Intelligence reform: One year later, it's a mixed bag

By Kit Bond

As I have traveled to other countries in recent months, I have talked to young, energetic and skilled intelligence operatives across the globe risking their lives to gather the crucial intelligence we need to fight effectively the war on terror.

In the past three months I have traveled to the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, South Korea and India to meet with our personnel and hear their concerns from the field. I can tell you their thoughts are not on the bureaucratic turf wars back in Washington. They want to execute their missions, gather intelligence and track down al-Qaida.

These field operatives are our best hope in this war on terror. Back home, we need to create for them a community that encourages retention. After a decade of decimating our ranks and driving out many of our skilled officers from the field in the 1990s, we need to retain our expertise in the community as we rebuild it.

As part of that effort, Congress created the position of the director of national intelligence one year ago in an effort to fix a system of stovepipes and bottlenecks within the intelligence community. Today, the intelligence community is still a mixed bag with a long way to go.

Some claim that the director of national intelligence should be applauded for achieving his three main objectives during his first year: the creation of a National Clandestine Service, the development of an intelligence capability with the National Security Branch in the FBI, and the creation of the DNI Open Source Center.

The reality is that the NCS is a new name for the CIA's former Directorate of Operations, the current value of the National Security Branch is debatable, and the DNI Open Source Center is a new name for the former Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which is still run at the CIA. That is not to say that these organizations are not producing good work, but rather that their good work has little to do with the recent intelligence shake-up.

The true success story of the past year was the development of the National Counter Terrorism Center as the premier all-source intelligence analysis lead for terrorism. Although NCTC is simply a new name for the former Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the center is now more robust, running smoothly and is a model for jointness and information-sharing.

NCTC has created interagency plans for a coordinated federal response to terrorist acts. Although it has no power to compel the government to follow those plans, for the first time the federal government will have integrated plans vetted throughout its agencies to respond in a time of crisis.

The DNI is also making progress on his portion of the intelligence budget.

In his first year, the DNI is reducing overruns and establishing fiscal discipline. Still, we have a long journey ahead in transforming the culture of intelligence that led to the colossal failures of the recent past, and we need to focus on strengthening the DNI.

Disagreement persists among policy-makers as to the proper role of the DNI, and I believe what Congress created in 2004 was half-baked. The DNI's office today is dangerously close to becoming a Washington bureaucracy less involved in intelligence and more involved in administrative oversight.

Staff growth is soaring well over one thousand combined with an influx of Washington staffers and downtown bureaucrats. The DNI has referred to himself as the "umpire" of the agencies. What we need is a leader who sees himself as the "coach" with real decision-making power backed by law.

Oversight is the job of the intelligence committees on Capitol Hill, not the DNI. It is understandable that some in the intelligence community don't want their bureaucracies changed. But September 11th is cause enough to disregard those who are more concerned with their own turf wars than the war on terror. The bottom line is the United States needs a unified intelligence capability to lead its forces in the war on terror and into the international challenges of the coming decade.

In the long-term, some initiatives the DNI has been working on this year may have significant benefit in collection and strategy, although these benefits are dependent on the extent to which community agencies coalesce around them. In my opinion, we do not have the luxury of spending a lot of time trying to persuade intelligence agencies to work together. To accomplish this, the DNI can speak softly, as long as he carry's a big stick. But today, he lacks that stick.

Kit Bond represents Missouri in the U.S. Senate.