An American Lion

Perhaps this administration should just keep quiet about Osama Bin Laden:

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden may periodically slip back into Afghanistan from his remote hideout in neighboring Pakistan, a senior White House official says, adding a new twist to the mystery of the elusive terrorist’s whereabouts.

President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, James Jones, said bin Laden, believed hiding mainly in a rugged area of western Pakistan, may be spending some time in Afghanistan, where he was based while plotting the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

But Obama’s Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, said the U.S. has lacked good intelligence on bin Laden for a long time — “I think it has been years” — and did not confirm that he’d slipped into Afghanistan.

This highlights the disconnect between Jones and Gates. As Secretary of Defense, Gates has much of the intelligence gathering apparatus under his control. What little was actually ceded to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) doesn’t really mean Gates still doesn’t retain control of the intelligence that would be fed to Jones, or have some say in how it would be interpreted or distributed.

Just the fact that the National Security Adviser and the Secretary of Defense can’t quite articulate the same piece of information is reason enough to conclude that there is a management problem here that rests with the President. This is no team of rivals—this is the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.