The new national counterterrorism center established by President Bush under an executive order is to begin operations in early December, at about the same time that Congress may be debating whether to approve a law that would create a different version of the same agency.
The center would be the "primary organization in the United States government for analyzing and integrating" all intelligence "pertaining to terrorism and counterterrorism, excepting purely domestic counterterrorism information." The center's director is to supervise correlation of the terrorism intelligence and produce reports to be sent to the president and other senior officials.
It would operate under the "direction and control" of Director of Central Intelligence Porter J. Goss, according to the president's order. Goss, with the approval of Bush, would choose the director.
The center would also "conduct strategic operational planning for counterterrorism activities," but assign the carrying out of operations to the CIA, FBI and Pentagon. The center "shall not direct the execution of operations," the order says.
As established by the compromise reform bill now before Congress and which could be discussed again on Monday, the proposed center, and particularly its director, would have more authority than the president's version. The director would be a presidential appointee, approved by the Senate, and report directly to the president on "the planning and progress of joint counterterrorism operations," according to the bill.
The director would also report to the new director of national intelligence, but on matters such as the center's budget, terrorism analyses produced and the counterterrorism operations carried out by other agencies.
Under the compromise bill, the director of national intelligence "shall oversee" the new center, unlike the Bush approach, in which the CIA director "shall have authority, direction, and control over the Center and the Director of the Center."
Concerns voiced
While most of the public debate about the deadlock over passage of the intelligence reform legislation has focused on budget authority of the new director of national intelligence and some controversial immigration provisions, some legislators and experienced intelligence experts on Capitol Hill and in the government have privately pointed out issues they have with the center as it is authorized in the compromise legislation.
The center set up by the bill "could make things worse and create genuine problems," according to John Hamre, former deputy defense secretary in the Clinton administration and president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
One of a bipartisan group of 11 former senior officials who in September warned Congress "not to rush efforts to overhaul U.S. intelligence," Hamre said in a recent interview that the bill "could create tense relations because its director is a presidential appointee."
It is not clear whether the center director is "a policy job or a staff job," Hamre said, given that he or she is "a confirmed presidential appointee with a direct reporting responsibility to the president."
Hamre also said the major emphasis put on the center by the congressional bill has the effect of "taking one problem and organizing the whole government intelligence structure around this one problem." Congress, he said, "has slapped a bill together and handed it back to the administration."
Ironically, the compromise bill gives the director of national intelligence authority to resolve disagreements should they arise between the center director and a Cabinet official, such as the defense secretary.
Pentagon vs. intel chief?
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) also has mentioned potential conflicts in roles and reporting channels to the president, but he has focused his strong opposition to the measure on the threat it creates to warfighters in the event of a conflict between the defense secretary and the director of national intelligence over control of Pentagon intelligence collection agencies.
Under the House intelligence reform bill, which Hunter helped draft, the center director was not a presidential appointee but, similar to the president's approach, was named by the new director of national intelligence.
Hunter is also concerned that under the compromise bill the CIA becomes a virtual independent agency, supervised by the director of national intelligence but not controlled or directed by him. Instead, the CIA director remains a presidential appointee who is confirmed by the Senate and "reports" to the director of national intelligence "regarding the activities" of his agency.
As noted by intelligence specialists in one congressional analysis of the compromise bill, the measure's language "introduces a degree of uncertainty into the relationship of the Director of Central intelligence and the DNI."
Another perceived weakness is that unlike in the present arrangement, in which the CIA director has a direct role in approving covert operations, the director of national intelligence will not. The congressional experts see this as creating a situation in which the president may "come to rely more on the CIA director for daily intelligence and operational issues."
The Hill experts also see the role of director of national intelligence diminishing because of the center director's direct access to the president on terrorism, which they describe as "the primary issue affecting the U.S. government today."
Overall they ask: "Why will the president consult the director of national intelligence? Will this limit his ability to effectively manage the intelligence community?"
One compromise agreed to by the Senate was to modify a provision that would have prohibited the director of national intelligence from being housed in any building with an existing intelligence agency, in particular CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., renamed in the 1990s as the George H.W. Bush Intelligence Center.
Goss has already begun clearing out space on the seventh floor of the main Langley building for additional staff either for a director of national intelligence, should the bill pass, or for additional staff for himself as DCI with new budget authority.
Recognizing that the president may want to keep his top intelligence adviser in the building named for his father, the senators agreed to modify the legislation to say the director of national intelligence would have to move to a separate headquarters, but not until October 1, 2008, three months before Bush's term ends.
