Public hearings and 9/11 report put focus on intelligence reform

Congressional hearings and a highly anticipated report this week will highlight problems within U.S. intelligence agencies and recommend major reforms, including the creation of a Cabinet-level director of national intelligence.

The Senate Intelligence Committee begins public hearings Tuesday on intelligence failures with regard to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, and what should be done to prevent future failures like this. On Thursday, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States is expected to issue its final report on how the Sept. 11 attacks occurred, as well as what should be done to prevent future attacks. Both events are expected to bolster calls that Congress requires changes in the management and operation of intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA.

"This has to be legislated. If it isn't legislated, it will never happen," W. Patrick Lang, the Defense Intelligence Agency's former director of human intelligence collection and chief of Middle East intelligence, said in an interview Monday. Lang, who now runs his own consulting firm, says a major overhaul of intelligence agencies is long overdue.

The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report two weeks ago that found the CIA and other intelligence agencies had systematically overstated the threat posed by Iraq before last year's invasion. The 9/11 commission's report is expected to document extensive law enforcement and intelligence failures in the years and days leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The commission will recommend that an intelligence czar be appointed to oversee the government's 15 intelligence agencies, according to the New York Times. Currently, the director of the CIA serves as director of the overall intelligence community.

John McLaughlin became acting director of the CIA last week. He indicated his opposition to an intelligence czar in an interview on Fox News Sunday, saying creating such a position "would be hard to do without adding an additional layer of bureaucracy."

"One thing people have to keep in mind when they read this report is that … the intelligence community of today is not the intelligence community of 9/11," McLaughlin said.

The White House said Monday that McLaughlin was not speaking for the administration when he expressed reservations about the appointment of an intelligence czar.

Lang said having one person serve as both CIA director and director of the overall intelligence community creates would an inherent conflict of interest if that person was partial toward the CIA. He also said intelligence agencies have become institutionalized bureaucracies where, in some cases, managers put their interests above those of the public.

"There have been many fine and devoted heads of the various American intelligence agencies, but all too often the directors themselves are members of the managerial class within the intelligence community, or simply politically selected party functionaries," Lang wrote earlier this year. "All too often directors see themselves as travelers on a journey to yet further heights within the government and, therefore, not decisively committed to the work of their people."

To be effective, Lang said, an intelligence czar should have budgetary authority over all intelligence agencies. "If you don't control the money, you don't have anything."

He added, however, that some managers should retain control over discretionary funds in order to carry out tactical projects in different parts of the world.

Lang doubted that the intelligence community could change itself from within.

"If the Congress really wants better intelligence to avoid future disasters, it will have to grasp the nettle itself and dictate reorganization and a new beginning," he said. "If this does not happen, then superficial changes may occur, but nothing of significance will be produced from within the community, and we will all just wait for the next time."