Getting it 'dead wrong'
So, how fouled up are the nation's spy agencies? Oy
Such miscues are part of a larger problem, the commission found, in how intelligence agencies communicate with policymakers--and each other. For instance, there are no communitywide procedures for correcting intelligence after a source has been discredited. The commission also issued a rare critique of the President's Daily Brief on intelligence, saying it often carried alarmist headlines and failed to mention uncertainties behind its conclusions. Reading the presidential report every day, the commission concluded, could "create, over time, a greater perception of certainty about [intelligence analysts'] judgments than is warranted." Commissioners did not examine whether the Bush administration misused intelligence in making its case for the Iraq war, saying that was beyond their purview.
The report did praise the spy agencies for their work shedding light on Libya's WMD program and uncovering the nuclear smuggling network of Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan. It said that innovative efforts in collecting and analyzing intelligence helped officials gather enough information to force Libya to abandon its nuclear and chemical programs. The commission also acknowledged that agencies had made some reforms to improve information sharing.
But commissioners issued 74 recommendations to revitalize the "disorganized and fragmented" spy agencies, calling for "stronger and more centralized management" and for clearer authority for the new director of national intelligence. The FBI, it said, needs a reorganization to strengthen its focus on national security.
President Bush promised action, but the report was timed to come out safely after the presidential election and Congress's major intelligence reform. The commissioners warn that Negroponte will have trouble taking on the Pentagon, which owns 80 percent of the intelligence budget, and the CIA. The spy agencies have "an almost perfect record of resisting external recommendations." After all, they note, many of their proposals have been made before--in some cases, as long ago as 1971.
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