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Democratic Lawmakers, Panel Members Question White House Stand on Intelligence Director By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers and members of the Sept. 11 commission yesterday questioned whether the White House plan for a national director of intelligence would create a supervisor strong enough to manage the intelligence community (see GSN, Aug. 3). Earlier this week, U.S. President George W. Bush publicly supported the creation of a national intelligence director — one of the key reform proposals included in the report released last month by the Sept. 11 commission. The White House, however, proposes giving the new director less budgetary and personnel authority than recommended by the commission, and does not support the body’s call to place the position within the executive office. During two hearings held yesterday in both houses of Congress, the White House’s position came under criticism by Democrats who fear it would result in a weak director. “I worry that that would create a kind of Potemkin national intelligence director … where you see the facade but there’s not real authority behind it,” said Senator Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), the top Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. “In this city, if you have a fancy title, but you’re not in the chain of command, and you don’t control the budget, you’re a figurehead. And another figurehead is not what the 9/11 commission recommended and what our nation needs,” said Representative Henry Waxman (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee. In testimony before lawmakers, some commission members tentatively praised the White House’s vision of the new director. It is “a constructive beginning,” commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow told the Senate committee. Commission members also reiterated, though, their recommendations that the new director be given the authority to apportion and reprogram funding to and among the various intelligence agencies and the power to “approve and submit” to the president nominees to head various intelligence agencies. “You’re better off, in my view, with nothing than creating something that just adds one more impression that this person has power that they don’t have,” commission member Bob Kerry told the House committee. Commission members also reaffirmed the need to locate the new director within the executive office for better access to the president. Zelikow rejected the argument put forth by the White House that the new director would be less subject to potential White House pressure by working outside the executive office. “Those dangers have always arisen from the functions and relationships that go with the job, regardless of where the person sits,” Zelikow said. “Those dangers should be offset by selecting a person who believes the president is served by rigorous truth-telling and by making the … director fully accountable to Congress,” he said. U.S. intelligence officials, though, told the Senate committee that they agreed with the administration on the need to separate the new intelligence director from the executive office. “We have a community that’s spent many decades trying to build a tradition that says we should provide unvarnished and unbiased information to the president. And I think it’s good to keep some air gap between the White House and the national intelligence director,” said Philip Mudd, deputy director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center. The intelligence director position would be created through congressional action. Several committees in both houses of Congress are scheduled to hold hearings this month on the commission’s proposals, with the aim of producing legislation by the end of the year. Commission member John Lehman expressed hope that the new director would ultimately receive the authority called for by the Sept. 11 panel. “Those powers must be given. And I don’t believe the president will oppose them. I think, unlike the rest of us, he has a whole administration that he’s got to kind of herd along and keep consensus in,” he said. Lehman rejected suggestions that the new director, who both the White House and the commission have envisioned would oversee the entire intelligence community, may assume too much authority and become a type of secret police chief. “If you compare the powers of the secretary of defense, compared to this intelligence director, the intelligence director’s pale in comparison to what we’ve put into the centralized secretary of defense. So we believe it is manageable,” he said. In testimony before the Senate committee, senior intelligence officials also expressed support for another key intelligence reform measure proposed by the Sept. 11 commission and supported by the White House — the creation of a national counterterrorism center. As envisioned by the commission, the proposed center, to be built upon the existing Terrorist Threat Integration Center, would be responsible for both joint foreign and domestic intelligence and operational planning efforts. TTIC Director John Brennan warned senators against moving too quickly to establish the new center, saying that the Sept. 11 commission’s report did not provide the necessary “detailed type of engineering blueprint.” “What I don’t want to do is to move and to have a dropped [a] piece of information because, in fact, we went through rapid change very quickly,” he said. Improving Congressional OversightAddressing the calls in the Sept. 11 commission’s report for improved congressional oversight of intelligence efforts, panel members testified in support of creating a joint House of Representatives-Senate intelligence committee to replace the separate committees in each congressional house. “Fix that first if there has to be a priority, because the rest of the system that we’re recommending will not function properly without Congress fixing its own committee structure and jurisdiction,” Lehman said. Kerry told lawmakers that a joint intelligence committee should be required to release an unclassified annual report on the U.S. intelligence community. Such a committee should also be created through legislative action, not by a congressional resolution, to improve its standing in the eyes of the intelligence agencies, Kerry said. “No matter what the critics of the CIA will tell you, the men and women who work there follow the law. And they’re just a little less persuaded of a congressional resolution,” he said.
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