Remolding the CIA

The retired four-star general, [David Petraeus] who took over as CIA chief last month, issued [an] unusual rebuttal after the Associated Press reported that Petraeus approved a change requiring CIA analysts to confer with battlefield officers before presenting their findings to the head of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan.

In the past, CIA analysts had first presented their assessment to chiefs of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who then shared the results with officers in the field.

Petraeus acknowledged a change in how analysts would go about their work in Afghanistan, but said the suggestion that it was “somehow designed to impose a military viewpoint on our analysis” was “flat wrong.”

“The change was simply this: to ask our analysts to discuss their findings with working-level ISAF officers before discussing them with the ISAF leadership — the same steps, but just in a different order,” he said.

Raw Story

And the order of things makes all the difference in the world.

I suppose putting a military general in charge of the CIA would have been designed to alter the agency's objectives, but what the final outcome is remains to be seen. Although Petraeus resigned from the military to take the job, a career military general isn't likely to resign his mindset.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.