Goss Outlines His Vision For The CIA
Submitted by Templar Titan on Thu, 06/17/2004 - 18:39.
By RICHARD LARDNER
rlardner@tampatrib.com TAMPA - George Tenet's resignation as the nation's top spy is triggering speculation about who will replace him and whether the change in leadership will provide the momentum needed to reform the U.S. intelligence community. Finding a new intelligence director will be the easy part, with U.S. Rep. Porter Goss, R- Sanibel, considered a front- runner. Overhauling the dysfunctional confederation of agencies responsible for stealing secrets from U.S. allies and enemies will be much harder, national security experts say. |
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Perhaps no one knows that better than Goss, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and a former CIA agent. In an interview this week, Goss said President Bush has not asked him to take over for Tenet as director of central intelligence, and he declined to say whether he would take the job if it were offered. But Goss, 65, has plenty of opinions on improving U.S. intelligence operations. The process begins with vesting the CIA director with greater control over spending and personnel decisions, he said. But that means taking authority away from the Defense Department, a daunting prospect. ``I've been in Washington just long enough to know that people do not voluntarily shovel turf at you from their own supply,'' Goss said. The intelligence community is made up of 15 federal agencies that consume about $40 billion a year in funding. Although the director of central intelligence is supposed to run the community, the bulk of the money and personnel are under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's control. That leads to friction over what kinds of intelligence should be collected and from where, Goss said. Congress has considered legislative remedies, but those measures have stalled largely because the Pentagon has consistently opposed any weakening of its authority. Goss said it will take a decision from the president to change the structure, which has remained mostly unchanged for nearly 60 years. ``Right now we've got this anomaly where we give the authority to one person and the money to someone else,'' Goss said. ``That's the problem. What does it take to deal with the secretary of defense? It takes the boss of the secretary of defense.'' Beyond budget issues, dealing with the massive flow of intelligence collected by satellites, aircraft, ships at sea and spies on the ground has emerged as a major challenge. U.S. intelligence agencies gather tens of millions of pieces of information every day, government officials say. The information is loaded into disparate databases, and there are not enough human and technical resources to process all of it quickly. An episode reported two years ago underscores the challenge. The U.S. National Security Agency, which intercepts foreign communications, collected two messages the day before the Sept. 11 attacks warning that a major event was about to happen. But the Arabic-language messages weren't translated until Sept. 12. Although NSA said they were too vague to prevent the attacks, the delay showed how severe the data overload problem had become. Looking For Work Goss blamed cuts made to the intelligence budget during the 1990s. He said he wants to hire more intelligence analysts and linguists skilled in translating the Middle Eastern languages used by al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. ``What we need to do is reshape our capabilities to deal with the threats as they exist,'' Goss said. ``We're talking about something very different. It's a new order of battle. It's terrorists in alleys.'' Although Goss has not been offered the CIA post, he will soon be looking for a job. At the end of the year he will retire from Congress after representing Florida's 14th congressional district for 16 years. As chairman of the House intelligence committee since 1996, Goss is a well-known figure on Capitol Hill and would likely have little trouble being confirmed. ``It would be an easy confirmation,'' said Melvin Goodman, director of intelligence reform at the Center for International Policy, a liberal think tank in Washington. ``The Senate tends to confirm people from Capitol Hill. Porter Goss is a Hill person.'' Goodman criticizes Goss for being an advocate for the intelligence community rather than an aggressive and critical overseer. Goss has shown an independent streak at times and has had reasonably good working relationships with Democrats in Congress. He was a senior member of a bipartisan panel that delivered a report critical of the intelligence community's performance before Sept. 11. Goss also teamed with Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the intelligence committee's top Democrat, to investigate why the CIA's assessment of Iraq's weapons program was flawed. But Goss is not above bare- knuckle politics. In late January, Harman cried foul when Goss shut the public out of a committee hearing on the leak of a covert CIA officer's name. Harman said that she and Goss had worked out a deal to hold an open hearing but that Goss reneged at the last minute. ``Bipartisanship on the committee just got a lot harder,'' Harman said at the time. Goss said ``partisan pressures'' from both sides of the aisle can complicate the committee's work. Election May Delay Move At a news conference in April, President Bush said he is willing to discuss changes in how the intelligence community operates, but he has offered no specific plans. Bush's Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, wants to create a national intelligence director with authority over all intelligence resources - a plan similar to what Goss has proposed. Rand Beers, the Kerry campaign's senior adviser on national security, has criticized Bush for moving too slowly to reform intelligence operations. When Tenet leaves July 11, his deputy, John McLaughlin, will take over as acting director. Bush might not make a permanent change until after the election in November. James Woolsey, President Clinton's director of central intelligence from 1993 to 1995, supports the creation of an intelligence czar. But the budget authority issue needs to be resolved before a new position is created, he said Thursday. Woolsey said Goss would make a solid intelligence chief because of his experience in Congress and at the CIA. ``He's got good judgment,'' Woolsey said of Goss. ``He's not an impetuous man. He's fair. He listens to all sides and makes up his mind. I think if he and president wanted it, he'd be a very fine DCI.'' |
