Mr. Baer, whose recent book, "See No Evil," is critical of the C.I.A., also argued that the agency has depended too much on liaison arrangements with foreign intelligence services, in the hope they will pass on information from their sources.
Ms. Todd, who was assigned as an informal liaison between the Navy and the Shiites, was dismissed from her duties in December 2007 in a formal letter that cited "unauthorized contact with foreign nationals," "financial irresponsibility" and "disclosure of classified information".
They were Mike Rogers, who had been handling national security, and Matthew Freedman, a lobbyist and liaison with business and foreign governments.
There is a new liaison office for the swift swapping of information with foreign agencies, and a new witness-protection scheme (though this must make do with a budget of just $700,000).
It also maintains several hundred "satellite" offices, called resident agencies, and several dozen liaison posts in foreign countries to facilitate the exchange of information with foreign agencies on matters relating to international crime and criminals.
The other could have been an intelligence-driven international manhunt requiring liaison with the CIA and its expert foreign counterterrorism counterparts, such as MI6.
Such efforts, however, are unlikely to succeed because they run counter to centuries of State Department tradition that emphasizes liaison work with established governments rather than creating governments from scratch or communicating with foreign citizens over the heads of their leaders.
Current and former C.I.A. officials said the C.I.A.'s long-established relationships with foreign spy services could be thrown into confusion if foreign spymasters had to deal with different American liaisons.
Start with foreign policy.
