THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

AMERICA'S BUREAUCRACIES GET DEADLIER EVERY DAY SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 | 2002-03-16

The CIA and FBI failed to give any indication that the World Trade Center attack was being planned. So Congress wants to increase the CIA and FBI budgets.

That is our response to everything, and it never works. More money will not improve bad performance.

Entrenched bureaucrats run American security agencies. It is the nature of that bureaucracy that is the problem.

But nobody dares face the problem with our security bureaucracy because it is the same problem we have with others who run the country.

If we faced it in intelligence, we might see other things clearly as well. If we faced the truth about the CIA and the FBI, our other failing bureaucracies would be in serious trouble. Instead of pumping more and more money into Government tuition grants, we might have to realize that our universities are just entrenched bureaucracies, where academic bureaucrats hold all the teaching and administrative jobs. No intellectual need apply.

Our welfare bureaucracy, in fact our entire titanic education-welfare establishment, would be under attack. And bureaucrats with stars on their shoulders in the Pentagon might lose some of their blind conservative worshippers.

Those who run our political bureaucracy might be questioned.

Worst of all, media bureaucrats might even be questioned.

But bureaucrats needn't panic. Nobody is going to let any of that happen until things get truly desperate.