Controlling the Intelligence Agencies, Centrally

She had probably done this a dozen times before. Modern digital technology had made clandestine communications with overseas agents seem routine. Back in the cold war, contacting a secret agent in Moscow or Beijing was a dangerous, labour-intensive process that could take days or even weeks. But by 2004, it was possible to send high-speed, encrypted messages directly and instantaneously from CIA headquarters to agents in the field who were equipped with small, covert personal communications devices. So the officer at CIA headquarters assigned to handle communications with the agency's spies in Iran probably didn't think twice when she began her latest download. With a few simple commands, she sent a secret data flow to one of the Iranian agents in the CIA's spy network. Just as she had done so many times before.

But this time, the ease and speed of the technology betrayed her. The CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.
Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who received the download was a double agent. The agent quickly turned the data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to "roll up" the CIA's network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of the others is still unknown.

This is the CIA under President George Bush. The CIA under Republican nominee McCain (nothing to do with hot chips, I was disappointed to learn) will be more of the same bungling. Hillary and Bill Clinton did no better their first time around. That is why, I, Barack Fauxbama, the Democrat nominee for president take great pleasure in announcing my intelligence policy:

1) The CIA is incompetent. The FBI and the DHS are also not particularly talented. All these agencies will be disbanded and a new agency will be formed - named Control. A group of the Control people were here last night (at my undisclosed location) with a film they had made to promote their plans - I had no idea that the paper guy from Dunder-Miflin was a spy too!

2) In order to beef-up Control further, I'm enlisting the services of my good buddies Bill Ayers and Bobby Rush. Also joining the control team will be several of my other friends, who are also not Secret Muslims.