Home > Rumsfeld is doubtful on post of spy czar
Changes must not reopen gaps, he says
WASHINGTON Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed substantial reservations on Tuesday about proposals to reorganize U.S. intelligence agencies around a single director, urging that any changes be made to close gaps in intelligence collection and analysis, "not to reopen them."
But both the acting director of central intelligence, John McLaughlin, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, supported the idea of a new national intelligence director, one of the central proposals of the national commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
McLaughlin said the new director should hold controlling power over the intelligence community’s combined budget of $40 billion.
All three men, however, counseled a deliberate approach to the critical question of how to recast intelligence operations. Myers urged that "we proceed with caution on any decision that increases centralized control of intelligence."
Each of the men, appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, vigorously defended intelligence changes already made.
Some members of the committee appeared impatient with that response, saying in effect that turf warfare could not be allowed to delay potentially crucial changes.
The committee is one of several intelligence-related congressional panels that have continued working through the August recess in response to what members say is the urgent need to repair gaps in U.S. intelligence capabilities.
"We’ve got some momentum in these committees," said Senator John Warner, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
Rumsfeld’s comments represented his first public exposition on the much-debated question of what powers, especially on all-important budgetary questions, should be conferred on the post of national intelligence director, an idea supported by President George W. Bush.
The defense secretary carefully framed his remarks as personal views, noting that discussion continued about some aspects of the proposed changes.
But Rumsfeld’s comments, particularly important because his department controls about 85 percent of the overall intelligence budget, were replete with cautions about the risks of a rush to reform that might instead make matters worse. Organizing the 15 major U.S. intelligence agencies directly under a national intelligence director, he said, "could conceivably lead to some efficiencies in some aspects of intelligence collection and some modest but indefinable improvement in the support those agencies provide to other elements of the government."
There were also risks, Rumsfeld said. To introduce new barriers between the military’s combat commanders and the intelligence agencies they rely on, "would be a major step" in the wrong direction, he said.
Like McLaughlin, Rumsfeld supported the need aggressively to remove barriers to the sharing of domestic, foreign and military intelligence, and to make intelligence analysis more creative and less prone to disastrous surprises like the Sept. 11 attacks.
Both men vigorously defended the work their departments are now doing.
"The result of a decade’s effort to establish a timely and seamless interaction" between the Defense Department and the CIA had been affirmed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the broader war on terror, Rumsfeld said.
"But in my view," he added, "we’re about as well connected as we ever have been," though more could be done.
Reform should come carefully, Rumsfeld said.
"If we move unwisely and get it wrong, the penalty would be great," Rumsfeld said.
"I doubt that we should think of intelligence reform being completed at a single stroke," he added.
McLaughlin, who remains as acting director pending confirmation hearings for his nominated successor, Representative Porter Goss of Florida, said that a national intelligence director could do much to improve the responsiveness of U.S. intelligence agencies, but only if he or she had clear and substantial authority and budget power.
While Bush has said only that a national intelligence director would coordinate the budgets of the major intelligence agencies, members of the Sept. 11 commission have said that without substantial control over the agencies’ budgets, the new director might merely create a new level of bureaucracy.
Warner, the Armed Services Committee chairman, gently goaded the Bush administration to elaborate on the budget question.
"We’re awaiting further clarification," he said, "maybe actually a bill itself."
McLaughlin said the director "should have the clear authority to move people and resources and to evaluate the performance of the national intelligence agencies and their leaders." In the absence of such powers, he asked panel members, "who will you hold responsible not just when things are going well, but when something goes wrong with intelligence?"
Rumsfeld, pushed by Warner to clarify his stance on a national intelligence director, said the position should wield "extensive" influence in matters both of budget and personnel.