You can pin blame for 9/11 and the failure to find weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq on many things. But the lack of a central
budget authority over the various intelligence agencies isn't one
of them.
True: Giving the head of U.S. intelligence real authority over the
$40 billion spent annually on intelligence is a step in the right
direction. But the notion that centralizing control over the budget
is a silver bullet for preventing a future 9/11 is pure
fantasy.
Many factors contributed to the 9/11- and Iraq-intelligence
failures, including unimaginative intelligence analysts and
policy-makers, the prevalence of groupthink, communications
problems among agencies, the fact that we had too few agents
infiltrating terrorist groups or on the ground in Iraq, and
shortcomings in the intelligence community's leadership over a
number of years.
Budget authority is the smallest problem.
Fortunately, the 9/11 Commission recently moved the debate over the
intelligence community in the right direction by proposing the
establishment of a national intelligence director to oversee all
intelligence efforts. This post would replace the director of
central intelligence, who serves as both the nominal chief of the
U.S. intelligence community and the head of the CIA at its
headquarters in Langley, Va.
The problem with the CIA post is that it has all of the
responsibility for the intelligence community's conduct, but
virtually no authority to guarantee its performance. The national
intelligence director would gain greater authority to handle
budgets. But more important, he would have the clout to break up
such problems as groupthink and poor communication.
This would be a significant improvement over the current position,
whose authorities were established under the 1947 National Security
Act during the Cold War.
So, yes, improving the budgetary authority of the intelligence
community's head is a good start. But it's going to take more than
that to ensure that intelligence remains our first line of
defense.
Peter Brookes, a former CIA and naval intelligence officer, is
senior fellow for national security affairs at the Heritage
Foundation.
First appeared in the USA Today
