Sparrowhawk
10-02-04, 11:18 AM
Pentagon Wields an Iron Hand In National Director Debate
By Martin Kady II,
CQ Staff
http://www.cq.com/graphics/weekly/2004/10/02/wr20041002-38intel-warner.jpg
Senate Armed Services Chairman Warner, left, and ranking Democrat Levin, are among the ‘Big Four’ seeking to maintain Pentagon control over the largest parts of the intelligence apparatus. (CQ PHOTO / SCOTT J. FERRELL)
Intelligence Committee chairmen carry with them some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets. So it was with no small measure of authority that the current chairman of the Senate panel and two of his predecessors showed up on the Senate floor Sept. 29 to make a forceful case that a new intelligence chief should have unprecedented powers to fight the war on terrorism.
This so-called czar of the spy world, they argued, should have a “clear chain of command” that would allow him to directly control intelligence units from Langley, Va., to Tora Bora, Afghanistan.
In fact, the idea never had a chance. The Senate rejected the proposal, an amendment offered by Arlen Specter, R-Pa., one of the two former Intelligence chairmen, backed by the other, Republican Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, and current Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., that would have given a national intelligence director (NID) day-to-day operational control over the entire 15-agency intelligence system. The vote to table, thus kill, the proposal was 78-19. (Senate Vote 192, p. 2335)
B o x S c o r e
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bills: HR 10, S 2845 — To reorganize the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies.
Latest Action: House Intelligence, Armed Services, Government Reform, Judiciary and Financial Services committees approved parts of HR 10 on Sept. 29; Senate debated S 2845 from Sept. 27 to Oct. 1.
Next Likely Action: House passage of HR 10 and Senate passage of S 2845 the week of Oct. 4.
Reference: Senate committee approval, CQ Weekly, p. 2276; authority of national intelligence director, p. 2180; House-Senate differences, p. 2061; Governmental Affairs jurisdiction, p. 1906.
Roberts, standing outside the Senate chamber after the vote, was clearly frustrated. “I feel like a chicken with one leg,” he said.
Roberts knew he was bumping up against a long history of inertia when it comes to shaking up the intelligence structure, more than 80 percent of which is controlled by the Pentagon through agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and Defense Intelligence Agency.
In fact, the Defense Department and its allies in Congress would no more yield control of their intelligence agencies, budgets or oversight to a civilian NID than they would hand an aircraft carrier to Florida or tanks to New York. The Pentagon and the military committees are willing to discuss cooperation, much as a soldier might let a child hold his helmet or look at his rifle. But they allow no one else to pull the trigger.
It is that iron-hard grip on budgets and personnel that has stymied intelligence integration in the past and is likely to do so again. Without firm authority over money and people, and no matter how the agencies and titles are arranged, a new intelligence director would have no more power than the current director of central intelligence, whose influence stops with the CIA and daily briefings for the president.
Roberts noted that 24 commissions or study groups over the past 50 years have called for changes in intelligence management. Each time the Pentagon has managed to persuade policy makers to maintain its hold over military intelligence.
“They’ve done it 24 times. This is 25,” Roberts said.
“They” are the Pentagon and its biggest supporters on Capitol Hill. Among them is a group known as the “Big Four” — Armed Services Chairman John W. Warner, R-Va., Armed Services ranking Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawaii — who between them have 130 years of Senate experience and oppose giving an intelligence chief much authority over military personnel.
During the debate that has followed the July 22 release of the Sept. 11 commission’s recommendations, the Pentagon and its allies on Capitol Hill have been able to chip away at provisions that would define broad powers for an NID. Top defense officials have lobbied in closed-door briefings, and their supporters in the Senate have eaten up hours of floor time questioning why an outside intelligence director should have a major say, or perhaps even the final word, over the budget and employees of the uniformed and civilian military who work for Pentagon intelligence divisions.
Rising in opposition to Specter’s amendment on control of intelligence agencies, Warner argued that three of them — the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office — were vital to soldiers in the field and must remain under Pentagon control.
“These three agencies are designated in law as combat support agencies, servicing our troops, the men and women of the Armed Forces, wherever they are in the world facing harm’s way, today, tomorrow, and in the future,” Warner said. “I foresee a potential disruption to [military] operations were this amendment to become law.”
In addition to the defeat of the Specter amendment, the Pentagon has won other battles: The intelligence chief would not have budget control over tactical battlefield intelligence and joint military intelligence programs such as unmanned surveillance planes and command and control computers.
This effort will continue as the Senate resumes debate on its bill (S 2845) the week of Oct. 4, when Warner, Levin and Stevens plan to offer amendments that would prevent the proposed NID from being able to transfer military personnel among agencies. The House bill (HR 10), written by Republican leaders following the lead of the White House, proposes an intelligence director with wide spending powers but whose intelligence budget would still have to pass through the Department of Defense. (Story, p. 2313)
Staking Out Sides in the Senate
At stake as the House and Senate move toward final passage of their bills is the future of the intelligence community’s power structure, which has been blamed by many for pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures and shaky information that led to the war in Iraq.
