Would the operations side of the CIA be better handled by the military?

John Judis suggests this as a possibility to consider, as well as eliminating the CIA as a whole (Hat tip, Yglesias).

The question that Congress might ponder, but won't, is whether the structure of our foreign policy apparatus - the power and responsibility vested in a secret branch of government --  invites abuse. That was the position of the late Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan who argued for abolishing the CIA.  He didn't want to eliminate intelligence, but he wanted to return it to the purview of the State Department, while giving the armed forces the responsibility for overseas intervention. 

I'm not saying I favor this, but it's certainly worth discussing. One need only consider George Tenet's reign as CIA chief.  Tenet came in with a reform portfolio; and he initially did well as a manager; but by the time he had been forced out of office, the CIA itself had committed more war crimes, and bollixed more critical intelligence inquiries than ever before.  Was that because Tenet was deeply incompetent?  Or was there something about the agency's structure in government that invited presidents to twist it for their own sordid political ends?  Could the armed services have as easily complied with these torture memos?  I think not. 

I’m not really sure of the best arrangement of the analysis side of intelligence gathering.  I do suspect that constantly rearranging the organization charts is probably undermining the potential benefits of improvements.  However, I do feel that when you go from spying to strike forces and holding prisoners, it’s better to use the military?  Is that because the military is somehow immune to abuse?  No, certainly not. 

Instead I think the switchover could be worth while because the military has more protections built in as well as the Uniform Code of [Military] Justice.   I’ve heard of more official objections coming out of the military than the CIA.  High ranking military officers tend to escape judgment, but I think that on the CIA side there tends to be no accountability whatsoever.  I’m not sure I can say what the exact dividing line should be, but if it’s the kind of thing happening in the final third of a James Bond film, it would probably be better handled by the military.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t good people working at the CIA, there were those that resigned during the Bush years and in past accounts of debacles there are a fair number of agents that wanted to do right.  However, organizations with more institutional protections make it easier to do the right thing.  This isn’t to say it isn’t possible to design a civilian operations agency with such protections, but we haven’t pulled it off yet.  This is probably an area where comparisons with other nations intelligence services may help.  But on the whole, my instinct is that if the current and previous four directors of a government institution want to cover up torture, than it’s time to reassign powers and then salt the ground on which the old corruption was built.