Report Backs Expansion of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board

A new report by associates of former President George H.W. Bush recommends beefing up a little-known government panel that could help the next president avoid getting insulated in the White House, which critics say has happened to George W. Bush.

The panel is called the President's Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB), and it should be given more staff and taken far more seriously by the next commander in chief, according to the report by three former government officials who are now affiliated with the elder Bush's library and the Bush School of Government at Texas A&M University.

A source close to the authors said the board, composed of government officials and nongovernment experts such as academics and civic leaders, could give a president "warning signals" about problems in the intelligence world, such as looming threats from abroad and faulty patterns of intelligence similar to the deficiencies that led the current President Bush to conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction during his first term. That conclusion was a cornerstone of his rationale for invading Iraq.

The board could also give the commander in chief an independent assessment of important intelligence issues, outside normal channels at the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House. "Outside people don't have any bone to pick," says the source. "They can give you an unvarnished look."

Use of the board, formerly called the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), has been spotty over the years, and the group has sometimes been populated with political appointees who were ill-equipped to give sage advice, the report says. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy made good use of the board, the report adds, while President Carter largely ignored it.

The current president at first didn't pay much attention to the panel, and it met only once during his first term. "In Bush's second term," the report says, "the PFIAB took on a new life, largely due to the major effort at intelligence reorganization that took place."

PFIAB's precursor was established by President Eisenhower in 1956 as the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities.

The report, authored by Kenneth Absher, Michael Desch, and Roman Popadiuk, was financed by the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, which aims to foster science, technology, and research.

—Kenneth T. Walsh