John LeBoutillier
Friday, Nov. 9, 2001

The CIA is our lead intelligence agency and, as such, should receive the lion's share of the blame for this failure.

But, in the eight weeks since September 11, there has been virtually no blame whatsoever. Instead, there has been:

A) A show of support by the president for CIA Director George Tenet – the lone Clinton holdover – by going out to CIA HQ in Langley, Va., and praising Tenet, a lifelong Democrat who just happened to name the CIA's main building the George H.W. Bush building in honor of the former CIA director, former president – and father of the present president. (Could this partially explain President Bush's retention of this Clintonite and former Democratic Senate staffer?)

B) An increase by the president of $1 billion to the already staggering – and secret – CIA budget, which is closer to $60 billion than the $30 billion often repeated in press accounts.

C) No talk whatsoever of congressional hearings exploring this massive intel failure. Where is the oversight? Who is checking the CIA and putting the heat on the agency to clean up its act?

Now comes one more inside-the-Beltway move which expands CIA's power – rather than limiting it and making it more accountable.

As the Washington Post wrote, "A high-level presidential commission plans to recommend that the Pentagon's three largest intelligence-collection agencies be transferred to the director of central intelligence in a major restructuring of the intelligence community, according to sources familiar with the panel's findings.

"Under the proposal, the National Reconnaissance Office, which develops, builds and manages intelligence satellite systems, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which handles imagery intelligence systems and mapping, and the National Security Agency, which is responsible for electronic intercepts, would each come under the control of the CIA director.

"The proposal, which will be delivered to President Bush this month, would constitute the largest overhaul of the U.S. intelligence community in decades and is aimed at helping consolidate programs and reducing rivalries within a massive intelligence-collection bureaucracy that involves 12 separate agencies."

In other words, the CIA – rather than have some of its power stripped or limited – is actually going to have even more power.

This is a terrible move. What should happen is something that, for a brief period in time 20 years ago, actually improved our intelligence capability.

Back in the mid-1970s there was a huge debate inside the CIA over just how large the Soviet military threat really was. Statistics, pictures, budget numbers all painted a hazy picture. CIA was not certain how large was the USSR's military capability. (We should not be surprised at CIA's ineptitude. They did not even know that the Berlin Wall was coming down until they saw it on CNN.)

Back in the mid-1970s they decided on a unique approach: Team B. CIA brought in an entirely new group of analysts and experts who looked at the very same data that the regular CIA had examined.

And guess what happened? Team B 'read' this Intel entirely differently. Team B saw that indeed the Soviet military was twice the strength and size that the regular CIA analysts had determined.

Of course, Team B was then disbanded.

What we need now is not a consolidation of power in one agency. Rather, we need creative cooperation and constructive competition to force out the best analysis possible.

In other words, we need a permanent Team B.

The Scowcroft recommendation is yet another move to put too much power in the very hands that have performed badly.

Why is it that in Washington you always get rewarded for your failures?

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

War on Terrorism