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Panel recommends intelligence czar Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/9202299.htmhttp://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/9202299.htm
Posted on Wed, Jul. 21, 2004
SEPT. 11 RECOMMENDATIONS
Consensus building for intelligence czar
Sen. Dianne Feinstein proposed creating a post to oversee all U.S. intelligence agencies, and the 9/11 panel is expected to suggest the same idea in its final report.
BY ALAN BJERGA
Knight Ridder News Service
WASHINGTON - Momentum is building on Capitol Hill for a new Cabinet-level position of director of U.S. intelligence, as supporters testified Tuesday before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the independent commission that's investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks prepared to endorse the concept Thursday.
Intelligence agencies ''are increasingly vital to the survival of our country,'' combating terrorists and dealing with rogue nations, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
But with the agencies battered by high-profile failures over the Sept. 11 attacks and errors related to the intelligence that justified the Iraq war, a new organization is needed, she said.
''The fact that we do not have an independent head of all our intelligence assets has become a significant problem,'' she said.
The hearing followed the committee's blistering report earlier this month on intelligence agency failures connected to the war. Tuesday's session focused on committee member Feinstein's proposal to create a post overseeing all U.S. intelligence activities.
ONE OFFICIAL
Her plan would put the operations of 15 U.S. intelligence agencies under the supervision of one official who would report directly to the president. Currently, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency is regarded as the nation's top intelligence official.
Feinstein said no one could run a massive agency such as the CIA and supervise other intelligence bureaucracies effectively.
The current structure, she said, is one reason that spy agencies didn't ''connect the dots'' on intelligence before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and officials fell into ''group think'' in the prelude to the Iraq war, when analysts all assumed that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction.
Feinstein's bill anticipates a recommendation for a Cabinet-level intelligence post that the Sept. 11 commission is expected to make Thursday, when it releases its official report on what contributed to the attacks and how more terrorist attacks can be prevented.
The commission's final report won't declare that the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history was preventable, though some panelists said during the 20-month investigation they believed the hijackers could have been stopped. In the end, the panel's five Democrats and five Republicans did not want to draw a conclusion on that major point believing it could open the way to partisan sniping in an election year.
BROKEN SYSTEM
''My personal view is that the intelligence system we have has been broken for a long time,'' said Republican Commissioner John Lehman, a former Navy secretary. ``But we wanted to let the American people make up their mind. They don't need our editorializing.''
Besides calling for a new Cabinet-level intelligence chief, the report will recommend combining the House and Senate intelligence committees and removing term limits from members, said House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.
The Bush administration is noncommittal toward the intelligence chief proposal, which has some high-profile critics, including acting CIA Director John McLaughlin.
Sen. Pat Roberts, the intelligence committee's chairman, said he wasn't in a rush to create a new Cabinet post.
''It is far more important to do [an overhaul] right than to do it quickly,'' he said.
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