From the always useful Secrecy News:
“The United States Intelligence Community (IC) has an obligation to learn from its history and its performance and to document its activities,” Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell wrote in a newly disclosed Intelligence Community Directive.
Towards that end, “each IC agency/organization shall establish and maintain a professional historical capability… to document, analyze and advance an understanding of the history of the agency or organization and its predecessors.”
I don’t know an agency that doesn’t have a history office, but no matter, I doubt seriously that this memo is going to spark an effort to, say, open captured Iraqi documents and media to historians so that they can document where we went wrong, point out gaps in our collection and analytical efforts, and otherwise show people how not to tackle a hard target.
But hey, I’ve been wrong before.
