Aye-Aye Spy

Security: James Clapper's ignorance of a major counter-terrorist success is less distressing than why he got his job as director of national intelligence: to "Obamacize" America's spy operations.

Why was the nation's top intelligence official unaware in an ABC News interview this week that Britain had, many hours earlier, foiled an al-Qaida-related plot of multiple suicide bombings targeting Christmas shoppers?

The White House at first claimed Director Clapper was busy all day preventing another Korean War and getting the New START treaty ratified. It was eventually admitted he hadn't been briefed.

Could the truth be that Clapper is too busy as mega-bureaucrat? Science fiction novelist Jerry Pournelle has an "Iron Law of Bureaucracy": "In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself."

Worst of all, "The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization."

Why did President Obama give Clapper oversight of the country's 16 intelligence agencies? His predecessor, Adm. Dennis Blair, pushed out earlier this year, was "cut off at every turn by a White House and an attorney general that have tried to treat terrorism as a law-enforcement problem," wrote former House Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., in Human Events.

Hoekstra called Blair "the one person you could count on to have a rational idea among Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan — and he's the one the President let go."

Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., earlier this year charged that in his previous job as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Clapper blocked Congress' "efforts to give more authority to the DNI."

But Obama apparently thought Clapper could streamline and manage the often-turf-conscious array of spy agencies — the same way ObamaCare falsely claims to fix the health care industry.

Moreover, Clapper may in practice actually be the underling of White House counterterrorism chief John O. Brennan — who found himself coaching Clapper during the ABC interview.

Center for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney, writing for BigPeace.com in October, said Brennan "reportedly effectively operates as the de facto Director of National Intelligence." Further, Gaffney believes "Muslim outreach" programs are "dumbing down" the intelligence community's threat analysis efforts.

When it comes to this administration's spy agency incompetence, not being up to speed on major terrorism developments may be just the tip of the iceberg.