neither Obama nor anybody else can do anything without massive support from the 98% who are too scared to draw a deep breath. What keeps them down?
The myth and the degrading results of believing it.

Unfortunately, empires are essentially like those poor souls with a genetic predisposition to dementia. As they say, the mind is the first thing to go followed by the the brain’s progressive deterioration to the point of loss of bodily function resulting in death. Think of all of the politicians at all levels along with their toadies and private sector remoras as the plaque invading the cerebral vascular system and there you have the basis for what may be termed indelicately as “rot at the top”. It’s always easy to blame the size of government as the cause of all our woes when the issue lies really with the over complexity of the structure imposed by the arcane demands of legalese as well as the infectious nature of corruption contracted via constant exposure to an economic system which acts as a rapacious cancer on the societal soma.

Re Marcus: “. . . this defensiveness continued in Clapper’s confirmation hearing Tuesday before the Senate intelligence committee. “I think there was some breathless and shrillness to it that I don’t subscribe to,” he told the panel.”

One wonders how Clapper could ever expect to know anything about anything since the Senate Intelligence Committee failed to give the Office of the Director of National Intelligence enough resources to adequately determine problems or the authority to resolve any problems that his Office might find:

“Mr. Clapper on Tuesday faced the Senate Intelligence Committee, which, of course, was greatly responsible for making sure the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not have the needed resources or authority in the first place. Mr. Clapper persuaded us that he intends to try to take charge, but we’re not sure he fully recognizes the scope of that commitment.

The director’s job — the brainchild of the independent Sept. 11 commission — is supposed to tame rivalries among 16 competing agencies and provide strategic direction. Yet Congress deprived the director of the authority to set budgets or hire and fire leaders. Other intelligence power centers — the C.I.A., White House and Pentagon — have blocked the director from doing his job.”

[Quote NYT Editorial: “Misdirection of National Intelligence” July 22, 2010]

http://www.nytimes.com/

If your goal is to use fear of enemies to hold your entire population in thrall, too scared to think straight and therefore easy to manipulate, you set up proliferating intelligence/surveillance agencies that fall all over each other looking for trouble at home and abroad.  Keep both the agencies and the general population busy with rumors and suspicions and every now and then bring some “investigation” to light and give it wide publicity to make you look efficient. In the process, destroy as many civil liberties as you can get your hands on, shred habeas corpus and see that it is not restored. Let your public education go to pieces for want of funding, and promote radical religious beliefs that refuse to tolerate differences. Arm people to the teeth with handguns, assault rifles and whatever else
they demand in order to “protect themselves.”
  Are we there yet?

If your goal is to use fear of enemies to hold your entire population in thrall, too scared to think straight and therefore easy to manipulate, you set up proliferating intelligence/surveillance agencies that fall all over each other looking for trouble at home and abroad.  Keep both the agencies and the general population busy with rumors and suspicions and every now and then bring some “investigation” to light and give it wide publicity to make you look efficient. In the process, destroy as many civil liberties as you can get your hands on, shred habeas corpus and see that it is not restored. Let your public education go to pieces for want of funding, and promote radical religious beliefs that refuse to tolerate differences. Arm people to the teeth with handguns, assault rifles and whatever else
they demand in order to “protect themselves.”
  Are we there yet?