Just how powerful the intelligence director becomes under a new law will determine whether the true center of power in the war against terrorism rests with a new spy chief or remains centered in the Pentagon.
The Senate bill’s sponsors, Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, remain confident that they will prevail in creating a powerful intelligence director.
“The [Senate] bill would make historic changes to reform our intelligence community to do the best job we possibly can of knowing where our terrorist enemies are, what they are planning, and to strike at them before they can strike at us based on that intelligence,” Lieberman said.
Lobbying With Force
Pentagon leaders have been working quietly for months — in open hearings, classified briefings and one-on-one lobbying — to reduce the role that an NID would be able to play in controlling the military agencies.
Beginning with the series of unusual hearings held during the August recess, Pentagon officials began to warn that an intelligence director with too much authority could get in the way of providing intelligence to troops on the battlefield. At a time when American troops are in harm’s way, these cautions tend to have an impact.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, at an Aug. 17 hearing, said national intelligence and tactical intelligence often overlap, indicating that the legislation should require an intelligence director to coordinate with the Department of Defense.
“You could disrupt things because of not understanding the fact that the same piece of intelligence is simultaneously national and military or battlefield,” Rumsfeld said.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the same hearing that the capture of Saddam Hussein, which involved a flurry of shared intelligence from high-level national intelligence officials as well as battlefield intelligence units, illustrated in vivid detail why the Pentagon wants to keep as much control as possible.
“In today’s threat environment, we no longer have a distinct boundary between operations and intelligence,” Myers said. “When coalition forces captured Saddam Hussein in December of 2003, we saw this integrated team in action as they turned information into action quickly, and that’s just one example out of thousands.”
The Pentagon picked up the lobbying pace in mid-September as the Senate bill headed to the Governmental Affairs Committee and House leaders began drafting their bill.
In two classified briefings on Iraq on Sept. 22, top Pentagon officials and military officers urged lawmakers to be very careful not to tread on military turf with intelligence legislation, according to lawmakers who attended the briefing.
In back-to-back meetings that day, a bevy of top administration officials met with the full House and Senate to report on the situation in Iraq. But a significant topic of congressional interest that day aside from Iraq was the impact the proposed intelligence reforms would have on the military.
“They’re very concerned about the soldiers on the battlefield,” said Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “They told that to the entire House, Democrats and Republicans. They expressed their concern to be able to keep the people alive on the battlefield and to maintain that lifeline between their troops and these intelligence-gathering assets.”
Rumsfeld’s message to lawmakers that day was simple: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That message has clearly carried the day in the House and with powerful senators, including Warner and Stevens.
(Continued)
By Martin Kady II,
CQ Staff
http://www.cq.com/graphics/weekly/2004/10/02/wr20041002-38intel-warner.jpg
Senate Armed Services Chairman Warner, left, and ranking Democrat Levin, are among the ‘Big Four’ seeking to maintain Pentagon control over the largest parts of the intelligence apparatus. (CQ PHOTO / SCOTT J. FERRELL)
Intelligence Committee chairmen carry with them some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets. So it was with no small measure of authority that the current chairman of the Senate panel and two of his predecessors showed up on the Senate floor Sept. 29 to make a forceful case that a new intelligence chief should have unprecedented powers to fight the war on terrorism.
This so-called czar of the spy world, they argued, should have a “clear chain of command” that would allow him to directly control intelligence units from Langley, Va., to Tora Bora, Afghanistan.
In fact, the idea never had a chance. The Senate rejected the proposal, an amendment offered by Arlen Specter, R-Pa., one of the two former Intelligence chairmen, backed by the other, Republican Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, and current Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., that would have given a national intelligence director (NID) day-to-day operational control over the entire 15-agency intelligence system. The vote to table, thus kill, the proposal was 78-19. (Senate Vote 192, p. 2335)
B o x S c o r e
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bills: HR 10, S 2845 — To reorganize the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies.
Latest Action: House Intelligence, Armed Services, Government Reform, Judiciary and Financial Services committees approved parts of HR 10 on Sept. 29; Senate debated S 2845 from Sept. 27 to Oct. 1.
Next Likely Action: House passage of HR 10 and Senate passage of S 2845 the week of Oct. 4.
Reference: Senate committee approval, CQ Weekly, p. 2276; authority of national intelligence director, p. 2180; House-Senate differences, p. 2061; Governmental Affairs jurisdiction, p. 1906.
Roberts, standing outside the Senate chamber after the vote, was clearly frustrated. “I feel like a chicken with one leg,” he said.
Roberts knew he was bumping up against a long history of inertia when it comes to shaking up the intelligence structure, more than 80 percent of which is controlled by the Pentagon through agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and Defense Intelligence Agency.
In fact, the Defense Department and its allies in Congress would no more yield control of their intelligence agencies, budgets or oversight to a civilian NID than they would hand an aircraft carrier to Florida or tanks to New York. The Pentagon and the military committees are willing to discuss cooperation, much as a soldier might let a child hold his helmet or look at his rifle. But they allow no one else to pull the trigger.
