Inside the Capitol Beltway, and particularly inside the Pentagon, if you really want to sound smart, you talk about "The Interagency." It's not an arm of the government. It's not a place. It has no formal director and certainly no troops. It's not even a thing; it's a process. But it is perhaps the one process that the government needs to do better to win "the long war" against terrorism and in the greater Middle East. And, given that people in uniform are asked to pick up the pieces or plug the gaps when the interagency process — where the Defense Department, the State Department and the other, formal agencies meet — fails, people in the Pentagon are right to fret about The Interagency.

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/07/1857934