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S. Hrg. 108-835
REFORM OF THE UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
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HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
AUGUST 18 2004 AND SEPTEMBER 7, 2004
__________
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
[Established by S. Res. 400, 94th Cong., 2d Sess.]
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas, Chairman
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia, Vice Chairman
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah CARL LEVIN, Michigan
MIKE DeWINE, Ohio DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri RON WYDEN, Oregon
TRENT LOTT, Mississippi RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, Maine EVAN BAYH, Indiana
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland
JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia
BILL FRIST, Tennessee, Ex Officio
HARRY REID, Nevada, Ex Officio
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Bill Duhnke, Staff Director
Andrew W. Johnson, Minority Staff Director
Kathleen P. McGhee, Chief Clerk
CONTENTS
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Day One
Page
Hearing held in Washington, DC:
August 18, 2004.............................................. 1
Witness Statements:
Boyd, General Charles G., USAF (Ret.), President and CEO,
Business Executives for National Security.................. 22
Prepared statement....................................... 25
Kay, Dr. David, Senior Research Fellow, The Potomac Institute
for Policy Studies......................................... 13
Prepared statement....................................... 18
Zegart, Dr. Amy B., Assistant Professor, Department of Public
Policy, School of Public Affairs, University of California. 6
Prepared statement....................................... 9
Supplemental Materials:
Fact Sheet: Key Bush Administration Actions Consistent with
9/11
Commission Recommendations................................. 44
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Day Two
Page
Hearing held in Washington, DC:
September 7, 2004............................................ 81
Witness Statements:
Kean, Hon. Thomas H., former Chairman, National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States................... 89
Hamilton, Hon. Lee H., former Vice Chairman, National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States..... 90
Lehman, Hon. John F., former member, National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States................... 88
Prepared joint statement................................. 94
Supplemental Materials:
Letter dated September 7, 2004 from Bob Kerrey, President,
New School University...................................... 88
CRS Report for Congress: Proposals for Intelligence
Reorganization
1949-2004, September 8, 2004............................... 135
REFORM OF THE UNITED STATES INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY
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DAY ONE
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2004
United States Senate,
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:41 p.m., in
room SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Pat Roberts
(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Committee Members Present: Senators Roberts, Hatch, DeWine,
Bond, Snowe, Hagel, Chambliss, Rockefeller, Levin and Mikulski.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. PAT ROBERTS
Chairman Roberts. The Committee will come to order.
Today the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence meets in
open session to continue our examination of intelligence reform
issues. Since the Congress adjourned on July 22, 11 committees
have held or intend to hold a total of 21 hearings on the topic
on intelligence reform. I welcome my colleagues on other
committees as they begin to examine the issues with which this
Committee has wrestled for over 27 years.
As anyone who is familiar with the intelligence community
well knows, it reaches across many government agencies and
disciplines. So it is appropriate that other committees within
the Senate and House take an interest in the facets that touch
upon their respective areas of responsibility. We agree with
that.
There is, however, one committee whose jurisdiction and
mandate encompasses every facet of this topic, and that is the
Senate Intelligence Committee. It is this Committee that must
weigh not only the interests of the national users of
intelligence, but also the military users. We must, by
necessity, balance the needs of each without presuming the
primacy of either.
As this Committee has attempted reforms over the years,
many of which were intended to accomplish the same goals that
we are discussing today, we have found that other committees of
jurisdiction often hold the keys to success. It is with that in
mind that we intend to work very closely with our counterparts
on the other committees to ensure that they have the full
benefit of this Committee's long history and experience and
also professional staff expertise.
As I stated publicly on Monday before the Government
Affairs Committee, we are working to draft legislation that we
will share with the appropriate committees when we have reached
general agreement among our own ranks. I believe we can
accomplish that within a relatively short, short period of
time.
Our goal is to address the major concerns outlined by the
9/11 Commission to implement their goals as well as those of
the joint and Senate-House inquiry into 9/11, and our report on
prewar intelligence on Iraq and this Committee's experience
over the past two decades. Translating those important ideas,
some of which are long overdue, into legislative language is
very complicated, however. As they say, the devil is in the
details.
As members of this Committee well know, the missions of the
intelligence community are as diverse as the 15 intelligence
community members themselves. While counterterrorism rightly
stands foremost among our concerns, we must not legislate
reform that hardwires an intelligence community to fight a
single threat, as we did with the cold war.
Terrorism will not be the last threat that this Nation
faces. Therefore, we must provide a legal framework and provide
ample resources to allow the executive branch the flexibility
required of the demanding and changing threats. Congress should
then be prepared to provide its required oversight. Our ability
to do so effectively should also be examined closely, as
recommended by the Commission.
In this discourse on reform, many of the terms used to
craft the ``lanes in the road'' and justify the missions of any
particular agency are ambiguous, even to the experts, and some
may even be obsolete. I would challenge anyone to clearly
define the boundary between national intelligence and military
intelligence or where the strategic intelligence ends and the
tactical intelligence actually begins.
The light infantry forces fighting us in Vietnam were a
tactical concern. The light infantry forces fighting us in Tora
Bora in Afghanistan are of national interest in our global war
on terrorism. The small boat that killed 18 of our sailors on
the USS COLE may have been a tactical concern to the commander
but it was of great strategic concern to our national
policymakers. How we consider tactical elements both as
consumers and collectors of intelligence, and vice versa, for
national entities is central to much of this debate.
We must also seriously discuss whether the constructs of
the past have any meaning for the future. By this, I am
referring to the primacy of the Department of Defense vis-a-vis
the defense agencies, such as the National Security Agency, the
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National
Reconnaissance Office, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Why would a national intelligence director with actual
budget and line authority over these agencies be any less
responsive to the needs of the Department of the Defense than
the Secretary of Defense? They both must answer to the same
President and achieve jointly the same goals. I suspect the
answer lies in realizing that easy separations are no longer
feasible. This will provide even further impetus to breaking
down institutional structures, biases, and cultures. We often
refer to those as stovepipes.
These divisions exist not only between agencies, but
between the concepts of strategic versus tactical and national
versus military. Reflecting these ambiguities and divisions are
intelligence budgets which are often similarly very vague. The
National Foreign Intelligence Program, or NFIP, funds all non-
DOD intelligence activities as well as four national entities
that reside within the Department of Defense.
The Joint Military Intelligence Program, or JMIP, funds the
DOD-level activities of interest to more than one service or
the unified commands. The military services Tactical
Intelligence and Related Activities, or TIARA, fund their
individual intelligence activities. Yet JMIP and TIARA monies
also help fund national agencies. Budget lines are often as
fuzzy as functional lines.
As we deliberate granting further NFIP budget authorities
to a national intelligence director, we must be certain to
understand the often-nuanced ramifications to the Department of
Defense's other intelligence budgets, the JMIP and also TIARA.
We must also clearly understand what budget authority means and
how we intend to distinguish it from the authorities already
granted the Director of Central Intelligence in the National
Security Act of 1947. I would repeat that: already granted the
Director of the Central Intelligence in the National Security
Act of 1947.
Underlying actual statutory authorities is a bureaucratic
and political dynamic and, as General Myers said yesterday
before the Armed Services Committee, a corporate culture that I
believe we will never be able to legislate away. In other
words, we should be realistic in what we can expect even if we
make significant changes and how long it will take for those
changes to work their way down to the working level, i.e., to
the warfighter or that intelligence agent or that intelligence
analyst.
The fact that such changes will take time to effect is,
however, only more reason for Congress to act quickly. One
thing is certain: We are in a window of opportunity that should
not be squandered. Rarely does the President and the entire
Congress focus on a single issue with such intensity.
If the elected officials of the executive and legislative
branches of government are once again unable to change the
bureaucracies that they manage and oversee, respectively, we
have done a grave disservice to the people who bestowed this
high honor upon us. I hope that today's hearings will
illustrate that necessity and provide further insights into
these very difficult issues.
So today we welcome Dr. Amy Zegart, Dr. David Kay and
General Charles Boyd. All have extensive backgrounds in
national security and intelligence issues. All bring different
experiences and views of these same issues. Because none are
currently serving in the government, all are what we call
disinterested parties with a great deal of expertise.
The members have full bios for each in their binders. Those
are at tabs B, C and D, I would tell my colleagues.
Dr. Amy Zegart is currently an assistant professor at the
UCLA School of Public Affairs and author of the book, ``Flawed
By Design: The Evolution of the CIA and the JCS and the NSC.''
Dr. David Kay is a very well-known witness to this
Committee, as an expert on counterproliferation issues, most
recently as the head of the Iraq Survey Group. I should mention
that both Dr. Kay and Ms. Zegart were profiled by the National
Journal as key experts in the ongoing debate for intelligence
reform.
General Charles Boyd, United States Air Force, retired,
brings his valuable experience as the executive director of the
Hart-Rudman Commission, as well as hard-won experience from 35
years of active duty service, which included 2,488 days as a
prisoner of war.
Let me say this on behalf of General Boyd. We've had the
Bremer Commission, we've had the Gilmore Commission, we've had
the CSIS study, we've had the Aspin-Brown Commission and we
have had the Hart-Rudman Commission. General Boyd somehow--
somehow--with a magical ability to bring people together, got
Julian Bond, Newt Gingrich, Warren Rudman and Gary Hart all to
work together. This is no small achievement.
We thank our witnesses for being here today. Before I turn
to our witnesses for any opening statement they wish to make, I
recognize my distinguished colleague and friend, Vice Chairman
Rockefeller.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My
remarks will be brief and deal more with process.
I also welcome our witnesses today, one of them back for
the third or fourth time, and I honor their service and their
experience. Dr. Zegart, you were on the National Security
Council, weren't you?
Dr. Zegart. Yes.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. See, that's not necessarily--if
you're a UCLA law professor, people don't make the quick jump
to NSC, but that becomes a very important part of your
expertise, so there's some questions I want to ask you.
The Chairman I think has been very good in making sure that
we get started on this. We got started on this actually before
we went out of session, we had a hearing on reform. I think,
like all of my colleagues, we have looked over the 9/11
Commission book, read it, looked at the reform proposals, and I
think probably for the most part agree with many of them,
making up our minds about some of them and listening to experts
like yourselves to help us get closer to the rest.
We've also looked at proposals offered by Senator
Feinstein, Senator Snowe, Representative Harman, and others
both inside and outside the government. Our hearings and those
held by other committees have been invaluable to looking at
those relative merits in terms of the 9/11 recommendations.
So in terms of process, as the Chairman has indicated, over
the days and weeks that are before us, I'll be working with the
Chairman, also with members on both sides, committee members,
to pull together what we achieved in our first report, which
was a bipartisan consensus, which doesn't happen very often
around here, but did happen on WMD, which was not necessarily
an easy subject.
We had a 17-to-nothing vote because we just got together
and decided we were going to put other interests above whatever
small disagreements we might have.
We have to restructure. We have to strengthen our
intelligence community. We know that.
I've already shared with the Chairman, for my part, my
views--written views--as well as my colleagues on the
democratic side--my views on what the 9/11 Commission's are
like: Do I say, ``yes'', ``no'', ``maybe''; yes, but modified;
no, but modified, to list those out, to give a sense of at
least how I come down on some of them so far.
I know that the Chairman also is in the process of writing
or has written either a bill or a list of principles and
recommendations. I look forward to getting those soon so that I
can see where our views are common and we can continue our
discussion.
