Mission Impossible
The inside story of how a band of reformers tried--and failed--to change America's spy agencies
But it won't be easy. Since 1991, the intelligence community has been the subject of no fewer than 16 federal studies and commissions--many calling for major reform--yet its basic structure has remained essentially unchanged for a half century. Why? The usual Washington reasons: fights over turf and money. In the intelligence game, the big players include a half-dozen powerful congressional commit-tees, a handful of billion-dollar contractors, and the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, and a dozen other agencies.
But money and power alone don't explain the failure to improve America's intelligence capabilities. A six-month examination by U.S. News --based on extensive interviews with senior intelligence officials and a review of thousands of pages of internal government memorandums, reports, and other documents--shows why the nation's hydra-headed intelligence network has been so stubbornly, and successfully, resistant to change. The magazine's inquiry identified many of the same problems found by the 9/11 commission and the Senate intelligence panel: chronic shortages of qualified spies, experienced analysts, and fluent linguists, and a system hobbled by overclassification, conflicting security rules, and myopic management.
The magazine's review, however, documented not just technical problems but cultural, structural, and even psychological impediments to change. They are illuminated by a story, never previously told, of the last major effort to reform the nation's intelligence services--and why that effort failed. Technically, the story begins just three years before the 9/11 attacks, but those involved say it really dates back to the early 1990s. At the time, the fall of the Berlin Wall was still fresh in the public mind, but for many intelligence hands the celebration of the victory over communism was short-lived. In search of a peace dividend, Congress slashed the intelligence budget by nearly 20 percent. Some lawmakers, angry at the CIA's exaggeration of Soviet economic strength, even sought to abolish the agency.
By the mid-1990s, cutbacks and controversies like the Aldrich Ames espionage scandal had taken their toll. Plummeting morale and a booming tech market prompted a brain drain of some of the community's best minds. At the same time, cellphones, 24-hour cable-news networks, and the Internet were revolutionizing communications. In the cloistered cubicles of the intelligence agencies, managers were finding their deadlines shorter and their staffs smaller. The threats also seemed to have multiplied, from Serbian ethnic cleansing to North Korea's secret nuclear program.
Two-part job. By 1996, calls for reform were echoing across the Potomac. To better marshal the intelligence community's resources, some in Congress demanded what studies and commissions have repeatedly called for: increasing the power of the DCI, the director of central intelligence. The DCI has always worn two hats: first as CIA chief and second as coordinator, at least on paper, of the entire intelligence community. The problem is that the DCI controls only about 10 percent of the intelligence budget; nearly all the rest is run by the Pentagon, with its military intelligence programs and control of satellites and electronic listening posts.
Unsurprisingly, Pentagon brass argued that a true DCI would shortchange military priorities. Others warned that an intelligence czar, not unlike that proposed last week by the 9/11 panel, would add unneeded bureaucracy or create an unaccountable superspy agency. Confronted by the Pentagon and its powerful allies on Capitol Hill, the reformers backed down. The compromise: Congress created four new positions under the DCI, charged specifically with managing the intelligence community. The new plan gave the four a clear mandate, fancy new titles--and virtually no real authority.
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