Bush orders creation of information sharing council

An executive order signed by President Bush earlier this week establishes an information sharing council and potentially strengthens the hand of John Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence.

Executive order 13388, signed by Bush on Tuesday and published in the Federal Register Thursday, creates an information sharing council, as required by the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act.

The council will be chaired by John Russack, program manager of the director of national intelligence office's Information Sharing Environment.

Russack, a CIA veteran and former Energy Department intelligence director, reports directly to Negroponte and is responsible for coordinating information sharing across the government. Bush appointed Russack to his position -- created by the intelligence reform act -- in April.

The council's mission, according to the executive order, is to help establish an environment where terrorism information is automatically shared among the appropriate agencies.

It will be made up of representatives of the secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, Commerce, Energy and Homeland Security, the attorney general, the director of national intelligence, the CIA director, the Office of Management and Budget director, the FBI director, the National Counterterrorism Center director and others selected at Negroponte's discretion.

The order does not specify when the council members will be appointed, or how often the group will meet.

It remains uncertain exactly how much more power Negroponte will wield, observers say. But the council does give Negroponte an instrument with which to play a larger role.

"I think it's premature whether this really represents a strong effort on the part of the [director of national intelligence] to do this or whether it's just window dressing," said James Steinberg, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

Steinberg said this could pull Negroponte "down into the weeds" of intelligence sharing, but since "the legislation is so incredibly vague," it could have other results.

"It could mean something very dramatic like an open architecture with some standards that would allow some people to come up with some creative solutions," Steinberg said. "It could be useless … The jury's still out."