thedrifter
02-03-05, 06:43 AM
02-01-2005
Clandestiny: Who Would Be ‘Intelli-Czar’?
By Michael S. Woodson
I feel, uncomfortably, like one of those British tourists in the upper floor of a Thai resort hotel, videotaping the tsunami waves washing in and swirling about ominously, shifting everything around in a whirlpool of raw power. It’s going back out. ‘E should be able to grasp onto that tree right there, see? Plenty of trees on the way out. ‘E can swim, can’t he?
Except I am not talking about a flailing tourist in Thailand, I am speaking of the unknown holdout spymaster at CIA who is too smart to leak him or herself into an early, forced retirement. This hypothetical person is riding out a nasty storm over the intelligence community. Forget the KGB, once you’re marked as the scapegoat in D.C., your interesting times are ticking.
As early as August last year, it was widely reported that President Bush championed a sweeping intelligence reform bill and an intelligence czar over all agencies. This implied that the CIA could not be trusted with the “C” in its name. The imperatives of the 9/11 Commission’s report rolled over Washington like a seismic wave over Asian beaches.
While Bush raced with Kerry for the best homeland security image, Rumsfeld and allies in Congress felt queasy about an intelligence reform bill opening the Pentagon’s intelligence faculties to a independent oversight. But why did they not feel equally concerned about centralizing power over the CIA, or FBI or NSA?
Considering the current imbroglios over Rumsfeld’s made-to-order Strategic Support Branch of the DIA, maybe the SecDef was concerned he would have to disclose the nature and extent of his developing intelligence powers that confess no faith in any centrality but its own.
Now, under the light of flashing bulbs, Rumsfeld, who should long ago have imitated The Donald and fired his own neo-intelligence analysts with their Kremlin-like control over the U.S. foreign policy, now says his espionage agency will work with the CIA, according to The Washington Post.
An anonymous CIA source was quoted in that piece as saying that the Strategic Support Branch has the same objectives as the CIA, yet emphasizes combat operations intelligence, and that the CIA had to be responsible for “broader missions not directly related to combat operations” in each country. Responsible, or in control?
The problem is that “combat operations” could be anything done to further the “war on terror” considering the open-ended definition of that war.
If the war on terror ends when extremists turn bucolic, then it seems the Pentagon will call the intelligence shots indefinitely. After all, wasn’t the unnamed CIA source quoted by the Post speaking favorably of the Strategic Support Branch from the Gossamer-led CIA?
In November 2004, a month after passage of the 2005 defense budget, the intelligence reform bill, complete with the intelli-czar accessory, was due for a vote. Then a strange thing happened: The powerful GOP Armed Services Committee Chairman from California, Rep. Duncan Hunter, who pushed the 2005 defense package through with billions of dollars for his state’s aerospace defense industry, cautioned colleagues to pull the intelligence reform bill. They pulled it despite the urgency of the 9/11 Commission report conclusions.
If done to protect democracy, three cheers for Hunter. If done to secure his Pentagon ace (Rumsfeld) in the defense contract hole, we have a serious problem. Yet I doubt Rep. Joel Hefley’s Ethics Committee replacement will notice, since the GOP is putting Hefley on the fly for challenging the ethics of Hunter’s GOP colleague, Majority Whip Rep. Tom Delay.
Was Rumsfeld holding out for a Pentagon-based Czar? His main objection was not to an intelli-czar in principle, but to one that could control his Department’s intelligence. Had he been building the Pentagon intelligence machine, not wanting anyone to play with his toy?
Here is some recent history framing this intelligence struggle:
* 9/11 happened in G.W. Bush’s first year;
* Funky intelligence lent WMD gravity to the case for an Iraq invasion;
* The CIA was blamed for not vetting said intelligence;
* The Bush Administration then reiterated that it was good intelligence after saying it was not;
* The 9/11 Commission Report debuted;
* CIA Director George Tenet preemptively retired after getting hit with the buck, about whose story his successor, Porter Goss, seems oddly silent;
* Goss landed not at all lightly at Langley to consolidate the Company and trim it of its hard-won experience;
* Rumsfeld usurped the CIA’s analytical role because in his view, nobody does it better than Wolfowitz and Perle, even if it means sacrificing Feith, undershooting CFR president Gelb’s advice of last summer to fire them all;
* Rumsfeld then forms his own intelligence operations branch at some point, to match his analytical arm;
* Bush v. Kerry opens in theatres everywhere, and the Kerry campaign’s Abu-Graib fueled heat on Rumsfeld to retire hits Kelvin temps;
* Under said heat, Bush deftly endorsed the 9/11 Commission Report with some downgrades;
* Tenet gets the Presidential Medal of Freedom (to slow his inevitably dangerous book deal?);
* Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge flees, as if having seen a ghost;
* Bush asks for $80 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan, effectively putting the 2005 Defense budget over the 500 billion mark.
