Intelligence Community

Richard Nixon was a crook. He was also a liar and anti-Semite who sought to subvert the Constitution. I wish he was president again. I'd also take Jimmy Carter, widely perceived as being about as effectual as Elmer Fudd, or Bill Clinton, fastest zipper in the West. Flawed men, yes, but say this much for them: When it came to a choice between people and party, between the public and the politics, there was at least a bare chance they would put the people, the public, first. No such chance exists with the current occupant of the mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue.

THIS IS a picture of ethnic cleansing in progress.The red-circled objects are Serbian armored vehicles, surrounding the Kosovo Albanian village of Glodane.The elongated gray smudge in the lower-right area of the shot is a crowd of people -- the population of the village, ousted from their homes and herded into a field by Serbian troops. You can also make out a flow of civilian vehicles, presumably full of deportees, proceeding from the field south on the road to Albania.Striking imagesIt's breathtaking to contemplate these images, probably taken by an American U-2 spy plane over Kosovo at the height of the Serbian rampage through the province.

IS THE National Security Agency doing its job - or stumbling through a midlife crisis? Is it protecting the United States from harm by eavesdropping on potential enemies? Or buying too many high-tech toys - all the better to soak up the world's fax, cellular phone and Internet transmissions - and spending too little on humans to analyze all the electronic booty?Those questions and others were raised during debate over the Intelligence authorization bill, quietly approved by the House and Senate recently.

HOW MANY AMERICANS figure that alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden is quaking in his boots by now? A show of hands please. Anyone? Anyone?Of course he isn't. The bombs we dropped in Afghanistan missed him and his gathering of terrorists. The bombs we dropped in Sudan either destroyed a deadly chemical weapons plant -- if you believe President Clinton and that ever-reliable, never-prevaricating American intelligence community -- or a pharmaceutical plant. A CNN news report says one of our bombs also hit a candy factory near Khartoum.

WASHINGTON -- Iran, Iraq and North Korea are working faster than the CIA realizes to obtain missiles that could strike the United States, a high-level government commission reported yesterday, warning that such an attack could come with little or no warning.Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who led the nine-member commission created by Congress last year, said the "relaxed post-Cold War world" of technology transfers and leaked classified information has enhanced the ability of nations to build or acquire ballistic missiles.

WASHINGTON -- The United States was caught off guard by India's recent nuclear test because American intelligence officials didn't believe India's new leaders would follow through on a campaign pledge to make their country a nuclear power, an inquiry concluded yesterday.This fundamental misjudgment of India's new Hindu nationalist government points to flaws in how the United States collects and analyzes intelligence, said retired Adm. David Jeremiah, who conducted the probe. But the main flaw he cited was basic to spycraft.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton appointed the CIA's No. 2 official, George J. Tenet, to run the nation's spy agencies yesterday, moving speedily to quell the furor surrounding the nomination of Anthony Lake, who withdrew this week in the face of sharp opposition."

How to reform our national intelligenceAfter reading William Pfaff's cogent and insightful article, ''Is the CIA above the law?'' (Nov. 21), I am compelled to offer the following comments regarding the current organization of intelligence in the United States.The national intelligence community consists of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the intelligence activities of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Of these, only the CIA is an independent agency; that is, not a subordinate activity within an executive department of the government.

High-level government commissions are usually meant to defuse crises and, above all, deflect political criticism from the White House or Congress. Seldom do they produce real solutions or lead to major reforms, because that is not their true purpose.It was not an overwhelming surprise, therefore, when the commission appointed after the Aldrich H. Ames spy case to study the future of the CIA and U.S. intelligence recently recommended that spies largely be left alone. For the agencies, the commission, headed by former Defense Secretary Harold O. Brown, suggested what might be termed a light make-over some cosmetic changes, a different hair style, a touch less mascara then back to the streets for business-as-usual in what has been called "the second oldest profession."

WASHINGTON -- Burdened by a bloated and expensive work force, the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence services must make deeper cuts in personnel and invest in new technology or their mission could be "seriously jeopardized," a federal commission said yesterday.NSA, which eavesdrops on foreign communications and is Maryland's largest employer with about 20,000 workers at Fort Meade, and the nation's two other spy agencies have been ordered by Congress to reduce their civilian personnel 24 percent by 2001.

