Congressional Record: September 23, 2004 (Senate)
Page S9555-S9557
INTELLIGENCE REFORM
Mr. GRAHAM of Florida. Mr. President, this is the fourth floor
statement I have made on the subject of intelligence reform. I have
spoken previously about the history of our intelligence community, how
did we get to where we are today. I have talked about the failures of
the intelligence community to adapt after the end of the Cold War. And
I have talked about the unfortunate lethargy with which both the
current administration and, I must say, the Congress, have responded to
the needs for much-needed reform of our intelligence agencies.
I must also express my gratitude for the excellent work of the
independent 9/11 Commission. This Commission has built upon other sets
of recommendations going back to the mid-1990s for the overhauling of
our intelligence structure.
Today, I would like to spend a few minutes discussing the shape that
I believe the organizational reform should take, and I would like to
begin by briefly recalling the history of our modern Department of
Defense.
The Defense Department evolution can be divided into three historic
phases: first, pre-1947; second, 1947 through 1986; and, finally, 1986
until today.
In the first phase, the pre-1947 phase, practically going back to the
birth of our Nation, we had independent services which had little
coordination one with the other. The Navy had its own Cabinet level
Secretary. The Army had its own Cabinet level Secretary.
The Army Air Corps, which was a product largely of the Second World
War, was about to be spun off from the Army and almost certainly would
have had its own bureaucratic structure. What avoided that from
occurring was that Congress, at the insistence of President Harry
Truman, stepped in, in 1947, with the National Security Act. This act
created, among other things, the Department of Defense with a single
civilian at the top and service chiefs reporting to that single
Secretary at the top. That action did not end all rivalries and
competition for budget dollars and prestige, but it helped.
However, there were dramatic instances of operational failures,
including the botched attempt to rescue hostages in Iran and the
bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon and the problems which
plagued the invasion of Grenada. All of these in their own way pointed
to weaknesses in the structure that existed in the period from 1947 to
1986.
By 1986, Congress moved to address these concerns, the concerns that
the services were not communicating well together or coordinating their
activities toward common missions.
The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 decentralized the military
establishment and created joint operation commands based upon
geography. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were given responsibility for
planning and advising the civilian command structure on strategy. The
joint commands have become very familiar to us all, and I might say, I
am proud to say that three of these are based in my home State of
Florida: the Southern Command in Miami, the Central Command, and the
Special Operations Command in Tampa.
Goldwater-Nichols gave our Nation a much more effective mission-
oriented warfighting machine. It is well recognized that this could not
have happened had it been conducted under the centralized form of 1947.
The challenge today is, it took 39 years for the military to evolve
from the centralized system of 1947 to the decentralized system of
1986. Using this analogy of our military command structure, I would
suggest that our current intelligence community, the community of 2004,
is in the pre-1947 state. I would further suggest that if this is the
year to be ``the 1947 for intelligence,'' we cannot wait 39 years to
get it right with our intelligence community, that we cannot centralize
the leadership of intelligence agencies under a new director of
national intelligence and then wait for decades until we enact the
equivalent of Goldwater-Nichols legislation for the decentralization of
intelligence.
Given the threats we face around the world, it is urgent that in the
same act that brings the intelligence agencies together--which are
defined around functions--under a new director of national
intelligence, that in that same legislation we need to lay out the plan
for the most effective management of intelligence and collection and
analysis in order to achieve the missions responding to the threats we
have today.
At the very least, we should plant the seeds for the next necessary
step--decentralization, jointness of effort among our intelligence
agencies and personnel, and a mission-based orientation.
I would propose, as has the 9/11 Commission, that we empower the
director of national intelligence to establish centers which are built
not around regions of the world, as are our military commands, but
around the threats to which our intelligence community must better
understand and equip us to respond.
The 9/11 Commission recommended one such center, a center on
counterterrorism. In the legislation that is currently being considered
by the relevant committees in the Senate, there is a statutorily
directed counterterrorism center. I am pleased that President Bush has
now begun to provide, belatedly as it is, the creation of such a center
by statute.
Other centers which should be authorized in this legislation but not
specifically identified are those that focus on other challenges,
challenges that we face today, challenges that we may face in the
future.
For instance, I do not believe anyone in this Chamber would question
the fact that we need to have a national intelligence center which
focuses on how we are going to counter and combat the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction. We will probably also find that we need to
have a center which focuses on financing, the financing of rogue
states, the financing of terrorist organizations.
It is entirely possible that we will need to create centers to
respond to threats that are defined by national boundaries or regions,
such as the specific dangers posed by regimes in North Korea and Iran.
