PublicOrgTheory

I’m not an I-told-you-so kind of guy, but…

On May 19, Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, sent a classified memorandum announcing that his office would use its authority to select the top American spy in each country overseas.

One day later, Leon E. Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, sent a dispatch of his own. Ignore Mr. Blair’s message, Mr. Panetta wrote to agency employees; the C.I.A. was still in charge overseas, a role that C.I.A. station chiefs had jealously guarded for decades.

The dispute has posed an early test for both spymasters, with Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, now trying to negotiate a truce. The behind-the-scenes battle shows the intensity of struggles continuing between intelligence agencies whose roles were left ill defined after a structural overhaul in 2004 that was intended to harness greater cooperation and put an end to internecine fights.

Although I am having trouble finding the post, this was something I took a pass at in 2004, soon after Porter Goss took on CIA.  My assessment at the time was that there would be turf squabbles due to CIA’s original mandate as the intelligence agency and the fact that the 16 agencies in the Intelligence Community–most of which sit within the Pentagon–control their own budgets.

[Note: yes, I know the image above is dated.  They don't have one with the O-Dawg on it yet.]