Tenet leaving should start debate

WASHINGTON — George Tenet’s resignation as CIA director does little to solve the many inherent problems plaguing U.S. intelligence, say former spies, lawmakers and experts pushing for a broad overhaul of how spy agencies operate.

Tenet’s decision to leave next month paves the way for a debate over how to resolve those issues.

The CIA and 14 other agencies representing the U.S. intelligence community have been beset by difficulties in recruiting human sources and by the inability to fully analyze and share information from oceans of incoming data, many observers agree.

The CIA director has managerial authority over only the CIA. The Pentagon controls most other agencies and around 80 percent of the estimated $40 billion in annual intelligence spending.

Tenet’s resignation “presents an opportunity for the intelligence community to undergo the structural reforms critical to our national security that I have long advocated,” said former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

“What this announcement does is completely shuffle the deck and open up some basic questions about the future direction of intelligence,” echoed Steven Aftergood, an analyst who tracks government secrecy and intelligence for the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington watchdog group.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said it would be wrong to try to undertake intelligence reforms during an election year and at a time when the CIA’s performance on Iraq and other areas is still being examined.

Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, Tenet had tried to reorient spy agencies away from their traditional Cold War framework and toward terrorism and other “asymmetric” threats. He has sought more money to hire thousands of new employees, including analysts and Arabic translators.

Tenet’s efforts won him strong support from President Bush and – in his initial years on the job – from a broad bipartisan group in Congress. But some lawmakers said changes were necessary after the Sept. 11 attacks and the failed prediction that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq.

“Simply put, I think the community is somewhat in denial over the full extent … of the shortcoming of its work on Iraq and also on 9-11,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said before Tenet’s decision was announced. “We need fresh thinking within the community, especially within the Congress, to enable the intelligence community to change and adapt to the dangerous world in which we live.”

Others critics said Tenet became too interested in pleasing the White House to make the sweeping changes needed in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

“What we need is a director of Central Intelligence who is independent of the White House and who will provide accurate information on a timely basis, irrespective of what the folks in the White House want to hear,” said Richard Stubbing, Duke University public policy professor who oversaw intelligence and national security budgets for the Office of Management and Budget from 1974 to 1981.

Tenet “does not have the authority to go along with his responsibilities,” former CIA Director James Woolsey said. “He’s sort of the chairman of the board of a conglomerate, and he owns no stock and has no executive authority in all but one of the (companies).”

Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced bills that would create a national intelligence director with greater budgetary authority over other agencies besides the CIA, which is similar to what Shelby is proposing.

“We need a true director of the entire intelligence community — all 15 agencies — who has the necessary authority, responsibility and accountability,” said Jane Harman, the House Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat.

Giving the Defense Department control over intelligence budgets “is not the way to have an independent intelligence community,” agreed Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., sponsor of the Senate version. But the Defense Department has objected to ceding any authority. Pentagon officials have argued that much intelligence work is still done in support of military operations.

Richard Perle, a leading conservative thinker with close ties to senior Pentagon officials, said in a February speech that the CIA has done a poor job of anticipating future threats.

“We need significant change at the CIA,” Perle said. “It depends too much on what it steals and not enough on what it can read in the open literature that is developed over a period of time.”