Friday, October 29, 2004
Intelligence Reform
The International Institute for Strategic Studies in its latest “Comments” takes a position on the reform of American intelligence. Its conclusion is that the egregious errors in handling the situation leading up to 9/11 should not lead to the kind of changes that the 9/11 Commission, seconded by the U.S. Senate, are proposing. The difficulty that needs to be addressed is that the information gathered at lower levels is not getting up to those who could act on it at the top in a timely fashion, if at all. Placing another layer above the CIA may simply make the situation worse.
They point out that a pre 9/11 reorganization was an attempt to get the information to the NSC. This was useful but not enough. As they say: “Well before 9/11, there was a bureaucratic mechanism in place for gathering intelligence at the appropriate level in the form of the CSG, which had been enshrined by presidential decision directive as the government’s counter-terrorism crisis-management nerve centre at the NSC. As chairman of the CSG, Richard Clarke made breaking down inter-agency anxieties about sharing information a priority but had not been completely successful. The problem before 9/11, then, was not the absence of a top-level clearinghouse for pooling intelligence on terrorist threats from multiple agencies. Rather, the trouble was that key officials in the individual agencies themselves did not rate intelligence that turned out to be important as sufficiently probative to filter up to the NSC.”
The “Comments” also sum up the advice offered by Henry Kissinger with the support of others, which concluded (note that the NID is the new position being advocated by the 9/11 Commission and the Senate; DCI is the present Director of Central Intelligence):
“Shortly before the House version of the intelligence reform bill was introduced, Henry Kissinger, with the support of a bipartisan group of former high-ranking officials, in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee cautioned Congress against taking ‘irrevocable legislative action’ prompted by any false sense of urgency that the election cycle might have created. Kissinger was generally concerned with creating another layer - in the form of the NID - between the president and existing intelligence institutions. His specific worries included:
• weakening the relationship between intelligence analysts and operations officers;
• potentially compromising democratic principles by institutionally melding domestic intelligence with foreign intelligence;
• suppressing competing views;
• blurring lines of authority between the NID and the NSC;
• the questionable advisability of folding tactical and operational military intelligence into a predominantly civilian multi-agency structure; and
• the inclination of the 9/11 Commission to ignore more incremental and less disruptive means of achieving reform through existing institutions, such as the DCI.”
Good points, well made.
As suggested in previous postings, it seems to me that there should be an operational office alongside the NSC that has responsibility for action. Such an office would be more likely to demand needed intelligence and coordination than the advisory and fact-gathering groups that seem to be in the loop discussed above. One would office would be in Homeland Security. But this is not the way this agency is structured. It is more like the old Civil Defense or FEMA agencies that have to do with managing crises, with reaching out to everybody, mobilizing first responders etc. Perhaps a thorough redoing of Homeland Security would give us such a capability, but probably the complexion of that agency is already set (and I believe it might as well be dismantled). The FBI and the CIA are both very ineffective agencies (because of a combination of the quality of their personnel and their institutional culture). The first task is to remold their cultures and personnel (a long and perhaps impossible task). The FBI is set up to control internal crime by getting indictments in the court system. This is a task that must be done in the end in many terrorism cases, but it leads to different priorities and a different sense of time than the terrorism issue demands. Most of the CIA is concerned with fact gathering. A section send out small units on ad hoc military assignments in overseas situations. It does not, however, have the command function and field forces that would be demanded by serious security threats playing out in the United States. Somehow this lack has to be remedied without damaging civil freedoms in the country more than the terrorism scare already has.
They point out that a pre 9/11 reorganization was an attempt to get the information to the NSC. This was useful but not enough. As they say: “Well before 9/11, there was a bureaucratic mechanism in place for gathering intelligence at the appropriate level in the form of the CSG, which had been enshrined by presidential decision directive as the government’s counter-terrorism crisis-management nerve centre at the NSC. As chairman of the CSG, Richard Clarke made breaking down inter-agency anxieties about sharing information a priority but had not been completely successful. The problem before 9/11, then, was not the absence of a top-level clearinghouse for pooling intelligence on terrorist threats from multiple agencies. Rather, the trouble was that key officials in the individual agencies themselves did not rate intelligence that turned out to be important as sufficiently probative to filter up to the NSC.”
The “Comments” also sum up the advice offered by Henry Kissinger with the support of others, which concluded (note that the NID is the new position being advocated by the 9/11 Commission and the Senate; DCI is the present Director of Central Intelligence):
“Shortly before the House version of the intelligence reform bill was introduced, Henry Kissinger, with the support of a bipartisan group of former high-ranking officials, in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee cautioned Congress against taking ‘irrevocable legislative action’ prompted by any false sense of urgency that the election cycle might have created. Kissinger was generally concerned with creating another layer - in the form of the NID - between the president and existing intelligence institutions. His specific worries included:
• weakening the relationship between intelligence analysts and operations officers;
• potentially compromising democratic principles by institutionally melding domestic intelligence with foreign intelligence;
• suppressing competing views;
• blurring lines of authority between the NID and the NSC;
• the questionable advisability of folding tactical and operational military intelligence into a predominantly civilian multi-agency structure; and
• the inclination of the 9/11 Commission to ignore more incremental and less disruptive means of achieving reform through existing institutions, such as the DCI.”
Good points, well made.
As suggested in previous postings, it seems to me that there should be an operational office alongside the NSC that has responsibility for action. Such an office would be more likely to demand needed intelligence and coordination than the advisory and fact-gathering groups that seem to be in the loop discussed above. One would office would be in Homeland Security. But this is not the way this agency is structured. It is more like the old Civil Defense or FEMA agencies that have to do with managing crises, with reaching out to everybody, mobilizing first responders etc. Perhaps a thorough redoing of Homeland Security would give us such a capability, but probably the complexion of that agency is already set (and I believe it might as well be dismantled). The FBI and the CIA are both very ineffective agencies (because of a combination of the quality of their personnel and their institutional culture). The first task is to remold their cultures and personnel (a long and perhaps impossible task). The FBI is set up to control internal crime by getting indictments in the court system. This is a task that must be done in the end in many terrorism cases, but it leads to different priorities and a different sense of time than the terrorism issue demands. Most of the CIA is concerned with fact gathering. A section send out small units on ad hoc military assignments in overseas situations. It does not, however, have the command function and field forces that would be demanded by serious security threats playing out in the United States. Somehow this lack has to be remedied without damaging civil freedoms in the country more than the terrorism scare already has.
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