CIA DIRECTOR TO HAVE EXPANDED POWERS

President Bush announced yesterday that he had signed an executive order giving the Director of Central Intelligence an expanded role, at least until Congress makes a decision about creating a National Intelligence Director, and creating a National Counterterrorism Center.

The new roles for the CIA Director include expanded budget control over various intelligence functions, including defense intelligence. The move by Bush will be a blow to the SecDef, and will help to bolster the CIA's significance. Bush's decision to give the Director of Central Intelligence budgetary control--in particular, the ability to shift funds from one department to another and to stop funding for any project that he deems not in the national security interest--comes just days after Sen. Pat Roberts, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced his plans to introduce legislation that would effectively dismantle the CIA and reform it into three separate agencies that would report to the National Intelligence Director. Bush said that this move by executive order is a temporary consolidation of the 15 intelligence-gathering agencies of the government until the Congress completes legislation creating the post of National Intelligence Director.

Sen. John Edwards, Democratic candidate for Vice-President, said in response to the Bush announcement that this just confirms that the President has not taken the appropriate and decisive action since 9/11 to fix the problems in the intelligence-gathering abilities of the U.S. He argued that this political move by the current administration does not go far enough in consolidating the power into a cabinet-equivalent position as called for by the 9/11 Commission Report.

The creation of a national counterterrorism center would bring together representatives of all agencies concerned with terrorism prevention--at home and abroad. This super-agency would serve as the information gathering and dissemination center to help coordinate and share information among all the agencies from the various departments--the State Dept, Homeland Security's Immigration and Naturalization Service and its investigative arm, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Secret Service, the FAA, the Federal Trade Commission and/or Securities and Exchange Commission (to help prevent attacks on the financial services computer systems), NORAD and relevant domestic military agencies, and defense intelligence agencies.

Additionally, Bush called for the creation of standards and methods for secure identification for federal workers and contractors. He created an oversight board within the Dept of Justice "to monitor government laws and policies for civil liberties violations."

Essentially, Bush has put into place a 'watered-down' version of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and it now seems that the administration will be willing to accept a powerful National Intelligence Director rather than just the figurehead Bush had suggested previously. Once again Bush proves himself to be just as much of a 'flip-flopper' as he accuses John Kerry of being.

Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the ranking Republican member of the Senate, spoke out yesterday about the rush to institute the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. It seems to me that the Congress has not acted in any reasonable capacity as yet to move forward with some of the most essential components of the commission's plan. Most important to enact right away would be the oversight functions of a single joint committee and the institution of the National Intelligence Director. Stevens argues that the Commission failed to take into account the modifications that have been made since 9/11 by the CIA and FBI in particular. However, I think the point of the Commission's work is very precise--there must be true centralized power and monetary control in order to allow for effective communication and sharing of information between these various and vastly different agencies.

I will continue to argue that competition is not the best thing to drive successful analysis. Success comes from reasoned dialogue among peers with the same areas of expertise who must come to a consensus but are then free to present their contrary opinion to another department. Compartmentalizing does not work--the intelligence must be shared, debated, and filtered through the dialogue process. The filtering must include analysts from as many different agencies and branches of government as possible--working groups formed for particular issues, such as Iraqi intelligence leading up to the war when State Dept and Energy Dept specialists were disagreeing with Defense and CIA analysts that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. If these people had all been in one room, forced to reach a consensus, we might not be mired in a nasty military campaign that will only get uglier before it gets any better--IF it gets better at all!