But it's not just a discussion between the Chairman and the
Vice Chairman. It's a question in that the Intelligence
Committee has general responsibility for oversight. It's what
do all of our colleagues think. This is a process that clearly,
in order to achieve a bipartisan consensus, we have to go
through and take very seriously. The Chairman and Vice Chairman
have certain things they can do, but one of the things that we
cannot do is make decisions on behalf of our colleagues, and we
don't wish to because we want to have a bipartisan consensus on
this.
So we have to bring our collective expertise and judgment
to the ongoing reform debate in the Senate and to the Congress
as a whole.
The Senate leadership, as the Chairman pointed out, asked
the Government Affairs Committee to take the lead in drafting
reform legislation. I've talked with both Susan Collins and Joe
Lieberman, and pledged to them--twice, actually, now--and
pledged to them our assistance as this legislative process
moves forward, because we want to be helpful. We want to help
shape the debate. We are a part of the debate formally by
resolution and also, obviously, by the expertise of the
Committee. Both agreed that our Committee has a very strong
place at the table during these discussions.
I'm hopeful, and I believe that the Chairman shares my
hope, that our Committee will be in a position to share with
the Government Affairs Committee the fruits of what we
collectively, as a committee, think when the Senate reconvenes
next month, or shortly thereafter. That's easier said than
done. There's a convention coming up. People are still away in
some cases. So there's a lot of pressure on us to bring
ourselves together.
I think it's not going to be actually as difficult a
process as I would have expected. The Chairman and I agree on a
great deal. We've already found that out. I think that there
will be a lot of agreement, and then there will be some
argument.
But the bipartisan consensus is very, very important to
both the Chairman and myself. It's what allows things to stand
out around here. And tasking ourselves, you know, if the
Congress and the President can't reach agreement on meaningful
reform, then what are we here for?
Some people say, ``Well, we're trying to make a show of it
in August.'' Yes, we're making a show of it in August. But it's
more than a show; it's laying a predicate. When you take
actions by holding committee hearings, by inconveniencing folks
like yourself to come and testify before us, we prepare
ourselves for this, we do our commission homework, which is
basically what we've been doing.
I didn't even go to our national convention, but just
stayed home and worked on the 9/11 Commission, because I
thought it was--not more important, I guess--but yes, more
important, maybe, in that the outcome in one is fairly certain
and the outcome in the other is relatively uncertain.
So we have to do our job or we will have failed the
American people. That is not something that Chairman Roberts
and I choose to do.
I thank the Chairman.
Chairman Roberts. Let me just say that I want to thank my
colleague. I think we burned the phone lines down in the last 2
weeks and we've met individually. I appreciate his summary in
regards to what the 9/11 Commission has suggested and polling
his membership. I've shared that with our side.
I might add that we are also working with the
administration, and that is a work in progress. Our national
security director, Ms. Rice, has indicated there will be
mechanisms that will be made public, and we've urged her to do
that. We have shared sort of an idea, in regards to what we
both believe, with the administration. We have done that with
the leadership. As the Vice Chairman has pointed out, we have
done that with Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins and the
Government Affairs members.
We're also doing that in reaching out to the staff members
of the 9/11 Commission and that of the families. While there
are a lot of, I guess I would say, players or moving parts here
that have to come together to fit what we hope is realistic and
credible and practical intelligence reform, we are reaching out
as best we can.
We're doing so because we know we have 22 excellent
professional staffers and we have a history in regards to the
prewar intelligence report on a 17-0 vote. We think we can get
this job done, and we think we can be a positive influence in
this business.
With that, we would like to recognize first Dr. Zegart and
then Dr. Kay and then General Boyd.
Dr. Zegart, welcome to the Committee.
STATEMENT OF AMY B. ZEGART, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR,
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC POLICY, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC
AFFAIRS, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
Dr. Zegart. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Rockefeller,
distinguished members of the Committee. It is an honor to be
here today. This Committee has done extraordinary work in
highlighting critical problems in the intelligence community
and in leading the path toward reform.
I am an assistant professor at UCLA. I have been
researching and writing about the intelligence community for a
decade now. I have written one book on organizational problems
in the CIA and I am currently writing a book about why the
intelligence community adapted poorly to the rise of terrorism
after the cold war. As Senator Rockefeller mentioned, I worked
on the National Security Council staff as a consumer of
intelligence.
Mr. Chairman, I have submitted more extensive written
remarks. Today I would like to briefly touch on three main
points. The first is, as you mentioned, the fleeting
opportunities for reform, the second is the need for structural
overhaul, and the third is the critical importance of cultural
change. The bottom line is that structural reform of the
intelligence community is crucial, long overdue and not enough.
Mr. Chairman, as you so astutely mentioned in your opening
remarks, major overhauls to our national security apparatus are
extremely difficult and rare. The National Security Act of 1947
took 4 years to pass and succeeded against overwhelming
opposition and great odds. The New York Times called it a
brass-knuckle fight to the finish.
Reforming the Pentagon, as you know, took nearly 40 more
years, despite the grave stakes we faced during the cold war
and the fact that critical organizations were well known. As
Secretary Powell once put it when I spoke to him, the
performance of the JCS before its reform in 1986 could only be
described, and I quote, ``as barely adequate.''
As you know, in the past 57 years, despite the great
efforts of this Committee and more than 40 different studies of
the intelligence community recommending reform, no President
and no Congress has succeeded in overhauling our intelligence
system.
History's lesson is to make the most of reform
opportunities when they arise because they do not arise often
and they do not last long. We have one of those rare windows of
opportunity now. If the past is any guide, there will not be
another chance for a generation. These realities mean that
reforms should be sweeping, because they will be lasting. The
choices you make will be with us all for decades to come.
Mr. Chairman, let me turn briefly to structure. Stacks of
intelligence studies over the past 50 years have examined a
number of diverse issues but have reached stunning consensus on
one point: The director of central intelligence needs help.
The National Security Act of 1947 gave the DCI two jobs, as
we know--running the CIA on the one hand and managing the
entire community on the other. But it did not give him the
power to do both of these jobs effectively. Now there has been
great debate about whether fixing this problem is best done by
allowing the DCI to keep his two hats and bolstering his power
or by creating a new director of national intelligence,
separate from the CIA.
Let me put three thoughts on the table.
First, Mr. Chairman, as you mentioned, the devil lies in
the details. For either approach, success hinges on giving
either an empowered DCI or a new director of national
intelligence much greater budgetary authority, greater
personnel authority and the staff and systems capabilities to
make use of these legal authorities. These are must-haves for
reform.
Second, no organizational structure is perfect. Grappling
with the weaknesses inherent in each approach is crucial, not
only for selecting a new intelligence structure but for
maximizing its effectiveness as well. Anticipating problems is
one of the best ways of avoiding them. Knowing that your car
tends to veer off course helps you keep it on the road.
In particular, I believe that separating the community head
from the CIA has drawbacks that may be less obvious than the
benefits. One concern is that a director of national
intelligence who is not tied to the CIA will be more likely to
view intelligence needs and assets through tactical lenses.
Now let me be clear. Tactical intelligence that supports
the warfighter should always be a priority; I think everyone
can agree about that. The question is, how much of a priority?
Our system has a natural gravitational pull toward providing
tactical intelligence, a pull that has only grown stronger in
recent years with the marriage of intelligence and precision-
guided weaponry as we've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But in light of our strategic intelligence failures related
to 9/11 and Iraq, we need to consider seriously whether a DNI,
a director of national intelligence, will be able to strike the
right balance between national intelligence and military
intelligence.
A third consideration, and I believe this is an important
one, is that both of these solutions offer a vast improvement
to keeping the current flawed structure intact.
Let me turn briefly to culture. Organizational culture is
the silent killer of innovation. Building new organizational
arrangements with more people and more power will not make us
safer if intelligence officials still view the world through
old lenses and hoard information in old stove pipes. Fixing the
cultural pathologies that have crippled our system is hard, but
it is not impossible. Legislation can help.
Two good first steps would be to change training and career
incentives. The FBI faces a daunting cultural challenge:
transforming its crime-fighting culture into an intelligence
one. Our nation's best-known law enforcement agency must
somehow teach itself not to think like one. Training programs
are crucial in this effort. Today, however, counterterrorism
training constitutes only 2 weeks out of the 17-week new agent
course at Quantico. Now, that's more than it used to be, but it
is still less time than new agents get for vacation in their
first year.
Then there is the unspoken 11th commandment of
intelligence: Thou shalt not share. Here, too, a large part of
the problem is cultural. As this Committee knows well from its
investigation of our analysis in Iraq, reluctance to pass
information across agency lines is deeply ingrained, based more
on habit and values than policy or organization charts. Here,
too, training is key. Creating a one-team approach to
intelligence requires developing trust and building informal
networks between officials in different agencies.
Now, this is best done by cross-agency training programs
early in officials' careers, before they become good and
indoctrinated into the stovepipes. By current policies,
however, most intelligence professionals can spend 20 years or
more without ever experiencing a community-wide training
program. Institutional bridges will always be hard to build and
information always hard to share when one side does not trust
or understand the other.
Now, several past reform studies have recommended improving
information sharing by requiring the rotation of personnel
across intelligence agencies. This has not happened. Several
years ago, DCI Tenet issued a directive requiring that
officials do a rotational tour in another intelligence agency
to get promoted. According to senior intelligence officials,
every single agency in the community, including the CIA,
ignored that directive.
Taking temporary assignment in another agency is still
viewed as a career-limiting move. Here's what one senior
intelligence official told me: ``I often think of writing a
vacancy notice for temporary detailees to the agency that says
only stupid people doing unimportant work need apply.''
Now, the 9/11 Commission has recognized the seriousness of
these problems, but has recommended a solution that I believe
will not solve them. It has proposed that the new director of
national intelligence set policies for education and training
and facilitate assignments across agency lines. Now this is
good in theory. In practice, however, it leaves too much work
for a new official whose other job responsibilities include
advising the President, managing the entire community, creating
a unified intelligence budget and overseeing new national
intelligence centers. It does not take much to see which duties
will come first.
Instead, intelligence reform legislation should explicitly
require the establishment of community-wide training programs
early in officials' careers and legislation also should make
rotational assignments to other intelligence agencies a
requirement for promotion.
I cannot stress this enough. As the 9/11 Commission and so
many others have concluded, a similar provision in the
Goldwater-Nichols Act transformed the culture of the Defense
Department from a service-first attitude to a truly joint
outlook.
Mr. Chairman, successful intelligence reform must change
more than the organization's structure. It has to change the
minds of those who work inside it.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Zegart follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Amy B. Zegart
Mr. Chairman, Senator Rockefeller, distinguished Members of the
Committee, it is an honor to be here today to discuss reform of our
nation's intelligence system.
My name is Amy Zegart. I am an Assistant Professor in the School of
Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). For
the past decade, I have been researching and writing about the
Intelligence Community. I have written a book about organizational
problems in the CIA and other agencies called Flawed by Design: The
Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC (Stanford University Press, 1999). I
have worked as a consumer of intelligence on the National Security
Council staff. And I am currently writing a book about why the
Intelligence Community adapted poorly to the rise of terrorism after
the Cold War ended.
Mr. Chairman, my remarks cover three main points:
The fleeting opportunities for reform;
The need for structural overhaul; and
The importance of cultural change.
The bottom line is that structural reforms are crucial, long
overdue, and insufficient.
intelligence reform opportunities are few and fleeting
Major overhauls of national security agencies are difficult and
rare. The National Security Act of 1947, which created the CIA,
National Security Council, and unified the military services under a
single Department of Defense and Joint Chiefs of Staff, took 4 years to
pass and succeeded against great opposition and long odds; The New York
Times called the political battles between the military services a
``brass knuckle fight to the finish.''
