Fix The Intelligence Mess

[NATO AIR]

The reforms only made everything worse, some surprise.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/20/AR2006042001356.html?sub=AR

Fix the Intelligence Mess

By David Ignatius
Friday, April 21, 2006; Page A23

For the U.S. intelligence community, the warning lights are blinking red. A reorganization that was supposed to bring greater coordination has instead produced a layering of responsibilities and bureaucratic confusion. A demoralized CIA that needed professional management is chafing under a Republican former congressman who has proved to be the most political and ineffective director in the agency's history.

Look at the organizational chart of the new Office of the Director of National Intelligence and you wonder if America has become a Third World country with a rival intelligence agency for each patch of turf. At last count, there were 16 different spy units under the DNI's umbrella -- a number that puts even Syria to shame. In theory, this flotilla of spy agencies is being supervised by a deputy responsible for "customer outcomes," whatever that means, and three other deputy directors. The organization chart gives each of the four a peppy two-word mission statement: "Want It," "Know It," "Get It" and "Build It."

I'd like to suggest a new mission for John Negroponte, the man who sits atop this intelligence ziggurat: "Fix It." One year on, the intelligence reorganization isn't working. It has overanalyzed the little problems without solving the big ones. It hasn't succeeded in coordinating the various agencies, and it has allowed the biggest problem of all -- the disarray at the CIA -- to get even worse. I'm told that several foreign intelligence services have recently observed a decline in CIA performance, which should scare us all.

"The reorganization reshuffled rather than augmented the nation's federal intelligence personnel," Richard A. Posner, a federal appeals court judge who knows the intelligence world well, argued in a speech in March to a gathering of CIA lawyers. He said of the DNI structure: "It has become a new bureaucracy layered on top of the intelligence community, a new agency on top of the fifteen or more previously existing agencies." According to The Post's Walter Pincus, Negroponte's budget is nearing $1 billion -- about five times what was previously spent for intelligence-community management. His staff is now 1,539 people, about twice what was expected.

The intelligence mess is serious enough that it has triggered a quiet investigation by the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a secretive blue-ribbon panel that advises the White House. The group's new chairman is Stephen Friedman, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs and former White House economic adviser. Other luminaries on the 16-member panel are former senator Charles Robb, former representative Lee Hamilton and retired Adm. David E. Jeremiah.

I'm told the intelligence board has summoned a series of top current and former officials in recent weeks to get a handle on the problems at the CIA and DNI. "They are trying to get a sense of what is really going on and how bad it is," says one intelligence insider. Because many of the board members have run big companies, they are said to be applying management metrics to the crazy quilt of the reorganization.

The Bush administration, unfortunately, is a big part of what's wrong. From the start, officials close to Vice President Cheney viewed a moribund, risk-averse CIA as an obstacle to their goals. Certainly the CIA made mistakes, especially in its assessment of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but that's not why it was punished. It became a political whipping boy for the right wing largely because it tried to tell the truth on two key issues: alleged Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Niger and alleged Iraqi operational links with al-Qaeda. On both, CIA analysts repeatedly warned the administration that the evidence didn't support its conclusions, yet the vice president's office kept coming back and telling them to take another look. The CIA issued a secret paper in January 2003 saying that there was no Iraqi authority, control or direction over al-Qaeda. Yet the political pressure continued.

Negroponte defended his performance in a speech yesterday at the National Press Club, and one can only wish him well. He has a huge job: The CIA has lost a generation of senior managers, burned off by Porter Goss and his political aides in a senseless vendetta. Dissatisfaction is growing in the middle ranks. Operations officers are looking over their shoulders; analysts are looking at the proliferating bureaucracies and wondering where to try to make their careers; and terrorism specialists are torn between the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and the DNI's National Counterterrorism Center. We don't have enough good spies to afford this confusion.

You would have thought it was impossible to make our intelligence problems even worse, but the Bush administration has accomplished that. This is a dangerous situation for the country, and it needs to be fixed, now.

[email protected]

 

[Annie]

I won't pretend to know that much about Negroponte, but I DO know the CIA's problems go back even before Carter. To push this on one person is wrong.