But most of the threats we now face do not lend themselves to
geographic definitions. Just look at how al-Qaida has rejuvenated
itself into so many decentralized parts of the world with such a
flexible, nimble organizational structure, that we failed to wipe it
out in Afghanistan, diverted our attention to Iraq, and have now
allowed the enemy to become much more violent and effective.
The analogy that I have used is to that of a puddle of mercury. If
you slam your fist into the mercury, it does not disappear. It becomes
a thousand tiny blobs scattered over the tabletop. That is essentially
what we have done to al-Qaida. We have slammed our fist into the puddle
of mercury and now we are faced with literally hundreds of droplets
around the world.
The key to this mission-based decentralization of intelligence, in my
opinion, is that we must give the director of national intelligence the
statutory authority to manage the community with flexibility and
nimbleness so he or she can quickly establish new centers or modify
existing centers as future threats emerge, just as Goldwater-Nichols
has given that authority to the Secretary of Defense.
Again, there is an analogy in the Defense Department since Goldwater-
Nichols. Originally, the countries of Syria and Lebanon were assigned
to European Command because they were thought to be more relevant to
European defense issues than the Middle East.
Recently, there has been a reorganization for those two countries,
recognizing the fact of the threat they pose through such things as
providing sanctuary to some of the major international terrorist
groups, that it would
[[Page S9556]]
be more appropriate to assign them to Central Command which has
responsibility for the Middle East and Central Asia. I am very pleased
that such an approach has a growing number of advocates within the
intelligence community.
As an example, Flynt Leverett, a former senior analyst at the CIA and
later Senior Director for Middle Eastern Affairs at the National
Security Council from 2002 to 2003, is now a visiting fellow at the
Brookings Institution. He wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times
in July of this year. In that article, Mr. Leverett said the following:
Clearly, structural reform needs to go beyond the creation
of a freestanding intelligence ``czar'' who would oversee the
entire American spy network. We need to develop a model of
``jointness'' for the intelligence community, analogous to
that which Goldwater-Nichols Act did for the uniform military
18 years ago . . .
Before Goldwater-Nichols, too many modern military missions
were characterized by disaster . . .
Since Goldwater-Nichols required the armed services to
collaborate, we have seen the successes of Panama, Operation
Desert Storm, and the outstanding battle performance of our
forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This model should be applied to American intelligence.
This means moving away from the current organizational
structure, [which is] defined primarily along disciplinary
and agency lines . . .
Instead, we should organize and deploy our resources
against high priority targets, including terrorism, weapons
of mass destruction, China, and the problem states in the
Middle East.
Focused on a particular target, each group would draw on
people and resources from across the intelligence community.
. . . Existing agencies would function primarily as providers
of personnel and resources, much as the individual military
services function in relationship to the combatant commands.
It is clear that our intelligence agencies cannot move
towards partnership on their own. The post-9/11 battles among
the counterterrorist center, the new Terrorism Threat
Integration Center, the F.B.I., and the Department of
Homeland Security over primacy in assessing the terrorist
threat strongly suggest that we have regressed in our efforts
to integrate . . .
It is going to require strong presidential and
Congressional leadership to achieve genuine reform.
I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Leverett's entire article be printed
in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the New York Times, July 9, 2004]
Force Spies to Work Together
(By Flynt Leverett)
Washington.--Today, the Senate Intelligence Committee is
expected to release its report on the prewar intelligence on
Iraq. The document is likely to make clear that America's
intelligence network, particularly the Central Intelligence
Agency, badly needs repair.
The Senate report will also show that America's
intelligence shortcomings aren't going to be addressed simply
by changing C.I.A. directors. As the report should make
clear, our spy services both failed to do a thorough enough
job watching Iraq's weapons programs and played down evidence
that challenged the prevailing assumptions that the programs
were active. In addition, analysts did not critically
evaluate their sources of information; instead, they
marshaled the available evidence to paint the picture that
policymakers wanted to see.
And how will President Bush and his administration respond
to these findings? It's unlikely that they will do much of
anything. After all, every independent panel that examined
American post-cold-war intelligence--including President
Bush's own Scowcroft commission--recognized that fundamental
structural changes were needed in our intelligence services.
Yet, the White House has remained steadfastly passive as
critical problems have gone unaddressed. Meanwhile,
administration loyalists have argued repeatedly that
structural change is not needed to improve the community's
performance, providing a politically comfortable rationale
for the White House's inaction.
