Intelligence

DATE=10/7/03

TYPE=Dateline

NUMBER=7-37918

TITLE=INTELLIGENCE REFORM

BYLINE=Gary Thomas

TELEPHONE=619-1874

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Neal Lavon

CONTENT=

DISK: DATELINE THEME [PLAYED IN STUDIO, FADED UNDER DATELINE HOST VOICE OR PROGRAMMING MATERIAL]

INTRO: Intelligence officers are fond of saying, their failures are trumpeted, while their successes remain unsung. Critics charge U-S intelligence agencies failed to assess adequately threats to national security. In this Dateline report, VOA correspondent Gary Thomas looks at attempts to strengthen the United States' aging intelligence apparatus.

HOST: The September 11th attacks, several spy scandals, and questions over intelligence on Iraq have shaken the U-S intelligence community to the core. As a result, calls have come for what is potentially the greatest overhaul of the U-S intelligence apparatus since the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.

Arthur Hulnick, a political science professor at Boston University and a 28-year veteran of the C-I-A, says there have been numerous initiatives for intelligence reform in the past.

TAPE: CUT 1 Hulnick, :20

"But it's politically not feasible. There have been at least 20 study commissions since the end of World War Two looking at how American intelligence is constructed and managed. And every one of them has recommended changes. And no changes have ever really been made."

HOST: Amy Zegart, a political science professor at the University of California Los Angeles and former National Security Council staffer, says change is long overdue.

TAPE: CUT 2 Zegart, :24

"Well, I think it's no secret that the intelligence community has been living with a number of organizational problems that date back to the 1940s. And I think to a great exten,t we're living with the compromises that we had to make back then that really hindered in particular the C-I-A's ability to coordinate the disparate parts of the intelligence community."

HOST: The C-I-A is perhaps the best-known U-S intelligence agency. But there is a vast intelligence bureaucracy comprised of some 35 U-S military and civilian government agencies that deal with intelligence collection and analysis in some form or another. Former intelligence officers say there is often an atmosphere of deep mistrust between agencies as they engage in intense bureaucratic competition for money and resources from the consumers of their product the policymakers.

John MacGaffin, who was once the associate deputy director for operations at the C-I-A, says the intelligence community has become cumbersome and overly bureaucratic, resulting in a slowdown in how information is collected, analyzed and distributed to the policymakers.

TAPE: CUT 3 Macgaffin, :14

"A problem comes up, we layer one solution, one organizational fix on top of another, just as we're doing now with the Department of Homeland Security. Yeah, I mean, we have to do something here, but we are unable we just layer something on top of something else."

HOST: The National Security Act was supposed to bring order to a postwar intelligence system. The Director of Central Intelligence the D-C-I -- is not only chief of the C-I-A, but, under law, is also titular head of the entire intelligence community.

But critics charge that the well-intentioned unification of intelligence effort never really got off the ground. In reality, the D-C-I currently George Tenet has no real control over the budget or actions of other intelligence agencies, particularly those of the military. Bureaucratic rivalry, say ex-intelligence officers, persists to this day.

Amy Zegart says there is still a need for a true "intelligence czar" to oversee and coordinate all intelligence efforts.

TAPE: CUT 4 Zegart :29

"To some degree, duplication of effort is a good thing. But there's no question that what we have is a community of a number of different agencies which have a very difficult time working together, in part simply because there are so many of them, in part because of legal barriers, and in part because there's no one person in charge of the intelligence budget and who can set the programmatic priorities and back those priorities up."

HOST: Intelligence professionals like to speak of what they call the "intelligence cycle," a process in which information is collected through a wide variety of means. This can range from high-tech electronic surveillance to old-fashioned human spies. The information is then analyzed and presented to policymakers so they can render decisions.

The finished intelligence "product" is supposed to be derived from a neutral process. But raw information is rarely clear-cut, and is often open to a range of interpretation.

One potential pitfall that has arisen is the possible politicization of intelligence. There have been accusations, for example, that policymakers hyped intelligence on Iraq to justify war. Information on Iraqi nuclear weapons programs found its way into President Bush's State of the Union address. Officials later tempered some of the intelligence points. And criticism emerged about the intelligence community's performance in light of the failure as yet to turn up weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Intelligence officials concede that some analysts may bend intelligence to satisfy policymakers. British intelligence historian Nigel West says intelligence agencies have to remain neutral and independent of political concerns.

