CIA director advises caution in overhaul of intelligence bureaucracy

CIA Director George Tenet on Wednesday cautioned the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against trying to create a new director of national intelligence.

Tenet said more reforms could be made within the CIA, but the country should have one person serve as both the director of central intelligence (DCI) and the director of the CIA. Tenet currently wears both hats. The DCI serves not only as CIA head, but as the head of the U.S. intelligence community and principal adviser to the president for intelligence matters related to national security.

"There are ways to do this in terms of its reorganization," he told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks. "I'm saying that there may be structural ways to do this smarter once you think about what end state you want to achieve."

Tenet acknowledged he has a difficult position wearing both hats, but cautioned the commission to look at the effects that reforms within the intelligence community have had since Sept. 11 before recommending major changes.

"I sit back at night and look at a war in Iraq, a war on terrorism, conflict in Afghanistan and all the things I have to do, and recognize…no single human being can do all these things," Tenet said. "I understand that. So maybe some structure is required. But I would also urge the commission, and I will come back to you formally, to take a look at some significant things that have happened."

The commission is responsible for examining failures that led to the Sept. 11 attacks and making recommendations to prevent future ones. On Tuesday, the commission's staff released a report citing problems within the FBI prior to the attacks. On Wednesday, the staff issued another report outlining CIA problems in conducting foreign intelligence operations before the attacks.

Commissioner John Lehman, who served as Navy secretary under President Reagan, called the CIA staff report "a damning evaluation of a system that is broken, that doesn't function."

"I'm here to tell you, and I'm sure you've heard it before, there is a train coming down the track; there are going to be very real changes made," he told Tenet. "You've done a terrific job in the evolutionary change, but it's clearly not been enough. Revolution is coming."

Lehman added that the commission has been struck by the difference in responses from the FBI and the CIA.

"The bureau, while it's been defending various actions and issues, has fundamentally admitted they're in an agency that is deeply dysfunctional and broken, and make no bones about it," Lehman said. "The attitude we kind of get from CIA is … kind of a smugness and even arrogance towards deep reform."

Tenet disagreed with some sections of the staff report. "When the staff statement says the DCI had no strategic plan to manage the war on terrorism, that's flat wrong. When the staff statement says I had no program [or] strategic direction in place to integrate, correlate data and move data across the community, that's wrong," Tenet said.

Tenet said he would support more reforms within the CIA. "By no stretch of the imagination am I going to tell you that I've solved all the problems of the community in terms of integrating it and lashing it up, but we've made an enormous amount of progress."

However, he said, one person wearing both hats is needed because the CIA director has direct access to the president while the DCI has direct access to different intelligence agencies.

"One of the concerns I have is if you create another layer and another staff between something that's supposed to provide central organization, all source analysis and operations, we've created another gap and a distance," Tenet said. "All I want to focus on is, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don't miss the capabilities that have to be grown. Don't separate those capabilities from a chain of command that can only execute them and then figure out how that mesh works."

Tenet said the Defense secretary must also be included in developing any new structures. The majority of intelligence funding and most intelligence agencies are within the Defense Department. Tenet said he wants to meet with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to discuss what changes might make sense before making formal recommendations to the commission.

The commission is also evaluating whether a new domestic intelligence service should be created. Such an agency would likely remove intelligence operations from the purview of the FBI. Robert Mueller, director of the FBI, told the commission Wednesday that creating such an agency would be "a grave mistake."

"Splitting the law enforcement and the intelligence functions would leave both agencies fighting the war on terrorism with one hand tied behind their backs," Mueller said. "The distinct advantage we gain by having intelligence and law enforcement together would be lost in more layers and greater stovepiping of information, not to mention the difficulty of transitioning safely to a new entity while terrorists seek to do us harm."