Completing the job at the Pentagon took nearly 40 more years,
despite the grave stakes we faced during the Cold War and the fact that
critical organizational problems were well known. Although Democrats
and Republicans alike issued major studies and repeated calls for
reform, it took four decades of pressure and the convergence of a
number of extraordinary circumstances--including a string of rapid-fire
operational problems in Iran, Beirut, and Grenada; the unprecedented
push for reform by two sitting JCS members; and a determined campaign
by key Congressional champions--to win passage of the landmark
Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986.
As you know, in the past 57 years no President and no Congress,
despite the great efforts of this Committee and more than 40 studies
recommending reform, has succeeded in overhauling our intelligence
system.
This is no accident. Problems in national security agencies are
extremely hard to fix, even when they are clear, stakes are high, and
danger is imminent. Three reasons explain why.
(1) No Organization Changes Easily On Its Own
Even businesses, which are blessed with few management constraints
and the knowledge that they must adapt or die, fail to respond to
shifting environmental demands at surprising rates. Nearly a third of
the 5.5 million businesses tracked by the U.S. Census over a 4-year
period in the 1990's did not survive.\1\ In the past 3 years, more than
200 major corporations have declared bankruptcy, including United
Airlines, K-Mart, Global Crossing, and Bethlehem Steel.
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\1\ Howard Aldrich, Organizations Evolving (London: Sage
Publications, 1999), p.262.
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Government agencies are even less able to make internal changes.
The Army kept a horse cavalry until World War II. Compared to firms,
government agencies have more limited resources, less managerial
discretion, and are hardwired to perform routine tasks in standard ways
rather than nimbly responding to changing demands.\2\ For example, this
Committee's Joint Inquiry learned that the CIA failed to watchlist
Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the September 11th hijackers, for 18 months
before the attacks, even though the agency suspected al-Mihdhar was an
Al Qaeda terrorist and knew he held a multiple entry visa to the United
States.\3\ The simplest explanation for this failure is that the CIA
was not in the habit of watchlisting terrorists. For 50 years, Cold War
priorities, thinking, and procedures were not geared to keeping foreign
terrorists out of the country. When the principal threat to American
national security changed, the Intelligence Community was naturally
slow to change with it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ See in particular Joel Aberbach and Bert Rockmart, In the Web
of Politics: Three Decades of the U.S. Federal Executive (Washington,
D.C.: Brookings, 2000); James Q. Wilson, Bureaucracy: What Government
Agencies Do and Why They Do It (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
\3\ Eleanor Hill, ``The Intelligence Community's Knowledge of the
September 11 Hijackers Prior to September 11, 2001,'' testimony to the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, September 20, 2002, p.6.
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(2) Rational Political Interests Do Not Favor Reform
By rational political interests I do not mean coldhearted
calculations or selfish intentions. Rather, the idea is that sober-eyed
elected officials who want to maximize the benefits they provide to
their constituents do not have strong incentives to expend the enormous
amount of time, energy and political capital that intelligence reform
requires.
Presidents have good reason to consider the effectiveness of the
Intelligence Community. The problem is that Presidents are short on
time, have only so much political capital, few formal powers, and long
agendas. In fact, no President since Truman has tackled major
intelligence reform and only one, Eisenhower, ever took the lead in
seeking a major restructuring of the Pentagon. Instead, Presidents have
tried to mitigate the worst organizational problems they face in lower-
cost ways, by creating new agencies through unilateral Executive
action. The National Security Agency, and more recently the Terrorist
Threat Integration Center, both were created in this fashion.
Unfortunately, this approach may only make coordination problems worse.
As Nobel laureate Herbert Simon noted, the more organizations there are
on the scene, the harder it is for the entire system to change. Tight
coupling between government agencies means that changes must occur in
multiple places at once to produce results.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Herbert Simon, ``Public Administration in Today's World of
Organizations and Markets,'' John Gaus Lecture, American Political
Science Association Annual Meetings, September 1, 2000, reprinted in
PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 33, No. 4 (December 2000), p.
753.
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As you know far better than I do, legislators do not win landslide
elections by delving into the arcane details of intelligence agency
design. Intelligence reform is a burning issue for a dedicated few like
yourselves. But the fact is, intelligence reform is not usually a
burning issue for Congress as a whole. And in the past, it has been
stymied by opposition from members of the Armed Services Committees who
seek to defend their Committees' jurisdictions and the autonomy and
power of the agencies they oversee.
Bureaucrats, finally, fight against changes even to agencies
outside their own because they see reform as a zero-sum game for agency
autonomy and power. There is nothing quite like intelligence reform to
trigger the antibodies of affected agencies.
(3) The Fragmented Federal Government Makes Reform Difficult
Ironically, some of the most cherished features of American
democracy, such as separation of powers, work against agency
effectiveness. This is because the political process requires
compromise for legislation to pass, and compromise allows opponents to
weaken agency design at the outset. These same features of the
political process make subsequent legislative fixes an uphill battle.
History's lesson is to make the most of reform opportunities when
they arise, because they do not arise often and they do not last long.
We have one of those rare opportunities now. If the past is any guide,
there will not be another chance for a generation. These realities mean
that reforms must be sweeping because they will be lasting; the choices
you make today will be with us for decades to come.
STRUCTURAL OVERHAUL: THE DCI NEEDS HELP
Stacks of intelligence studies over the past 50 years have examined
a number of diverse issues but have reached a stunning degree of
consensus about one thing: the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI)
needs help. The National Security Act of 1947 gave the DCI two jobs--
running the CIA and managing the rest of the Intelligence Community--
but did not give him the power to do both jobs effectively. This is no
accident. The historical record shows quite clearly that when the CIA
was created, it was deliberately hobbled by existing intelligence
agencies in the Departments of State, Defense and Justice, which sought
to maintain their own autonomy and power. Together, these agencies
worked diligently to strip the National Security Act of provisions that
would have created a truly centralized Central Intelligence Agency. The
most lasting legacy of this design is the yawning gap between the DCI's
wide-ranging responsibilities and his circumscribed power. The proposed
remedies to this problem have varied, but the diagnosis has not.
There has been great debate over the years about whether fixing
this problem is best done by allowing the DCI to keep his two hats and
bolstering his power, or by creating a separate Director of National
Intelligence to oversee the entire Community. Let me put three thoughts
on the table:
First, the devil lies in the details. For either approach,
success hinges on giving an empowered DCI or a new Director of National
Intelligence much greater budgetary authority, stronger personnel
authority, and the systems and staff capabilities to use such
authorities effectively. These are must-haves.
Second, no organizational structure is perfect. Grappling
with the weaknesses of both approaches is crucial--not only for
choosing a new intelligence structure, but for maximizing its
effectiveness as well. Anticipating problems is one of the best ways to
avoid them. Knowing that your car tends to veer helps you keep it on
the road.
In particular, I believe that separating the Community head from
the CIA has drawbacks that may be less obvious than the benefits. One
concern is that a Director of National Intelligence who is not tied to
the CIA will be more likely to view intelligence needs and assets
through tactical lenses. Let me be clear. Tactical intelligence that
supports the warfighter should always take priority. The question is
how much of a priority. Our system has a natural gravitational pull
toward tactical intelligence, a pull that has only grown stronger with
the successful marriage of intelligence and precision weapons in
Afghanistan and Iraq. But especially in light of our strategic
intelligence failings related to 9/11 and Iraq, we need to consider
whether a DNI will be able to strike the right balance, whether a level
playing field among the 15 intelligence agencies would create a level
approach to intelligence.
Third, both of these solutions offer a vast improvement to
keeping the current flawed structure intact.
Good structure is not a cure-all, but bad structure can have
debilitating effects on organizational performance. Structure is not
about boxes. It is about power. Structure determines who answers to
whom, whose memo goes on top, and what formal powers organizational
leaders have.
CULTURE: THE SILENT KILLER OF INNOVATION
Although any meaningful reform must start with structure,
structural changes alone will not be enough. Building new
organizational arrangements with more people and more power will not
make us safer if intelligence officials still view the world through
the same old lenses and hoard information in the same old stovepipes.
Organizational culture is a silent but deadly innovation killer.
Fixing the cultural pathologies that have crippled our intelligence
system is hard but not impossible. Two good first steps would be to
change training and career incentives.
The FBI faces a daunting cultural challenge: transforming a crime-
fighting culture that prizes slow and careful evidence gathering after-
the-fact and works each case separately into an intelligence culture
that takes fast action and follows leads across cases to prevent future
tragedies. The nation's best-known law enforcement agency somehow must
teach itself not to think like one. Training programs are crucial to
this effort. Today, however, counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence
training constitute only 2 weeks out of the 17-week required course for
all new agents. That is more than it used to be, but still less time
than new agents get for vacation.
Then there is the unspoken 11th Commandment of intelligence: Thou
Shalt Not Share. Here, too, a large part of the problem is cultural. As
this Committee knows, the reluctance to pass information across agency
lines is deeply engrained, based more on habit and values than policy
or official organization charts. And here, too, training is key.
Creating a ``one team'' approach to intelligence requires developing
trust and building informal networks between officials in different
agencies. This is best done by cross-agency training programs early in
officials' careers, before they become indoctrinated in the stovepipes.
By current policies, however, most intelligence agency professionals
can spend 20 years or more without a single Community-wide training
experience. Institutional bridges will always be hard to build and
information hard to share when one side does not trust or understand
the other.
Several past reform studies have recommended improving information
sharing by requiring the rotation of personnel across intelligence
agencies. This has not happened. Several years ago DCI Tenet issued a
directive requiring that officials do a rotational tour in another
intelligence agency to get promoted to senior ranks. According to
senior intelligence officials, every intelligence agency including the
CIA ignored him. Taking a temporary assignment in an agency outside
one's home is still viewed as a career-limiting move. Instead of
encouraging the best and brightest within each agency to venture out
and build institutional bridges, career incentives encourage them to
stay right where they are. The result is that while agencies post
openings for temporary detailees, these positions all too often get
filled by weak performers. As one senior intelligence official
lamented, ``I often think of writing a vacancy notice [for temporary
detailees to the agency] that says, `only stupid people doing
unimportant work need apply.' ''
The 9/11 Commission recognized the seriousness of these problems,
but has recommended a solution that will not solve them: it has
suggested that the proposed new Director of National Intelligence set
policies for education and training and facilitate assignments across
agency lines. This is good in theory. But in practice, it leaves too
much work for a new official whose other job responsibilities include
advising the President, managing the entire Intelligence Community,
creating a unified intelligence budget, and overseeing new national
intelligence centers. It does not take much to see which duties will
come first.
Instead, intelligence reform legislation should explicitly require
the establishment of Community-wide training programs early in
officials' careers. Legislation also should make rotational assignments
to other intelligence agencies a requirement for promotion. I cannot
stress this enough. As the 9/11 Commission and many others have noted,
a similar provision in the Goldwater-Nichols Act transformed the
culture of the Defense Department from a ``service first'' attitude to
a truly joint outlook.
Mr. Chairman, successful intelligence reform must change more than
the organization chart. It must change the minds of those who work
inside it.
Thank you.
Chairman Roberts. Dr. Zegart, thank you very much. Your
full statement will be made part of the record.
We welcome now Dr. Kay.
STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID KAY, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, THE POTOMAC
INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES
Dr. Kay. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I have submitted for the record a full statement. I will
try to briefly summarize what I think are the key points. I
certainly thank you and the Committee for the opportunity to
appear before you and to address the important issues of the
future organization, shape and role of the intelligence
community.
