Abstract
A struggle by entrenched parties is likely to torpedo genuine intelligence community reform; the next CIA will not differ much from the old one.
As you read this, the U.S. media is most likely reporting on a stormy debate about the very structure of the U.S. intelligence community. Release of the 9/11 report by the National Commission to Study the Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States will help to crystallize the debate already set off by the appearance of the Iraq intelligence report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), driving citizen fury at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its brethren. The dust barely having settled on the resignation of CIA Director George J. Tenet, the Bush administration has already seized on the debate to divert attention from its own actions and to confine the controversy to the esoteric and technical issues of intelligence community structure.
The Senate intelligence committee rendering shows a highly selective intelligence process in which an “assumptions train” drove the most pessimistic judgments about the possible existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. On issue after issue, assumptions substituted for paltry evidence in drawing the most dire conclusions. The new acting director of the CIA, John E. McLaughlin, defended his agency at a July 12 press conference, arguing that “if it was an assumption train, we were not the engine. I'm not even sure we were the coal car.” In a corollary reprised with glee by President George W. Bush, McLaughlin went on to say, “People all around the world made the assumption that this country [Iraq] had weapons,” and that the assumptions were long-standing and “held almost universally.”
Of course, that is not exactly the truth. In fact, the universe of believers boils down to intelligence services that relied on raw data supplied by the United States, which has been brought out by investigations of pre-war intelligence conducted in both Britain and Australia. Bush has disingenuously added the United Nations itself to that universe, even though the U.N. weapons inspectors in several public reports explicitly declared they had found no evidence for the U.S. claims about Iraq. Even the public doubted the CIA version of reality, as readers of the Bulletin should be aware. The lack of substance to the U.S. claims was noted before the war, and on all the very issues that lay at the heart of the U.S. intelligence case for action.
The 9/11 Commission final report only adds to the building dissatisfaction with U.S. intelligence. Missed signals before the terrorist attacks, poor cooperation among agencies, a lack of follow-up on information that was in the system, and other factors all contributed to the 9/11 failure. Demands for reform are already out there and will intensify.
Yet even before the debate is done it is a fair bet that the next CIA will not differ much from the old one. In the past, with great legerdemain, the CIA has often succeeded in converting major challenges into fresh bids for more resources. This is likely to happen again. The groundwork is already in place for that play. George Tenet, his director for operations, the chief of the agency's Counterterrorism Center, all made the argument before the 9/11 Commission that the CIA found it impossible to plan for steady growth–or to conduct a coherent “war” against the Al Qaeda terrorist group–due to uncertain budget requests during the 1990s. The new debate will include a strong demand for increasing intelligence spending over the long term and at some defined pace. The net result will be a CIA juggernaut stronger than before.
It is true that in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War there was great uncertainty about the direction of U.S. intelligence. The roles and missions of intelligence seemed to blur after the demise of the Soviet Union. As far as the business of spying and clandestine operations is concerned, views in the early 1990s ranged from demands to abolish the CIA to recommendations for abolition of the Directorate of Operations (the main espionage and covert operations entity) at the agency, to notions of accomplishing a divorce another way, by moving the business of intelligence analysis to a new organization or even directly into the White House as some form of staff agency serving the National Security Council. Advocates of some of the more extreme measures included certain of the CIA's own officers. The Directorate of Operations (DO) sustained budget and staffing cuts into the mid-1990s, though they were not as severe as the cuts elsewhere at the agency. But a presidential commission at that time recommended against all of the proposals and no changes were made.
Starting in the mid-1990s the debate shifted. Now the accusation was that the CIA was somehow “risk averse”–a charge leveled against George Tenet himself by some insiders when he came up for confirmation as CIA director–but that argument was really about unleashing the spooks. The question of missions withered away after the embassy bombings in Africa in August 1998. Before that year was out, Tenet had issued a directive effectively declaring war on terror and spoken out publicly in favor of building up the clandestine service. By 1999, budgets passed by Congress already acknowledged the purpose of expanding the operations directorate.
Tenet would take considerable flak in 2003-2004 for testifying to the Senate intelligence committee and the 9/11 Commission that it would take five years to build up the clandestine service, but he really meant the process of putting a cadre of experienced mid-career officers into the field, not simply recruiting new people. Also, the process had already begun–in 2004 CIA training schools graduated the largest class of operations officers in the agency's history. Given the time required to process recruits, to complete their background investigations, and the length of the training programs themselves, this move had to have been under way before September 11. In any case, 9/11 settled for the present any question of the utility of the clandestine services. The new debate will not be about them.
Intelligence analysis failures figured in both the tragic 9/11 attacks and the prelude to the Iraq war. Despite that fact, there is no talk of abolishing the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), the CIA's key analytical unit. The more typical complaint is that there are not enough analysts to interpret all the information being pulled down by the intelligence community's mass of satellites, technical collection mechanisms, and spies. Reforms that are on the table involve changes in the way information is handled and sourced, making analysts more aware of the origins of intelligence they interpret. These expectations for change were enunciated explicitly to DI officers at a February 2004 briefing by the current deputy director for intelligence, Jami Miscik.