On the other hand, the problems do have to be addressed and quickly. Killing the current office holder isn't the way though.

 

[pegwinn]

Killing the current office holder isn't the way though.

How true. It is however a fine old American tradition yes? Problem is that we don't have a world war to spawn the OSS. Or a cold war to get the CIA on the ball. Or a competent enemy to keep us on our toes. Or a Congress with the willpower to acknowlege the need to do what needs doing.

How y'all been?

 

[Annie]

How true. It is however a fine old American tradition yes? Problem is that we don't have a world war to spawn the OSS. Or a cold war to get the CIA on the ball. Or a competent enemy to keep us on our toes. Or a Congress with the willpower to acknowlege the need to do what needs doing.

How y'all been?

I've been pretty good. Too much happening at home on the parent front, but trying to work through it. How about yourself?

As for the tradition of killing the office holder, it's wrong. Now if it would get the job done, might be worth it, that doesn't seem on the table.

 

[pegwinn]

I've been pretty good. Too much happening at home on the parent front, but trying to work through it. How about yourself?

As for the tradition of killing the office holder, it's wrong. Now if it would get the job done, might be worth it, that doesn't seem on the table.

I've been busy with real life. Down to only two boards when time permits. Came by here for old times sake. Gonna hang out awhile and see who I can tick off

I agree the tradition is wrong. But, without scapegoats who would employ the out of work reporters.

 

[Annie]

I've been busy with real life. Down to only two boards when time permits. Came by here for old times sake. Gonna hang out awhile and see who I can tick off

I agree the tradition is wrong. But, without scapegoats who would employ the out of work reporters.

How are the offspring doing in the military? Where are they? Anything I can do to make them feel I care?

 

[pegwinn]

How are the offspring doing in the military? Where are they? Anything I can do to make them feel I care?

Daughter is drilling monthly with the local Marine reserve unit until December when she will be commissioned. Son-in-law is in predeployment work ups for Iraq. So they are doing the separated family thing and she is bummed, and motivated, and proud, and conflicted, typical young wife. Appreciate the thoughts.......

Hows the teaching going? Ready for summer yet?

 

[Annie]

Daughter is drilling monthly with the local Marine reserve unit until December when she will be commissioned. Son-in-law is in predeployment work ups for Iraq. So they are doing the separated family thing and she is bummed, and motivated, and proud, and conflicted, typical young wife. Appreciate the thoughts.......

Hows the teaching going? Ready for summer yet?

For the first time, I lost out in summer session. I'm in trouble. Have to make up the salary, but my bank position will not go full time this summer. True financial problem.

I'll get through, one way or the other. Can we contact your kids? Would they like that?

 

[NATO AIR]

The intelligence business needs help, badly. Sadly, if the one man in charge can't get it done, he'll have to be recycled and replaced. We don't have time for sympathy and fairness when our nation is weak because of its poorly aligned and led intelligence agencies. I would fire Porter Goss first though, then get someone in there that knows what they're doing and can stablize the CIA.

 

[nosarcasm]

It seems that a reorganization of the thiefdoms would be one possible solution.

Trim it down to 4 or 5 intelligence organisations. Domestic/Foreing/military being the basic 3 setups.

But more safe jobs in the federal bureaucracy have replaced a leaner approach.
All those family members need a job somewhere.

 

[jillian]

The reforms only made everything worse, some surprise.

Thank you for raising this issue. Theoretically, the intelligence community was supposed to be made more manageable. It doesn't appear that has happened.

It seems to me, an outsider to the world of intel, that everything I've read indicates that the intelligence folk became resentful of their current leadership, particularly Cheney's office, when the admin made them the fall-guys for "bad intel" on Iraq, when it seems more and more clear that the intel was good..... the VP just didn't like what he was being told and ignored everything that pointed away from Iraq.

Also, the choice of Negraponte was questionable to begin with. He had a spotty history going back to the Iran-Contra days and brought a lot of negatives with him to the job.

What's most unsettling to me is that in this post-9/11 world, intel is our greatest weapon against terrorists. And the WOT starts there....

But you wouldn't know that from the way things have been run.