“First, do no harm . . .”

by Marilyn M. Brannan, Associate Editor

Unravelling The New World Order

November 29, 2004

Intelligence Reform (tailored after 9-11 Commission recommendations) was, for the time being,  killed by the House during the third weekend of November.  The proposed plan would have consolidated the nation's 15 intelligence agencies into one, headed by a national intelligence director. By shelving the legislation, the House broke away from the fevered stampede in Washington, giving some time for sensible deliberation—and hopefully, making real reform possible in the future.

Putting the brakes on in the House has accelerated the political blame game.  Outraged editorials warning that the country is now less safe have appeared, along with angry testimonials by persons who lost family or friends in the 9-11 attack and who charge that failure to pass intelligence reform posthaste is a cruel and irresponsible response to the suffering and death of 9-11.   

The Washington Post was only too happy to identify the “conservatives” in the House as the bad guys. Others have claimed certain House members were simply doing the Pentagon's bidding—an egregious offense, of course, in the eyes of the liberal establishment. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, (D-WV) called the bill the most important national security bill in the last generation, and blamed Rep. James Sensenbrenner and Rep. Duncan Hunter (both Republicans) for the failure to pass the legislation.

Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat, had this to say: “If there is another major terrorist attack on our soil—and sadly, there will likely be one—we will have only ourselves to blame. Congress had a chance to protect America, and Congress failed.” 

The bill that Rockefeller has labeled “the most important national security bill in the last generation” is at the same time the least-considered.  The measure was rushed through both houses, then cobbled together in a conference committee into a 500-page omnibus bill that few had read, much less considered.

Dr. James Schlesinger, former head of the intelligence community and past Secretary of Defense, said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on August 16, “First, do no harm.  In altering the structure of the intelligence community, it is essential to deliberate long and hard—and not to be stampeded into doing harm.”

A Wall Street Journal editorial on November 22 observed, “If this reform is really so vital, it will get done, but better to do it in more considered fashion next year.”

Pentagon—or CIA?

The fact is, the bill died in House-Senate conference over one critical, central policy issue: whether the military should take the lead in fighting the war on terror. Some Beltway insiders don't consider Iraq to be a part of that war and would prefer to have the Marines and special-ops forces take a back seat to the CIA and other clandestine operations—a view reflected in the reforms pushed by the Senate.

Obviously, the right reforms will make America stronger. But the 9/11 Commission suggested a complete overhaul of the intelligence community that would include the creation of a national intelligence director to head up the CIA and other agencies, and would give that person control over the budgets for the intelligence agencies inside the Defense Department.  Their recommendations also include the creation of a National Counter Terrorism Center and a requirement that the intelligence budget be made public.

The Senate picked up these recommendations, including provisions that would allow the new national intelligence director to pull money and personnel away from the Pentagon's intelligence agencies. The Senate plan would give the National Counter Terrorism Center a dangerous level of “operational control”—meaning the new intelligence czar could order military personnel and CIA operatives to carry out missions overseas without any input from the director of the CIA or the Secretary of Defense.

The problems with that are obvious. The intelligence czar, who would no doubt occupy office space within the CIA, could end up drawing intelligence resources away from the military to meet the needs of the CIA, FBI and other civilian spy agencies, leaving soldiers in the field without the real-time intelligence critically needed to fight on the modern battlefield. If such a scenario had already been in place, soldiers fighting in Fallujah might not have had the satellite linkups they needed to study the changing battlefield.  Top military personnel also fear the intelligence director would pull essential personnel away from military duties—something expressly within his power under the Senate plan.

Also troubling is the proposal to give the intelligence czar the ability to move personnel out of combat support units, a tactic that would destroy the military's chain of command and give rise to the kind of bureaucratic micromanagement that causes operations to fail and gets soldiers killed.

Put simply, the Senate bill does not reflect a war fighting mentality.  Instead, it is a call for managing terrorism with small-scale, possibly covert, operations by taking the Pentagon out of the decision-making process and putting the task of going after terrorists in the hands of the intelligence czar. Such a strategy is more a law-enforcement matter than a real war, where a large number of soldiers openly do battle with the enemy.

Obviously, Congress (especially the Senate) was attempting to legislate that thinking into law with these proposed reforms—ignoring the expressed will of the American people.  John Kerry ran a national campaign based on that very agenda and he lost.

Must we rubber stamp 9-11 Commission recommendations? 

It is important to remember that the 9-11 Commission turned out to be political, agenda-driven, and anything but the non-partisan group it was supposed to be. The Wall Street Journal reported back in March that Commissioners Gorelick, Richard BenVeniste and Timothy Roemer were regularly consulting with Senate minority leader Tom Daschle to coordinate a political strategy—namely, to use the commission as a political opportunity to suggest that the Bush administration had been asleep at the switch in the months prior to the 9/11 attacks.

House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter and Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Judiciary Committee chairman, agree that the compromise bill that House Speaker Hastert wanted to bring to a vote on November 20 would greatly hamper the power of the military to use real-time intelligence, but would not go far enough in clamping down on immigration security loopholes.

Some in Congress do not believe that immigration reform issues belong in the intelligence-reform bill.  However, Sensenbrenner pointed out that opponents who focus on the intelligence side and ignore the immigration issues put our security at risk, as immigration issues are central to intelligence reform.

“The immigration system has been gamed by a lot of people, including terrorists,” Sensenbrenner stated.  “They know how to do it, and they see the vulnerabilities, and until we plug those vulnerabilities, America is going to be at risk.”

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