The House Intelligence Committee voted Thursday to withhold funding from the nation’s intelligence director over concerns that his office, which was created to streamline operations in the nation’s spy community, is instead becoming bloated and bureaucratic. […] The bill would require the nation’s intelligence director, John D. Negroponte, to present a detailed rationale for any…

The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday rejected a proposal to withhold money from the National Security Agency if the White House did not reveal information about the cost of the agency’s warrantless surveillance program. In a session closed to reporters, only Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., who heads a subcommittee that oversees the NSA, voted with…

When FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III went before a House subcommittee Tuesday to explain the Bureau’s budget request, one of the success stories he gave involved Mercyhurst College. Two FBI employees are enrolled in their first year of Mercyhurst’s two-year graduate program in applied intelligence. The Bureau may send another three in September, according…

Former CIA spy hunter Paul Redmond, who helped catch notorious Moscow mole Aldrich Ames, has withdrawn from consideration to become the Bush administration’s top counterspy, U.S. intelligence officials say. Mr. Redmond had been selected to be national counterintelligence executive, but backed out after the FBI held up his formal appointment by conducting a lengthy background…

A bipartisan push on Capitol Hill to strip the hue from the government’s color-coded terrorist alert system is gaining momentum. A package of legislation moving through the House eliminates the Department of Homeland Security’s use of colors to change the threat level, and calls for more specific threat information to be shared with the private…

True this: In Posner’s analysis, the director of national intelligence (DNI), created by Congress to be the president’s top intelligence adviser, was given too much to do. DNI John D. Negroponte oversees the CIA and 15 other intelligence agencies, including those at the Pentagon. Negroponte’s staff, which has grown to about 1,000, “has become a…

The Homeland Security Department is losing top managers and rank-and-file employees in a brain drain that could affect morale and the nation’s safety, according to members of Congress and labor experts. Homeland Security is “hemorrhaging on the front lines and higher up,” says New York University professor Paul Light, an expert on the federal workforce.…

“. . . Colorado . . .” The idea that a whole lot of people all checking each other can converge on acceptably accurate results, and do it faster than a few experts, is relatively new. But once people have seen it work, they’re eager to try it. During the period leading up to the…

. . . when the “pros” can’t be bothered to do the job properly: The top US general this week suggested that the Pentagon had not adequately vetted documents that allege Russia passed intelligence about US troop movements to Saddam Hussein early on during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On Tuesday – the same day…

A U.S. State Department purchase of more than 15,000 computers made by Lenovo Group of China is starting to draw criticism, in the latest sign of American unease about the role of foreign companies in the domestic economy. I’m sorry; last year wasn’t this called “IBM”? I know somewhere in the DC area a certain…