Reforming the Intelligence Community

Today, the greatest threats facing our national security come from terrorists. We are less likely to be attacked by nations and armies with tanks and missiles, and more likely to be attacked by terrorists with bombs hidden in trucks or strapped to their bodies.

Since terrorists are not deterred by the threat of their own destruction, and because terrorist networks are so diffuse, accurate intelligence is absolutely essential to preventing terrorist attacks.

The release of the 9/11 Commission Report has fueled a debate about how our intelligence community should be reformed to better respond to the terrorist threat. This is a debate we need to have.

But in structurally reforming the agencies that make up our Intelligence Community, we should not lose sight of the fundamental problem that was demonstrated by the pre-Iraq War intelligence failures – the manipulation of intelligence to support a specific policy.

The Senate Intelligence Committee investigated the failures of the Intelligence Community in the period leading up to the Iraq War. The Committee identified several instances where the CIA director made public statements that expressed significantly more certainty about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) than was justified by the underlying classified intelligence.

The first conclusion of the unanimous report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee states that, “Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting.”

The CIA’s efforts to support Administration policy instead of doing what they are supposed to do, which is to inform Administration policy makers with objective and independent intelligence, wasn’t limited to WMD issues. Former CIA Director George Tenet also backed up the Administration’s contention that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were closely linked. This took a special contortion on Tenet’s part because the CIA’s then-classified analysis stated that there were no significant links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

In contrast to the manipulation of intelligence to support Administration policy leading up to the Iraq War, the intelligence failures before 9/11 related to intelligence agencies not using the information they had and not sharing that information with others.

We need to keep the reasons for both of these failures in mind as we consider reforming the Intelligence Community.

Most of the reform focus so far has been on fixing the pre-9/11 type failures – that is, the failures of information sharing and coordination. At least as important as these reforms, and arguably even more so, is the need to protect the independence, objectivity and integrity of intelligence analyses.

I was pleased that during consideration of intelligence reform legislation, the Governmental Affairs Committee adopted an amendment I offered to help assure that a National Intelligence Director (NID) will be independent and will produce objective intelligence. Among other provisions, my amendment explicitly places the NID outside the Executive Office of the President and away from the politics and policy debates of that office. My amendment also puts in place mechanisms to provide congressional access to critical intelligence information, thereby strengthening congressional oversight of the intelligence community and reducing the chance that intelligence will be shaped to meet the policy goals of any Administration.

The Senate will now consider the Governmental Affairs Committee’s bill and other reforms, and I intend to do what I can to make sure that the independence of the NID and the objectivity of intelligence are a focus of those debates.

The bottom line is that terrorism is our number one threat and intelligence is our most essential tool to deal with that threat. Before we create a stronger National Intelligence Director we must take steps to ensure that the person serving in that position, indeed our entire Intelligence Community, are better equipped to provide objective, independent intelligence analyses. A National Intelligence Director must not be a more powerful “yes man” for the Administration in power. Our security depends on it.