Actually, the DI could do more about reforming analysis. In particular the CIA could step back from its creeping predilection for hypothetical analysis and similar inductive methods that work backward from conclusions, substituting wishful thinking for deductive reasoning. As was mercilessly driven home in the SSCI report on Iraq, the role of assumptions in intelligence analysis must be reexamined in the wake of that fiasco. The high ratio of managers to line analysts, which some argue makes the CIA more vulnerable to political pressures, also deserves attention. But there can be little question that the next CIA will feature a larger analytical component, possibly one with closer integration of the DI with the DO. The recent trend has been to combine personnel from both sides of the agency in fusion centers that focus on issues, such as the Counterterrorism Center, the Counternarcotics Center, and others. The use of this approach can be expected to increase.
The top level is where the main changes will take place. Proposals for a “director of national intelligence” have been floating around for some time. The 9/11 commission recommended the idea of an intelligence czar in its final report, and the Senate committee may do the same (the SSCI's first-stage report contains substantive conclusions but no recommendations). The White House panel under Gen. Brent Scowcroft, which carried out the Bush administration's initial review of intelligence organization in 2001, reportedly recommended the establishment of this post. The director of national intelligence would be a cabinet-level official responsible for the entire intelligence community. According to this concept, a national director would have complete budget authority over all national intelligence agencies, hire and fire officials at will, and set collection and production goals. How military and Energy and State Department staffs in this area would be affected is unclear.
It is important to understand that from the beginning the existing director of central intelligence (DCI) position has had the same formal responsibility for the community as a whole. But DCIs have lacked the authority to go with the role. Tenet and his predecessors set goals under what is called the National Foreign Intelligence Program, and they approved long-term budget plans. But the defense secretary actually programs, budgets, and spends the money, which amounts to more than 85 percent of the annual intelligence budget, and the people in most of the agencies work for him. Agencies operating under the defense secretary include the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Together they dwarf the CIA in size and overshadow it even more in budget. Removing these agencies from the Pentagon would, in an instant, take away roughly a tenth of the defense secretary's budget. If related units like the electronic intercept components of each of the armed services, the Defense Human Intelligence Service, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the military intelligence staffs were included, the budget slice would be even bigger and the percent of personnel loss to the Pentagon would come close to its loss in budget. Also at stake would be technology development programs for some of the most sophisticated space systems, which the present defense secretary is particularly enamored of. The Pentagon can be expected to fight these changes.
There are a host of unexamined issues related to the larger moves. Could the intelligence czar promote, fire, or hire military personnel? If so, why would a defense secretary assign people to the director of national intelligence's (DNI) agencies? But if not, what would a DNI's power amount to? Would civilians at the national agencies work for the DNI, and would these agencies then convert to an all- or mostly civilian cadre? Could the DNI cancel air force technology programs? What about Energy's intelligence initiatives? Or NSA computer upgrades? Would the DNI's budget authority mean he/she would have complete authority to set budget requests, with the defense secretary (and others) merely rubberstamping them, or would the role be limited to stapling together Pentagon submissions and forwarding them to Congress? If the latter, what would that authority amount to? And would the program justification process exist within the DNI's office, or would the Pentagon (and other) requesters present proposals that the DNI would then reject or approve? Many more questions of this sort lurk in the wings.
A different set of arguments applies from the CIA side. Agency officers object that taking the CIA away from the director would be like leaving a general with no troops. Absent any direct means for action, the DNI would be dependent on a set of agencies with their own bureaucracies, roles, and missions. If a director had the kind of real control implied by the term “intelligence czar,” and could fire at will those who defy him, this objection would lose much of its strength.
“An obstruction is restricting the flow of oxygen to your brain. That might explain the missile shield idea.”
Former directors of central intelligence are divided on the notion of an intelligence czar. All agree that leadership of a “community” is among their key tasks. George Tenet and Stansfield Turner, who led the CIA under President Jimmy Carter, believe they did pretty well on the community side, but Tenet opposes proposals for a director of national intelligence while Admiral Turner has believed in them since his own time at the helm. Robert Gates, CIA director during the presidency of George Bush's father, sides with Tenet, arguing the DCI already has the mission, and all that is needed is to perfect its official powers. William Webster, the first Bush's other DCI, would not mind the increased power of a czar but does not want the CIA taken away from any DNI. John McLaughlin opposes creation of the position of DNI. A number of other past CIA directors, including James R. Schlesinger, John Deutch, and R. James Woolsey, all favor the establishment of the post of intelligence czar. Recent press reporting portrays George Bush as being on both sides of the issue.
Given the wide variations in opinion and the fact that such a change would require legislation, the likelihood is that demands for reform will lead to yet another study group, not to actual change. Kicking the can down the road is preferable, at least for this president, to doing the hard work of leading the nation into an era of intelligence reform. There may be a next CIA, but its advent is still some ways away.