President-elect Barack Obama secured the support of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, for his choice to head the CIA yesterday, significantly improving the odds that former California congressman Leon E. Panetta will be the next chief of the spy service. Feinstein, who as chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee will preside over Panetta's confirmation hearing, said yesterday that she had spoken with Panetta by phone and that she would support his confirmation. "I believe all systems are go," she said in an interview at the Capitol.

WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama has selected Leon E. Panetta to serve as the next director of the CIA, apparently concluding that a spy chief who understands politics might be more important than one with deep experience in intelligence matters. The surprise pick of Panetta, a former congressman and Clinton administration official, would give Obama a CIA director with unquestioned loyalty to the White House and an experienced managerial hand to steer the new administration away from intelligence scandals.

WASHINGTON - A new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies predicts that U.S. influence in the world will decline during the next two decades, as surging powers such as China and India, as well as independent entities including ethnic tribes and criminal networks, gain international clout. The report, meant to serve as a guide for the administration of President-elect Barack Obama, offers a vision of a global future in which the United States, while powerful, is just "one of a number" of important players on the world stage.

President-elect Barack Obama is sending conflicting signals on whether he intends to change the bankrupt culture of Washington's intelligence community and to introduce genuine reform to the Central Intelligence Agency. He appears to be ready to remove the top two intelligence officials, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA Director Michael V. Hayden - both retired general officers - which suggests Mr. Obama recognizes the need to change the military culture of the intelligence community.

U.S. presidents have been reluctant to reform the Central Intelligence Agency. Often, their first decision, naming a CIA director, guarantees there will be no meaningful change. Presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush named CIA directors who either were unfit for the job or politicized intelligence - or both. Three decades of mediocre appointments have created huge bureaucratic woes at the CIA that will be difficult to fix. The next president needs to address three major problems that have weakened the intelligence community: militarization of intelligence; absence of oversight; and illegal activity by the CIA's National Clandestine Service.

Richard Nixon was a crook. He was also a liar and anti-Semite who sought to subvert the Constitution. I wish he was president again. I'd also take Jimmy Carter, widely perceived as being about as effectual as Elmer Fudd, or Bill Clinton, fastest zipper in the West. Flawed men, yes, but say this much for them: When it came to a choice between people and party, between the public and the politics, there was at least a bare chance they would put the people, the public, first. No such chance exists with the current occupant of the mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Hundreds of job openings for members of the intelligence community who must gain experience at multiple agencies before advancing into executive positions are expected to be posted on a new Web site, beginning July 1, said Ronald Sanders, chief human capital officer for the director of national intelligence, during a press briefing this month. Requiring workers to complete temporary assignments at another agency is part of Director Mike McConnell's 100-day plan to improve collaboration among the country's 16 intelligence agencies.

WASHINGTON -- The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee accused the Bush administration yesterday of suppressing a classified intelligence report that paints a "grim" picture of the situation in Iraq. Rep. Jane Harman of California sent a letter to CIA Director Michael V. Hayden requesting the release of the report and charging that the agency was withholding the information for political considerations, which she said was demoralizing to the agency's work force. "I believe that the intelligence community has produced an in-depth intelligence review of Iraq, but that the material has been stamped `draft' and will not be finalized" until after the November elections, Harman said in the letter, which was released by her office.

WASHINGTON -- Moving to counter critics of President Bush's choice for CIA director, the White House mounted an intense effort yesterday to defend Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden as fit to lead the embattled spy agency. Bush and his senior advisers worked to discredit early attacks on the nominee, whose military background and involvement with the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program have raised concerns among lawmakers in both parties. "Mike knows our intelligence community from the ground up," Bush said of Hayden, the deputy director of national intelligence and former head of the NSA. Hayden would replace Porter J. Goss, who is leaving the CIA after a turbulent tenure marked by personnel turmoil and turf battles with spymaster John D. Negroponte.

WASHINGTON -- Porter J. Goss' replacement as CIA director will inherit an agency with an identity crisis that, to some degree, mirrors the overall state of U.S. intelligence, former top intelligence officials said yesterday. Many of them have been critical of Goss' performance, saying he failed to create a post-9/11 vision for his agency. Similarly, their criticism of Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte, who is Goss' boss, is that he has not produced an effective framework for the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies under his command.