I think I agree very strongly with Amy. This is a chance
that comes along largely once a generation. If you don't get it
right now, we will live with the consequences until the next
disaster.
I also understand that in the minds of many outside this
room, the subject boils down to creating a national
intelligence director. Maybe the only open question is what
powers that person should have. There have been at least 20
that I know of commissions, panels, studies in the last 20
years of the intelligence community. They have almost all been
uniform in their conclusion of the necessity of reform, of the
shortcomings and the failures. Yet, by and large, nothing has
happened.
Indeed, as Chairman Porter Goss, before his nomination for
CIA director, said, ``Nobody in their right mind would create
the architecture we have in our intelligence community today.
It's a dysfunctional community.''
Therefore, there is little wonder that many would say it's
time for a czar, or more, in my Texas dialect, off with the
heads, in the face of such inaction over the years.
This may be the right answer, although, if so, it would be
the first time in the history of the U.S. Government that the
creation of a czar to deal with organizational failures and
inadequacies has been successful. This is a record that is very
much without sustained success.
I therefore remain agnostic on the wisdom of creating a
national intelligence director in the absence of knowing five
things. First, do we agree on the failures and shortcomings
that the post should address; the power of the post itself, and
power in considerable detail that is to have the wider
executive branch national security structure within which that
post is to operate; the legislative oversight, authorization
and budgeting appropriation structure that will vitally
determine whether such an individual actually has the
authorities and endurance to be successful; and finally, I
would really say most importantly, a demonstrated willingness
by both the Congress and the executive branch to hold people
and organizations responsible when they massively fail to live
up to their responsibilities. I think that is the single
greatest failing that sustains the inadequacy of the system
today.
I should add that my agnosticism does not reflect in any
way a lack of the enduring grief that I know the families of 9/
11 and the Nation feels for the failures to prevent 9/11 from
occurring. It certainly doesn't reflect any lack of
appreciation that I have for the outstanding work of the 9/11
Commission.
I am concerned, however, that simply creating a national
intelligence director, even one that seems to have and we think
has real powers, realizing that in Washington we exist
somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 feet in looking inside
bureaucracies and we think budget and personnel authority is
real power, we will not end up addressing the real problems
that led to the long string of failures that conclude with 9/11
and the WMD findings in Iraq. I think this is particularly true
if we continue to say everyone is at fault and therefore no one
is at fault.
Let me turn to what I know best, although I must say I know
this Committee knows probably better than I do the reasons we
failed to adequately assess the actual State of Iraq's WMD
program. Let me do it very quickly, just in headline form. I
think there were nine principal failings here.
There was a broken culture and management within the CIA.
There was a breakdown in CIA analytical tradecraft;
The lack of any U.S. human clandestine collection after
1998--and damn little before 1998;
A failure to seriously examine and question non-American-
controlled sources of information on WMD, which we came to rely
on;
Abuse of the control over information to prevent others
even in the CIA, and certainly many outside the CIA from seeing
the real problems with the available data concerning
conclusions the CIA reached and assertions as to the current
status of Iraq's WMD program;
A real absence of scientific, analytical capability within
the Directorate of Intelligence, and a refusal to even use the
scientific excellence that existed in other parts of the CIA
and certainly that existed in other parts of the U.S.
Government to understand the existing status of Iraq's WMD
program;
Multiple security systems and information systems that both
within the CIA restricted access to vital elements of
information, and certainly outside the CIA did this;
A complete lack of competitive analysis that led to stale
data and findings being passed completely unchallenged to
policymakers, to you in the Congress and ultimately to the
American people as being the product of current, up-to-date
collection and knowledge;
And, finally, a national intelligence collection process
that was unproductive of real assessments and had, quite
frankly, misled rather than informed, and misled the executive
branch, the Congress and the American people.
The remarkable thing, as I examine this record and read the
outstanding 500-plus pages of this Committee's report on Iraq,
is that the origin of most of these factors lies within the CIA
itself. Iraq was an overwhelming, systemic failure of the
Central Intelligence Agency. Until this is taken onboard and
people and organizations are held responsible for this failure,
I have real difficulty seeing how a national intelligence
director can correct these failings.
Indeed, I would argue that, unless the newly appointed
director of central intelligence takes on as his first
responsibility correcting the obvious failures that you have so
thoroughly documented, that the national intelligence director
has no hope of success.
If you will indulge me in something that is not in my
statement--I've spent a lot of time before this Committee--
there have been a lot of pointed questions. But there's one
question that no one ever asked me, and that is what was my
most frustrating moment in Iraq. If you don't mind, Mr.
Chairman, I'd like to share that with you.
There was a period after I was here in October and
testified before you and I went back. I had been back about a
week and I had one of the CIA lead analysts come into me and
say, ``David, the analysts are really unhappy and some are
thinking of going home.'' Of course, the thought crossed my
mind, what have I now done to destroy morale.
She quickly said, ``No, no, it's not anything you've done.
We've just learned that the performance bonuses given for the
analytical work done in the CIA before, in the lead-up to the
war, have given way more money to the nuclear team than it has
to the chem-bio analysts.''
At that point, I was glad my Glock was unloaded, because
let me tell you, we had discovered that the nuclear team, as
you have documented more thoroughly than has been done any
place else on the public record, that is a record of abuse of
authority, a failure to use expertise. There is nothing in that
record that deserves a performance bonus. Nor in fact, quite
frankly, was there much to deserve a performance bonus in the
chemical and biological area.
Instead of holding people responsible, we reward them for
failure. Unless you change that part of the culture,
organizational shuffling of deck chairs has no hope of being
successful.
Mr. Chairman, having started out declaring my agnosticism,
I would like to conclude by sharing with you what I believe, if
you go ahead with the creation of a national intelligence
director, are the essential 10 elements that must be included
in the powers and related to that authority if there is to be
any hope of success.
First of all, I think you explicitly have to place all 15
of the intelligence organizations under the authority of a
national intelligence director. You have to define that
authority to include the design and monitoring of national
intelligence strategies, responsibility for the execution of
those strategies and all other powers deemed necessary to carry
out and ensure the effectiveness of U.S. intelligence
activities.
Secondly, giving the director of national intelligence not
just budget approval authority, which is largely meaningless,
but the real budget power, which is detailed budget
formulation, approval, release and reprogramming authority for
each of the 15 agencies. Without that, saying that I have or
anyone has the right to approve the final budget at a final day
is saying I have no power. If you look at the history of past
czars, you'll see that it's uniform across those.
Thirdly, giving the national intelligence director not just
the responsibility for approving the heads of the 15
intelligence agencies--this is largely a meaningless power--but
the responsibility for ensuring that the personnel policies and
practices, some of which Amy, I think, has ably, both in her
testimony here and in her other writings pointed to, ensuring
that these practices across all the intelligence agencies
operate in a manner that support the effective execution of the
national intelligence strategies and the responsibility and
power to remove personnel at all levels who do not adequately
perform.
Fourthly, I think the National Intelligence Council must be
moved from the authority of the DCI to the national
intelligence director and charged with ensuring that all the
resources of the intelligence agencies are brought to bear in a
way that provides the Nation with the best possible analytical
products.
I also think the responsibility for what is now called the
PDBs, the Presidential daily briefings, should be moved to this
reformed National Intelligence Council operating under the
national intelligence director, and it should have the
responsibility and access to all the collection and analytical
assets of the community in briefing the President.
It is vital to this Nation that we ensure that diverse
analytical views within the intelligence community are allowed
to contend on a level playing field, and that policymakers
understand the differences in conclusions and views of various
agencies.
The national intelligence director, and particularly a
reformed National Intelligence Council, has that responsibility
and must be held to task for that responsibility, ensuring that
diversity of views are encouraged and that the diverse views
that occur are in fact brought to the attention of the Congress
and of policymakers.
Now, while diversity in analysis--and I would say not just
diversity. I revel in contention when analysts disagree. We
need to encourage that and create an atmosphere where that
occurs. But I think we need much more than we have had in the
past, and certainly than we have now, common, shared and more
efficient collection agencies.
Collection, after all, data is what is the feedstock of
analysis, even when the analysts may reach different
conclusions. I think you need to place the national
intelligence director in charge, charged by you, Congress, with
ensuring that all of the collection assets of this government
work to support the national intelligence strategies and
priorities.
A post that allowed in the past individual collection
agencies to identify their own customers and ignore directives
of the DCI--and this is, I think, well documented in the 9/11
Commission report, as well as those of us who have spent any
time in the system have seen at first hand--must be stopped.
I would say also, by the same token--and I think this is
something that the oversight powers of Congress have spent less
time on than they should have--we've allowed the national
collection agencies in their various forms to set their own
technological acquisition agenda without any relation to a
common strategy.
The result has been that we have acquired technologies that
are not always relevant to agreed strategies and goals and
problems we face as a nation. That must stop. There's not
enough money and, more importantly, we will not get the
collection we need if we allow that to continue.
Let me say, seventhly, even if perfect collection, and
that's a goal that I've never seen achieved, it may have and
someone may know of it, an excellent analysis is worthless
unless it is effectively disseminated, both within the
communities and between the agencies. The 9/11 Commission has
adequately documented, as has your own report, the failure to
do this, including abuse of authority in the nuclear area,
certainly. You know, we have called attention at least since
1992, with the Aspin-Brown panel, called attention to this
glaring weakness. Yet, nothing has been done.
The national intelligence director must be given the
authority, the responsibility and held accountable for ensuring
that this chaos ends. We need to ensure that the ultimate
responsibility, particularly for security systems, e-mail, data
base, the whole schmear, operates in a way that supports
collaboration across everyone involved in intelligence and the
customers that intelligence is designed to serve.
Eighthly, we must charge the national intelligence director
with providing the President and Congress, I think, within 12
months of its creation, and every 3 years after that, with
analysis and recommendations of the adequacy of the
organizational structure and the resources necessary to support
national intelligence needs.
Let me say, I believe 15 agencies are way too many. It's a
product of the cold war, a different environment. But as you
are probably more aware of than I am, the difficulty of getting
rid of agencies once created is far greater than the problem of
even creating new agencies. That needs to be addressed. It is a
flaw in the system that daily impedes effective collection and
analysis across the system.
Ninthly, you've got to recognize that unless Congress puts
its own house on a footing to support and provide the essential
oversight of the performance of the intelligence community, the
powers of the national intelligence director will ultimately be
carved up. The Senate and the House must find ways that do not
allow diverse authorizers and appropriators to carve up and
undermine this authority.
I hope you can come up with that scheme. I confess--and
it's probably a product of my age--I continue to be drawn back
to the early days of the Joint Atomic Energy Commission, which
in fact was responsible for creating, when we did create, the
essential undergridding of our deterrent strategy in the
nuclear area and performed, I think, outstandingly, certainly
in its early years.
Finally, and probably most contentious of all, or at least
will get me in greatest trouble, let me say, just as I believe
Congress needs to reshape its oversight structure if a new
national intelligence director is to have any chance of
success, so must the President with regard to his own national
security structure.
The dog that did not bark in the case of Iraq's WMD
program, quite frankly in my view, is the National Security
Council. Where was the National Security Council when
apparently the President expressed his own doubt about the
adequacy of the case concerning Iraq's WMD weapons that were
made before him?
Why was the Secretary of State sent out to the CIA to
personally vet the data that he was to take to the Security
Council in New York and ultimately left to hang in the wind for
data that was at least misleading, and in some cases absolutely
false and known by parts of the intelligence community to be
false? Where was the NSC then?
