Spy chief stumbles through crash course on Washington politics

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's spy chief is in the midst of a crash course on how to navigate some of Washington's most dangerous terrain: Capitol Hill.

By many accounts, National Intelligence director Mike McConnell has a lot to learn as the administration's point man on its controversial effort this fall to overhaul the law that governs how national security agencies snoop on U.S. soil.

When Congress created McConnell's job in late 2004, lawmakers intentionally kept the spy chief off the president's Cabinet, adhering to the tradition that intelligence officials should eschew politics. But in recent months, McConnell has opened himself up to criticism that he has become too political to oversee the 16 spy agencies.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., a co-author of the legislation that helped create his job, put it bluntly to a Washington audience last week: "Jane to Mike: Please stop. You're undermining the authorities of your office."

To some, McConnell is a well-regarded retired Navy vice admiral who left a lucrative career as a government consultant to respond to Bush's search for a spy chief; a much-needed veteran to help the often clumsy intelligence agencies adapt to a post-Sept. 11, 2001, world.

To others, McConnell is out of the shadows and in over his head. Worse, he either does not always think before he speaks or he intentionally misstates key facts. Just last week, he waited two days before retracting Senate testimony in which he wrongly credited changes in August to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with this month's success in breaking up a plot against U.S. targets in Germany.

"Those arrests were made with the assistance of intelligence gathered under U.S. laws in effect earlier this year," said Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., chairman of a House Appropriations panel that oversees intelligence spending. "The DNI knew that."

McConnell has declined repeated requests for interviews this year, including one last week to discuss surveillance law and his first 200 days in office.

The soft-spoken southerner took over the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in February. Early on, he got some snickers when he complained about his workload.

McConnell, who briefs Bush each morning, said he did not anticipate the six- and seven-day workweeks, with hours stretching from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. "My biggest challenge early is just stamina," McConnell, 64, told an audience of government officials in May.

Days later, McConnell issued a 100-day plan that included efforts to simplify the security clearance process and other bureaucratic problems. The marching orders drew quiet grumbles from some midlevel intelligence officers who thought he was pressing for changes that were already happening. His office thought everyone needed to get on the same page.

McConnell again irked some when he boasted to an audience of intelligence officials and two reporters that he cut a classified, multibillion-dollar program. It did not take long for the media to find out he had cut a much-maligned satellite program known as "Misty."

Then, this summer, McConnell dove headfirst into the FISA debate, championing a bill that he said would modernize the law to ensure spy agencies adequately could eavesdrop on adversaries. Civil liberties advocates say his ideas trample the Constitution.

McConnell caught the attention of Democrats in May when he wrote an opinion column for The Washington Post that left the impression that FISA had not been updated since 1978. Among other factual differences, House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, responded that the law had been updated in 50 ways since its passage.

Still, Reyes and other Democrats were willing to work with him, and McConnell spent hours personally hammering out legislation before Congress' annual August recess. It got bumpy when Democrats accused McConnell of negotiating in bad faith.

John Brennan, an intelligence veteran and chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance professional association, said he does not believe McConnell was trying to mislead anyone on a complicated subject.

"In all of my dealings with Mike," he said, "I have found him to be of the highest integrity and as honest as the day is long. I think he is trying to do the right thing."

Yet the breaking point for some came when McConnell stood just off the Senate floor as lawmakers hotly debated how best to update the law. That was unusual for intelligence leaders, who most often meet with lawmakers in Capitol Hill's windowless, secure rooms.

Republicans said McConnell was there at the request of three Democrats who had questions, but some Democrats disliked the appearance. "The day we start deferring to someone who is not an elected member of this body ... is a sad day for the Senate. We make the policy, not the executive branch," said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., an intelligence committee member.

In the end, McConnell's campaign worked, and many of the administration's changes to the surveillance law passed Congress. But the revised law expires in six months and forces policymakers to reconsider the issue between now and February. McConnell will again play a pivotal role.

He has since found opportunities to make the case for permanent change, ruffling feathers along the way.

Last month, he went to Texas for a border security conference and gave an interview to the El Paso Times in which he revealed classified details about how FISA works. He also confirmed for the first time that the private sector assisted with Bush's terrorist surveillance program, among details that his office had argued in court filings could not be discussed publicly.

Senior Justice Department officials questioned whether the intelligence chief had overstepped. Reyes, who attended much of the interview, said he, too, was surprised by how much McConnell divulged.

"I don't know why he went to the extent that he did in that interview, but certainly I hope that doesn't recur," Reyes said.

McConnell's spokesman, Ross Feinstein, said that the director by law has declassification authority but declined to say whether McConnell followed established processes to declassify the information in the interview.

Then came McConnell's misstatements last week before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the German terrorist case, which led his office to issue a retraction.

Harman said it all taints McConnell. Despite an obligation to be above politics, she said, "he appeared to be taking orders from the White House."

His defenders, including the Senate Intelligence Committee's top Republican, Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, say McConnell is exactly what the intelligence agencies need to make crucial changes.

Says Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the House intelligence panel's top Republican: "He is just coming into Congress and saying these are the authorities that I need to do my job. ... I didn't come back into government to be your fall guy."