Quoted in Congressional Quarterly Weekly, 5 May 2008

“Intel: Lost In The Reshuffle,” by Tim Starks, Congressional Quarterly (5/5/2008)

Can anything be done? Some experts hope that those running the spy agencies will work things out for themselves. National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell, a retired Navy admiral, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have known each other for years, share a vision of national security and have been working together to improve cooperation among agencies. Their relationship, which Mark M. Lowenthal, one of the country’s foremost authorities on intelligence, calls a “golden age,” might set a pattern that would last into a new administration.

But Lowenthal, who now runs an intelligence education and consulting business, says the 2004 law has not created “significant improvements” in American spying performance.