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Can the prevailing vacuum-up-everything-and-follow-every-lead
attitude be chalked up to pure adolescent-type inexperience, innocence,
incompetence? Not pure--not by a long shot. One has to
ask Cui Bono? Who profits?
It is so painfully obvious. Here,
in microcosm, is an example of what Eisenhower warned of when he coined
"military-industrial complex." Cui bono? Think the contractors
who create marvelous databases--and the mindset of: the-more-contractors-and-databases-the-merrier.
Think also of snake-oil salesmen like former Justice Department and
Homeland Security guru Michael Chertoff, who could not resist the temptation
over the past several days to keep hawking on TV the full-body scanners
marketed by one of the Chertoff Group's clients.
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Has the new intelligence bureaucracy created after the Sept. 11th
attacks functioned correctly? How could it be improved, or was
it a good idea to create it?
The creation of the post of Director
of National Intelligence, the National Counterterrorism Center, and
the 170,000-person Department of Homeland Security was the mother of
all misguided panaceas.
Bear in mind that the general election
of 2004 was just a few months away when the 9/11 report was published,
and lawmakers and administration functionaries desperately needed to
be seen to be DOING SOMETHING. And, as is almost always the case
in such circumstances, they made things considerably worse.
The 9/11 Commissioners had been fretting
over the fact that, in their words, "No one was in charge of coordination
among intelligence agencies." That was true, but only because
George Tenet much preferred to cavort with foreign potentates and thugs,
than to do the job of Director of Central Intelligence (DCI).
It was not a systemic problem, but
one of personal irresponsibility. Ignoring that, a new systemic
"solution" was sought, and implemented, where none was needed.
By law, the Director of Central Intelligence was responsible precisely
for coordinating the work of the entire intelligence community, as the
principal intelligence adviser to the President (National Security Act
of 1947).
This, indeed, was the main reason why
Truman created the Central Intelligence Agency and not
only put the DCI in charge of the CIA but also gave the DCI wider--and
equally important intelligence community-wide responsibilities.
The idea was to prevent another Pearl
Harbor, where bits and pieces of intelligence lay around with the code-breakers,
the Navy, the Army Air Corps, the FBI, Embassy Tokyo, the people monitoring
Radio Tokyo, etc., etc. with no central
place where analysts could be in receipt of and consider all the evidence.
It was abundantly clear to Truman that, had there been such a place
in 1941, adequate forewarning of the Japanese attack would have been
a no-brainer.
As for the situation obtaining in the
Washington bureaucracies in mid-2004, the following personal vignette,
I believe, speaks volumes: On July 22, the day the 9/11 Commission
Report was issued, BBC TV had scheduled me for comment on it, just minutes
after its release, at the BBC bureau in Washington. During my
ten minutes before the camera I focused mostly on the curious fact that
NO ONE, NO ONE, NOT ONE SOLITARY SOUL WAS BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE!
As I left the TV studio for the outer
room, in walked 9/11 Commissioners Jamie Gorelick and former Senator
Slade Gorton (R, Washington) to present their own commentary to BBC
viewers. Gorelick went right into the studio; I took advantage
of being one-on-one with Sen. Gorton.
"Sen. Gorton," I asked, "I don't
quite understand all this talk alleging that "No one is in charge
of the intelligence community." You are surely aware that, by
act of Congress, there is such a person, and right now that happens
to be Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet."
The avuncular Gorton tiptoed up to
me, put his right hand around my shoulder, and with a conspiratorial
whisper said, "Yes, Ray, Of course I know that. We all know
that. But George would not take charge; he would not do what he
was supposed to."
True, this was hardly news to me, but
coming from a 9/11 Commissioner? I was about to respond with something
like, "So you need to create another layer, a superstructure over
existing arrangements, to address that problem?" But, as it
happened, just then the BBC studio door opened, Gorelick emerged, and
Horton went in. Gorelick was too busy to answer the question I
had posed to Horton.
The
new Director of National Intelligence? This position, created
by the post -9/11 "reforms," was/is totally unnecessary--and counterproductive.
This was entirely predictable. As my former CIA colleague Mel
Goodman has written, the DNI superstructure has actually been very destructive
of good intelligence".in more ways than I have space to go into here.
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