Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Director of National Intelligence: Reorganizational Madness
Richard Posner in an impressive Op-Ed today points out the reasons why the Administration has been unable to fill the position of Director of National Intelligence. Robert gates, the most obvious candidate said no thanks. Posner thinks he knows why. He says that the legislation has been carefully worded so that the new Director will have all the responsibility and none of the power. He is sure to be blamed if there is another al-Qaida spectacular. But he would have been unable to do anything effectively to avoid it.
One of the organizational glitches that Posner points to is that sitting on top of all the other intelligence agencies, the new Director is to have a staff of 500. As he notes, this means that any intelligence that is gathered under the new system will have to make its way through yet another level or two in the bureaucracy, making more than ever the unlikelihood that it will reach the President or anybody else that might do something about it.
As has been argued here often, the bureaucratic changes that are needed are to tie the intelligence more closely to those who might act on the intelligence. Useful intelligence is not something that exists in the ether or in written memos. It is something that real people react to, impelling them to ask for more information, to pin down and verify, and tie together bits of information. But above all it must be connected directly to those who are expected to act on the intelligence. This is why I suggested some posts back that the Pentagon taking over some of the gathering of intelligence in the field from the CIA was a good idea. If Special Forces has units in Afghanistan that need more intelligence on who is who or what dangers are developing around them, they want military units to be doing the work, not persons answering to a different command structure.
Instead of complexifying things with Homeland Security and an overarching National Intelligence Directorate, what we need is a handful of trusted advisors working with the President and Homeland Security whose job it is to be on top of, and actively engaged in, the intelligence work of the FBI, CIA, Pentagon etc, and be able to directly interact with any units of these organizations or others whose job it is to act both passively and aggressively on the basis of such intelligence. This trusted group of advisors would have the responsibility of directly contacting agents in the field organizations of the established intelligence agencies here and abroad, finding out what they know, seeing the areas in which they are deficient, and advising at several levels up to and including the President on how to remedy the deficiencies they have discovered.
One of the organizational glitches that Posner points to is that sitting on top of all the other intelligence agencies, the new Director is to have a staff of 500. As he notes, this means that any intelligence that is gathered under the new system will have to make its way through yet another level or two in the bureaucracy, making more than ever the unlikelihood that it will reach the President or anybody else that might do something about it.
As has been argued here often, the bureaucratic changes that are needed are to tie the intelligence more closely to those who might act on the intelligence. Useful intelligence is not something that exists in the ether or in written memos. It is something that real people react to, impelling them to ask for more information, to pin down and verify, and tie together bits of information. But above all it must be connected directly to those who are expected to act on the intelligence. This is why I suggested some posts back that the Pentagon taking over some of the gathering of intelligence in the field from the CIA was a good idea. If Special Forces has units in Afghanistan that need more intelligence on who is who or what dangers are developing around them, they want military units to be doing the work, not persons answering to a different command structure.
Instead of complexifying things with Homeland Security and an overarching National Intelligence Directorate, what we need is a handful of trusted advisors working with the President and Homeland Security whose job it is to be on top of, and actively engaged in, the intelligence work of the FBI, CIA, Pentagon etc, and be able to directly interact with any units of these organizations or others whose job it is to act both passively and aggressively on the basis of such intelligence. This trusted group of advisors would have the responsibility of directly contacting agents in the field organizations of the established intelligence agencies here and abroad, finding out what they know, seeing the areas in which they are deficient, and advising at several levels up to and including the President on how to remedy the deficiencies they have discovered.
Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
