Earlier this week I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin on the theme of "Confronting Foreign Intelligence and Information Gaps." Feingold's speech -- sponsored by my home institution, the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation -- went beyond the admittedly important questions about who was responsible for the intelligence fiascos of the Bush years to the even more urgent issue of how to reform U.S. intelligence gathering going forward. Along the way, he also expressed his views on an increasingly controversial issue, the privatization of intelligence functions, which is dealt with at length in Tim Shorrock's new book, Spies for Hire.

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