Now, presidents over time have had various ways to run
their truth tests. When I first came to Washington, which
really is dating myself, the President tended to rely on
informal consultations with Members of Congress, even Supreme
Court judges, and probably worst of all, journalists and
academics. Those times have gone. In more recent times, he's
had to depend on the National Security Council. But the one
thing I think you will all understand, the President must have
the ability to run truth tests on information that is brought
to the Oval Office, across all areas of the government.
This is true of welfare reform, agriculture, environmental
policy, as it is true of foreign and domestic policy. I do not
believe that it is appropriate that the national intelligence
director be sucked into the political process of the White
House. I think that would be a disaster.
But equally, it is true, we must recognize that the
President needs his own ability both to express his
requirements and his direction and his policy with regard to
intelligence and broader national security policies and to run
those truth tests. I think that is absent. I think we ignore
that at our own risk.
Mr. Chairman, as I know you no doubt have concluded, that
in view of my expressed agnosticism about the creation of a
national intelligence director, it hasn't stopped me from
sharing in some detail, and I suspect you are quietly now
saying a Marine's prayer that you're glad that I wasn't
enthusiastic about creating the national intelligence director,
because I really would have gone on at great lengths.
But I share with many the views that the U.S. intelligence
community is in a crisis. This crisis is so grave that it
weakens an essential underpinning of both our diplomatic and
our national military security capabilities and their ability
to support U.S. national interest.
If this crisis is to be resolved, it will require an effort
at least as great as that that went into creating the
intelligence community in the most dire part of the cold war.
Remedying this crisis cannot be simply achieved by naming a
national intelligence director. What is necessary is vision and
an unswerving commitment to serving the Nation beyond the
political and policy interests of any one particular
administration, an ability to listen, to communicate, to lead
and to execute, and probably most importantly of all, an
ethical center that recognizes and understands the values of
truth and the values of speaking truth to power.
This task will be neither easy nor will it be quick. It's
actually more of a journey, in my view, than a one-step
solution. It will certainly not be, and we should not mislead
anyone, a quick fix.
Let me conclude by this, because it actually is, I think,
for me the most essential point. Intelligence reform without
accountability will not achieve the objective we all share--
that is, avoiding the clearly avoidable tragedies of 9/11 and
the equally avoidable tragedies of a botched assessment of
Iraq's WMD capabilities.
If you are to go ahead with the creation of a national
intelligence director--and I believe you will--I think that you
must ensure that such a structure is vested with all the powers
necessary to be successful and that the Congress and the
President have the organizational capabilities and acceptance
of responsibility to ensure that, as new structure moves
forward, accountability goes hand in hand with reform.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you and the Committee for letting me
go on at the length about what to me is a very important topic.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Kay follows:]
Prepared Statement of David Kay\1\
Mr. Chairman, I thank you and the Committee for the opportunity to
address the important issues related to the future shape, organization
and role of the U.S. intelligence system that you are focusing on in
this series of hearings.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Senior Research Fellow, The Potomac Institute for Policy
Studies. The views expressed in this statement are solely the
responsibility of the author.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I understand that in the minds of many outside this room the
subject boils down to creating a National Intelligence Director, and
the only open question is what powers such an individual should have.
At least 20 Commissions, panels and other bodies over the last 20 years
have reviewed the intelligence system, documented serious shortcomings,
called for reforms, examined intelligence failures and generally
concluded, as Representative Porter Goss has recently said, ``Nobody in
their right mind would create the architecture we have in our
intelligence community today. It's a dysfunctional community.'' After
so many warnings and so little action it is little wonder that many
would say it's time for a Czar, if not, ``off with their heads''.
This may be the right answer although, if so, it would be a first
in the U.S. Government's many attempts to address organizational and
performance failures by anointing czars endowed with symbolism and
little real power and even less enduring executive or Congressional
support. I remain agnostic on the wisdom of creating a National
Intelligence Director in the absence of knowing:
Whether we agree on the failures and shortcomings the post
is to correct,
The power of the post itself,
The wider executive branch national security structure
within which it is to fit,
The legislative oversight, authorization and budgeting
structure that will vitally determine its authorities and endurance,
and
Most importantly a demonstrated willingness by both the
Congress and the President to hold people and organizations responsible
when they massively fail to live up to their responsibilities. [The
Committee might ask the Congressional Research Service to provide a
report on the total number of officials ever ``fired'' by all the
previous ``Czars'' that have been pushed forward to deal with other
organizational failings in the U.S. Government.]
I should add that my agnosticism does not reflect in any way a lack
of enduring grief for the shared tragedy of the families and the Nation
that resulted from the failure of the U.S. intelligence and law
enforcement system to prevent the disaster of 911. And it certainly
does not reflect a lack of appreciation for the outstanding work of the
911 Commission.
I am concerned, however, that simply creating a National
Intelligence Director, even one with what may seem like real powers--
and we should all recall that at the 100,000 feet level that we
generally address such questions in Washington this boils down to
budgets and very senior personnel--will end up not addressing the real
problems--particularly if we continue to say ``everyone is at fault
therefore no one can be held responsible''--that led to the long string
of recent intelligence failures that concluded with 911 and the failure
to find Iraqi WMD.
Let me turn to what I know best--although probably not as well as
this Committee itself--the reasons we failed to adequately assess the
actual State of Iraq's WMD program. In headline form, I would identify
the major factors that contributed to this failure as:
1. A broken culture and poor management within the CIA;
2. A breakdown in CIA analytical tradecraft;
3. The lack of any U.S. clandestine human collection against the
Iraq WMD target after 1998;
4. A failure to seriously examine and question the accuracy of data
and reports that came from non-U.S. sources;
5. Abuse of control over information to prevent others in the CIA
and other parts of the intelligence community from seeing the real
problems with the available data concerning Iraq's WMD and consequently
the CIA's assertions as to the status of Iraq's WMD program;
6. A real absence of scientific analytical capability within the
CIA's Directorate of Intelligence and a failure to use even the
scientific excellence that existed elsewhere in the CIA much less
elsewhere in the U.S. Government to understand the current State of
Iraq's WMD program;
7. Multiple security systems and information systems that both
within the CIA and between the CIA and other parts of the intelligence
system restricted access to vital elements of information necessary for
accurately understanding Iraq's WMD program;
8. A complete lack of competitive analysis that led to stale data
and findings passing completely unchallenged and being offered up as if
they were based on current collection and knowledge;
9. A National Intelligence Council process that was unproductive of
real assessments and that misled, rather than informed, the
policymakers, the Congress and, ultimately, the American public.
The remarkable thing to me as I re-examine my own experience and
look at the excellent report of this Committee on Iraq's WMD is that
the origin of these factors is almost entirely within the CIA. Iraq was
an overwhelming systemic failure of the CIA and until this is taken on
board and people and organizations are held responsible for this
failure I have real difficulty seeing how more far reaching reforms
have any chance of real success. It really should not take a National
Intelligence Director to correct these failings. Indeed, I would argue
that if the next DCI does not take on board as his first task the
renovation of the CIA beginning with ensuring that these failings are
finally effectively addressed then a National Intelligence Director has
little hope of success.
Mr. Chairman, having started out by declaring my agnosticism on the
creation of a National Intelligence Director let me conclude with what
I feel are the essential powers and conditions that, at a minimum, must
be given to a National Intelligence Director if this new ``czar'' were
to have a decent chance of not sliding into the irrelevance of our
other ``czars''. At a minimum these are:
1. Explicitly placing all 15 intelligence organization under the
authority of the National Intelligence Director and defining that
authority to include design and monitoring of intelligence strategies
to support the national security of the United States, responsibility
for the execution of that strategy and all other powers deemed
necessary to ensure the effectiveness of all U.S. intelligence
activities;
2. Giving the National Intelligence Director not just budget
approval authority, but the real budget power which is detailed budget
formulation, approval and release and reprogramming authority for each
of the 15 intelligence agencies;
3. Giving the National Intelligence Director not just the
responsibility for approving the heads of the 15 intelligence
agencies--a largely meaningless power--but the responsibility for
ensuring that the personnel policies and practices of all the
intelligence agencies operate in a manner to support the effective
execution of the national intelligence strategies and the
responsibility to remove personnel at all levels who do not adequately
perform.
4. Move the National Intelligence Council from the DCI to the
National Intelligence Director with the charge of ensuring that all the
resources of the intelligence agencies are brought to bear in providing
the Nation with the best possible analytical products. Responsibility
for production and briefing of the PDBs should be moved to this
reformed National Intelligence Council, and it must have access to all
the collection and analytical resources of the U.S. intelligence
community.
5. It is vital to the Nation to ensure that diverse analytical
views within the intelligence community are allowed to contend on a
level playing field and that policymakers understand these differences.
The National Intelligence Director, and particularly a reformed
National Intelligence Council, must have this as one of its highest
responsibilities.
6. While diversity and even contention is to be prized in analysis,
a much more common, shared and more effective system is required in the
collection of intelligence data--the common feedstock for even
differing analytical views. The National Intelligence Director needs to
be charged by Congress with ensuring that all of the collection
resources of the U.S. intelligence community work to support the
national intelligence strategies and priorities. A past that allowed
individual collection agencies to ignore the priorities of the DCI and
follow their own understanding of the priority needs of ``their''
customers must come to an end. By the same token the past practice of
letting collection organizations establish their own technology
requirements and investment plans independent of overall Nation
intelligence strategies or requirements must end. The National
Intelligence Director must assume the responsibility for ensuring that
the various collection services meet the information needs of the
intelligence community, and this means setting collection priorities
and strategies and ensuring that investment resources are used wisely.
7. Even perfect collection--a goal almost never reached--and
excellent analysis is worthless unless it is effectively disseminated,
first within and among intelligence agencies but even more importantly
to the ultimate users throughout the Government. Too many examples of
failures in communication abound in the cases of 911, Iraq's WMD and
almost every other of the multitude of recent intelligence failures.
Incompatible e-mail systems and data bases within agencies and between
agencies have been tolerated when almost every study since at least
1992 has called attention to this glaring weakness. The National
Intelligence Director must be given the authority and requirement to
end this chaos. In the same token, the myriad security systems and
authorities no longer add to security--in fact they detract from it--
and serve more to protect turf and prevent determinations of
accountability. The National Intelligence Director must be given by
Congress the ultimate responsibility for security systems through out
the intelligence community and be held responsible for shaping a
security system that truly protects what is vital while allowing
information to be shared and accountability to be assessed.
8. Charge the National Intelligence Director with providing the
President and the Congress within 12 months of its creation and every 3
years afterwards with analysis and recommendations on the
organizational and resource requirements necessary to support the
intelligence requirements to ensure U.S. national security. Fifteen
intelligence organizations--and there are actually more--is surely the
wrong number and reflect more the needs of the Cold War and the will
documented difficulty of the Government to eliminate organizations
after the requirements that led to their creation has passed.
9. Recognize that unless Congress puts its house on a footing to
support and provide the essential oversight of the performance of the
intelligence community and the National Intelligence Director this
innovation is doomed to failure. The Senate and House must find a way
that does not allow diverse authorizers and appropriators to carve up
and undermine the authority of the National Intelligence Director.
