Thursday, July 22, 2004
Intelligence Reform or Defense Reform?
The 9/11 Commission Report recommends that major changes be made in our intelligence services. I have commented previously on what I think of this.
However, the key problem with the 9/11 report is how the problem is defined. The problem is in the first instance not the organization of intelligence but the organization of homeland defense. This is not the job of Tom Ridge no matter what the title of his office. Ridge was a Governor and his interests are essentially bureaucratic. He sees his job as organizing national resources of men and materiel at every level to respond to the manifold possibilities of terrorism. But in another crisis and in the weeks leading up to it what I would want to have is a military command responsible for immediate action. We that the presidential and NSC response to the actual 9/11 was chaotic and confused. The President and his office are not set up to handle this kind of emergency. We do need something new, but that new is a separate branch of the Department of Defense focusing on timely response to threats to the American homeland. This person should answer to the Chief of Staff on the one hand and to the President on the other.
This chief of this projected "Homeland Security Command" would be the person responsible if there were another 9/11 or comparable attack. The "buck would stop" at this person's doorstep. Notice the difference between this and an intelligence "czar". The intelligence czar's job would be to coordinate knowledge and reporting, not coordinate action and response. The intelligence czar would look for flaws and incompleteness in the reporting process, in the lack of communication among agencies. Such a czar could not have prevented 9/11. He might have improved the flow of information to the President and his staff. But they have such a broad agenda, and 9/11s come so intermittently, that even the best reporting might have gotten lost in the shuffle. Since the czar would not command forces, he would not be the person to demand information in a timely fashion for action. The very existence of the new Commander of Homeland Security, his responsibility, would make him demand of all the intelligence agencies the type of coordinated and useful information that they failed to provide before 9/11. If he had existed, and if this had been his only responsibility, he could easily have gathered much more actionable information than was gathered from the intelligence agencies as they already exist, and he could have acted on this information as no one else could. Whether this would have been enough to prevent the tragedy, one cannot say.
The 9/11 Commission Report recommends that major changes be made in our intelligence services. I have commented previously on what I think of this.
However, the key problem with the 9/11 report is how the problem is defined. The problem is in the first instance not the organization of intelligence but the organization of homeland defense. This is not the job of Tom Ridge no matter what the title of his office. Ridge was a Governor and his interests are essentially bureaucratic. He sees his job as organizing national resources of men and materiel at every level to respond to the manifold possibilities of terrorism. But in another crisis and in the weeks leading up to it what I would want to have is a military command responsible for immediate action. We that the presidential and NSC response to the actual 9/11 was chaotic and confused. The President and his office are not set up to handle this kind of emergency. We do need something new, but that new is a separate branch of the Department of Defense focusing on timely response to threats to the American homeland. This person should answer to the Chief of Staff on the one hand and to the President on the other.
This chief of this projected "Homeland Security Command" would be the person responsible if there were another 9/11 or comparable attack. The "buck would stop" at this person's doorstep. Notice the difference between this and an intelligence "czar". The intelligence czar's job would be to coordinate knowledge and reporting, not coordinate action and response. The intelligence czar would look for flaws and incompleteness in the reporting process, in the lack of communication among agencies. Such a czar could not have prevented 9/11. He might have improved the flow of information to the President and his staff. But they have such a broad agenda, and 9/11s come so intermittently, that even the best reporting might have gotten lost in the shuffle. Since the czar would not command forces, he would not be the person to demand information in a timely fashion for action. The very existence of the new Commander of Homeland Security, his responsibility, would make him demand of all the intelligence agencies the type of coordinated and useful information that they failed to provide before 9/11. If he had existed, and if this had been his only responsibility, he could easily have gathered much more actionable information than was gathered from the intelligence agencies as they already exist, and he could have acted on this information as no one else could. Whether this would have been enough to prevent the tragedy, one cannot say.
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