Bush embraces proposal for intelligence director

BY STEPHEN J. HEDGES

President Bush announced Monday that he would ask Congress to establish a national intelligence director and new counterterrorism center but said the new intelligence chief should have less sweeping authority than was recommended by the Sept. 11 commission.

"I don’t think the person ought to be a member of my Cabinet," Bush told reporters outside the White House. "I will hire the person and I can fire the person, which is what any president would like. I’ll tell you, that’s how you have accountability in government."

Bush’s announcement came just days after the independent commission that examined the failures leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks issued its lengthy report, including a series of recommendations to improve intelligence activities.

While the commission recommended that the new post and counterterrorism center fall under the management structure of the White House, Bush said letting them run separately would make them more independent and effective.

The commission did not explicitly say that the so-called intelligence czar should be a member of the Cabinet, but it did call for the official to work in the White House in order to have clear authority and access to the president. A joint congressional inquiry in December 2002 called for the job to be a Cabinet position.

The commission also recommended that the intelligence director have the power to hire and fire his top three deputies, including the CIA director and the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. But Bush’s proposal would not give the new position that power.

Nor would the new director have the budgetary authority that the commission envisioned.

The question of whether the intelligence director is based in the White House is a sore point for the Bush administration, which has faced questions over its use of intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Some administration critics, especially in Congress, contend that former CIA Director George Tenet became too close to presidential advisers who were making policy decisions based on the CIA’s intelligence.

Since the Sept. 11 commission issued its report on July 22, pressure has been building in Congress and in the presidential campaign for the White House to take up the commission’s recommendations. Commission members have said the matter was one of great urgency if terrorist attacks were to be thwarted.

Bush initially said he would study the report and then take action where necessary. Bush’s Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, called last week for all of the commission’s recommendations to be adopted. After reviewing the commission’s report last week at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Bush took up the panel’s chief proposals and said he would have more changes soon.

Bush made his announcement flanked by members of what has become his terror war cabinet: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, acting director of central intelligence John McLaughlin, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

The new intelligence director, Bush said, "will be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, and will serve at the pleasure of the president. The national intelligence director will serve as the president’s principal intelligence adviser and will oversee and coordinate the foreign and domestic activities of the intelligence community."

The CIA will be run by a separate director, he said.

Kerry, campaigning in Michigan on Monday, praised Bush’s decision, but said the president isn’t going far enough soon enough.

"If the president had a sense of urgency about this director of intelligence and about the needs to strengthen America, he would call the Congress back and get the job done now," he said. "That’s what we need to do now. That’s the urgency that exists to make America as safe as possible."

Kerry said that if a special session of Congress were to be called, he would return to Washington to vote and to debate. The Senate held one hearing on the proposals last week, and several committees of the House have scheduled hearings this week.

Republican congressional leaders have said the complexity of any possible legislation will make adopting it before the November elections difficult.

Bush said Congress "can think about (the proposed reforms) over August and come back and act on them in September."

Members of both parties were quick to support Bush’s announcement, though Democrats suggested that much more can be done.

"I am glad to see President Bush finally joining the calls that began over a year ago for serious intelligence reform, including the establishment of a national intelligence director," said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. "It is a shame that it took so much public pressure, from the 9/11 families, from two bipartisan commissions, from John Kerry and from congressional Democrats, to get the President to act."

Bush and administration advisers have argued that they have already adopted measures to improve intelligence sharing among federal agencies - particularly between the CIA and FBI - as well as to better secure borders, ports and airline traffic against terrorist threats.

Bush’s decision puts in motion the complex task of establishing a new office at the top of the intelligence-gathering pyramid and also redefining who controls intelligence gathering and how it is run. Fifteen government agencies make up what is known in Washington as the "intelligence community."

While nominally under the control of the director of central intelligence, that job has come to primarily involve the management of the Central Intelligence Agency. The other agencies, which conduct a variety of human and high-tech intelligence gathering activities, have come to operate independently.

The Sept. 11 commission and a joint congressional inquiry 20 months earlier, found that the nation’s intelligence agencies do a poor job of sharing important information. That lack of cooperation, both panels found, contributed greatly to the inability of the FBI and CIA to uncover the Sept. 11 suicide hijacking plot.

The commission recommended that three intelligence deputies should work under the national director to run the CIA, Defense Department intelligence efforts and the FBI-Department of Homeland Security intelligence.

But Bush said the separate departments would retain the authority to conduct their own operations.

"When it comes to operations, the chain of command will be intact," Bush said. "When the Defense Department is conducting operations to secure the homeland, there will be nothing in between the secretary of defense and me."

The commission envisioned a national intelligence director with control over federal agencies’ intelligence budgets. Although Bush said the director "ought to be able to coordinate budgets" for intelligence gathering agencies, the administration said later that those agencies would retain their budget control while the director offered "significant input."

Since the commission’s report was issued July 22, intelligence veterans and analysts have been debating whether naming a national director, or simply restructuring the CIA and other existing agencies, makes the most sense.

Jack Devine, a former acting director of operations at the CIA, said politics has made the prospect of a national intelligence director a foregone conclusion. But the authority given the job, he said, won’t be as important as the person who fills it.

"I think the biggest issue will be, is he a man who will take seriously the job of the intelligence that is being gathered or will he be a political loyalist?" Devine said. "I don’t think whether he’s in the Cabinet or not in the Cabinet will make that much difference."

In addition to the new post, Bush said he would establish the counterterrorism center, and possibly another intelligence center to monitor global weapons proliferation. The counterterrorism center, Bush said, would also not be managed by the White House.

The CIA already directs the Terrorism Threat Integration Center, which is designed to coordinate information sharing among federal agencies, and it is unclear whether the new center will replace it. But Bush said he would issue a series of directives in the coming days that will take up more of the commission’s recommendations.

One of those, he suggested, will focus on streamlining the flow of information among the 15 intelligence agencies. WASHINGTON - (KRT)

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