10. Just as Congress needs to reshape its oversight structure if a
new National Intelligence Director is to have any chance of success, so
must the President's national security apparatus. The dog that did not
bark in the case of Iraq's WMD is the NSC. When the President
apparently expressed concern about the adequacy of the briefings he was
receiving on WMD where was the NSC? Why was the Secretary of State left
to spend several days reviewing CIA data of Iraq's WMD and ultimately
left to twist in the wind when the data he went forward with to the
U.N. Security Council proved false and misleading? Where was the NSC
process that ensures that data being given the President and other
senior decisionmakers represent what it is said to represent? The
National Intelligence Director should not be in the Executive Office of
the White House or in the Cabinet. Intelligence must serve the Nation
and speak truth to power even if in some cases elected leaders chose,
as is their right, to disagree with the intelligence with which they
are presented. This means that intelligence should not be part of the
political apparatus or process. On the other hand, no President can
with regard to intelligence--or any other field of government--safely
assume that everything that comes to the Oval Office is what it is said
to represent. Presidents have developed various means, as befits their
personalities and the times, to run their truth tests. When I first
came to Washington, it was common for a President to check informally
with Members of Congress , individual judges on the Supreme Court and,
believe it or not, even journalists and academics on the views
presented them by their own Cabinet officers. In more recent
Administrations, the NSC assumed this role with regard to foreign
affairs and defense policy. Regardless of how you do it, it should be
clear that it must be done. The National Intelligence Director must not
be sucked into the political apparatus of the White House, but on the
other hand the President needs to have a mechanism for both conveying
his priorities and concerns and for ensuring that he has confidence and
an understanding of what the intelligence community is telling him. The
NSC seems to be the most logical place to center this role.
Mr. Chairman, as you no doubt have concluded my agnosticism
concerning the National Intelligence Director has not stopped me from
sharing with you, in some detail, my views as to the shape such an
office should take. I suspect that you are saying a Marine's silent
prayer that I was not unreservedly enthusiastic as then my comments
might really have been lengthy.
I share with many the view that the U.S. intelligence system is in
crisis and that this crisis is so grave as to weaken an essential
underpinning of both our diplomatic and military capabilities to
support U.S. national interests. If this crisis is to be resolved, it
will require an effort at least equal to the effort that led to the
intelligence community's creation and rise to strength in the most
dangerous phase of the Cold War. Remedying this crisis cannot simply be
achieved by naming a National Intelligence Director. Vision; an
unswerving commitment to serving the Nation beyond the political and
policy interests of any one Administration; an ability to listen,
communicate, lead and execute; and an ethical center all must be
brought to bear. The task ahead will be neither easy or quick and will
be more a journey than a one-step solution. It will certainly not be a
quick fix.
I believe that intelligence reform without accountability will not
achieve the objective we all share to avoid repeating the clearly
avoidable tragedy of 911 and the equally avoidable failures in analysis
that marked the Iraq WMD program. If you are to go ahead with the
creation of a National Intelligence Director--and I believe you will--I
think that you must ensure that such a structure is vested with all the
powers necessary to be successful and that the Congress and the
President have the organization, capabilities and acceptance of the
responsibility to ensure that, as this new structure moves forward,
accountability goes hand-in-hand with reform.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you and the Committee for this opportunity to
share my views with you.
Chairman Roberts. Dr. Kay, we thank you for a very
comprehensive statement. It is somewhat unique, I think, to
have an agnostic list 10 Commandments in behalf of a proposal
that he is agnostic about.
[Laughter.]
Dr. Kay. Senator, we Baptists are all unusual in that
regard.
Chairman Roberts. If we include the 10 Commandments,
perhaps we can have you baptized, and you can see the light in
behalf of the national intelligence director.
General Boyd.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL CHARLES G. BOYD, USAF, RETIRED, PRESIDENT
AND CEO, BUSINESS EXECUTIVES FOR
NATIONAL SECURITY
General Boyd. Sir. Senator Roberts, Senator Rockefeller,
distinguished members, I will give you back some of the time
that David took. I feel toward David like Frank Sinatra felt
toward Sammy Davis, Jr. He said, ``I'd hate to follow him on.''
I've been asked specifically to discuss with you the Hart-
Rudman Commission, of which I was the executive director, in
the context of intelligence reform. I will summarize briefly
that effort, and then let your questions guide the discussion
that follows. Nothing like as comprehensive a view as Dr. Kay
has just given you, but there might be a gem in here somewhere.
By way of refresher, the Hart-Rudman Commission was
chartered to try to determine what kind of a world we're going
to live in over the next quarter of a century; to devise a
national security strategy appropriate to that world; and
finally, to examine the structures and the processes by which
the Nation formulates and executes its national security
policies, and recommend adjustments and restructuring as
appropriate.
Fourteen prominent Americans served as commissioners, with
analytical, research and support staff numbering approximately
50 people. We devoted 2\1/2\ years to this effort. I believe
there's common agreement that it was the most comprehensive
review of our Nation's security apparatus to be conducted since
1947.
The Hart-Rudman Commission is primarily identified now in
the aftermath of 9/11 for its specific work on homeland
security, and in retrospect, it is the piece of work for which
I am the most pleased. But for our purposes today I will ignore
that, except where it relates to intelligence, as well as the
40 other major recommendations that dealt with other aspects of
national security, and stick with the section that pleases me
the least, that having to do with intelligence.
With our conviction that terrorism would be the method of
choice for most of the early 21st century enemies came the
dawning notion that the military component would decline in
relative importance in the national security calculus; the
economic, diplomatic and communication components would
increase in relative value; and some, though not all, concluded
that ultimately this type of conflict could not be won with the
Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Although their role
would be important, such conflict would be won with other
components--with law enforcement and with, most of all,
intelligence.
The debate about intelligence at this moment is about
organization. But that was not the centerpiece of our work on
this subject. Ours was on process and priorities.
We concluded then, as had others, that the intelligence
community had lost its focus when the Berlin Wall came down. To
that point, since the Nation had no effective systematic
process for establishing new national security objectives and
strategies and was floundering in its attempt at reorientation,
it followed that the intelligence community had nothing solid
on which to realign its own orientation and priorities.
The two had to be inseparable processes. So in some of the
most important work we did, we developed models for both. I
commend them to your attention.
The second major area we dealt with had to do with HUMINT,
specifically the paucity of it. We put very strong emphasis on
this capability, well before the bandwagon for it began to
roll. We did take note of the role Congress had played in the
dissolution of much of that capability and the restrictions on
the kind of people that could be involved. But I think we're
beyond that now, and I hope we stay beyond it.
Finally, we dealt with the issue of economic intelligence
commensurate with the emphasis we had placed on economics as a
component of our national security arsenal, along with science
and technology, as a much higher priority focus area.
We had two dogs that didn't bark. I'll talk to those. If
there's value here, here's where it'll be.
To the first: It's the powers of the DCI and the
profession-
alization of the billet. In the first case, it's not that we
didn't address it, only that in the end, we could not find
agreeable common ground.
Since you invited me here today and not the rest of the
commissioners, I'll tell you what my position was and is. If
the DCI, or now the NID or the DNI or whatever we're going to
call him, and if indeed that's our fate, to have one, if that
person is truly to be the director of this Nation's
intelligence apparatus, then he or she must be able to direct
those elements on which the broad user community is dependent.
Here's where I would break with David. By the way, I think
only broad user community. I'll talk to that a bit more. By
direction, I mean, resource allocation, budgets, and, the way
Dr. Kay defined them, manpower requirements.
At the time we struggled with this issue, the DCI, of
course, already controlled the CIA. But our analytical team
thought he needed more control over that portion of the budget
that resided in DOD. Therein, of course, came the rub. The
argument then was based on the notion that the non-DOD user
community was increasing for some DOD products, especially
those of NSA. In the world we saw coming, that fraction would
only continue to increase.
The argument is even more obvious today. I would probably
transfer control of NGA and the NRO, as well as NSA, to the
NID. Purely departmental organizations, such as DIA, INR in
State, and service intel organizations, et cetera, should stay
right where they are.
These were the only organizational fixes we contemplated,
and frankly I don't believe now that reorganization will by any
means fix what's wrong with our intelligence community. I agree
with Dr. Faulkenrath's comment recently, and echoed here by Dr.
Kay, that our recent failures are due to performance, not
organization.
My last issue is a tough one, and has not to my knowledge
appeared in the current debate. In fact, I may be the only one
who's worrying about it, though I think others may if they
start to think about it. That is the professionalization of the
President's principal intelligence adviser.
The President's chief military adviser is a military
professional, standing at the very top of the entire profession
of arms. We put only professionals in that position, and in
fact our law requires that only one who has served as a service
chief, vice chairman or commander of a unified or specified
command can hold the position. Not so for the person who stands
at the top of the intelligence profession and serves as the
principal adviser to the President for intelligence.
After 1947--and Dr. Zegart can elaborate on this, I'm
sure--as a professional intelligence service began to be
developed, professionals were placed in charge. The first few
were military professionals, since there were no intelligence
professionals at the time.
When Eisenhower came to office, the first civilian was
appointed, who, though not a professional, had senior
leadership experience in a wartime ad hoc intelligence
organization. In the years since, with an occasional exception,
a trend of placing nonprofessionals in the position has
evolved--lawyers, businessmen, academics, congressional
staffers, politicians and the like.
Indeed, there is nothing in law that requires
professionalism or even national security experience. The
President can choose whomever he wants and, though your consent
is required, I am not aware of any occasion when the Senate
objected to a nominee on the basis of lack of professional
credentials. But should you?
It is not just because the intelligence discipline, the
science, the art, indeed the craft of it, are so specialized
and complex that, like the military, begs for depth of
particular knowledge in the one who is to lead. But it is also
the special ethos of the professional that helps that person
stand apart from the political considerations that inevitably
surround every Presidential policy choice.
Those who serve at the pleasure of a President for an
expected term limited to his, who comes to office precisely
because of shared politics and political reliability, come, I
should think, under enormous pressure or temptation to give the
President what he wants rather than what he doesn't want, but
needs. When that servant is responsible for selecting the
intelligence analysis to give his President, I think I'd prefer
a professional to a political appointee with as much
independence and job security as possible.
It is without impugning anyone who has ever held the DCI
billet or is about to that I advance this idea. I will develop
it further in the question and answer period if you wish.
I'd be happy to take your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Boyd follows:]
Prepared Statement of General Charles G. Boyd, USAF (Ret.), President
and CEO, Business Executives for National Security
Senator Roberts, Senator Rockefeller, Distinguished Members of this
Committee, it's always a special honor to be asked to participate in
the important work of any congressional committee. My contributions,
however modest, are offered with the highest sense of purpose.
I have been asked, specifically, to discuss with you the Hart-
Rudman Commission--of which I was executive director--in the context of
intelligence reform. I will summarize briefly that effort, and then let
your questions guide the disscussion that follows. I will also give you
a couple of personal perspectives derived from decades spent as a user
of intelligence in the hope they will be of some use. I will leave
spaghetti charts and wiring diagrams to others with more current
organizational familiarity.
By way of refresher, the Hart-Rudman Commission was chartered to
try to determine what kind of world we are going to live in over the
next quarter century, then develop a national security strategy
relevant to that world, and finally to examine the structures and
processes by which the Nation formulates and executes its national
security policies, and recommend adjustments or restructuring as
appropriate. Fourteen prominent Americans served as commissioners, with
analytical, research, and support staff consisting of approximately 50
people. We devoted over 2\1/2\ years to what was the most comprehensive
review of our Nation's security apparatus to be conducted since 1947.
The first phase of our work led us to a conclusion none held at the
outset: that the security phenomenon our Nation would face in the early
21st century, and the one for which we were least prepared, would be
terrorism--in a variety of forms--ranging from small scale disruption
to--quite possibly--mass casualty catastrophe of a magnitude that could
change the very nature of the way our society works and interacts with
the rest of the world.