Our CIA holdout probably saw this coming, and wisely kept a silent vigil rather than fighting the agency’s scapegoating too early. There would be two reasons for this. The first: this CIA stalwart does not want an independent intelligence czar over the CIA either, preferring to let Rumsfeld and Hunter fight his fight since Rumsfeld has the president’s ear and Hunter the Senate’s. The risk? The Pentagon captures the CIA’s flag using the endless war on terror to justify it.
Now that the election in Iraq proves that Bush’s instincts were on target for a groundswell of democratic enthusiasm, Rumsfeld’s hand is stronger, and our CIA holdout has to be concerned that the obedient Goss will remain his boss, under orders to cede power to the Pentagon.
Now some spinners are saying competition would be good for intelligence, not centralization. However, while there is reason to doubt centralized power, as I argued in a recent article (“Centralized Intelligence No Guarantee of Success,” DefenseWatch, Jan. 10, 2005), competition of powers will be too extreme to form a real team.
Since when did competing ball teams share their playbooks? We need a traceable, secure, and centralized repository of shared intelligence information accessible to intelligence and homeland security agency heads and the president. This will level the playing field and expand the team. We must avoid turning the U.S. intelligence community into an episode of “Survivor.” The Congress seems to be allowing that now.
Why couldn’t President Bush create a seasonal, cabinet level Chief of Staff over Wartime Intelligence Agency Directors who would not be activated in peacetime? And for the war on terror, I would nominate retired Gen. Anthony Zinni as a wise atonement for the administration’s early mistakes in post-war analysis and planning.
Michael Woodson is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at singingmountains@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
Ellie
Clandestiny: Who Would Be ‘Intelli-Czar’?
By Michael S. Woodson
I feel, uncomfortably, like one of those British tourists in the upper floor of a Thai resort hotel, videotaping the tsunami waves washing in and swirling about ominously, shifting everything around in a whirlpool of raw power. It’s going back out. ‘E should be able to grasp onto that tree right there, see? Plenty of trees on the way out. ‘E can swim, can’t he?
Except I am not talking about a flailing tourist in Thailand, I am speaking of the unknown holdout spymaster at CIA who is too smart to leak him or herself into an early, forced retirement. This hypothetical person is riding out a nasty storm over the intelligence community. Forget the KGB, once you’re marked as the scapegoat in D.C., your interesting times are ticking.
As early as August last year, it was widely reported that President Bush championed a sweeping intelligence reform bill and an intelligence czar over all agencies. This implied that the CIA could not be trusted with the “C” in its name. The imperatives of the 9/11 Commission’s report rolled over Washington like a seismic wave over Asian beaches.
While Bush raced with Kerry for the best homeland security image, Rumsfeld and allies in Congress felt queasy about an intelligence reform bill opening the Pentagon’s intelligence faculties to a independent oversight. But why did they not feel equally concerned about centralizing power over the CIA, or FBI or NSA?
Considering the current imbroglios over Rumsfeld’s made-to-order Strategic Support Branch of the DIA, maybe the SecDef was concerned he would have to disclose the nature and extent of his developing intelligence powers that confess no faith in any centrality but its own.
Now, under the light of flashing bulbs, Rumsfeld, who should long ago have imitated The Donald and fired his own neo-intelligence analysts with their Kremlin-like control over the U.S. foreign policy, now says his espionage agency will work with the CIA, according to The Washington Post.
An anonymous CIA source was quoted in that piece as saying that the Strategic Support Branch has the same objectives as the CIA, yet emphasizes combat operations intelligence, and that the CIA had to be responsible for “broader missions not directly related to combat operations” in each country. Responsible, or in control?
The problem is that “combat operations” could be anything done to further the “war on terror” considering the open-ended definition of that war.
