It's probably not even right to say "...they're reliant on, and credulous of, advisers..." when it comes to organizations like the NSA. Many of the executive b

It's probably not even right to say "...they're reliant on, and credulous of, advisers..." when it comes to organizations like the NSA. Many of the executive bureaucracies are probably well-equipped to act on their own initiative, and evade attempts from the White House to exercise direct control over their operations, regardless of whether the president is informed by advisors or acting on his own initiative. Ironically, an overly-centralized executive branch is actually less adapt at ensuring accountability and transparency in its subordinate organizations, especially ones that have grown as large and complex as the modern federal bureaucracy has. If we're not going to rein in the power and reduce the scale of the federal government, we're going to need to do something along the lines of making the department secretaries constitutional offices, elected independently, or implement some sort of collegial executive, like Switzerland's. Otherwise, we're going to wind up with a situation where the government is too complex to itself be governed by its constitutional officers (if it isn't already).