After that understanding had begun to settle into our
consciousness, it affected, to a prevailing degree, how we would think
about securing the base camp--our homeland--and then the effect that
would have on all other aspects of national security, to include of
course, intelligence.
Hart-Rudman Commission is primarily identified now, in the
aftermath of 9/11, for its' specific work on homeland security, and in
retrospect it is the piece of work with which I am the most pleased.
For our purposes today, however, I will ignore that, except where it
relates to intelligence, as well as the 40 other major recommendations
that dealt with other aspects of national security, and stick with the
section that pleases me the least--that having to do with intelligence.
With our conviction that terrorism would be the method of choice
for most of our early 21st century enemies, came the dawning notion
that the military component would decline in relative importance in the
national security calculus. The economic, diplomatic and communication
components would increase in relative value, and some--not all--
concluded that, ultimately, this type of conflict could not be won with
the army, navy, marine corps and air force. Although their role would
be important, such conflict would be won with the other components,
with law enforcement, and with the most important element of all--
intelligence.
The debate about intelligence, at this moment, is about
organization, but that was not the centerpiece of our work on the
subject. It was on process and priorites. We concluded then, as had
others, that the intelligence community lost it's focus when the Berlin
Wall came down, and, to that point, since the nation had no effective,
systematic process for establishing new national security objectives
and strategies, and was floundering in its attempt at re-orientation,
it followed that the intelligence community had nothing solid on which
to realign its own orientation and priorities. The two had to be
inseparable processes, so, in some of the most important work we did,
we developed models for both. I commend them to your attention.
The second major area we dealt with had to do with humint,
specifically the paucity of it. We put very strong emphasis on this
capability, well before the bandwagon began to roll. I might add, much
of the reason for the dissolution of that capability, and restrictions
on what kind of people could be involved, came from the U.S. Congress.
You've gotten over that now, I think, and I fervently hope you stay
over it.
Finally, we dealt with the issue of economic intelligence
commensuate with the emphasis we had placed on economics as a component
of our national security arsenal, along with science and technology as
a much higher priority focus area.
There were two dogs that didn't bark: the powers of the DCI, and
professional-
ization of the billet.
To the first--it's not that we didn't address it, only that in the
end we could not find agreeable, common ground. Since you invited me
here today, and not the rest of the commissioners, I'll tell you what
my position was--and is: if the DCI, or now the NID or the DNI, if that
is to be our fate, is truly to be the director of this Nation's
intelligence apparatus, then he/she must be able to direct those
elements on which the broad user community is dependent. by direction,
I mean: resource allocation--budgets--manpower--requirements.
At the time we struggled with this issue, the DCI of course already
controlled CIA, but our analytical team thought he needed more control
over that portion of the budget that resided in DOD. The argument then
was based on the notion that the non-DOD user community was increasing
for some DOD products, especially those of NSA, and in the world we saw
coming that fraction would only continue to increase. The argument is
even more obvious today, and I would probably transfer control of NGA
and NRO, as well as NSA, to the NID. Purely departmental organizations
such as dia, inr at state, service intell organizations, etc should
stay right where they are.
My last issue is a tough one, and has not, to my knowledge,
appeared in the current debate. In fact, I may be the only one who is
worrying about it, though I think others may if they start thinking
about it, and that is the professionalization of the President's
principal intelligence advisor.
The President's Chief Military Advisor is a military professional,
standing at the very top of the entire profession of arms. We put only
professionals into that position, and in fact our law requires that
only one who has served as a service chief, vice chairman, or commander
of a unified or specified command can hold the position. Not so, for
the person who stands at the top to the intelligence profession, and
serves as the principal advisor to the President for intelligence.
After 1947, as a professional intelligence service began to be
developed, professionals were placed in charge. The first few were
military professionals since there were no intelligence professionals
at the time. When Eisenhower came to office the first civilian was
appointed who, though not a professional, had senior leadership
experience in a wartime ad hoc intelligence organization.
In the years since, with occasional exception, a trend of placing
non-professionals in the position has evolved: lawyers, businessmen,
academics, congressional staffers, politicians, and the like, and
indeed there is nothing in law that requires professionalism, or even
national security experience. The President can choose whomever he
wants, and though your consent is required, I am not aware of any
occasion when the Senate objected to a nominee on the basis of lack of
professional credentials. Should you?
It is not just because the intelligence discipline, the science,
the art, indeed the craft of it are so specialized and complex that,
like the military, begs for depth of knowledge in the one who is to
lead, but it is also the special ethos of the professional that helps
the person stand apart from the political considerations that
inevitably surrounds every Presidential policy choice. Those who serve
at the pleasure of a President, for an expected term limited to his,
who come to office precisely because of shared politics and political
reliability, come--1 should think--under enormous pressure or
temptation to give the President what he wants and not necessarily what
he doesn't want but needs; and when that servant is responsible for
selecting the intelligence analysis to give his President, I think I'd
prefer a professional to a political appointee--with as much
independence and job security as possible.
It is without impugning anyone who has ever held the DCI billet, or
is about to, that I advance this idea. I will develop it further in the
question and answer period if you wish.
I'll be happy to take your questions.
Chairman Roberts. General Boyd, we thank you very much for
your statement.
Senator Rockefeller.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. Thank you all very much. I want
to make a sort of a general observation as a way of using up my
time, at which point I'll ask a question.
There is, I think, a tendency as I've been to hearings and
I've listened to them on C-SPAN and read about them in the
papers and talked with colleagues about them, to refer to the
30, 40, 50 attempts to reform the intelligence community over
the years. Then, having done that, and since none of that was
successful, then people say, ``Well, there isn't the will to do
it'' or, ``Dr. Zegart, you have this wonderful phrase, `There
is nothing quite like intelligence reform to trigger the
antibodies of affected agencies.' '' I love that.
But we've never been in a situation like this. Intelligence
was barely paid attention to for years, even during the cold
war and the post-cold war period, except by those who needed to
do it--certainly not the media or the public in general. You
were probably thinking about it, you were all living it.
Because it hasn't worked before, it's considered to be sort
of an undoable task. Because it's considered to be an undoable
task, then if somebody suggests the idea of a national
intelligence director, it's considered too simplistic, and it's
sort of a way out, as opposed to something that might just
possibly work, which is what I happen to believe, provided that
that person has the budget authority and the powers and the
tasking and all the rest, the follow-up that goes along with
it.
I want to make that point, that I think there's a natural
instinct for some people to say, ``Well, it can't work because
it hasn't worked before'' and what you're suggesting is put one
person in charge of everything, that's what everybody does when
there's a crisis and you've got to get a quick answer.
Well, No. 1, we don't have to have a quick answer. We have
to have a right answer. That will take the time that it takes.
We're gathered here in August as sort of a statement of
intensity, but probably not as a statement of refinement of
position, because that will take debate, conferences back and
forth between the executive and the legislative branch and the
services, and all the rest of it. I just want to make that
point.
Another shibboleth, from my point of view at least, is the
fact that somehow--and it has been said by several recently,
and accepted, therefore--that if you have intelligence reform--
and it's called intelligence reform, just the word intelligence
reform--that by some reason the interest of the warfighter is
compromised. I want to go into that and ask each of you your
views on that.
There's been a lot of discussion about whether the creation
of the national intelligence director with unified budget
authority, would have the unintended consequence of depriving
the warfighter of tactical intelligence. Now, that's accepted
by a lot of people, because it's said by the people who would
be affected by it.
First off, it's important, I think, to remember that the 9/
11 Commission recommends that the Secretary of Defense keep
control, as Chairman Roberts has pointed out, of the military
intelligence programs contained in the Joint Military
Intelligence Program, or JMIP, which is substantial, and the
tactical intelligence, the TIARA budgets, which is the service
intelligence capacity, which is in and of itself.
So those immediately are not included in the equation and
therefore, are doing nothing but helping the warfighter. They
are left out of the national intelligence director's realm.
Now, the 9/11 Commission is recommending giving the
national intelligence director budget executive authority only
over those military intelligence programs currently in the
national--and I repeat that--in the National Foreign
Intelligence Program budget. This shift of authority would not
affect the Secretary of Defense's current control over tactical
and joint military intelligence programs. I can say that 10
times in a row. It's the truth, if we do it, if we choose to do
it.
Now, the argument is that a national intelligence director
could control national intelligence systems and personnel in a
way that might be detrimental to the best interests of the
warfighter. There's always the question of what's going to
affect the warfighter. As you indicated, that is the priority.
The question is, at what level of priority. I think everybody
agrees it is the priority, like you do.
But on the other hand, that potential exists today in our
current system. The dispute that might arise between the
current DCI, the director of central intelligence, and the
Secretary of Defense would have to be escalated today, were
there to be such a disagreement, up toward the President,
through the National Security Council--in the later round of
questioning I want to talk about that, Dr. Kay, what you said
about that--to see if it could be resolved, and if it couldn't
be resolved at the national security level, it would be taken
to the President for a decision.
In the Government Affairs testimony that Chairman Roberts
and I went to the other day, Acting DCI McLaughlin replied, and
I think he's been there 30-plus years, that he could not recall
this escalation ever occurring.
So evidently, something gets worked out. Now, it may be
because, as George Tenet said, I have a really good
relationship with Don Rumsfeld, even as we understood that he
was not necessarily going to be around forever. So it depends
on personal relationships. But there's always the way out now,
much less under what we are talking about. So this avenue of
appeal would still exist if the NID and Secretary of Defense
were at odds under organizational restructuring proposed by the
9/11 Commission.
So, two questions for our witnesses, each of you.
First, do you believe that a national intelligence director
would be unsympathetic to the legitimate intelligence needs of
the warfighter? Would they be unsympathetic? Is there something
about a DCI director that would make him or her unsympathetic?
For that matter, has the DCI historically been insensitive to
military requirements, particularly in times of war?
Second and last question: If the ultimate decision on
pressing matters of national security resides with the
commander in chief, as it does today and it would under this
system if adopted, is there really a danger of a national
intelligence director forcing his will on a Secretary of
Defense in a way that would deprive the warfighter of the
tactical intelligence that he and she need?
Dr. Zegart. Senator, these are both crucial questions.
I do not believe that a national intelligence director
would be unsympathetic to the warfighter. It's no surprise that
the Secretary of Defense has made this argument. No sitting
Secretary of Defense since 1947 has taken kindly to the idea of
intelligence restructuring.
In fact, that natural protection of the Defense Department
was in part what led to the flawed design of our intelligence
community that we're dealing with today. It was exactly that
attitude that stripped the DCI of the authority to actually
manage the community that he was charged to do by statute.
So that's an argument that we've seen for quite some time.
I understand where it comes from, but I do not believe that
there is any indication that the DCI in history or that a
national intelligence director in the future would compromise
the warfighter.
Quite the contrary, actually. What keeps me awake at night,
among other things, is the idea that we will place too little
emphasis on strategic intelligence, the kind of long-term
assessments that we saw so lacking, with no national
intelligence assessment on terrorism from 1997 to September
11th; with no collectors on the ground in Iraq after 1998.
Those are strategic intelligence questions, and I believe that
the danger is that we give so much attention to tactical
intelligence that we end up not providing the type of
intelligence support that allows the President to make policy
decisions about whether to send troops in harm's way to begin
with.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. Who is it who appoints the
national intelligence director?
Dr. Zegart. The President appoints, with the confirmation
of the Senate.
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. Right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Roberts. Dr. Kay and General Boyd, do you have any
comments?
Vice Chairman Rockefeller. Yes, my apologies.