If the war on terror ends when extremists turn bucolic, then it seems the Pentagon will call the intelligence shots indefinitely. After all, wasn’t the unnamed CIA source quoted by the Post speaking favorably of the Strategic Support Branch from the Gossamer-led CIA?
In November 2004, a month after passage of the 2005 defense budget, the intelligence reform bill, complete with the intelli-czar accessory, was due for a vote. Then a strange thing happened: The powerful GOP Armed Services Committee Chairman from California, Rep. Duncan Hunter, who pushed the 2005 defense package through with billions of dollars for his state’s aerospace defense industry, cautioned colleagues to pull the intelligence reform bill. They pulled it despite the urgency of the 9/11 Commission report conclusions.
If done to protect democracy, three cheers for Hunter. If done to secure his Pentagon ace (Rumsfeld) in the defense contract hole, we have a serious problem. Yet I doubt Rep. Joel Hefley’s Ethics Committee replacement will notice, since the GOP is putting Hefley on the fly for challenging the ethics of Hunter’s GOP colleague, Majority Whip Rep. Tom Delay.
Was Rumsfeld holding out for a Pentagon-based Czar? His main objection was not to an intelli-czar in principle, but to one that could control his Department’s intelligence. Had he been building the Pentagon intelligence machine, not wanting anyone to play with his toy?
Here is some recent history framing this intelligence struggle:
* 9/11 happened in G.W. Bush’s first year;
* Funky intelligence lent WMD gravity to the case for an Iraq invasion;
* The CIA was blamed for not vetting said intelligence;
* The Bush Administration then reiterated that it was good intelligence after saying it was not;
* The 9/11 Commission Report debuted;
* CIA Director George Tenet preemptively retired after getting hit with the buck, about whose story his successor, Porter Goss, seems oddly silent;
* Goss landed not at all lightly at Langley to consolidate the Company and trim it of its hard-won experience;
* Rumsfeld usurped the CIA’s analytical role because in his view, nobody does it better than Wolfowitz and Perle, even if it means sacrificing Feith, undershooting CFR president Gelb’s advice of last summer to fire them all;
* Rumsfeld then forms his own intelligence operations branch at some point, to match his analytical arm;
* Bush v. Kerry opens in theatres everywhere, and the Kerry campaign’s Abu-Graib fueled heat on Rumsfeld to retire hits Kelvin temps;
* Under said heat, Bush deftly endorsed the 9/11 Commission Report with some downgrades;
* Tenet gets the Presidential Medal of Freedom (to slow his inevitably dangerous book deal?);
* Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge flees, as if having seen a ghost;
* Bush asks for $80 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan, effectively putting the 2005 Defense budget over the 500 billion mark.
Our CIA holdout probably saw this coming, and wisely kept a silent vigil rather than fighting the agency’s scapegoating too early. There would be two reasons for this. The first: this CIA stalwart does not want an independent intelligence czar over the CIA either, preferring to let Rumsfeld and Hunter fight his fight since Rumsfeld has the president’s ear and Hunter the Senate’s. The risk? The Pentagon captures the CIA’s flag using the endless war on terror to justify it.
Now that the election in Iraq proves that Bush’s instincts were on target for a groundswell of democratic enthusiasm, Rumsfeld’s hand is stronger, and our CIA holdout has to be concerned that the obedient Goss will remain his boss, under orders to cede power to the Pentagon.
Now some spinners are saying competition would be good for intelligence, not centralization. However, while there is reason to doubt centralized power, as I argued in a recent article (“Centralized Intelligence No Guarantee of Success,” DefenseWatch, Jan. 10, 2005), competition of powers will be too extreme to form a real team.
Since when did competing ball teams share their playbooks? We need a traceable, secure, and centralized repository of shared intelligence information accessible to intelligence and homeland security agency heads and the president. This will level the playing field and expand the team. We must avoid turning the U.S. intelligence community into an episode of “Survivor.” The Congress seems to be allowing that now.
Why couldn’t President Bush create a seasonal, cabinet level Chief of Staff over Wartime Intelligence Agency Directors who would not be activated in peacetime? And for the war on terror, I would nominate retired Gen. Anthony Zinni as a wise atonement for the administration’s early mistakes in post-war analysis and planning.
Michael Woodson is a Contributing Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at singingmountains@yahoo.com. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
Ellie