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| Shaping Intelligence Reform |
December 02, 2004 |
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Dear Friends,
As one of eight Republicans who voted against the House bill implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations, I`ve been watching the deliberations between the House and the Senate quite carefully.
I voted against the House bill for two reasons.
First, the House bill included some provisions on deportation of immigrants not suspected of terrorism without hearings, including to countries that allow torture. We have some obligations -- both moral and treaties -- to allow people to seek asylum and prove that they are eligible for it. These and other immigration provisions were not recommended by the 9/11 Commission and, in my view, should not have been included in the legislation.
Second, the 9/11 Commission recommended unprecedented information sharing among government agencies with very little attention to privacy protections for American citizens. It surprises me that this issue has gotten so little attention. The PATRIOT Act has far more checks and balances -- sunset provisions, probable cause with warrants from a judge, legislative review etc. Both the House and Senate bills were very weak in this regard.
The 9/11 Commission focused on one problem in intelligence -- improving strategic warning of a terrorist attack in enough time to respond and defend ourselves. They did not look at military intelligence, analysis and estimates, collection priorities or a whole host of other intelligence challenges. Some of the "solutions" for strategic warning can exacerbate problems elsewhere. For example, the 9/11 Commission recommended a more streamlined and centralized intelligence structure. But the Senate Intelligence Committee review on the Iraq WMD Intelligence identified "group think" as a real problem in our analysis and estimates -- a problem that could be made worse by a centralized, streamlined structure. How we resolve these tensions is very important.
Both House and Senate bills create a Counter Terrorism Center in statute -- largely a formality because the center is already functioning in practice. They also create a strengthened National Intelligence Director.
Important differences remain over how much authority to give the "NID" over budget, programs and personnel. On this matter, the House Armed Services Committee and our Chairman Duncan Hunter are right.
There are two "customers" for intelligence -- policymakers and soldiers. As one of those policymakers currently in the legislative branch but who served in the executive branch on the national security council staff in a previous life, I can tell you that the demand for information by policymakers is insatiable. We always want more information and we have plenty of muscle to pressure the system to get it for us and loud voices to scream when we don`t have it.
But there is another priority that doesn`t have as loud a voice: the soldiers. In the ten years between the first Gulf War and the current war in Iraq, the United States made huge strides getting realtime information to soldiers on the battlefield.
A few short months ago, a 24 year old Captain responsible for 90 young Americans was clearing out a dangerous neighborhood in northern Iraq. He had real time pictures of the town and where the enemy was streaming into his command post. That was not possible ten years ago and takes unprecedented cooperation between the military and intelligence agencies.
There is a group of people meeting in Washington today, as they do every day, deciding where our national assets need to be prioritized for tomorrow. There will always be competing priorities and more needs than there are capabilities. When those priorities are being decided, we need to make sure the soldiers have a seat at the table. There are a lot of young Americans depending on us. We need to get this right.
Wish you were here,
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