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Nine Fingers on the Charles. Looks like the Harvard Institute of Politics has been running some pretty interesting lectures:
Can we get transcripts?Thursday, March 17
"Saving Boxer: Porter Goss and the return of CIA to core mission"Guest: Patrick Murray, former HPSCI chief counsel and staff director and currently chief of staff to DCI Goss, will speak.
For years, Republican staffers on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) have warned that the CIA was in the last chapter of Animal Farm: They claimed that CIA was trading off its core intelligence mission overseas to create new layers of programs and a larger, "risk-adverse" bureaucracy back at its headquarters in Langley, VA. We will ask a former, senior HPSCI staffer, now in a powerful position at CIA headquarters, whether he found such problems when he arrived at CIA and what he thinks Porter Goss, the new Director of Central Intelligence, should do about it. Do we want the kind of CIA he and the DCI have in mind?
Goals:
To assess the reform effort underway within CIA and its meaning for our national security and our posture as a nation.
Thursday, March 24
"You'll never work in this town again: Congress and the sin of oversight"Guest: Brant Bassett, [editor's note, aka "Nine Fingers"] a retired CIA case officer and former Hill staffer, will speak (tentative)
Leakers from within CIA would have us believe that the Republican staffers from the House Intelligence Committee now at CIA are odious, partisan evildoers. You will hear from formerly odious, partisan evildoers from the Hill on the resistance within CIA to congressional oversight, and we'll discuss the proper role and extent of such oversight. Do we want or need intrusive oversight from Congress? Is there another, and better, way to watch a secret organization?
Goals:
To understand the oversight role of Congress in intelligence and assess its effectiveness.
Hey, Harvard: soon they may be available for more lecturing.
More here.