Dr. Kay. I can be very brief on this one, because I
essentially agree with Amy. I think the real danger is not that
tactical intelligence will be devalued. In fact, the history of
the last decade is tactical intelligence has gained at the
expense of strategic intelligence. Chairman Roberts has started
these hearings by saying we don't have to just deal with
terrorism, there will be other threats. There will indeed be
other threats, and those are the ones that strategic
intelligence must address.
I would add, Senator Rockefeller, it's hard for anyone to
argue, I would think, that the present system serves the
warfighter well. I don't know of any combatant commander who
has suffered so poorly from knowledge about the tactical
deployment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as Tommy
Franks.
If you read his book, he's very vocal about that. He put
people in harm's way by going to Mach-4 gear because he
believed and had been told that there were weapons of mass
destruction out there that were not out there. So the present
system doesn't serve the warfighter that well.
What you've got is I think what Amy refers to, these
antibodies against reform.
Chairman Roberts. General Boyd.
General Boyd. Easy, no and no.
But I'll add a comment; I'm old enough to have some
perspective. I remember as a young fighter pilot going to North
Vietnam with 10-year-old target photos on my knee, when every
day, U-2s and SR-71s were collecting strategic intelligence not
available to the likes of me, shared with other intel guys, I
guess.
I can remember very recently, as an active duty four-star,
being deluged with tactical intelligence far beyond any
possible ability to consume it, use it effectively.
I believe, if anything, what the other two respondents have
said, and that is that I worry more now about neglecting the
strategic sphere, something that certainly wasn't the case when
I was a young fighter pilot.
Chairman Roberts. Senator Hatch has to leave for a prior
commitment. I'm going to recognize him. We are under a 5-minute
timeframe.
Senator Hatch. Well, first of all, let me thank you, Mr.
Chairman. I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and our Vice
Chairman, Senator Rockefeller, for holding these important
hearings today. I also like to thank the Committee staff for
their hard work. They've worked very, very hard over the recess
for this hearing and working on proposed legislation that we've
been chatting about.
I know that when we return, the Chairman intends to hold
the confirmation hearings for Porter Goss, with whom I met this
morning. Of course, he's had about 10 years inside experience
with the CIA and I believe he would be an excellent DCI. So he
certainly, I think, knows where the bodies are and certainly
knows how to correct some of the difficulties. We'll certainly
try to help him at every step of the way.
But I'd just like to ask a question. Is it Dr. Zegart? Dr.
Zegart. Then have the other two respond, too.
I want to personally thank you, Dr. Kay, for the service
that you've given. You've appeared before this Committee
before, and I thought your testimony was really tremendous
then, as it is today.
General, I just can't begin to tell you how much we
appreciate you and the service you've given, the 35 years in
the military plus the service you've given in these areas.
But let me just ask this question. I'd like all three of
you to answer. That is that your testimony indicates that the
9/11 Commission doesn't go far enough in guaranteeing that
there will be a broad cross-fertilization of personnel in the
intelligence community.
Now, it's my sense that communication is dramatically
improving across agencies, but I also recognize your concern
that unless these initiatives are formalized in legislation and
become a routine part of professional development, that these
efforts will be lost in the shuffle. So I'd like you to comment
on that, and all three of you comment. I don't want this to
become another bureaucracy or another worthless bully pulpit
with no authority. If we're going to do this, it ought to be
done right.
But those two things are matters of great concern to me.
Dr. Zegart.
Dr. Zegart. Senator, I agree with you. I think that
culture, first of all, is a very difficult thing to change. We
know that.
There are three levers that you can use in legislation to
change culture. The first is, change how people are hired. The
second is, change how they're trained. The third is, change how
they're promoted, I think an issue that David brought up
eloquently in his testimony. You have to reward good
performance and punish bad performance.
Now, there is a balance to be made, obviously, between
writing too much detail into legislation that limits discretion
of the community to change, but I think we've erred on the
opposite side. So I do think there are opportunities for
legislation to make inroads in making cultural changes
throughout the community.
As I mentioned, the two that I know the most about and that
I think would be good places to start are age-old ideas and
that is training programs and incentives for rotations.
Let me just add one other thing, which is that I am struck
by how the challenges that we are discussing today are not so
much about developing new capabilities; they are about fixing
old problems.
Washington is littered with stacks of studies of
commissions past and governmental studies past, and many of
them have reached consensus about these issues. Training is one
of those issues and promotion incentives.
Senator Hatch. Thank you.
General.
General Boyd. I believe the issue of culture is indeed at
the heart of the matter, and professionalism. I'm not sure how
much legislation you can do to fix that. I think you can put
emphasis on it in ways and help emphasize the kind of person
that gets the job of the NID and so forth, that can have a lot
to do with it.
Over time, it's education, exactly professional education,
it's inculcating these professional values and performance
standards, a meritocracy approach that you get passed over
twice, you're out of here buddy, you know? Upward mobility,
accelerated for the high performer, and the slow performers go
home. That's the way you change behavior. That has nothing
whatsoever to do with organization.
Dr. Kay. Senator Hatch, I think you're quite right in
saying that there's evidence with regard to both terrorism and,
in my immediate case, Iraq WMD. Some of the collector barriers
have been broken down, the cultural barriers, and people are
communicating. That's what usually happens in a system when
you're in a crisis, you throw out the rule book and if you've
got good people, you try to get things done.
I think all of our concern is--and I've seen this
personally--as the crisis is passed and things turned back to
normal, the old habits, the old culture, the old barriers
impede themselves.
I will say twice in my career, with regard to Iraq, I've
benefited from collection systems and collectors across the
government and across agencies that have done tremendous jobs.
I will say with Iraq--and it really is both the terrorism and
Iraq in the current case--there are unheralded heroes out there
who deserve it. At the top of my list is Charlie Allen, who I
have seen Charlie Allen do absolutely marvelous things with
collection systems across this government that people said were
impossible to do. They served my interests greatly.
I would like to make that the norm, and not the exception.
I think I'd like to see people like Allen rewarded, and people
who don't perform that well punished and their career impeded.
The system now doesn't do that.
Charlie stands out because he is such a golden exception in
this. He does it under crisis. He would be the first to tell
you, in areas that you can't break the rules, because there's a
crisis brewing, things work their usual way, and that's not
very well.
Senator Hatch. Dr. Kay, you mentioned that the President--I
think your 10th point you made of the 10 major points that you
made in your remarks earlier--is that the President should have
the ability to run truth tests. Can you tell us a little bit
about how he or she might be able to do that?
Dr. Kay. I think explaining that to a politician as astute
as you is like telling my grandmother how to suck eggs.
Senator Hatch. We're giving you a good chance here.
Dr. Kay. That was never a good chance with my grandmother,
sir.
Look, it is foolish in the extreme to believe that just
because you sit in any office, and that includes the Oval
Office, that everyone who comes through that door is committed
fully to serving your interests and only your interests, and
what they tell you is the full truth. Every President who has
been successful, at least that I know of in the history of this
republic, has developed both informal and formal means of
getting checks on whether people who tell him things are in
fact telling him the whole and full truth.
I think this is particularly crucial and difficult to do in
the intelligence area. The recent history has been a reliance
on the NSC system to do it. I, quite frankly, think that has
not served this President very well.
I think we need to think long and hard about how it might.
My personal, if I were emperor for a day and not director of
national intelligence, would be to see that there be a special
assistant to the President for national intelligence, and
indeed I think he should be a professional, or someone with
professional knowledge, who in fact can run those truth tests,
but is part of the President, the Executive Office of the
President, not part of the NID structure. He serves the
President and the President's interests while he's in that job.
Senator Hatch. I think that's a good suggestion.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Roberts. We thank you, Senator.
Senator Mikulski.
Senator Mikulski. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I want to thank you and the Vice Chairman for
holding this series of hearings on reform--before we broke, the
Feinstein hearing, today and the ones that we will keep on
doing. I think we're all committed to reform.
When one reads the 9/11 Commission, they made 41
recommendations. Sixteen the President can do through Executive
Order. Nine the President needs our help by putting money into
Federal checkbook, and 16 fall squarely in our lap. So I look
forward to working with you.
Yesterday I was with the Government Ops Committee to hear
from the families, 60 of whom were from Maryland who perished
on that day, and of course here today, and you call us back any
time you want and I'm ready to be here.
Mr. Chairman, before I ask our very able witnesses
something, I want to bring something to the attention of the
Committee that I think was a breach of security. Since it's in
public document, I can do it here.
In all my intel reading over the weekend, I thought to
myself, why be on the Committee; all I need is a subscription
to Newsweek. When I read the August 16 issue of Newsweek--and I
commend it to my colleagues, called ``Target America''--there
was this article about the arresting of a man by the name of
Khan. That provided detailed information about his role in al-
Qa'ida, how the United States intelligence services would use
him to find and capture other terrorists, including those in
the United States. The arrest and capture of Khan was a major
step in penetrating the al-Qa'ida communication network.
He was the switchboard for bin Ladin. Reading from
Newsweek: ``Khan had access to handwritten notes delivered by
secret relays that came from the caves of bin Laden himself.''
This is the intelligence find of a lifetime. Agents live
for this time. We had the man. We had the computer. We had his
address book. We were using his address book to e-mail
operatives.
According to what Newsweek did, they gave details about how
we e-mailed operatives in the United States, the United
Kingdom, and other places around the world. He was outed on
August 2nd, to go to the news on August 3rd, while we captured
13 more al-Qa'ida networks, then everything shut down.
Dear friends, his arrest could have been the intelligence
breakthrough of a lifetime. It's a wasted opportunity. All of
our people working in the field, many of you know the kind of
work that's done--our Committee knows, too--dangerous,
requiring great risks and sacrifices. So what do we have now?
So what do you think the guys in the cave think now? Where do
you think they're communicating? We had in him the ability to
do this.
So I believe that the first reform needs to be no leaks. I
really believe that we need to find a way to institutionalize
this and then take strong accountability.
Colleagues, you need to know I'm writing a letter to the
President, asking the President to investigate this and find
out who made the Khan information--not only his arrest, but the
information--so public that the guys in the cave know now what
we've got and what we've got a hold of. I believe going with
the recommendations of Dr. Kay and General Boyd and Dr. Zegart,
performance, and it needs to be accountability. I think we need
to find out who did this, and I think they should be fired.
I really commend to the Committee and its leadership,
particularly Senator Roberts and Chairman Rockefeller, read
this, because it's not just your regular arrest here, the
arrest of a lifetime, and the information we knew, to see if
the Committee wants to take any other action about it.
Chairman Roberts. We'll be happy to work with you. I am
familiar with the article, as is Senator Rockefeller. It is a
matter of extreme concern. I thank the Senator for making her
views public. We will work with you on this matter. As you
know, we have been plagued--and I'm using the editorial ``we''
here, including the Committees of the Congress and the agencies
and everything else about leaks.
But this is especially egregious. We will work with you on
this topic.
Senator Mikulski. Well, Mr. Chairman, that's exactly right.
My letter to the President is not a confrontational letter,
nor is it a partisan letter. It's an American Senator's letter.
I know you've taken this. But I think our Committee, both its
members, then what also happened in the Congress and so on, I
really do think we need--our entire government really needs to
come to grips with the consequences of what leaks mean.
I thank you for your indulgence. Perhaps during a second
round I can ask our very able witnesses about their testimony.
Chairman Roberts. I thank the Senator.
Senator DeWine.
Senator DeWine. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
Well, this has been a very enlightening and interesting
hearing.
Let me if I could, just briefly summarize. General Boyd,
your comment was that it's performance, not organization, in
regard to this whole proposal about a national intelligence
director.
Dr. Kay, you're agnostic about the whole t