Changing the CIA
Reports critical of CIA activities fuel speculation about major reform.
When Tim Russert, the host of
NBC's"Meet the Press," asks US Secretary of State Colin Powell,
as he did Sunday, "Why shouldn't the American people lose all confidence in the information their government is giving them from the CIA about weapons of mass destruction, about terrorism, and who knows what else?" reform, major reform, of the CIA is in the air.
The question isn't whether there will be changes at the premier US spy agency, but whether they will be as extensive as the Church Committee reforms of 1975 the last great overhaul of the agency.
"Several official, and likely-embarrassing reports concerning CIA activities ... are
expected to appear soon," writes the
Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne, Indiana, in an editorial.
Indeed, the first of these reports "has finally finished [CIA] declassifying" and the highly critical
report about prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, "was turned over to a select Senate committee on US intelligence on Monday," reports
Reuters.
The Senate Intelligence Committee report examines one of the main reasons used by the United States for going to war against Iraq - intelligence that said Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction. No large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons have been found.
A second critical study of the CIA likely to drive calls for reform is, "next month's
release of the 9/11 commission's report and its excruciating details of intelligence failures," writes the
Los Angeles Times in an editorial.
A third study of the CIA , called for by Mr. Powell and just underway, will examine how a US State Department report "incorrectly showed a decline last year in terrorism worldwide." It was a "
big mistake," said Powell on Sunday, reports the
Globe and Mail.
Powell said he "was working with the Central Intelligence Agency, which helped to compile the data, to determine why the errors got into the report," reports the
Globe and Mail.
The
recent resignation of CIA director George Tenet and the appointment of current deputy director John McLaughlin as interim director effective July 11, only fuels speculation about pending reforms, writes the
Post Gazette. The Pittsburgh paper editorializes:
Nobody, but
noooobody, envies the job ahead of him. The CIA is about to get slammed with two major reports from a congressional committee and from the super-prestigious blue-ribbon panel investigating intelligence failures and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America. The CIA is braced for the worst.
But the worst must not be misguided reforms, a wide political spectrum of pundits and editorials cautioned. Tuesday's
editorial in the Fort Wayne, Indiana
Journal Gazette is typical:
The ills assailing the intelligence agencies from within and without can be fixed. But although proclamations about overhauling intelligence are appealing in an election year, only White House realism and on-the-ground reform will make it possible for CIA chief George J. Tenet's successor to compile a better record.
A
Los Angeles Times editorial counsels against any reform that calls for a new cabinet agency and "Intelligence Czar" similar to the Homeland Security Department formed in the aftermath of 9/11. It
downplays such a move:
"In theory, an intelligence czar with budgetary authority, independent of the CIA, could shake up agencies stuck in a Cold War mind-set of one big enemy rather than autonomous terrorist threats. But although Congress could create a new intelligence head, who would obey him or her? Consider the Department of Homeland Security, which has yet to play a serious role in threat assessments. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft has simply ignored it in issuing terror attack warnings. The Pentagon jealously guards its multiple intelligence programs, which receive an estimated $11 billion annually, while the CIA receives a little more than $3 billion."
Reform of the CIA is only the tip of the iceberg says Thomas Powers, author of "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al Qaeda"
in a recent interview with
Salon. "Tenet is leaving in the middle of an unresolved political crisis - what really amounts to a constitutional crisis," Mr. Powers says.
Salon sees the crisis as a "bittersweet dispute"
... between the CIA and the Pentagon, whose own secret intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, aggressively promoted the war on Iraq. While departing CIA Director George Tenet played along with the Bush administration - a fact which Powers says reveals the urgent need for a truly independent intelligence chief - much of the agency is enraged at the Pentagon, which put intense pressure on it to produce reports tailored to the policy goals of the Bush White House.
Offering
historical perspective as well as some intermediate steps that he thinks should be taken to reform the CIA, Joseph L. Galloway, senior military correspondent for
Knight Ridder Newspapers writes in a column:
There is no question that our intelligence system, which costs us more than $40 billion a year, is broken. It has been broken for years, decades really. Broken at least since the 1970s, when then-director Stansfield Turner turned human intelligence capabilities in the CIA into a stepchild and lavished most of the attention and money on what are called 'national technical means,' which means spy satellites.
Galloway points out the irony of what he considers misdirected policies carried over from the Cold War using technical means of spying when the enemy is a terrorist network:
Today's Keyhole 12 satellites can read the license plates of cars, and Mercury satellites can eavesdrop on cell phone calls, but they can't seem to find Osama bin Laden. We need much more to fight a global war on terrorism. We need spies - people who can be recruited by Al Qaeda and Hamas and the other crazies. We need to get inside. Galloway calls for three intermediate reforms until a full review of intelligence needs can be made:
• Shift at least a part of the resources and manpower from national technical means so valuable during the Cold War to the human intelligence that is so indispensable in a war on terrorism.
• Give the director of central intelligence authority to coordinate the effort and control the budget among the various [espionage] agencies.
• Don't do anything until after the November election. Fixing our national intelligence system is far too important to be undertaken in a season of political warfare.
Also...
•
CIA powers and 1975 Church Committee (
Labornet)
•
Central Intelligence Agency (
CIA - Director of Central Intelligence)
•
Decisive action needed to improve the CIA (
The Intelligencer: Wheeling News Register)
•
Tenet's resignation: opportunity for change? (
OpinionEditorials.com)
• Feedback appreciated. E-mail
Jim Bencivenga
.
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