Mission Impossible
The inside story of how a band of reformers tried--and failed--to change America's spy agencies
When Harry Truman signed into law the National Security Act of 1947, creating the CIA, he wanted precisely what the name implied: a central agency for intelligence. Its mission, above all, was to prevent another Pearl Harbor from happening. "The CIA was set up by me for the sole purpose of getting all the available information to the president," Truman wrote. "It was not intended to operate as an international agency engaged in strange activities."
Within months, of course, Truman himself was ordering the CIA to engage in "strange activities," such as staving off a Communist takeover in Italy. Still, the agency's key purpose remained the same. "We've lost sight of Truman's dream," says intelligence scholar Loch Johnson, a University of Georgia professor, "to have the wisdom of all the government before the president. In order to get these managers of the other agencies to send their information, they've got to fear him. And that comes from being able to fund or fire someone." Simon agrees: "As long as the DCI has neither capability," he says, "all this talk is garbage."
Split the job? Most of the reform proposals buzzing about Washington offer some version of a new, improved DCI. Some call for enhancing the position by granting the CIA chief authority over the budgets and personnel of the big collectors, such as the NSA. "It raises all kinds of huge issues," says one retired spy. "If CIA can't do its own job today, how does it also manage 14 other agencies?" Other proposals call for splitting the job--breaking off the DCI from the CIA and giving that person control over money and appointments. Some call this a DNI, a director of national intelligence. Either way, the military is bound to put up another formidable fight, as it has since 1947. Any attempt to wrest control of the Pentagon's spy agencies, says a Senate intelligence committee veteran, "would leave blood all over Capitol Hill."
Fortunately, other, smaller steps can be taken that would markedly improve the performance of U.S. intelligence. They are out there, in black and white, in a dozen federal studies over the past decade. They were the top priorities of the ODCI reformers: improving coordination and tasking, fostering cooperation and data sharing, standardizing security practices, and opening up and networking the community for the information age. But putting those into effect will take leadership--leadership that begins in the White House and Congress, they say. It can be done. Simon and his colleagues point to Wall Street firms, some saddled with conservative cultures and old technology, that successfully yanked their firms into the future; many have formidable security problems of their own--the protection of billions of dollars.
There are some hopeful signs. Allen says he has seen "fairly phenomenal" progress since 9/11 on threat reporting. Intelligence on potential terrorists now flows quickly through the system, he adds. Agencies are finally getting serious about common databases and communications. "I've done more sharing in the last two years than in the last 10," boasts a senior CIA analyst. At the FBI, the "wall" that separated national security investigations from criminal ones is down, and CIA officers now work on most of the FBI's terrorism task forces. The Defense Department's classified SIPRNET system, used by the military and U.S. embassies worldwide, is coming to the CIA soon and should help wire its analysts into a broader world.
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