Checking in on a few leaders

Leaders leave large footsteps.

It must be hard to be a leader today. TV cameras and reporters are all over the place, checking on what our leaders are doing. Just plain citizens, like me, what to know about leaders' decisions, check up on them, and write about them. I'm sure that those who are in trouble would very much like to be left alone. But I am a "news junkie," incurable and unabashed. And follow stories over the months and years, trying to keep up with what is happening. National Intelligence is one of those stories.
CIA Spies Get a New Home Base is the headline of this story on yet another intelligence community reorganization. (This story has been rather overshadowed by the so-called "Plame-Gate" investigation of prominent White House staff members, involving the exposure of CIA operative, Valerie Plame. But the stories are actually "all of a piece").
Our foreign and domestic intelligence efforts have gotten a lot of well-deserved criticism over the years. The events of 9/11/01 set a number of changes in motion. As citizens we need to be concerned with these efforts at achieving major improvements in the intelligence product.
Besides it is so interesting. The work of spies is intriguing, the players are interesting, and the stakes are high, all making for a lot of drama. Here are just a few of the leader players that I have been following for the past few years.

• Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairs the relevant (oversight) Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The Democratic Ranking Member is Joe Lieberman, D-Connecticut. These two Senators were very instrumental in drafting and leading the Congressional work of reorganizating the intelligence community, following recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Report.
• Former Republican Resentative Porter Goss, and current Representative Jane Harman, D-California, led the House effort, and did not get along nearly as well as Collins and Lieberman.
• DNI John Negroponte: delegated the general coordination of our human intelligence effort to the CIA, rather that putting it in his own portfolio. This post is the next chapter in his early tenure in this very powerful position.
• Head of the CIA, Porter Goss will be in charge of the human intelligence coordination. He has been an employee of the CIA in the past, as well as serving in Congress.
• Former CIA agent, Larry Johnson, has often been willing to speak out about what he believes to be the truth about important people and events connected to the CIA.

What difference does all this make? Despite what many think, these folks make a difference in the lives of everyday Americans. We are more or less safe, more or less free, and more or less proud of our country, based on the decisions of these people and others like them.

I am an unabashed fan of great leaders. I am curious about how leaders emerge---and how they fall. I find the conflict between exercising power and being a good leader fascinating. And, finally, I am more and more interested in how women attain and exercise leadership.

I'll keep watching; it is one of the best games in town.