It is that iron-hard grip on budgets and personnel that has stymied intelligence integration in the past and is likely to do so again. Without firm authority over money and people, and no matter how the agencies and titles are arranged, a new intelligence director would have no more power than the current director of central intelligence, whose influence stops with the CIA and daily briefings for the president.
Roberts noted that 24 commissions or study groups over the past 50 years have called for changes in intelligence management. Each time the Pentagon has managed to persuade policy makers to maintain its hold over military intelligence.
“They’ve done it 24 times. This is 25,” Roberts said.
“They” are the Pentagon and its biggest supporters on Capitol Hill. Among them is a group known as the “Big Four” — Armed Services Chairman John W. Warner, R-Va., Armed Services ranking Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawaii — who between them have 130 years of Senate experience and oppose giving an intelligence chief much authority over military personnel.
During the debate that has followed the July 22 release of the Sept. 11 commission’s recommendations, the Pentagon and its allies on Capitol Hill have been able to chip away at provisions that would define broad powers for an NID. Top defense officials have lobbied in closed-door briefings, and their supporters in the Senate have eaten up hours of floor time questioning why an outside intelligence director should have a major say, or perhaps even the final word, over the budget and employees of the uniformed and civilian military who work for Pentagon intelligence divisions.
Rising in opposition to Specter’s amendment on control of intelligence agencies, Warner argued that three of them — the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office — were vital to soldiers in the field and must remain under Pentagon control.
“These three agencies are designated in law as combat support agencies, servicing our troops, the men and women of the Armed Forces, wherever they are in the world facing harm’s way, today, tomorrow, and in the future,” Warner said. “I foresee a potential disruption to [military] operations were this amendment to become law.”
In addition to the defeat of the Specter amendment, the Pentagon has won other battles: The intelligence chief would not have budget control over tactical battlefield intelligence and joint military intelligence programs such as unmanned surveillance planes and command and control computers.
This effort will continue as the Senate resumes debate on its bill (S 2845) the week of Oct. 4, when Warner, Levin and Stevens plan to offer amendments that would prevent the proposed NID from being able to transfer military personnel among agencies. The House bill (HR 10), written by Republican leaders following the lead of the White House, proposes an intelligence director with wide spending powers but whose intelligence budget would still have to pass through the Department of Defense. (Story, p. 2313)
Staking Out Sides in the Senate
At stake as the House and Senate move toward final passage of their bills is the future of the intelligence community’s power structure, which has been blamed by many for pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures and shaky information that led to the war in Iraq.
Just how powerful the intelligence director becomes under a new law will determine whether the true center of power in the war against terrorism rests with a new spy chief or remains centered in the Pentagon.
The Senate bill’s sponsors, Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, remain confident that they will prevail in creating a powerful intelligence director.
“The [Senate] bill would make historic changes to reform our intelligence community to do the best job we possibly can of knowing where our terrorist enemies are, what they are planning, and to strike at them before they can strike at us based on that intelligence,” Lieberman said.
Lobbying With Force
Pentagon leaders have been working quietly for months — in open hearings, classified briefings and one-on-one lobbying — to reduce the role that an NID would be able to play in controlling the military agencies.
Beginning with the series of unusual hearings held during the August recess, Pentagon officials began to warn that an intelligence director with too much authority could get in the way of providing intelligence to troops on the battlefield. At a time when American troops are in harm’s way, these cautions tend to have an impact.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, at an Aug. 17 hearing, said national intelligence and tactical intelligence often overlap, indicating that the legislation should require an intelligence director to coordinate with the Department of Defense.
“You could disrupt things because of not understanding the fact that the same piece of intelligence is simultaneously national and military or battlefield,” Rumsfeld said.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the same hearing that the capture of Saddam Hussein, which involved a flurry of shared intelligence from high-level national intelligence officials as well as battlefield intelligence units, illustrated in vivid detail why the Pentagon wants to keep as much control as possible.
“In today’s threat environment, we no longer have a distinct boundary between operations and intelligence,” Myers said. “When coalition forces captured Saddam Hussein in December of 2003, we saw this integrated team in action as they turned information into action quickly, and that’s just one example out of thousands.”
The Pentagon picked up the lobbying pace in mid-September as the Senate bill headed to the Governmental Affairs Committee and House leaders began drafting their bill.
In two classified briefings on Iraq on Sept. 22, top Pentagon officials and military officers urged lawmakers to be very careful not to tread on military turf with intelligence legislation, according to lawmakers who attended the briefing.
In back-to-back meetings that day, a bevy of top administration officials met with the full House and Senate to report on the situation in Iraq. But a significant topic of congressional interest that day aside from Iraq was the impact the proposed intelligence reforms would have on the military.
“They’re very concerned about the soldiers on the battlefield,” said Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “They told that to the entire House, Democrats and Republicans. They expressed their concern to be able to keep the people alive on the battlefield and to maintain that lifeline between their troops and these intelligence-gathering assets.”
Rumsfeld’s message to lawmakers that day was simple: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That message has clearly carried the day in the House and with powerful senators, including Warner and Stevens.
(Continued)