The Federal government is a byzantine web of regulation, conflicting rules, agendas and actions.
Big programs have tentacles so intertwined into things, it's difficult/impossible to unwind and even figure out what they are doing. Think of it from the President's perspective -- getting someone whom he trusts in a position to actually know anything about the programs probably takes a year.
Say you have someone on top whom you trust and the President says "dismantle X program". The bureaucracy is awesome and effective at slowing things down. Keeping up the pressure to do something that the bureaucrats don't want requires alot of energy. And with something like Intelligence, attacking the people running those programs means that they won't be motivated to make the President look good.
So from the President's perspective, you have to invest massive energy, take body blows when things don't go well and distract yourself from whatever it is that you ran for office for. It's a high cost, and the benefits are minimal -- nobody is going to carve your head into the side of a mountain for shutting down some Top Secret program that nobody knew about anyway.
Big programs have tentacles so intertwined into things, it's difficult/impossible to unwind and even figure out what they are doing. Think of it from the President's perspective -- getting someone whom he trusts in a position to actually know anything about the programs probably takes a year.
Say you have someone on top whom you trust and the President says "dismantle X program". The bureaucracy is awesome and effective at slowing things down. Keeping up the pressure to do something that the bureaucrats don't want requires alot of energy. And with something like Intelligence, attacking the people running those programs means that they won't be motivated to make the President look good.
So from the President's perspective, you have to invest massive energy, take body blows when things don't go well and distract yourself from whatever it is that you ran for office for. It's a high cost, and the benefits are minimal -- nobody is going to carve your head into the side of a mountain for shutting down some Top Secret program that nobody knew about anyway.