In a country that has more than a dozen major intelligence agencies and numerous other organizations that have major or minor roles in the collection and assessment of intelligence pertaining to national security issues, any plan that seeks to consolidate so many disparate organizations and functions is certain worthy of consideration. Indeed, one former intelligence officer has questioned whether the United States is actually too big to win, given the number of competing, and sometimes conflicting, agencies trying to acquire and assess information on the same terrorist threat. Even with the post-9/11 re-organizations, there are simply too many organizations, collecting small pieces of the jigsaw, and as a result, the chances that vital snippets of information will still fall between the cracks remains depressingly high.

As a result of this massive replication of effort, there also remain far too many conflicting opinions on the nature and extent of this threat and insufficient agreement on how the threat should be assessed and tackled. It is, therefore, even more welcome when a government department actively considers consolidating its own disparate activities into one, more efficient structure that is likely to develop a much more harmonized approach when dealing with national security issues. After all, if the divisions of a government department cannot be organized into a single effective team, what hope is there for the rest of the government?