Director of 9/11 panel says CIA threat center not realizing potential

A senior official with the 9/11 commission said Friday that an intelligence integration center created under the CIA last year is not meeting its potential and should be replaced.

The Terrorist Threat Integration Center should be replaced with an organization that is better staffed and more connected to the intelligence community, the commission's executive director, Philip Zelikow, said during a briefing. The commission issued dozens of recommendations in its final report, released Thursday, including that TTIC be absorbed into a powerful new national counterterrorism center that would be under the authority of a Cabinet-level director of national intelligence.

TTIC "was an excellent step forward that has not yet attained its full promise," Zelikow said. "It is not yet a complete joint intelligence center. It does not have the power to task intelligence work directly because of the unwillingness to disrupt traditional lines of control in the executive departments."

TTIC was created in early 2003 as a one-stop government shop under CIA control to assess, analyze and disseminate threat information collected inside the United States and abroad to government agencies and officials.

"The information they develop isn't really being plugged into operations, which makes both the intelligence and the operational side weaker," Zelikow said. "It's just kind of standing out there, detached from the main vertical organizations of the government, and not yet able to lay claim on the analysts that are being sucked up by all those organizations."

For example, Zelikow said, analysts in the CIA's counterterrorism center that study al Qaeda have not been transferred to TTIC.

A CIA spokeswoman said the agency is reviewing the commission's report. "We need time to study and consider all the recommendations," she said. "It's premature to react to individual recommendations at this time. Stay tuned."

She said, however, that transferring analysts from the CIA and FBI to TTIC has always been part of a phased move. The analysts and their units are scheduled to move to TTIC by September, she said, adding that they already have been doing work for the center.

Zelikow said the new counterterrorism center would have joint operational management authority over intelligence agencies, or the ability to assign them specific work.

He said he does not believe the commission's proposal would be too bureaucratic. The commission took ideas from the private sector in developing the recommended management structure. For example, General Electric Co. has a powerful but lean front office with direct authority over large operating divisions, he said.

"What we suggest in the national counterterrorism center for executive governance is indeed hard," he acknowledged. "Everybody's accustomed to thinking about these giant industrial departments. But to people who study private sector management, [the federal government] is a mid-20th century management structure."