TAPE: CUT 5 West :41

"It's the worst accusation you can make to a professional intelligence officer. The role of the intelligence officer is to speak truth unto power. And the moment you get into the business of saying, 'Well, we're only going to tell the politicians what they want to hear,' then you're really talking like the K-G-B telling the Politburo what they think the Kremlin wants to hear. And that, of course well, we know what happened to the Soviet Union. And it's very important that the intelligence community retain its independence and retain a distance from the politicians. Policymaking and the collection of intelligence should be two entirely separate disciplines."

HOST: Former C-I-A official John MacGaffin says most analysts do not "cook" the intelligence to satisfy political interests.

TAPE: CUT 6 MacGaffin :42

" 'Tell truth to power' is what the good guys all believe and do. Are there people who shade it? Are there people who do it less forthrightly? Of course there are, just as there are doctors who don't get it right. But the day that intelligence is politicized or perceived to be politicized, then we are really in trouble. I don't believe that the people who steal the secrets the world I operated in or the analysts who prepare the compendium of secrets to inform policymakers would countenance the business of shaping intelligence, of politicizing it."

HOST: Amy Zegart says no amount of intelligence reform will make politicized intelligence totally disappear.

TAPE: CUT 7 Zegart :18

"There's always a problem about or the risk, I should say of getting intelligence politicized in any administration. And I think that you could make all the reforms in the world, and it's not clear to me that you would minimize the risk to zero that intelligence could ever be politicized."

HOST: The delineation between domestic and foreign intelligence was clearly spelled out in the postwar legislation. The C-I-A was to have responsibility for foreign intelligence, but could not operate in the United States. Domestic intelligence and counterintelligence the business of catching spies was left to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or the F-B-I.

But some now suggest that those lines are outdated in the post-Cold War age of international terrorism. Mr. MacGaffin says the September 11th attacks are a perfect example.

TAPE: CUT 8 MacGaffin ,:14

"Hatched in the mountains of Afghanistan, planned in the shadow of a mosque in Hamburg, and carried out in airports across the United States I mean, how can you say if this a foreign or a domestic issue?"

HOST: Some analysts suggest that the intelligence community was slow to adapt to new realities after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. There has also been criticism that the intelligence community has become overly reliant on technical intelligence collection, and as a result has neglected the use of old-fashioned spies. Some analysts believe the negative publicity the C-I-A received over the unsavory past of some of its recruited agents abroad made the agency skittish about human sources.

Amy Zegart of U-C-L-A says that, like a sports team, the intelligence agencies have to get back to the basics if they want to win the war on terrorism.

TAPE: CUT 9 Zegart :36

"Part of the problem our human intelligence has suffered is quite frankly the messages from Congress were, 'Don't get your hands dirty in recruiting foreign assets.' Well, foreign assets are generally not Boy Scouts. Foreign assets generally tend to be people who engage in shady activities. And so in the early to mid-1990s, the strong signals being sent by members of Congress and others were that we had to be careful about whom we recruited. And that went a bit too far. And I think there was to some degree a chilling effect on the recruitment of assets in the (C-I-A) Directorate of Operations."

HOST: Everyone agrees that domestic intelligence needs to be beefed up if a repeat of September 11th is to be avoided. But the question is, who should do it? The F-B-I is trying to improve its domestic intelligence capability. Mr. MacGaffin says that is the preferred approach but it may not necessarily be the right one.

TAPE: CUT 10 MacGaffin :30

"Ideally if we could do it, it would be done by the Bureau, in the Bureau. That would be preferable because that's in the American tradition. I am yet to be convinced, nor is any person I know in this town or looks at this that the Bureau has made sufficient progress to do that. I think they should. I hope they will. But if they can't, the stakes are too high, much too high, not to then change more fundamentally how we go about this. And that may require at that point a new organizational approach."

HOST: Intelligence professionals chuckle at how their work is portrayed in films and novels. The job, they say, is never as glamorous as James Bond. But even a Cold Warrior such as James Bond would have to adapt to the new threats presented today or else be perceived as a fossil of a bygone era.

As the threats to the United States continue, the intelligence community will be on the spot to produce the kind of information that will prevent attacks and further U-S policy goals. A performance worthy of James Bond may, indeed, be required.

For Dateline, this is Gary Thomas in Washington.

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