Commission: Problems plague intelligence community, despite reform efforts
Final report includes 74 recommendations, some of which are intended to clear up confusion created by new intelligence reform law.
The U.S. intelligence community is plagued by confused lines of responsibility and inefficient use of limited resources, which hurts the government's ability to understand and warn against possible terrorist attacks, a presidential commission warned Thursday.
Despite massive efforts at reform, including intelligence overhaul legislation passed late last year, the intelligence community suffers from dangerous ambiguities, unnecessary duplication and bureaucratic infighting, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction said in its final report.
The commission concluded--as did the Senate Intelligence Committee before it--that the U.S. intelligence community was "dead wrong" in almost all its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The commission, however, did not find any evidence that the intelligence community distorted evidence regarding Iraqi weapons or change any analytic judgments in response to political pressure to reach a particular conclusion.
The commission was formed primarily to assess whether the intelligence community is sufficiently organized and resourced to identify and warn against terrorist threats in a timely manner. On that account, the panel found widespread problems.
"In many instances, we found finished intelligence that was loosely reasoned, ill-supported and poorly communicated," the commission wrote in its 600-page report. "Perhaps most worrisome, we found too many analytic products that obscured how little the intelligence community actually knew about an issue and how much their conclusions rested on inference and assumptions.
"We believe these tendencies must be reversed if decision-makers are to have confidence in the intelligence they receive," the commission added. "And equally important, analysts must be willing to admit what they don't know in order to focus future collection efforts."
The report makes 74 recommendations, many of which relate to the new national intelligence structure implemented by the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which established a new director of national intelligence to manage the government's 15 intelligence agencies. President Bush has named former Iraqi Ambassador John Negroponte to be the DNI.
In some ways, the commission said, the intelligence reform act actually created more confusion.
"The DNI cannot make this work unless he takes his legal authorities over budget, programs, personnel and priorities to the limit," the commission said in a letter to Bush. "It won't be easy to provide this leadership to the intelligence components of the Defense Department, or to the CIA. They are some of the government's most headstrong agencies. Sooner or later, they will try to run around--or over--the DNI. Then, only your determined backing will convince them that we cannot return to the old ways."
The commission also cited confused lines of authority with regard to information sharing. In particular, the commission said the future Information Sharing Environment should be expanded to encompass all intelligence information, not just terrorism intelligence. Overlapping authorities of the DNI and the program manager for the ISE should be reconciled and coordinated, most likely by requiring the program manager to report to the intelligence director.
The commission also said the director of the new National Counterterrorism Center should report to the DNI on all matters relating to information sharing.
The report said ambiguous roles and responsibilities between the NCTC and the CIA's Counterterrorism Center have not been resolved, and the two agencies continue to fight bureaucratic battles to define their places in the war on terror. "The result has been unnecessary duplication of effort and the promotion of unproductive competition between the two organizations."
Other ambiguities with regard to counterintelligence analysis and warning, the report added, "have led to redundant efforts across the community and inefficient use of limited resources."
According to the commission: "The failure to manage counterterrorism resources from a community perspective has limited the intelligence community's ability to understand and warn against terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction."
The final report also said the FBI should be required to create a National Security Service that includes the bureau's Counterintelligence Division, Counterterrorism Division and Directorate of Intelligence. A single executive assistant director should lead the service.
"Without leadership from the DNI, the FBI is likely to continue escaping effective integration into the intelligence community," the report stated.
The Justice Department should also combine its Office of Intelligence Policy and Review and Counterterrorism and Counterespionage sections under a new assistant attorney general for national security, the report recommended.
Bush called the commission's recommendations "thoughtful and extremely significant" during comments to the media.
"The central conclusion is one that I share: America's intelligence community needs fundamental change to enable us to successfully confront the threats of the 21st century," he said.
Bush said he has ordered Frances Townsend, White House homeland security adviser, to oversee an interagency process to review the commission's findings and take concrete action.
The commission was headed by Judge Laurence Silberman and Charles Robb, a former Virginia governor and senator.