In theory, the argument against radical reform might seem
plausible. The director of Central Intelligence today has
sufficient authority on paper to address many of the issues
that will be identified in the Senate report, like the
failure of collectors and analysts to share information about
sources.
But in practice, the C.I.A. has had a hard time breaking
free from its culture of mediocrity. During my years in
government at the C.I.A. and elsewhere, I was repeatedly told
that the problems now publicly identified in the Senate
report were going to be fixed. I remember years of discussion
about the desirability of ``co-locating'' analysts and
operations officers working on the same target--seeing to it
that they had the equal access to information about their
sources. But in the end, nothing was done to change old ways
of doing business, setting the stage for the Iraq fiasco.
The story, it seems, hasn't changed much. In February, for
example, Jami Miscik, the agency's deputy director of
intelligence, told C.I.A. analysts in a speech that the
problems with information-sharing would be fixed within 30
days. It's July, and nothing has happened.
Clearly, structural reform needs to go beyond the creation
of a freestanding intelligence ``czar'' who would oversee the
entire American spy network. We need to develop a model of
``jointness'' for the intelligence community, analogous to
what the Goldwater-Nichols Act did for the uniformed
military 18 years ago. That legislation made the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the principal military
adviser to the president. It also mandated cross-service
commands, defined regionally and functionally, as the
operational chains of command for American military
forces.
This change produced real improvement in military
performance. Before Goldwater-Nichols, too many modern
military missions were characterized by disaster: the botched
attempt to rescue hostages in Iran, the bombing of the Marine
barracks in Lebanon, the operational problems that plagued
the invasion of Grenada.
Since Goldwater-Nichols required the armed services to
collaborate, we have seen the successes of Panama, Operation
Desert Storm and the outstanding battlefield performance of
our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This model should be applied to American intelligence. This
means moving away from the current organizational structure,
defined primarily along disciplinary and agency lines. (The
C.I.A.'s directorate of intelligence, for example, is
responsible for all-source analysis; the directorate of
operations is responsible for human intelligence collection;
the National Security Agency is responsible for
communications intelligence. Turf is sacred.)
Instead, we should organize and deploy our resources
against high-priority targets, including terrorism, weapons
of mass destruction, China and problem states in the Middle
East. Focused on a particular target, each group would draw
on people and resources from across the intelligence
community. These new target-based centers would report to a
new national intelligence director, not to heads of
individual agencies. Existing agencies would function
primarily as providers of personnel and resources, much as
the individual military services function in relation to the
combatant commands.
Certainly, there have been some tentative steps toward
collaboration. The Counterterrorist Center and the Weapons
Intelligence, Proliferation and Arms Control Center, both of
which report to the director of Central Intelligence, reflect
some of the logic of such cooperation. While the
counterterrorist center wasn't inclusive enough to bring
together information that might have stopped the 9/11
attacks, at least its analysts and operators are focused, in
an integrated way, on their target.
Still, it is clear that our intelligence agencies cannot
move toward partnership on their own. The post-9/11 battles
among the counterterrorist center, the new Terrorist Threat
Integration Center, the F.B.I., and the Department of
Homeland Security over primacy in assessing the terrorist
threat strongly suggest that we have regressed in the effort
to integrate. For its part, the arms control center was not
independent enough of C.I.A. views to avoid being led toward
a flawed analysis of the Iraqi arsenal.
It is going to require strong presidential and
Congressional leadership to achieve genuine reform.
Thoughtful members on both sides of the aisle in both houses
of Congress are already working on serious reform proposals,
though nobody has yet had the courage to devise a Goldwater-
Nichols Act for our spy agencies. In this context, the Bush
administration's lack of initiative is inexplicable and
unconscionable.
There are those who argue that intelligence reform should
not be taken up during a political season. They are wrong.
This kind of reform can take place only in a political
moment. We need a thorough discussion of the issue in the
context of the current presidential campaign so that whoever
is inaugurated in January has a mandate to break
organizational pottery in order to save American lives.
Mr. GRAHAM of Florida. The broad goal of ensuring that the Goldwater-
Nichols model is applied to the intelligence community should be the
top priority as we shape the organizational reforms in our pending
legislation. It is my intention next week to speak to some specific
organizational reforms which should be included in order to achieve
this broader objective of a decentralized, joint, and nimble
intelligence community, capable of responding to our emerging threats.
Let me repeat Flynt Leverett's conclusion: It is going to require
strong Presidential and congressional leadership to achieve genuine
reform.
That is our challenge. Next week, we will be tested as to whether we
will be able and worthy to meet that challenge.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
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The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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