December 08, 2004 | Intel on Intel Reform

Last night, the House approved the intelligence reform compromise. The Senate will follow with a roll call vote today.

For the big picture on the reform's create of a national intelligence director, I defer to one of the giants, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post.

He writes, in part,:

"But the new chief would not be directly in charge of any operations -- not covert actions, the CIA station chiefs around the world, the army of analysts whose job is to connect the dots, or the operators of high-tech collection systems that contribute so much these days to finding and disrupting terrorist plans.

The new director also would not have total control over the Defense Department collection agencies, mainly expensive satellite and eavesdropping systems, which provide three-quarters of the country's military and international intelligence.

There are other complications. The new director would have competition for the president's ear. The director of a new national counterterrorism center would be a presidential appointee who would report directly to the president on counterterrorist operations.

This new player is confounding to intelligence experts trying to see how all the new pieces would fit together with the existing system and whether the changes would make anyone safer.

"Have they created a stronger, central, senior person in charge? It is not clear to me that they have," said Winston P. Wiley, a former senior CIA official and terrorism expert. "It's not that budgets and personnel are not important, but what's really important is directing, controlling and having access to the people who do the work. They created a person who doesn't have that."

Full story here.

Posted by Ryan Singel at December 8, 2004 09:26 AM

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